Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

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?”

“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.