Bad blood

19

“This is Alexandra Cooper, Ms. Quillian. She’s the assistant DA on-”

“I know very well who she is.” Trish’s speech was sharp and clipped, and if she could have spit at me, I think she would have. “She’ll have to leave.”

The woman was younger than I but had hard features, pale skin lined prematurely with creases, and eyelids reddened from crying. She was tall and gaunt-unlike her brothers-and her shoulders slumped, perhaps from the weight of the week’s events.

“Alex is working this investigation with me. There’s nothing you can tell me that I won’t be telling her.”

“She’s railroaded Brendan, that’s what I know. I won’t have her here.”

“We’re a team, Trish. You think you’ve got something to help us on Duke’s case, give me another call,” Mike said.

“She’s not one of us. She won’t understand me.” I assumed Trish was referring to the Irish Catholic bond she expected to make with Mike.

“C’mon, Coop. Let’s move on.”

I was halfway out of the booth as Trish Quillian stopped chewing on her lip and told me to sit down. Mike had heard the desperation in her voice and knew that as much as she must have hated both of us, she needed something only Mike could do for her.

“Will you sit?” he asked.

She looked at the door and then down at me. I slid over to the wall and she sat beside me, clutching the black cloth coat that seemed way too heavy for the warm afternoon.

“Are you okay here? We can go somewhere else.”

“Back when I was a kid, this was McGinty’s Pub. Had a cousin who worked here till the whole neighborhood turned over. No one knows me here anymore.”

“Who are you afraid of, Trish? We ought to know that before we get started.”

The question provoked the hint of a smile. “I’d have to start with my own blood. I’ve got two brothers left now-that’s besides Brendan, even though he doesn’t really count anymore. The both of them would kill me just for talking to you.”

I wondered why Brendan didn’t count.

“Any others?” Mike asked.

“I take it you know something about sandhogs? Not a one of them wants you people snooping around their business. They’ll be promising me Lord knows what to just be still and let them find out what happened in the hole, what got Duke killed, themselves. Screw the cops.”

“Is that because you think whoever murdered Duke is also a sandhog?”

“Of course he is.”

“And the young men from Tobago?” I asked. “They were part of the murder plan?”

“I don’t know what they were, Ms. Cooper. I’m not here to talk about them. Maybe they just got in the way.”

“Does this have anything to do with Brendan’s case?”

She hesitated when the bar owner came back to ask if she wanted a drink. “Also a beer, lady?”

“No. I’ll take a shot of whiskey. Straight.” Trish then answered me without turning her head to me, “I can’t prove that yet, but I’ll bet that it does.”

“So, why don’t you tell us your theory? Tell us who did it and why,” Mike said, waiting as the shot glass was placed in front of her and letting her take a drink.

I could tell from his tone that Mike was skeptical of Trish’s usefulness. She seemed to be the bitter voice of the hapless Quillians, and he wouldn’t want to head off on a wild-goose chase just to assuage her while his task-force colleagues were following solid leads.

She looked up at Mike from the small glass she was rubbing between her fingers. “Do you know the name Hassett?”

We exchanged glances. I let Mike answer. “I think there was a Hassett-Bobby Hassett-working at the tunnel site on Thursday.”

He was one of the workers who had refused George Golden’s request to take us down in the shaft. But so had a dozen others.

Her eyes widened. “Doing what? Not getting in the way of my brother’s investigation, was he?”

“No, no, no. What’s he to you?” Mike asked.

“There’s no polite way to say it, Mr. Chapman. He’s scum. The Hassett boys-that’s just what they are.”

“I’ll try to take your word for it, Trish. But it would help if you could explain why.”

“I could give you more reasons than you’ve got time to listen to. I raised quite a row at the wake last night, after you were gone. The three of them dared show up, dared walk in there like decent souls to pay their respects with the rest of the crowd. I told Bobby-he’s the oldest Hassett, must be twenty-four now-I told Bobby we knew they’d done the killing,” Trish said, working herself up, her cheeks flaming red and her lips taut, chafed from the way she’d nervously been chewing on them. “I told them to get out of there before I had them dragged out by their boots.”

Mike let her rage on until she completed her tirade. With as much patience as he was able to maintain, he tried to coax a sensible story from her.

“Trish, you said you know the Hassetts killed Duke. Is there any evidence you can point me to? I understand how you feel, but so far, if all you’ve got to give us is-”

“I’m not a damn detective. I’ll tell you the facts and you find the evidence. The Irish are good at grudges, aren’t we, Mr. Chapman? Stubborn lot. Sometimes it takes a hundred years to right a wrong. But none of us have got that much time. You got to do something before they take the two brothers I’ve got left.”

“Your family, Trish, tell us about them,” Mike said.

She shrugged, as though they were no different from any other family. “Fifth-generation tunnel workers. My great-great-grandfather came from Ireland in 1906 to build the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under the Hudson River. I don’t know that he liked the work, but he liked getting paid every week, and he must have been fearless. His kin followed like sheep, and the Quillians have been down in the hole ever since. Brothers, uncles, cousins, in-laws.”

“What about your brothers, Trish?” Mike asked.

“Duke,” she said, then paused to close her eyes. “Duke was the oldest. Named John Wayne Quillian for my dad’s favorite tough guy. Called him Duke long as anybody can remember. He’d be two years older than Brendan. Thirty-seven, may he rest in peace.”

“Did he have a wife? Any kids?”

“Married a girl from the neighborhood. One of them,” she said, tossing her head in the direction of Ignacia and the Latino men sitting at the bar. “She didn’t understand the life. Walked out on him four or five years ago. No kids. Maybe that had something to do with his health, too. Had cancer-bad run of it-back in his twenties. Almost didn’t make it. Breaks my heart he pulls through that to be cut down by these bastards.”

“How old are you?” Mike asked.

“Twenty-eight.”

I looked at her again, wondering whether it was something besides grief that had given her such a hard look so early on.

“And you live…?”

“With my mother. She’s got the Alzheimer’s. Only thing the damn disease has been good for is not knowing she lost Duke. I told her all about it last night when she saw me crying, but she doesn’t understand what it means. Five minutes later she asks me if I’ve seen Duke today.”

“Do you work?”

“I used to help out in the parish office. Secretarial work and such. But the last three years I can’t be leaving her alone. That’s why we needed Duke. He always helped with the money so I didn’t have to leave her with no stranger.”

Mike signaled to the owner to bring Trish a refill.

“How about your other brothers?”

“Richie-he’s thirty-three. His wife’s third-generation. Got three little ones. And Marshall-he’s thirty. Named for Marshall Mabey. Ever hear of him?”

“No,” Mike said.

“My great-great-grandfather was working next to him, tunneling the East River in 1916, building the BMT.” Every time Trish mentioned a different sandhog project my awareness of the city beneath our city expanded. “There was a big blowout, if you know what I mean.”

Mike asked, “When the water breaches the caisson under the riverbed?”

“Yeah, exactly. Old man Quillian heard that terrible screech that signals the blowout, the story goes, and he’s one of the lucky ones. Scrambled back into the air lock. But three of them others were sucked down into twelve feet of riverbed, as the air escaped and propelled them out like a cannon. Two are buried under all that cement until kingdom come. Marshall Mabey-he was shot out by the burst of compressed air, through the mud and up out of the water like a geyser, five stories high.”

“Makes a good tale, Trish.”

“It’s true. There’s a lot of sandhog babies named for Marshall. Went back to the job the very same week. Everybody’s hero. Survival of the fittest, I guess.”

“What about Brendan?” I asked, wondering how the defendant in my trial had emerged from this underground fraternity to wind up in such a totally different social and professional milieu. “Why did you say he didn’t count anymore?”

Trish looked at me for the first time since she had started answering Mike’s questions. “If you’re hoping I’m going to say something bad about him, you’ll be mightily disappointed.”

Mike took the reins back from me. “I dropped the ball, Trish. I’m the guy who locked your brother up and I never knew any of you even existed. What’s that about?”

Trish stiffened now and took a deep breath. She seemed to be trying to decide whether to talk to us about him.

“Brendan got out, Mr. Chapman. He was the one of us meant to escape from the kind of lives the Quillians had chosen for themselves for as long as they’ve been in America.”

Her voice had an edge, and she started again to chew on her lower lip.

“That’s what you call it? He escaped?”

“My mother was very religious. Devoutly so. She believed that God had a different design for Brendan, that he wasn’t going to be like the rest of us.”

“And your father?”

“Blamed my mother for everything. Said it was her plan, is all. Nothing to do with God. Nothing but her grandiose ideas for the boy, come back to bite her in the ass-to be as blunt as he was. Even blamed her for the accident.”

“What accident?” Mike asked.

Trish frowned as she answered him. “Surely you know Brendan’s got only one good eye?”

“Yes,” Mike said, and I thought immediately of the chilling stare-downs Brendan gave me in court that were probably no more than the vacant gaze of his blind eye.

“He was five when it happened, before I was born. My mother took him out to her cousin’s place at Breezy Point. Him and Duke. It was Fourth of July and there were fireworks on the beach,” Trish said. “Nobody talked about it much to the kids by the time I came along. Dad blamed my mother for letting Brendan get too close, for not watching him that day. Got his eye put out by a stone that kicked up from the discharge. She was too hysterical to help him. It was Duke who dragged him out of the way. Could have been worse.”

“Lost his sight?”

“The right eye. Mama babied him something terrible after that. Made up her mind she was going to find him a better way. Make him study real hard, get him into a better school so he wouldn’t be bullied all the time by the local toughs. She loved books, Mama did-that’s how she traveled to different worlds without ever leaving the house very much. As long as Brendan had one eye, she was determined to keep it in books, too.”

That explained how he wound up at Regis, the parochial school that offered free education to students who had scored well on the entrance exams.

“And your father never tried to make a sandhog out of Brendan?” Mike asked.

“Sure he did. Took him down every chance he could, but the kid couldn’t take it.” Trish turned her empty glass upside down on the table. “I remember them coming home one time-Brendan must have been eighteen, so I guess I was almost eleven. Dad got him a summer job with the union, thinking he could keep a hold on his son before he went off to college, made a life for himself. Quit and came home the second day. My father got there an hour later and tore him apart in front of all of us. Called him a sissy-told him he wasn’t good enough to work in the hole. Would have hit him, I think, if Duke hadn’t been there to step in the way.”

“Sounds like Duke took good care of him,” Mike said softly.

“He thought like Mama. He knew Brendan had other possibilities.”

“Did you know what had happened on the job that day?”

“Sure, all us kids wanted to find out. First, it was no secret that Brendan had always hated it down there because it was so dark, so hard for him to see. Things were going on all around, creating a racket in every direction, and it frightened him not to know what was coming at him. But it was the blasts that got to him most when he showed up to work that week. The guys would rig the dynamite and set off the explosion, and whenever Brendan heard that dreadful sound, he’d be reliving the noise of the firecrackers that took his eye.”

“So he never went back in the tunnel?”

“Not once. Duke and Richie and Marshall, they live and breathe like sandhogs. Brendan, well, he’s something else.”

“And he had a scholarship to Georgetown?” Mike asked.

“I cried so hard I thought I was gonna die, the day he left,” Trish said. “My father wouldn’t even come out of his room to say good-bye. He knew he had a son who was just rejecting everything his own life had been built on.”

“But Brendan lived at home after that, didn’t he?”

“First year he did. Holidays and like that. Then he’d be getting with his fancy roommates and all, staying in their homes on Fifth Avenue or traveling with them for summer jobs over in Europe. And Amanda-his entire life revolved around Amanda by the time he was finishing high school. It was as though her family adopted him, even before they got engaged.”

“What was Amanda like?” I asked.

Trish looked at me quizzically. “You’re asking me?”

“You must have gotten to know her a bit,” Mike said.

“One time. I only ever met the girl once.”

“Why was that?” Mike asked. “I thought your family was so tight-knit.”

“All’s I can figure is that Brendan was ashamed of us.” Trish took a deep breath. “There he was, mixing with all these fine, rich people-wanting to become one of them. Not that I ever had the feeling the Keatings wanted anything to do with the likes of us, either. There was never any talk of inviting them over to the house or taking any of our holidays together. They must have figured they could have Brendan without bothering with his low-life relations. And it seemed to have suited him fine, too.”

“Was it at the wedding when you met Amanda?” I asked.

Trish cleared her throat and drank some water. “It was like a year before the wedding, when Brendan and Amanda became engaged. He called my mother and asked her to come to lunch-to bring me, too-to meet Amanda and Mrs. Keating. I was fifteen years old-so excited I was. I actually thought it was gonna be a chance to get the two families together, to make things better. We were to meet at the Boathouse in Central Park, real pretty in the springtime, right on the water. I was sure it meant we’d be getting Brendan back.

“Two days before we were supposed to go, Brendan mailed a package to the house. I’ll never forget how it looked when Mama removed the brown wrapping paper. Two bright red boxes tied with white satin ribbon, from a department store in the city I’d never dreamed of setting foot in. One was an expensive knit suit for my mother-with gold buttons and grosgrain trimmings-and the other was a lovely yellow dress for me, all lacy and soft.”

“To wear to the lunch?”

“That’s what Brendan wanted. My father exploded when he saw them. Told my mother that if her own clothes weren’t good enough for Mrs. Keating, she could go to the park naked or she couldn’t go at all.”

“So there was no lunch,” Mike said.

“Mama didn’t go. My father wouldn’t let her.” Trish bit into her lip and stared at the whiskey glass. She shook off the image and smiled at the memory that took her back to that long-ago day. “Me, I put on my yellow dress the minute he left for work that morning. Sneaked out of the house to meet my best friend, ’cause she wanted to see what this Amanda looked like, too. We played hookey from school, took the train into Manhattan so I could be at the lunch, and I gave Bex-my friend Rebecca-gave her a couple of dollars to go for a boat ride so she could watch me getting to meet Brendan’s new family. Like it wasn’t going to be real if someone didn’t see me there.”

“What did you think?” Mike asked.

“Brendan was so nervous-about me, I guess-I thought he’d have a seizure. I watched my manners and was careful about my language.” Trish was smirking as she twisted the glass around and around. “Mrs. Keating was very kind to me. Warm, actually. Amanda didn’t care about anything but Brendan-and once he saw Bex in the rowboat, ten feet away from the table, I think he was petrified we kids were going to do something to mortify him. Make a scene or something. But it was fine. I was only sad that my mother was too insecure to come herself. Really sad.”

“And the wedding?” I asked.

“Brendan was twenty-three, a year later, after Amanda’s graduation. My father died a month before the wedding.”

“How?” Mike asked.

“Painfully, Mr. Chapman. The way sandhogs do,” Trish said, looking up at him. “Silicosis it was. Too many years of breathing in the black dust. Silicosis killed him slowly-ate away at his lungs.”

“Sorry,” Mike said, pausing briefly. “But the wedding went on?”

“For the Keatings it did. And for Brendan. But my mother refused to go out of respect for my father. Kept all the boys home, too. Bex and me, we slipped into town and sat on a bench across from the church, just so we could see them when they stood out in front, all dressed up and such, posing to have their pictures taken before they went off to the reception at some club the Keatings belonged to.

“Brendan had called my mother one last time to urge her to come, but she told him to get on with his new life, to just act like we all had died when Dad did, if we embarrassed him so much.”

“And that’s what he did?” I asked. It seemed unthinkable to someone like Mike or me, to whom family was paramount.

“I never saw him again until yesterday, at the wake,” Trish said. “Can’t blame him too much, can I? He really made it, my big brother. Really crossed the tracks and created a fine life for himself without all our baggage. Until somebody set him up for Amanda’s death.”

“So now we know something about the Quillians,” Mike said. “I still don’t follow why you think the Hassetts killed your brother Duke. You never mentioned-”

“Did I give you a flavor of my father, Mr. Chapman? Could you get the sense he might have crossed a few folk along the way?”

“Sounds very proud, very tough,” Mike said, struggling for words.

“Feared and despised. I heard them words pretty often growing up. About six months or so before all this happened with Brendan, when the digging began in the Bronx for Water Tunnel Number Three, there was a dreadful accident in the hole.”

“A blast?” I asked.

“Not like that,” Trish said. “Old man Hassett-the boys’ father-he was somehow pinned against the side of the wall and crushed to death by a piece of machinery.”

“You called it an accident,” I said. Another painful way to die added to the tally.

“I was only a kid at the time. I grew up believing it was. But that was the last time the Quillians and the Hassetts ever went down in a shaft together. It was my father who was foreman of that job-it was Duke who was working the shift with Mr. Hassett.”

“It’s been more than twelve years, Trish,” Mike said. “What makes you think…?”

She reached under her coat and removed a folded envelope from the pocket of her skirt. “I guess for some people patience really is a virtue.”

She opened the letter and handed it to Mike, who flattened it on the table so we could read it together.

“See the date?” she asked, pointing to the postmarked envelope. “That’s the morning after you arrested Brendan, when the story that he hired somebody to kill Amanda was all over the newspapers.”

“It’s written to Duke,” Mike said. “Where did you get it?”

Trish wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Cleaning out his things yesterday morning. Found it in the top drawer of his dresser, under the watch my father left him.”

I read the note again, thinking of the sign affixed to the side of the Alimak that had taken us down the shaft last Thursday. Duke-The one-eyed wonder is gone. Keep your hands away from the door. Danger of amputation.