Chapter 22: The Family Door

My father set the table for fifty.

It was a Sunday, a week after the gala.

The long room at the back of the Bay Ridge house was one I had not entered since I was twenty-two.

Every Castellane cousin, uncle and cousin's husband sat on one side.

The other side stood empty, with a white cloth and a dozen chairs.

"Who's that for?" I whispered to Franco.

"Wait," he said, and tugged at his collar.

At six o'clock the front door opened.

A dozen people walked into the room in dark suits, and they stopped when they saw the table.

The man in front was white-haired and heavy, and he walked with a cane.

Behind him came a younger man with flour still on his sleeves.

I knew without being told that I was looking at the Baccari.

Nobody on my side spoke.

My father rose.

He walked down the length of the table, past forty of his own people.

He stopped in front of the old man with the cane.

"You know why I asked you here," my father said.

"I have a notion," said the old Baccari.

"Twenty-two years ago my wife was shot in front of my children."

"I remember."

"I said it was you. I made it a war."

"I buried eleven of your men and broke the hands of nine more."

"My son took the teeth of anyone who owed you a favor."

Franco stared at the tablecloth.

"It was a lie," my father said. "It was never you."

"I have it from my daughter, and I have it from Vincent's own mouth, in front of four million people."

"I was wrong."

The room was so quiet that I heard a fork settle on a plate.

"I have no excuse," my father said. "I have two piers on the Gowanus. They were mine."

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