Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Fifty-Seven

Epstein left. I stayed where I was, finishing my own coffee. My father had known Red Auerbach slightly, and had always told me that Red was just one of those guys who was, in Phil Randall’s words, smarter than all the other guys.

I wanted to walk across the marketplace now and sit next to Red on his bench and ask him if he thought the young guy visiting Maria Cataldo at the house in Providence was her son.

And if it wasn’t Robert Tomasi, or whatever Robert Tomasi might be calling himself, then who was he?

I had been pulling at threads since the night Richie had been shot. Along the way, someone had shot Spike and taken a shot at me. And while pulling at threads, I had without question poked a bear in the form of Albert Antonioni, who had threatened me in person and by proxy in the person of one Joseph Marchetti. Thread-pulling. Bear-poking. Could you even have them both in the same conversation?

If Red Auerbach didn’t know, perhaps Susan Silverman would when I saw her later.

I had established the connection between Albert and Maria. But that didn’t mean there was a connection between Albert and the shooter. Except that the guy in the alley had said, “We keep fucking with him because we can.” Meaning Desmond.

So who was “we”?

I took my phone out of my bag and called the Providence Police Department and was connected to Pete Colapietro and told him about what I’d learned from Nathan Epstein and what I now wanted to do.

“You’re shitting,” he said.

“No, sir.”

“Let me make some calls and get back to you,” he said.

“If I’m right about this, which you have to say would be a pleasant change of pace, the guy I’m looking for might have been right in front of us all along,” I said.

I watched the parade of tourists across what I had always thought of as one of the main plazas of the city. Over in front of The Black Dog, an old man I recognized from the day before fed pigeons. There was a long-haired young woman off to my right, wearing a Black Dog T-shirt and distressed jeans and playing the guitar rather well, her guitar case open for contributions.

“We go through with this,” Pete Colapietro said, “it might be the two of us who might want to think about hiding.”

“Don’t be a girl,” I said.

“So,” Susan Silverman said, “it appears the game’s afoot.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

She offered the tiniest of smiles.

“It’s something else the man of my dreams likes to say,” she said.

Considering how little I knew of her life outside this office, even an admission like that made me feel as if she had suddenly spilled her guts to me.

We were in her office at five in the afternoon. Even at this hour, the latest I knew she scheduled her appointments unless there was some kind of emergency, there was the palpable sense about her that her day was really just beginning, and that her focus and energy were as quietly intense as ever.

She wore gray pants today and a black cotton turtleneck sweater with a simple strand of pearls. By now, and even in her understated way, I knew her appearance was as important to her as mine was to me. And, being a vain and at least somewhat of an attractive woman myself, I knew that it took a hell of a lot of time and effort to make her beauty look as effortless and natural as it did.

We had been talking about the case. I sometimes did that with her. Sometimes she was able to help organize my thoughts just sitting across her desk from me. Which, I supposed, was part of the job description.

“I don’t know if I’m right about this,” I said. “But my gut tells me I am.”

“It has often served you well in the past,” she said. “Your gut.”

“I’m aware that your goal here is not primarily to help me solve complicated cases,” I said.

“Full service,” she said.

“This person, whoever he is, has killed at least two people that I know of, and perhaps one more,” I said. “So if he’s not technically a serial killer, he’s getting there.”

She waited.

“He shot Richie and shot Spike and tried to shoot me and even shot up a house,” I said.

“And while the logic of all this,” she said, “may seem at least somewhat random to you, even erratic, it makes perfect sense to him. Even doing something as reckless as coming to your house and nearly revealing himself. With him, there is a hidden, interior logic at work.”

“If it is the missing son, could he be avenging some perceived injustice against his mother?” I said. “Would that fit his interior logic?”

“Only if you can discover what the injustice is,” she said. “Whether perceived or quite real.”

“If I can find him, maybe I can find that out,” I said. “Before he kills anybody else.”

“But,” Susan Silverman said, “you are proceeding on the assumption that the son remained in her life until she died.”

“Call it a working theory,” I said.

“Or more gut instinct,” she said.

She may have smiled again.

Or not.

“Yes,” I said.

“It lies not in our power to love or hate,” she said. “For will in us is overruled by fate.”

“Christopher Marlowe,” I said.

“My boyfriend also likes poetry,” Susan Silverman said.

“If this guy feels as if his mother, whom he loved, was somehow wronged by Desmond Burke, his hatred of Desmond could consume him,” I said.

“Beyond the point of obsession,” she said. “And compulsion.”

“As he proceeds toward what he considers the logical end to his plan,” I said.

We sat in silence. A robin landed on the windowsill behind her, stared at me briefly, then flew away. I knew our time was almost up.

“One more thing,” I said. “Would you mind terribly dropping all your other clients for a couple weeks and focusing solely on this case?”

Susan Silverman did smile now, rather brilliantly.

“Even full service has its limits,” she said.