Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

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.”

“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.