Chapter 20: The Tape

Teo's POV

Leandro stopped the tape with one finger.

"There," he said. "You've heard my voice. Now you've heard what it was for."

I was still standing behind Cece's chair, and I could not feel my hands.

For seven years I had put my brother's death down to a drunk in a pickup truck.

I had taken the chair, and the table, and the quiet that went with it.

I had passed this man the bread.

"He was an informant," Leandro said to the five bosses. "I saved this table."

"Play the rest," I said.

Leandro turned his head.

"It's only an excerpt, Teodoro. The rest is a long conversation about trucks."

"Play it."

"You don't give orders at this table."

"Play it," said the old man from Cicero, with a wheeze. "All of it."

Leandro did not move.

I came around Cece's chair and reached across the wood, and pressed the button myself.

The tape hissed and ran on.

A second man's voice, a driver, said: "Your friend's brother, boss. Is he really talking to the feds?"

"No," said Leandro's voice.

The room went so still that I heard the recorder's motor.

"Then why?"

"He won't sell me his vote on the Calumet deal. His little brother will. The little brother's the medic, the quiet one. He'll do what he's told."

There was a laugh on the tape, and it was Leandro's.

Nobody at the table looked at me.

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