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?”
“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.”