“Not really,” I said thoughtfully, tapping the Sharpie against my mouth as I contemplated the wall of notes so far. “My family was killed by a drunk driver, my first year at Harvard. All of them taken out together in the one car. But the driver had mob connections—Giuliano Family—so he got off with a slap on the wrist. And I was left alone in the world. The only thing that kept me going at first was the idea of vengeance. I’d always wanted to join the FBI, but after that, I wanted it even more.” I looked across at Angelo. “I wanted a legal way to kill the guy. I was even going to look at him as a case study for my thesis, see if I could find a way to get closer to him.”
“Bax, I—”
“But I was lucky,” I said quickly, still looking at the wall, “because my mentor put me on a better path. Ethan Villiers taught me that living well was the best revenge, and putting mobsters in jail came in a close second. He encouraged me to let it go, stop obsessing about the Giulianos. And that’s how I came to look at you and the Morelli Family instead for my thesis.”
Angelo was quiet long enough that I turned around to make sure he was still there. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s like you said before,” I told him. “I don’t need pity.”
His eyebrows drew together like he was in pain. “If you tell me who it was, the man who killed your family, I can take care of it for you,” he said in a low, tight voice.
I snorted. “He died not long ago, actually. In Chicago. You all used to call him Jimmy G, or so I hear. Don Giacomo Giuliano, the old Giuliano Boss. So thanks, but don’t worry about it. Karma figured it out. But forget about all that; let’s focus on what we can do now. Are we agreed that Captain Walsh is a viable suspect?”
Angelo looked like he wanted to say something else about my family, ask more questions, but he did me the courtesy of moving on. “Yes. We are agreed.”
“Good. Then I know what we have to do.”
“And what’s that?”
I took a deep breath. “I have to go see Villiers.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Baxter
It took a while to convince Angelo of the wisdom of my idea. But we had no other ideas, and sifting through the FBI files would be meticulous and slow work, if we even managed to capture the intel we needed in the time allotted to us.
“If I can just get Villiers to give me an idea of theareawe should be looking in,” I argued for the fifth time.
“He will arrest you on sight.”
“He might try, but I’ll talk him down.”
“I hate to tell you this, Bax, but you have a misplaced confidence in your ability to persuade others by talking at them. From what you’ve told me about this Villiers, he’s like you: a victim of his own convictions. He’ll do the proper thing first and the right thing later, if at all.”
We’d gone round and round in circles on this for an hour already. I was done, because I’d made up my mind, so I grabbed up the key ring with the safe house and car keys on it and gave him a fake smile. “I’m gonna go now. You don’t have to come with me.”
He moved across the room to bar the door as I reached it, and stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “No,” he said softly. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s not like he’ll know I’m coming, and Ethan Villiers knows me better than anyone. I mean, hedoeshave two masters and a Ph.D. in psychological fields,” I added with a half-smile. “And anyway, he’s the one who ran the psych tests for my admission to the FBI. He’ll understand that I’m just trying to do the right thing.” I shifted my feet. “Like I said, you don’t have to come. And if he does arrest me, I’m not gonna rat you out. Promise. You can keep working the case from the outside.”
“He’ll have protective officers watching his apartment.”
“Then I’ll evade them.”
“The hell you will,” he snorted, and then looked down at his feet, thinking. “I’m coming with you and I’m scoping it out before you get anywhere near this fool. If I decide it’s not safe, then we leave.”
Even though I’d urged him to stay behind, I was relieved at his insistence on coming. But there was something I wanted him to understand. “Villiers is no fool. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how this all turns out. This is the man whomademe. Think of him like my Tino Morelli, if that helps.”
A dark look flashed over Angelo’s face. But all he said was, “You’re not driving the car, kid.” He held out his hand, and I dropped the keys into his palm.
* * *
We reachedmy old apartment block around four a.m., the same one Villiers was residing in on the FBI’s dime. The building seemed almost unfamiliar to me now. Had things changed so much, so quickly? I’d moved so far away from what I’d been—fledgling FBI agent, committed criminologist, willing protégé.
How would my mentor react to a protégé who’d gone off-plan so wildly? I was about to find out.
First, though, we were presented with an immediate problem: two cops in a marked police car parked opposite the building entrance. But in the end, it did not take Angelo long to set up a distraction for the police. He made one call to an associate, and within half an hour, the car gunned its engine and peeled out of the street.
