“I think you overestimate how much the people of this city will care about these things, Bax. Besides, if your buddies are looking for us in Manhattan, they’ll be less likely to bother us where we’re going today.”
“Which is?”
“Queens.”
“Mm. And it will take how long to get there from here?” he asked innocently.
“It will take much longer than it should, because I’ll be driving around in circles for a while to disorient you.”
He frowned at that. “Come on, Angelo. I’m here now, I’ve seen this place, I’m on therunfor Christ’s sake—can’t you just let me know where we are? Do I really need a blindfold every damn time we go somewhere?”
“Yes,” I told him softly. “You really do.”
He threw up his hands in frustration. “You told me you’d be straight with me,” he said accusingly. “Before I came here with you. You said I had to lay my cards out for you to see, and I did. You read the dossier, didn’t you? So how about some quid pro quo?”
He had a point. And I was as safe as I was ever going to be. If it turned out Baxter Flynn actuallywasplaying me, if the accusation laid against him was merely a setup for me to trust him, well…there were ways to deal with that situation.
I also liked his sheer guts in making demands of someone like me. He felt he’d earned a reward, and I happened to agree.
“Ask what you want to know,” I said. “But make it fast. We have places to be.”
Chapter Twelve
Baxter
Iwas still mulling over some of Angelo’s answers by the time he blindfolded me and bundled into a car—front seat this time, thankfully. He’d answered in ambiguities, but I’d satisfied some of the most burning questions I’d had around who he’d killed. He’d denied others, or “suggested” possible killers from other Families. But in the end, I was left more uncertain than ever about the man himself.
He’d deflected all questions about Tino Morelli, for one thing. And about his childhood, and about anyone else in the Family. So the problem was, I still had no context. I didn’t know thewhy. And it was thewhythat interested me. I wanted to know the man, how he thought.
Individuals in organized crime were so much more interesting to me than the regular kind. For one thing, traits such as like narcissism and antisocial personality disorder were not as prevalent; mafiosi were as interested in money as any criminal, but they had their own codes that kept behaviors within certain limits. They were, as Ethan Villiers constantly pointed out to Captain Walsh, socially cohesive. The members had expectations of each other. Traditions. Values.
Not all the time, of course. Sometimes you got a violent psychopath heading up a Family, and shit tended to go downhill. But those Families also tended to fall apart in the end, or split to form new entities. Like Sam Fuscone had split from Tino Morelli, or so the story went. Angelo had refused to confirm or deny those rumors.
The Morellis were of particular interest to me because of their differences from other Families. Members of organized crime tended to be more conservative than the general population. Being part of a wider group, especially one that had lasted as long as La Cosa Nostra, or other Italian criminal groups like the ‘Ndrangheta or Camorra, demanded rigorous adherence to the social norms and boundaries of the group.
The Morelli Family stood alone in defying those longstanding cultural norms—starting with Tino, who had been killed for many reasons, but mostly, in my view, because he’d stepped outside the bounds of acceptable behavior to the wider group. Now the Morellis were run by a gay man married to another man of Irish extraction, and hopeful queer mafiosi were flocking to them.
It was like a giant neon flashing sign of non-conformity, and it was no wonder there had been immediate attempts to take them down.
Angelo Messina was one of the old guard, or so I’d thought when I’d first written up my findings. I’d expected him to be someone bound to group mores, to have internalized the group over the individual. In some ways he was. I rubbed my wrist, slightly sore even today after Angelo had grabbed it tight as I was getting out of the shower.
Sure thing, Boss, I’d joked.
Don’t call me that. Not ever. You understand?
Messina wasn’t the Boss, and even though he wouldn’t outright admit to his own place in the hierarchy, he still wouldn’t allow anyone else to undermine therealBoss. Even if it meant letting his front of being an innocent citizen slip a little. That suggested that the Morellis still held fast to a hierarchical structure, for all their seemingly progressive moves. Or else Angelo was an outlier in their ranks—but an outlier wouldn’t have been made Underboss.
Unlike the criminal types who lived a more fringe existence, who spurned social rules, individuals who enjoyed rigid social structures did well in the Mafia. In fact, they shared a psychology with those who did well inlegalrigid subcultures—Marines, Special Ops, even the FBI.
I tried and failed to imagine Angelo as one of the good guys.
The thing was, Angelo had also stepped outside some of those exacting norms, even before Luca D’Amato had ascended. Angelo had met with Hanson, for example, formed what Hanson at least had called a friendship. Angelo had never given information, but had accepted it, acted on it, even knowing that while it protected the Morellis, it put other Families at risk. He must have had Tino’s blessing for that.
Did he still have the new Don’s blessing? I wondered.
“You’re awfully quiet.”
His voice broke my train of thought, just as I felt I might have been onto something. “Was it difficult, hiding who you were all those years under Tino Morelli?”
