He took a drink of water. They watched his hand as he set the glass down carefully.

“Well, you know. Millions of dollars of lost business, and it must be the same for you.”

Falcone began making a little sculpture out of cookies, strawberries, orange rinds, and nearby shards of glass.

“Our concerns,” said Forlenza, “are four.” He thrust out his left hand to say this, ready to tick off those reasons. It was a pet gesture. Forlenza had four reasons for anything. Four reasons Jews were misunderstood. Four reasons why, all pride aside, Joe Louis would have knocked out Rocky Marciano. Four reasons veal was better than sirloin. If Don Forlenza had been born with two extra fingers, he would have had six reasons for everything.

“First,” he said, returning to English, his right index finger bending back his left, “ New York. Helping them understand that this thing of ours can stand up to anything but infighting, that we all win the uneasy peace we have achieved simply by observing it.”

This met with nods of agreement all around, even from Geraci.

“Second”-middle finger-“ Las Vegas. Seven years ago, we sat in a fancy bank building in New York City and agreed that Las Vegas would be open for business for us all. A city of the future, where any Family could operate. Yet now the Corleones have set up headquarters there-”

Geraci started to talk, but Forlenza wagged a finger at him.

“-and the Chicago outfit all of a sudden thinks it’s in charge of enforcement there.”

“Fuckface,” muttered Narducci, a faraway look in his eyes.

“For your information,” Falcone said, now adding strawberries and more glass to his pile, “he don’t like to be called that.” Luigi Russo, who ran things in Chicago, preferred to be called Louie. He’d gotten his more colorful nickname (which the newspapers were forced to shorten to “the Face”) from a hooker who claimed the only sex he wanted was to stick his big nose up her cunt. Her decapitated body washed up on the Michigan side of the lake; her head was never found.

“Speaking of which,” Forlenza said, “third”-ring finger-“ Chicago.”

Geraci glanced at Falcone, whose operation was once just a branch of the Chicago outfit. No reaction. Every piece of glass that had been on the table was in front of him now.

“When we all met seven years ago, Chicago wasn’t even invited,” Forlenza said. “Can you imagine?”

Once, eager to direct Capone’s growth away from them, the New York Families had agreed that everything west of Chicago belonged to Chicago. There was still enough Cleveland in Nick Geraci to recognize this as a plan that could have made sense only to a New Yorker. Capone fell; brutal chaos followed. L.A. and San Francisco split off. Moe Greene, from New York, had a dream that became Las Vegas, which was designated an open city with no say from Chicago. After Greene was killed, the Corleones took over his casino and built the Castle in the Sand, but the most powerful force in the city was a coalition of the midwestern Families, led by Detroit and Cleveland. Chicago had points in that coalition (as did the Corleone Family, but only a few), and Louie Russo had made noises about wanting more control of it. Chicago was unified again and getting stronger by the day. With New York in turmoil, many saw Russo as the most powerful figure in American organized crime.

Forlenza shook his head in disbelief. “The New York Families said they’d given up trying to civilize Chicago. Back then, people called them our black sheep. Our mad dogs.”

“Our castrated chickens,” said Molinari, referring to the literal translation of Capone.

“Bunch of animals,” said Laughing Sal.

Falcone patted his pile on either side, shoring it up. It stood about two hands high. He leaned his face toward it as if he were trying to catch his reflection in the larger shards.

“And fourth”-pinkie-“drugs.” At that word, Forlenza slumped back in his wheelchair. He looked exhausted.

“Drugs?” Molinari said.

“Oh, boy,” said Narducci.

“Not this again,” said Falcone.

Geraci tried not to react at all.

“An old riddle, yes,” Forlenza said, “but one still unsolved. It is the biggest threat to our thing. Yes, if we don’t control it, others will, and we may lose power, but if-”

“If we do,” Falcone interrupted, “not that we aren’t already, the cops supposedly won’t look the other way like they do with gambling, women, unions, and so forth. C’mon, Vincent. Learn some new songs, huh? Look around. This little booze smuggler’s paradise”-a thunderclap boomed, in perfect synch with paradise-“that was your thing. You’ve done well, and salu’. But for men of my generation, it’s narcotics. For the next one, who knows?”

Narducci muttered something that Geraci heard as “Martian hookers.”

“Many of us,” Forlenza said, “when we took our oaths swore-swore, on our Family’s saint-that we would not be involved with narcotics.” He pointed to Falcone’s heap of cookies, fruit, and glass. “What are you doing?”

“Something to do is all,” he said. “Look, Vincent, I love you like you was my godfather, I do, but you need to live in the present day. Out west, we got it all set up, foolproof, layers and layers of guys between all the suckers who use it-your niggers, your Mexicans, your artistic types, your hotshots-and the people who sell it to ’em and the people who sell it to them. And so forth. The way we do anything else, and it works fine. The cops or whatever, they can slow it down a bit, especially in troubled times like this here, but the number of things that’d have to go wrong for them to get any of us in legal problems? Forget it. Not a chance.”

The Cleveland Family, Geraci knew, had some dealings in narcotics but contented itself with tributes and left most of the profits to the Negroes, the Irish, and the miscellaneous. After Prohibition, Cleveland had simply taken its next best things, gambling and unions, and expanded those. It wasn’t an organization open to new ideas or even new men. Geraci’s father said it had been more than ten years since Cleveland had initiated a new member.

Forlenza forged ahead, repeating himself: booze was different-cops drank and didn’t really want to break that up-but drugs were something else.

As Falcone reached down, got a piece of glass from the floor, and held it up toward the chandelier, Molinari diplomatically pointed out that Forlenza might be slightly naive about the makeup of today’s young street cop.

“That’s it,” Forlenza said. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The waiters returned. He pointed at the glass and cookies. “Take that away.”

“Did I say I wanted that taken away?” Falcone set down the shard and looked at the waiters. “Take it away and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

Chicago, right there, Geraci thought. Chicago in a fucking nutshell.

The waiters stood still. The one on the right-a Slavic-looking man with thick gray hair-had gone as white as his shirt. The one on the left, a man with a fringe of white hair and a tire black moustache, faced Forlenza, his head slightly bowed.

“Take it away,” Forlenza said.

“Just try it.” Falcone took the last biscotto and placed it like a cherry atop his pile.

“I got a grandkid going to some expensive school,” Narducci said. “Makes sculptures kind of like that. You two should meet.”

“Oh yeah?” Falcone swiveled in his chair to look at him. “Where at?”

“Where you going to meet or where does he go to school?”

“School.”

Narducci shrugged. “I just pay for it. To me, one kindergarten’s the same as another.”

Falcone leapt from his chair, and as he lunged toward the old consigliere, Geraci, still seated, hit Falcone squarely on the chin. His head snapped back. He staggered and fell.

The bodyguards rushed the table. Geraci stood. Time seemed to slow down. Amateurs had such bad footwork, he expected this to be over fast.