Patiently, he took the bowl from me. “No, you’re not. You’re a grown man who took a bullet to save my life, so you should know to ask for help when you need it. Come on. I’m not going to do the airplane zoom to your mouth or anything, I’ll just get the clams out for you and load up the fork.”
I thought about pressing my lips together and refusing, but Bax was already twirling the pasta, and it smelled too delicious to argue. He let me take the fork myself once it was ready, and I stuffed it into my mouth, then chewed in bliss.
“You saved my life, too,” I said after I’d swallowed. “So. There’s that.”
“Sure. No big deal or anything. And now that we’ve saved each other’s lives,” Bax said, loading up the next mouthful for me, “I think you owe me some answers.”
“Such as?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Such as, who the hell is Dylan?”
“Dylan?” I echoed blankly.
“When we first went on the lam—”
I started laughing, then had to stop. “Ouch. Damn. On thelam?”
“When we first wenton the lam,” Baxter said loudly, “you kept texting someone about a Dylan. Dylan and a number. I know it’s a code, like Nick Fontana is Ned Flanders, and Luca D’Amato is Georgie.”
I stopped smiling. “You didn’t tell the Boss that’s what I listed him as, did you?”
“No. Fontana told me not to. He had the same entry in his phone. What does it mean?”
“That’s another story,” I said, waving my good hand around, and then wincing. I needed to stay still for a while. Maybe forever. I was getting too old for this shit. This time I let Bax feed me the forkful himself, just like an infant.
“Well?” he asked, or demanded, rather, while I chewed. “Dylan?” he added, when he saw I didn’t understand.
I swallowed. “Dylan?” I had no idea what he was talking about, until suddenly I saw what he meant, and went back to my chuckling. “Oh,Dylan.”
Bax gave me an exasperated look and put down the bowl of tagliatelle. “Gonna let me in on the joke, there?”
“Mm. The answer to that, my friend, is blowing in the wind.”
“Don’t try to obfuscate,” he scowled. “Quoting Bob Dylan at me—wait.BobDylan is Dylan? Oh, shit, wait—blowing in the wind? That’s what it means? Like, going underground?”
I nodded, still grinning, but I was starting to tire again. “Dylan means one of us is ghosting. Goingon the lam, as you put it.” Bax pulled a face at me. “The number referred to which safe house.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” he said thoughtfully, and fed me another forkful of linguine. “Hang on—you havethirty-sevensafe houses?” He dropped the fork back in the bowl and stared at me.
I shook my head as I chewed. After I swallowed, I said, “There are far more than thirty-seven.”
“More?Isn’t that kind of excessive?”
“They’re not allmine, personally. And they’re not all safe houses. Some are just normal apartments, like the one near Central Park. Or warehouses, like where we met the Boss.”
Bax looked awed, but also slightly condemning. “They always said the Morellis were the richest Family. I just never…” He shook his head. “Speaking of property, Walsh has a rich wife. So you were right about him not being on the take. Luca D’Amato actually confirmed that for me earlier today.”
I stared at him. “You—you asked Luca if your Captain was corrupt?”
“Uh-huh. Seemed like something he’d know.”
“And he—told you?”
“Yes, although like you used to tell me stuff, you know? With lots of deniability and shit. But the meaning was clear. Anyway. That’s why he lived in such a fancy place.” His face changed, and he put the linguine aside. I watched it go hungrily. “What if his family had been in there?” he asked, and my appetite died. “Walsh had sent them away, or so the rumors go, for their own protection. But if theyhadbeen there, would Villiers have just—just—” He looked straight at me. “Wouldyou?” he demanded. “Wouldyouhave killed them all, Messina?”
“No,” I said simply. “Because I would never invade someone’s private home in the first place. A man’s home is sacred.”
“But not all you mobsters think the same,” he said accusingly. “Right? The Fuscones and Clemenzas, they didn’t seem to think it mattered when they came for Tino Morelli.”
