Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Forty-Five

I met my father for breakfast at the Taj Café, where he had taken me as a little girl for special occasions when it actually was still the old Ritz. It was another reason why I knew it would always be the old Ritz for me, the way it always would be with Phil Randall. He still called the football field at Boston University, my alma mater, Braves Field.

I had waited until this morning to call and tell him about Spike.

“You could have called last night,” he said.

“And had my sainted mother shit a brick?” I said.

“The mouth on you,” he said.

Now I was telling him over our late breakfast what I had learned about Albert Antonioni’s house on Pleasant Valley Parkway and how, no pun intended, even more roads than ever seemed to keep running through him and Maria. By now he was working on eggs with hash. I had ordered oatmeal.

“I think I may have been going about this all wrong,” I said. “I haven’t found out as much as I could have, or should have, about this woman.”

“If it is about her,” he said, “then she has inspired some very deep emotions in some extremely hard men.”

“If Albert gave her a house in which to live, he must still have had feelings about her,” I said.

“Ones that certainly passed the test of time,” my father said. “But this might not be anything more than an enduring friendship, not an enduring love.”

“He still might be the one looking to settle a score with Desmond,” I said. “You do understand we persist in making several leaps of faith here. Some of them giant ones.”

“Faith and hope,” he said.

“Or it could be another of Desmond’s enemies,” I said.

“Who are legion,” he said.

“You mind if we get back to Maria for a second?” I said.

“Whatever you want,” he said. “You’re paying.”

“Could she have married in the time after she left Boston?” I said. “Had children? Had a life completely apart from the one she was leading as Vincent Cataldo’s femme-fatale daughter?”

“She must have left some kind of footprint between Boston and Providence,” he said. “Isn’t Big Brother always watching?”

“Him or Facebook,” I said. “Or the Russians.”

He poured some Tabasco sauce on his hash. He used hot sauce on food only when my mother wasn’t around.

“Start with what footprint she may have left in Providence,” he said, “and work your way back from there.”

“You mean go knock on some doors,” I said.

He smiled. “Good girl,” he said.

“Long time since I’ve been that, Daddy,” I said.

“Not to your daddy,” my father said. “How’s Spike, by the way?”

“Says his arm hurts like a bitch,” I said. “Said the same thing that Richie said, that getting shot isn’t for sissies.”

Phil Randall smiled again.

“Was in his case,” he said.