Bax pondered that. “It’s the end goal,” he said. “Of the FBI,” he added when I raised a questioning eyebrow. “They mean to strip you of your American citizenship if they ever get the chance. Their aim is to get you convicted on something, even something minor, and use it as an excuse. Then they can ship you back to Italy on the basis of a criminal conviction, once you’ve served your time. And you won’t be an American problem anymore.”
It was nice to hear my suspicions confirmed, even if I’d been sure of the same thing most of my life.
“Doesn’t that bother you?” he asked curiously, studying my face.
I smiled. “They’ll never get me on anything,” I told him. “Not conspiracy, not tax evasion, not racketeering, not even unpaid parking tickets.”
“And if they do?”
“If they do, they’ll still have to find me before they can deport me.”
Bax grinned. “They’d have a hard time of it, I bet.” After a moment, he asked, “Why are you telling me this now? Why are you letting the mask slip?”
I studied him, his frank and curious brown eyes, and shrugged. “You say you’re not a therapist,” I said lightly. “But perhaps you make rather a good one.”
He gave a huff of acknowledgment, a brief, wry smile, his eyes still closed and his head resting back against the back of the sofa. He went quiet, thoughtful, and I watched him, wondering how he was rearranging his portrait of me in his head.
I had never told anyone any of that before, and most of the men who knew my history were long dead, or had been killed in the recent battles. I probablywouldregret sharing so much, come morning.
But if I could not share a bed with him anymore, I still wanted to share in other ways.
And I wanted to know him, too.
“What about you?” I asked. “Did you come from one of Tolstoy’s happy families, that are all alike?”
He nodded in a distracted kind of way, still thinking of me, I assumed. “We were very happy,” he said. “An older brother, my parents, me. Yeah, we were happy. Happy and boring.”
“Where are they now? Are they proud of their youngest son, making it big in the FBI?”
“Oh, they’re all dead now,” he said, so casually that I thought I had misheard. But before I could ask him to repeat himself, my phone lit up with an incoming message.
“Bax,” I said, and he opened his eyes at the excitement in my voice. “She’s done it. My hacker associate, bless her. She’s squirreled her way into the task force files and left a backdoor open for us. She says it’s a limited time deal, but for a few hours we’ll have everything they have. We’ll be able to see what they have on you, on me, and more importantly, on any other suspects.”
Baxter sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his face determined. “Then you’d better make coffee. It’ll be a long night.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Baxter
There was way too much information for us to cover in one night.
That much became clear very quickly. Angelo noticed my frustration mounting into panic, and said, “Let’s prioritize, download as much as we can. In between, we can consider the most viable suspects, or look in any files you think would be the most useful to us.”
I nodded, took a few deep breaths to calm myself, and suggested, “Listen, I don’t think it matters what they have on you and me, not so much.Obviouslywe’ve been set up, but that shit can wait until trial.” I ignored his amused look, which told me plainly thathedid not intend to be put on trial. “I mean, sure, let’s grab it if we can, but I want to take a deeper look at Walsh. I can’t get it out of my head, what you said the other day, that he worked the Clemenzas undercover. That he mightstillbe working with them.”
“I said it wasunlikelythat he might still be working with them. And besides that, there’s no connection with these killings.”
“Greco was a Clemenza,” I said. “That’s a connection.”
“It’s really not. And besides that, there won’t be any evidence of undercover work in the files of the task force.”
Exasperated, I pressed my lips together and glared at him. “Yeah, Iknow, probably not. But there could be other things. His emails, anything suspicious—I just want to see what’s there.” I went back to reading, scanning as fast as I could while still being able to understand the information and process it.
“Is there any other reason?” Angelo asked cautiously. “As I said, we need to prioritize. There’ve been plenty of Feds and undercovers who tried to break into the Morelli Family over the years. Some of them were even successful for a short time. Doesn’t mean they’re still operating for us now that they’re back in the bosom of the law. It would make my life a lot easier if they were.”
Angelo had come a long way from denying even being shot at in Central Park. “Yes, there’s more to Walsh than just the Clemenza connection,” I said.
“Well?”
