They Sent A Broke Waitress To Humiliate A Deaf Crime Boss — The Outcome Left The Entire Syndicate S...
Chapter 8
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No. You're not terrible. Your second letter needs to come from the elbow, not the wrist. Like this.He adjusted an invisible shape in the air between them. She mirrored it.Better, he signed.They stayed in the lobby for an hour.The annual summit of the collective's five regional directors happened in mid-March in a private function room on the 41st floor of a hotel whose name Tatum had only ever seen on the city's skyline.Declan had not mentioned it to her. She found out from Crane, who appeared at the building on a Thursday morning with an expression that told her something was wrong before he said a word.He told her about a man named Gerald Farrow. Farrow was the director of the Eastern Chapter, a man who had built his reputation in an era when Declan's predecessor had kept the collective's internal politics deliberately loud. Farrow was old money and older habits. He'd been running an operation on the waterfront that Declan had quietly moved to shut down. The summit was Farrow's chance to push back publicly, to use the full table of directors as leverage.Farrow had done his research. He knew that without an interpreter, Declan read lips. He knew exactly how to present that."He will speak to the table at large," Crane said. "He will keep his back to Mr. Morrow. He will use the acoustics of the room to make the sound carry everywhere except directly to Mr. Morrow's line of sight. When Mr. Morrow cannot follow the argument, Farrow will call for a vote on the waterfront contracts. He needs only three of the five chairs. He has two guaranteed. He needs one more from the table to move the motion."Tatum was quiet for a moment. "What does Declan need?""He needs someone who can translate what Farrow is actually saying in real time without the table realizing what is being communicated. If Farrow sees an interpreter, he will call a point of order. But if Mr. Morrow simply appears to have an associate present—""He needs someone who can sign without it looking like an interpreter," Tatum said."Yes.""And who knows enough of the room to understand what's being said?""Yes." Crane looked at her steadily. "This is not your world, Ms. Tatum. No one would fault you for declining."Tatum thought about Gerald Farrow maneuvering around a man's silence like it was a weapon he'd been handed for free."What time does the summit start?" she said.The 41st floor had a view that swallowed the city whole. On a clear night, you could see the lake stretching away to the south, its surface fractured by city light into a thousand scattered pieces. The function room was long and heavily carpeted, with a round table at its center large enough for eight, and ringed by auxiliary seating along the walls for associates and counsel.