Chapter 22: Show Your Hands

Nico's hands were wrapped in clean gauze when we reached the Belleville chapel at five to twelve.

Gina walked in front of us with the green book held against her chest.

I had looked for Silvia in every room of the flat and found only her mother's rosary on the sofa cushion.

I did not think she had run.

She had left the one thing she owned that was not stolen.

The chapel was full.

Every pew held a capo, and the men who had stood on Pier Nine with guns the night before sat in the back rows with their hats in their hands.

Marco sat on a single wooden chair in the aisle with his wrists tied in front of him.

His nose was swollen flat, and one eye had closed.

He turned his head slowly as I came in, and he smiled with a split lip.

"Wife," he said.

I walked past him and did not answer.

The old Don from Elizabeth sat at the front with his cane across his knees and the four other Dons beside him.

Rosaria sat alone in the first pew.

She wore black, and she had no cross at her throat.

"Barzini's mother asked to speak first," the old man said. "She has the floor."

She stood without help.

She walked to the altar rail and turned and looked at the men she had fed at her table for forty years.

"Three years ago my husband's church accounts started paying the Montclair clinic," Rosaria said. "I signed the first cheque."

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