“It’s a possibility,” I mused. It was late in the day and I was hungry. I’d refused all food and taken only water from my interrogators. Now it was early evening and I wanted a big bowl of tagliatelle and a very long piss. But I preferred to do both in my own apartment. “Let’s say I did want to see Dylan. How much notice should I give?”
“I’d check in by tomorrow.” He opened the door of the cab for me.
“Alright. Thanks, Carlo; it’s been a pleasure as always. Give the Boss my thanks as well.”
“Sure, Mr. Messina, I’ll do that.” I got into the cab and Bianchi leaned down, lips to my ear, murmuring low: “Boss says to go ahead and do what you need to do. Doesn’t like this any more than you do.”
He stepped back as I gave one nod and closed the door for me. During the drive I put in a call to my favorite restaurant and had the cab divert there to pick up my dinner, plus an extra portion for the grateful cabbie to eat later on. He was a talker, the driver, which I didn’t mind. Talkers let me think, which is what I did. By the time I was settled at my dinner table with my meal for one, I knew what I was going to do.
What’s that saying? Mortals plan while the gods laugh.
* * *
It wasclose to eleven when the intercom at the door buzzed.
I waited to see if it was a mistake, the wrong button hit down there on the street. Maybe some kids pranking, pushing buttons just to see what would happen. I’d been about to have a shower and I had no interest in company.
The buzzer sounded again, longer and insistent. I pulled on a robe and went to check the intercom camera. After all, it could have been a messenger from the Boss.
But the person who appeared on the video was no friend. I stood there staring at Special Agent Baxter Flynn, wondering whether the kid had a legitimate death wish.
He stared back, glaring into the monitor as though he knew I was watching him. He buzzed again, kept his finger on the button until I cut it off.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“We need to talk.”
“The hell we do.”
He looked around him, and then said, softly, “Please. I’ve been waiting for you. I have—I have information for you.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Go stand on the other side of the street so I can see you,” I told him, and cut him off before he could even agree. When I got to the window, though, he’d done what I told him. There he was, standing under the streetlight and looking up at me. He was bundled up in his winter clothes. For all I knew, he could have a rocket launcher buried under all those layers.
Still, it wasn’t that I was concerned with. I checked up and down the street, waiting to see if there were any reactions from as-yet-hidden backup. Sometimes law enforcement lacked patience. More than once I’d had to wait less than two minutes for one of them to give themselves away.
Not this time. Besides, I didn’t really think Flynn was the kind to come with backup. He was hard-headed, arrogant, confident in his own judgment. Not unlike me at that age. Experience, not to mention Tino Morelli, had whittled away my ego over time, made me cautious. That caution in turn kept me alive and out of trouble.
I left him there another minute, and he didn’t move. Neither did anyone or anything else. I hadn’t really expected it.
Mostly I’d just wanted to see if Baxter Flynn could do what he was told when he had to.
I left my window, and he must have seen the curtain move, because a few seconds later he was back at the monitor, buzzing to be let in.
“Not tonight, Flynn,” I told him. “And don’t annoy me again, or I’ll have you up on police harassment.”
“I’m not po—” he began, but I ended the conversation and put the intercom on mute. I didn’t have time for the kind of distraction that Flynn represented. If he was sniffing around this apartment, it was definitely time for Dylan.
By midnight, I’d be a ghost.
* * *
Ten minutes later,there was a thumping knock on my door.
I’d grabbed my go-bag and was self-indulgently packing my preferred toiletries by that stage. As the noise kept up, I looked up at myself in the mirror. I saw exasperation, yes. But also resignation.
I could hear voices when I came closer to the door: a loud, patrician female and the lower murmured answers of a male.
“…perhaps he’s really not home, darling,” I could make out the woman saying.
