by Mike Lupica
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “It was about to be a working theory of yours that Uncle Felix and me just happened to run into my father’s long-lost love at one of the most famous landmarks in America? And that he wanted to have a picture of the two of us so, what, he could put it in a scrapbook when we got back to Boston? Am I missing anything?”
We were drinking Bushmills tonight. We both sipped some. I didn’t like it as much as Jameson, but I knew Richie liked it a little more. He scratched Rosie behind an ear as he drank. I sensed in the moment that he liked her better than he liked me.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s take you out of the picture.”
“Thanks,” Richie said.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
He raised his glass in a mock toast.
“At the very least,” I said, “this picture could mean Maria had a son that no one, at least no one back here, knew about.”
“Finally you make some sense,” he said.
“Just spitballing here, big boy.”
“And Sunny Randall’s first rule of spitballing is that you can’t be afraid to hold back a cockeyed idea.”
“Correct.”
“Even if it happens to be an especially cockeyed idea, like me having posed for a photograph with Maria Cataldo, someone I never met, at a place I never visited.”
I finished my drink. He finished his and abruptly stood up.
“Gonna head out,” he said.
“Don’t be mad,” I said.
“I’m not,” he said. “Now I’m the one who’s tired.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Maria could have just been visiting Arizona the way Felix and I did,” Richie said.
“She and Little Richard also could have lived there,” I said, “and it was just a day trip.”
“Little Richard,” he said, sadly shaking his head.
“Couldn’t help myself,” I said.
We kissed lightly on the lips. He put his arms around me. I felt the same rush of excitement I always did when we were this close. I knew he knew, as I put my head on his shoulder.
When I finally pulled back I looked up at him and said, “So I’m going to assume, once and for all, that my theory about you and Felix running into Maria in Arizona is a big old no-can-do?”
Richie leaned down now and said to Rosie, “You deal with her.”
He left. I looked out the window and saw his car pull away, and then the one I knew had Desmond’s men inside pull out behind him. I briefly wondered why they didn’t just carpool.
I rinsed our glasses, stuck my .38 in the zippered pocket of my favorite Eileen Fisher vest. Rosie and I went outside. She did her business quickly, dear girl.
We went back inside. I set the dead bolt, not thrilled with how easily Ghost had vanquished the one on Pleasant Valley Parkway, and set the alarm. Wireless. Remembering how quickly Ghost had disarmed the wireless alarm at Maria’s house, I made a mental note to get a better one installed. Went through my nightly process with my ridiculously expensive face wash and cream, brushing and flossing. Put the gun on the table next to my bed, shut off the bedroom lights, having left the door ajar just enough that some light from the hallway snuck into the bedroom.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark.
Well, maybe a little bit.
I didn’t fall asleep right away. Sometimes whiskey helped, sometimes it did not. Maybe tonight was one of the nights when it really was a stimulant.
I got up out of bed and went back to the living room and picked up the photograph of Maria Cataldo and the little boy, brought it back with me into the bedroom.
Rosie was snoring slightly at the end of the bed, but I knew she secretly wanted to talk after I switched on the lamp next to my gun.
“That little boy and Richie could be brothers,” I said.
Rosie didn’t stir, or respond. But she didn’t have to. I knew my girl was thinking right along with me.
“Maybe,” I said, “because they are.”
FIFTY-THREE
THE NEXT MORNING I met Spike at Spike’s for coffee. He was no longer wearing his sling.
“Are you better?” I said.
“No,” he said. “But the sling kept getting in the way.”
“Of what?”
“Things,” he said, winking at me.
“Things plural?” I said.
“Don’t be coarse,” he said.
He had made the coffee. It was dark and strong and delicious. I described it to him in those words. “Like me,” he said.
I took out the photograph of Maria Cataldo and the boy. I placed it on the table in front of him, next to one of Richie I had found in a scrapbook I began to keep after we had gotten married. Felix Burke had helped me get photographs from Richie’s childhood and teenage years and college.
“They could be twins,” Spike said.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“You think the little boy in the picture is Desmond’s,” he said.
He made no attempt to make it sound like a question.
“I have no proof,” I said. “But, yeah, let’s say the idea is trending.”
Spike was staring down at the two photographs.
“You do this with Richie yet?” he said.
“No,” I said. “But he’s too smart not to be thinking the same thing.”
“You think if she was pregnant with Desmond’s child she would have told him?” Spike said.
“If she did, and Desmond has known about this kid all along, we’ve established who our greatest living actor is,” I said.
Spike sipped some coffee and remarked that, damn, I was right, he did make a damned fine cup of coffee.
“So Richie may have a half-brother,” he said.
“That is what I am positing, yes,” I said.
Spike said, “And you think this boy, all grown up, has now come out of the past to avenge his mother’s honor, like, oh, shit, I can’t believe I’m even saying this, some evil twin?”
“I keep wondering if Desmond knew and is lying his ass off,” I said.
“Look,” Spike said. “This is a man who’s made a career out of playing things close to the vest. You told me one time he didn’t actually tell Richie what the real family business was till he was graduating high school.”
“But if Desmond has secretly been in the kid’s life all along,” I said, “then why is the kid coming for him now?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Spike said.
“If this is her son, and Desmond’s son, I need to find him,” I said. “And maybe get the chance to ask him all the questions I’ll never get the chance to ask his mother.”
“Maybe Albert knows and Desmond doesn’t,” Spike said. “About the boy.”
“Or maybe they both know and they’ve both been lying their asses off to me the whole time,” I said.
“Are you suggesting there is no honor among thieves?” Spike said.
“Really?” I said.
Spike shrugged.
“Low-hanging fruit,” he said.
FIFTY-FOUR
BEFORE I ATTEMPTED to meet with Desmond Burke, I called Nathan Epstein, who, despite recent tumult at the FBI that seemed to involve all his superiors past and present, remained the field agent in charge of their Miami office, after having served for years in the same capacity in Boston.
“How have you managed to survive?” I said on the phone. “In the Bureau, I mean.”
“By pretending I don’t know who the president is,” he said.
“You’re aware that the rest of us don’t have that luxury,” I said.
“You don’t have years of training as a dedicated civil servant,” he said.
He asked where I was.
“Boston,” I said. “Where else?”
&n
bsp; “Where in Boston?”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Just because I now have a 305 area code doesn’t mean I’m always there,” he said. “I happen to be here.”
“Why?”
“Business,” he said. “I don’t mean to get too technical with you, but I classify it as bad-guy business.”
“Oh,” I said. “That.”
“So where are you at the moment?” Epstein said.
I told him I’d just had coffee at Spike’s on Marshall Street. He asked if I could stand to drink one more cup. I told him I’d still be looking to have one more cup of coffee when I was dead. He said he could meet me near the statue of Red Auerbach in the Faneuil Hall marketplace in fifteen minutes.
Now we were sitting on a bench across from the statue, both of us drinking Starbucks coffee. Epstein looked as I remembered him: small, balding, tiny round wire-rimmed glasses. He had always reminded me more of a career public accountant than a G-Man. But I knew him well enough by now, and knew enough about him, not to underestimate his toughness.
Better yet, he owed me a favor, or at least said he did, because of a case on which I’d helped him out a little over a year ago right before he left for Miami, one that saved the Bureau some embarrassment and took a rogue agent off the books. This, I had informed him, was that favor.
“Catch me up,” he said.
I told him, bumper-sticker-style. When I finished he said, “To use a clinical expression, this sounds like a hot mess.”
I asked if he could find out whatever there was to find out about Maria Cataldo.
“She ever have a job that you know about?”
I shook my head.
“Got a Social Security Number for her?” he said.
“Nope.”
“She ever have a driver’s license anywhere?”
“Not that the cops have been able to determine.”
“Credit cards?”
I shook my head again.
“Internet?”
“No email, no Facebook, no Instagram, no nothing,” I said.
“Imagine that,” Epstein said. “Married?”
“I got nothing,” I said.
“Takes a big person to admit that,” he said.
Epstein might have smiled. It was hard to tell with him, just because life in general so often seemed to amuse him.
“She own property?”
“Albert Antonioni owns the last house in which she lived,” I said.
“Well, this sounds like a piece of cake for an experienced Fed like myself,” Epstein said.
He stood up.
“There’s one other thing,” I said. “Unrelated to Ms. Cataldo.”
“I give and give and give,” he said.
“Have you guys noticed the uptick in movement of illegal guns around here?” I said.
“By ‘you guys’ I assume you’re referring to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice?”
“Them,” I said.
“ATF,” he said, as if that solved all of the mysteries of the universe.
“I know that you know what they know,” I said. “But I don’t have a personal relationship with big shots there the way I do with you.”
“Right,” he said.
“If you get the chance,” I said, “would you mind terribly asking around on that, as well? I think Desmond and Albert might be in some dick-swinging thing involving guns.”
“If you ask for anything else,” Epstein said, “I may have to start using vacation time.”
“I should have called you sooner,” I said.
Now Epstein did smile.
“No shit, Sherlock,” he said.
FIFTY-FIVE
I WAS SITTING IN Desmond’s living room in Charlestown with him and Felix and Richie.
I was well aware that Desmond would never have agreed to see me on his own. I knew Richie had brought some sort of force to bear.
“The thing of it is this,” I said to Desmond. “We’ve gone over this before. I don’t believe in coincidence, and neither does Richie and neither do you.”
“Who does?” Felix said.
Now the pictures of Maria Cataldo and the boy and a young Richie Burke were on the stump coffee table in front of the Burkes.
“This proves nothing,” Desmond said.
“Dad,” Richie said.
“It is my unproven assertion that the boy in the picture with Maria is her son,” I said. “And yours.”
“Goddamn it, now you’re just being ridiculous!” Felix Burke said to me, with surprising force.
“Ridiculous,” Desmond said, “because of an unfounded theory.”
“Working on that,” I said. “The unproven part.”
“Why won’t you leave this be?” Desmond said.
He stared at me with eyes as dark as coal. He did not look angry. Just terribly old. As old as all of this.
As old as the photographs on the table.
“I don’t leave things be,” I said.
“This family is no longer your family,” Desmond said.
“But he is,” I said, nodding at Richie.
“Dad,” Richie said, sounding tired himself. “You have to admit that it is possible that Maria left when she did and the way she did because she was pregnant with your child.”
“Many things are possible,” Desmond said, “but turn out not to be so.”
“But if she was pregnant,” I said, “you are telling us you didn’t know?”
“I did not,” he said. “But would I have wanted to know? Of course.”
Felix Burke said, “Sunny, you think that somehow the boy in that picture is the one who has come after us this way?”
Felix looked older, too, except for his slicked-back black hair, which remained forever young.
“It is the only thing that makes sense,” I said.
“For what reason?” Desmond said.
“I plan to ask him that when I find him,” I said.
“It is now my turn to ask you to walk away from this,” Felix Burke said. “I know you will never walk away from Richard. But walk away from Desmond and me. I’ve never asked you for anything, Sunny. I’m asking you now. Give it up.”
“I can’t,” I said.
Then I told him and told Desmond about Maria having been back in Providence for years, living in a house owned by Albert Antonioni.
Desmond looked at Richie. “You knew this?”
Richie nodded.
“And didn’t tell me?”
“I promised Sunny I wouldn’t,” Richie said. “And I was raised to keep my word.”
“I’m your father,” Desmond said.
“And I’m your son,” Richie said, “sometimes in ways I’m not sure even I fully comprehend.”
We all sat there. It occurred to me how much of my life had been spent in the company of hard men like these. Sunny and the boys.
I asked Desmond again when Maria had left Boston. He told me. Richie said, “The boy in that picture would be about my age.”
To no one Desmond said, “All this time, she was an hour away.”
“But gone now,” Felix said, as if putting out a fire that had not yet begun. “Another reason it is time for all of us to let go. We live in the past enough, Desmond, you and me.”
“But it means he knows things about her that I do not,” Desmond said.
He looked at me, perhaps because I was the only woman in the room.
“If she came back,” he said, “why would she come back to him?”
“I’m going to ask this again,” I said. “When Albert and Maria were younger, could they have had a relationship that she kept from you?”
“No,” he said. He spit out the word. “In those days
, when we were together, she just used to joke that I better treat her right, because if I were out of the picture, she would not lack for attention.”
He closed his eyes. “But I did treat her right,” he said.
When he opened his eyes finally, he was once again staring at me.
“You honestly think he might be the one trying to kill me?” Desmond said.
No one said anything until Richie said, “Our father.”
FIFTY-SIX
THE NEXT DAY Epstein and I were once again sitting across from Red Auerbach.
“I feel like we’re sneaking out to the malt shop,” I said.
“It’s best that you not come to my office when I am engaged in what I like to think of as off-the-books activities,” he said.
“But you’re one of the good guys,” I said.
“So I constantly remind myself.”
“You said you had stuff for me,” I said.
“Actually,” he said, “I do.”
Seven months or so from when Desmond thought Maria had left Boston in the spring of 1980, she had married a man named Samuel Tomasi in Prescott, Arizona. A month after that, Epstein said, she gave birth to a son named Robert.
“Prematurely?” I said.
Epstein shook his head. “Even for us it can be a bear getting hospital records,” he said. “But it was a long time ago. This time we managed.”
“So she was pregnant when she left Boston,” I said.
“So it appears.”
“Robert Tomasi has to be Desmond’s kid,” I said.
“So it appears,” Nathan Epstein said.
Maria divorced Samuel Tomasi a few months later. I asked Epstein what had become of Tomasi. He said he had no idea, that Tomasi went off the grid at that point and so did Maria Cataldo.
“You can still do that in the modern world?” I said to Epstein. “Go off the grid?”
“It was the eighties, remember, before everybody knew everything about everybody,” he said. “If it is your intent to disappear, if you don’t have a job or own a home and didn’t establish an Internet presence later, yes, it can be done.”
“It sounds as if Samuel Tomasi’s only job was to give the child a father, at least on the birth certificate,” I said.
