Chapter 20: Agnese Gets Up

The invitation came by courier at seven the next morning, on cream card as thick as a plate.

Gaspare brought it up to the penthouse himself and read it out in a flat voice.

"The Founders' Dinner of the Santelli family. Friday night, at eight, at Gallo's. By the invitation of Tommaso Gallo."

"Friday is four days away," I said.

"Two hundred guests."

He turned the card over.

"Not just the captains. He's invited every friend Salvatore ever had."

"From where?"

"Palermo. Brooklyn. Philadelphia. Old men who haven't set foot in New Jersey in ten years."

"Why them?" Cesare asked.

"Because they don't know you," Gaspare said.

He put the card on the table.

"They knew your father. They'll hear Tommaso say, in Italian, that the Don can't be trusted with the port."

"And they'll nod."

"They'll nod."

"And they'll hear nothing from me," Cesare said. "Because I can't say it back."

"They'll hear plenty from you," I said. "You'll just need somebody to pass you the words."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

I looked at the card with its gold edge.

Two hundred names were listed on the back in tiny curling script.

"We have the recording," I said. "We play it. In front of all of them."

"He'll say it's fake," Gaspare said.

"Then we need someone in that room who was there when Salvatore died."

Nobody had to say her name.

At nine o'clock I walked down the corridor of the fourth floor at University Hospital and found an empty bed.

The sheets were folded.

A bag of saline hung from the pole, with its tube neatly disconnected and capped.

The charge nurse stood beside it with her arms folded.

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