Robert B. Parker's Blood Feud

by Mike Lupica

  “Before our Maria, as they say in the crime shows on television, was in the wind,” Epstein said.

  “Maybe her father sent her out to Arizona to give the boy a name,” Epstein said. “And then sent him somewhere else to keep this Maria’s secret.”

  “So what became of young Robert Tomasi?” I said.

  “His last known presence was public high school in Prescott,” Epstein said. “He had a few brushes with the law. Fighting mostly. Never made it to his senior year. Then . . . poof.”

  “Poof?”

  “It’s a complicated law enforcement expression,” he said. “But we just went over this. If it is your intent not to be found, you can sometimes hide in plain sight. Especially if no one is really looking for you.”

  Until now, I thought.

  “Could he have died young?”

  Epstein said, “If he did, the selfish bastard did it without telling anybody.”

  He sipped his coffee and frowned. “You think they lie when they tell you they’re giving you an extra shot of espresso?”

  “To a G-Man?” I said.

  “Are we even now?” he said.

  “Hell, no,” I said.

  He sighed.

  “I will keep poking around on this and see if I can determine what happened to the son,” he said.

  “You’re making America great again,” I said.

  Epstein sighed more loudly than before.

  “Somebody has to,” he said.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  E PSTEIN LEFT. I stayed where I was, finishing my own coffee. My father had known Red Auerbach slightly, and had always told me that Red was just one of those guys who was, in Phil Randall’s words, smarter than all the other guys.

  I wanted to walk across the marketplace now and sit next to Red on his bench and ask him if he thought the young guy visiting Maria Cataldo at the house in Providence was her son.

  And if it wasn’t Robert Tomasi, or whatever Robert Tomasi might be calling himself, then who was he?

  I had been pulling at threads since the night Richie had been shot. Along the way, someone had shot Spike and taken a shot at me. And while pulling at threads, I had without question poked a bear in the form of Albert Antonioni, who had threatened me in person and by proxy in the person of one Joseph Marchetti. Thread-pulling. Bear-poking. Could you even have them both in the same conversation?

  If Red Auerbach didn’t know, perhaps Susan Silverman would when I saw her later.

  I had established the connection between Albert and Maria. But that didn’t mean there was a connection between Albert and the shooter. Except that the guy in the alley had said, “We keep fucking with him because we can.” Meaning Desmond.

  So who was “we”?

  I took my phone out of my bag and called the Providence Police Department and was connected to Pete Colapietro and told him about what I’d learned from Nathan Epstein and what I now wanted to do.

  “You’re shitting,” he said.

  “No, sir.”

  “Let me make some calls and get back to you,” he said.

  “If I’m right about this, which you have to say would be a pleasant change of pace, the guy I’m looking for might have been right in front of us all along,” I said.

  I watched the parade of tourists across what I had always thought of as one of the main plazas of the city. Over in front of The Black Dog, an old man I recognized from the day before fed pigeons. There was a long-haired young woman off to my right, wearing a Black Dog T-shirt and distressed jeans and playing the guitar rather well, her guitar case open for contributions.

  “We go through with this,” Pete Colapietro said, “it might be the two of us who might want to think about hiding.”

  “Don’t be a girl,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  “SO,” SUSAN SILVERMAN SAID, “it appears the game’s afoot.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  She offered the tiniest of smiles.

  “It’s something else the man of my dreams likes to say,” she said.

  Considering how little I knew of her life outside this office, even an admission like that made me feel as if she had suddenly spilled her guts to me.

  We were in her office at five in the afternoon. Even at this hour, the latest I knew she scheduled her appointments unless there was some kind of emergency, there was the palpable sense about her that her day was really just beginning, and that her focus and energy were as quietly intense as ever.

  She wore gray pants today and a black cotton turtleneck sweater with a simple strand of pearls. By now, and even in her understated way, I knew her appearance was as important to her as mine was to me. And, being a vain and at least somewhat of an attractive woman myself, I knew that it took a hell of a lot of time and effort to make her beauty look as effortless and natural as it did.

  We had been talking about the case. I sometimes did that with her. Sometimes she was able to help organize my thoughts just sitting across her desk from me. Which, I supposed, was part of the job description.

  “I don’t know if I’m right about this,” I said. “But my gut tells me I am.”

  “It has often served you well in the past,” she said. “Your gut.”

  “I’m aware that your goal here is not primarily to help me solve complicated cases,” I said.

  “Full service,” she said.

  “This person, whoever he is, has killed at least two people that I know of, and perhaps one more,” I said. “So if he’s not technically a serial killer, he’s getting there.”

  She waited.

  “He shot Richie and shot Spike and tried to shoot me and even shot up a house,” I said.

  “And while the logic of all this,” she said, “may seem at least somewhat random to you, even erratic, it makes perfect sense to him. Even doing something as reckless as coming to your house and nearly revealing himself. With him, there is a hidden, interior logic at work.”

  “If it is the missing son, could he be avenging some perceived injustice against his mother?” I said. “Would that fit his interior logic?”

  “Only if you can discover what the injustice is,” she said. “Whether perceived or quite real.”

  “If I can find him, maybe I can find that out,” I said. “Before he kills anybody else.”

  “But,” Susan Silverman said, “you are proceeding on the assumption that the son remained in her life until she died.”

  “Call it a working theory,” I said.

  “Or more gut instinct,” she said.

  She may have smiled again.

  Or not.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It lies not in our power to love or hate,” she said. “For will in us is overruled by fate.”

  “Christopher Marlowe,” I said.

  “My boyfriend also likes poetry,” Susan Silverman said.

  “If this guy feels as if his mother, whom he loved, was somehow wronged by Desmond Burke, his hatred of Desmond could consume him,” I said.

  “Beyond the point of obsession,” she said. “And compulsion.”

  “As he proceeds toward what he considers the logical end to his plan,” I said.

  We sat in silence. A robin landed on the windowsill behind her, stared at me briefly, then flew away. I knew our time was almost up.

  “One more thing,” I said. “Would you mind terribly dropping all your other clients for a couple weeks and focusing solely on this case?”

  Susan Silverman did smile now, rather brilliantly.

  “Even full service has its limits,” she said.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  I WAS SITTING WITH Pete Colapietro in the front seat of his car. It was our plan to spend the next several hours following Albert Antonioni around, as long as Albert began this day the way Pete sai
d he began most days, with an espresso and a pastry at Constantino’s Venda Ravioli in DePasquale Plaza.

  We were up the block, with a good view of the front entrance.

  Pete had been telling me about how Albert Antonioni had a rather complicated home life, according to some checking he had done with Police Intelligence and Organized Crime. Turned out, he said, that despite the fact that Albert was the legal owner of the house in which Maria Cataldo had lived and he had frequently visited, he had at least three other homes in Providence in the names of various business associates.

  Pete had put air quotes around “business associates.”

  “One is the guy who’s listed as the CEO of Albert’s vending-machine business,” Pete said. “The other two are top lieutenants in his less legitimate enterprises: Tommy Marchi, Ed Schembri, Matt Connors.”

  “Matt Connors?” I said.

  “He must be trying to be inclusive,” Pete said.

  Then he touched me on the arm and pointed and said, “Showtime.”

  An SUV had just pulled up in front of Constantino’s Venda Ravioli and Antonioni had gotten out. There were two men in the car with him. They got out as well. The one from the passenger seat opened the door for Albert. He walked between them into Constantino’s, to what Pete said would be his regular table, a round marble one in the back near the freezer.

  One of the troopers stayed in the car, the other stood to the side of the front door.

  “You recognize either one of those guys?” Pete said.

  “I think they both might have been in the room at the Old Canteen,” I said. “But neither one of them is who I’m looking for. The driver is too blond, and the guy by the door is too old and too fat.”

  I showed him the copy of the picture of Maria and the little boy I’d brought with me.

  “I’m looking for the grown-up version of him,” I said.

  “Because you think he’s the one doing all this.”

  I nodded. “Now I just have to find a way to prove it.” I sighed and shook my head. “The things I can prove don’t help me enough. But the things I can’t prove, I know I’m right about.”

  “I actually think I followed that,” he said.

  “I feel like I’ve been some kind of drone from the start,” I said. “Just being operated by a kid on a sugar high.”

  “I got one of those,” Pete said, “you can have him, you want him.”

  Albert stayed inside for an hour, came back outside with another old man, hugged the other old man, kissed him on the cheek, got back into the SUV.

  “Tallyho,” Pete said.

  “You’re not worried they’ll make us?”

  “Ho ho ho,” he said.

  Besides, Pete said, Albert being the creature of habit that his friends at Organized Crime said he was, he was fairly confident where his next stop was going to be. Pete was right. A few minutes later the SUV pulled up to the Acorn Social Club on Acorn Street.

  “You’ve heard of the Ravenite Social Club in New York, right?” Pete said. “Gotti’s old hangout?”

  “I have.”

  “This is the Providence version of that,” he said.

  He said he’d been in there, and it was pretty much everything he’d expected, a windowless front room, old men playing cards, a couple television screens, one showing horse races from various tracks around the country, the other showing the security feed from the camera above the front door.

  “They let you inside?” I said.

  “The goombahs think it’s funny, having a lively exchange of ideas with cops sometimes,” he said.

  He grinned.

  “Last time I was there one of them was bitching that he had to go get some cash from an ATM nearby and bail his son out on a DUI,” he said. “I asked him how old his son was. Guy said, ‘Fifty-seven, going on fifty-eight.’”

  This time Albert Antonioni stayed inside two hours. When he came out, the SUV was still there, but he got into a different car, a black Town Car. Before he got in, he turned and waved at a Crown Vic parked up Acorn Street.

  “Who’s he waving at?” I said.

  “Couple guys from Organized Crime,” Pete said.

  “They know you’re following him around today, too?” I said.

  “More the merrier in Goombahville,” he said.

  “Ours is a glamorous lot.”

  “Ain’t it?” he said.

  The next stop, as predicted by Pete, was at the Palomino Vending Company, which Pete said was actually a legitimate business, and one with which Albert had always done pretty well, even though he left the hands-on running of it to others.

  “That way he can focus on his real passion,” Pete said. “Doing really bad shit to people.”

  It was past four o’clock when Albert Antonioni finally came out of the Palomino Vending Company. I was past hungry by then, and needed to pee.

  The Town Car was long gone. The SUV was still there. But now a black Lincoln Navigator pulled up, only the driver inside.

  The driver got out, came around and hugged Albert Antonioni, gave a quick survey to the street, opened the back door, and helped Albert into the backseat. Came back around the front of the car.

  I had already pulled the long-lens camera out of my bag, one I’d brought along just in case I needed it.

  “Shazam,” I said.

  I kept snapping away until the guy got back behind the wheel of the Navigator and drove away.

  “We got a winner?”

  “Think so,” I said.

  “You know him?”

  “And had forgotten him,” I said. “He was there at the Old Canteen, both times. I remember thinking the first day that he reminded me a little bit of my ex-husband.”

  “Shazam, shazam, shazam,” Pete Colapietro said.

  And put our car into gear.

  “We gonna stay on Albert?” Pete said.

  “I think of it as staying on Little Richard,” I said.

  FIFTY-NINE

  PETE SAID HE didn’t recognize the driver but trusted that somebody at Organized Crime would.

  “You think it’s our guy?” Pete said.

  “Has to be,” I said.

  “Just off what he looks like?” he said.

  “Just because it has to be him,” I said.

  “My wife always boxes me in with logic like that,” he said.

  We followed the car to a big house in what Pete Colapietro said was the Mount Pleasant section of Providence. It looked even richer and more elegant than the street on which Maria Cataldo had lived, bigger, older houses set even farther back from the road.

  “This is Mount Pleasant,” I said to Pete. “Maria lived on Pleasant Valley Parkway. As a detective, I’m detecting a trend here.”

  “What can I tell you,” he said. “We’re a very pleasant city.”

  We passed the Triggs golf course, Pete pointing out that back in the sixties there had been a famous Mob hit there by a couple bookies named Rudy Marfeo and Anthony Melei. I told him that was good to know. He said he had a lot of fun facts like that.

  Antonioni and his driver went into the house together. The driver did not come back outside. Pete drove past the house and parked on a side street a block away.

  “If this is one of Albert’s houses, it wasn’t on my list,” Pete said.

  “Worth repeating that this is an old man,” I said, “who hasn’t lasted this long by throwing caution to the wind. Much the same as his old friend Desmond Burke.”

  “Now what?” Pete said.

  “We wait.”

  “Maybe the one you called Little Richard lives there with him,” Pete said. “Like a live-in bodyguard.”

  “Something else that would be good to know,” I said.

  Pete turned on the car so he could turn on the radio. “You mind if I listen
to the Sox?” he said.

  I grinned. “Yes.”

  “You come from Boston and you don’t like the Sox?” he said.

  It came out “Sawx,” as if that was the way it was supposed to.

  “I liked going to games with my dad when I was a little girl,” I said. “And I’d go with Richie once in a while if we had good seats and the weather was nice. But I just never thought there was enough going on.”

  “Part of the appeal,” he said.

  “So I’ve been told. Repeatedly.”

  “I’m feeling the urge for beer and peanuts just listening,” he said.

  “It’ll pass,” I said.

  We sat and he listened to the game, but as he did, we talked about his job. We talked about how I saw the job when I was still with the cops. He talked about his family, and how you couldn’t do better with a cop wife than he’d done. I told some stories about my dad, some of which he’d heard, starting with the one about my dad and I and the day the Spare Change killer died.

  * * *

  —

  TWO HOURS LATER Little Richard was still inside the house. I told Pete we could call it a night and he could drive me back to where I’d parked my car on Federal Hill and thanked him again for everything he’d done, that it was above and beyond. He said he didn’t mind waiting a little longer, if I wanted to. I said I was fine, that we knew where Antonioni lived now, or at least lived part of the time.

  Pete asked if I planned to circle back here myself before I went back to Boston.

  I grinned again. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” I said.

  “You gotta keep reminding yourself of something,” he said. “This isn’t just my turf. It’s his.”

  “I’m going to head back,” I said. “I got a lot today, pictures and this address and the fact that Little Richard and Albert might be living under the same roof.”

  “Okay, then,” Pete said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He drove me back to Federal Hill. As soon as his car pulled away, I drove straight back to Mount Pleasant. The Navigator was still parked in the driveway. Then I drove home. I called Spike from 95, asking him if he’d remembered to take Rosie out the way I’d asked him.