“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.
“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?”