There is an art to the kind of room I was building, and it is the opposite of the art Emiliano practiced.

He filled his rooms with performance — with lighting and flowers and a photograph of me the size of a wall, all of it designed to make people feel something and stop them thinking.

I had spent the days before the gala doing the reverse: filling the room, quietly, with people who thought for a living.

The compliance specialists Andres had folded into the guest list did not look different from the other guests.

They accepted champagne they didn’t drink and made small talk and drifted, over the course of the evening, into exactly the positions where they needed to be.

The officials with the warrants waited where the valets couldn’t see them.