Bad blood

44

“Did you see the date?”

“I couldn’t,” I said. “She grabbed it too quickly.”

We were back in the car in front of Trish Quillian’s house.

“But you’re sure of the names?”

“Positive. Brendan Quillian was in touch with Duke while he was still working for his father-in-law. The return address was the Keating Properties offices.”

“So why was she carrying it around in her pocket today? Why did she have it on her when Teddy O’Malley was here?” Mike asked aloud.

“Maybe Teddy gave it to her. Insurance papers or something like that. Maybe it’s just a sentimental letter she’s been looking at, something that Brendan wrote to Duke.”

“Yeah, Coop, that’s one sentimental pair of brothers. Them and the Menendez boys.”

“I meant that we don’t know-”

“If Brendan wrote a thank-you note to big Duke for offing Amanda, you might have wanted to see that, don’t you think? You let go of that envelope faster than the old maid card in a losing game.”

“The law is such an impediment to your investigative skills, isn’t it?” I looked at my watch. “Tell you what. Stick me in a cab and I’ll go down to my office for a couple of hours.”

“I’d like to stick you somewhere, but it wouldn’t be in a cab. You know Battaglia’s rules. One of us has to be glued to your side, like it or not.”

Mike drove to the end of Trish Quillian’s street. “I got one more idea, as long as we’re here in the Bronx. You with me?”

“Depends.”

“The Musketeers never said stupid things like that to each other. Neither would Mercer. You’re either in or you’re out. It shouldn’t depend on anything. It’s not like I’m gonna throw you to the wolves, Coop.”

“In. Okay, I’m in. Whatever you say, my musketeer. Where to?”

“Back to Fort Schuyler. Phinneas Baylor. I bet he’s given some thought to everything that’s happened since we met him last week.”

He had seemed to know most of the history of bad blood between the Hassetts and the Quillians and been caught in the middle of their first deadly tunnel incident. “Good idea.”

“I get ’em every now and then,” Mike said, heading off to the old building on the edge of Long Island Sound.

Phin was just as we’d left him. A bit more whiskers on his face, an almost empty sixteen-ounce bottle of beer, and the trusty cane resting beside him on the bench. The afternoon sun warmed the ramparts, and he was leaning back so that his already tanned face could soak in more rays. He opened his eyes as he heard our footsteps.

“You imitating me, son? You’re limping worse than me,” Phin said, holding out his walking stick to Mike.

“Nah. Just the uneven stones here. Thought I just sprained it, but maybe pulled a ligament. Nothing to complain about to you.”

Mike sat next to Phin on the bench while I stood opposite, watching a few kids chase gulls off the battlement.

“So what did you think of the news about Brendan Quillian?”

Phin’s expression never changed. He lifted his face to the sunlight and closed his eyes again. “Didn’t give it much thought.”

“My friend here-Ms. Cooper-she almost got killed by the guy. I’m giving it all the thought I can, Phin.”

Baylor took his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on, but the lenses were so dark I couldn’t see whether he opened his eyes.

“I as much as told you they were miserable folk, the Quillians. Much as told you no good comes from being around them.”

“That wasn’t a choice Coop had, being around Brendan or not.”

“Why does everybody think I’m any help?”

“Everybody? Who’s everybody?”

Phin didn’t answer.

“Guys been coming around asking questions?”

“Yeah.”

“Like who?” Mike said.

“Like guys who are willing to pay me for information. Do you pay? I didn’t want none of their money, but I’ve got my needs.”

Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills. “I can give you a down payment, Phin. Lots more where this came from.”

The old man turned his head and lifted his glasses for a moment.

“Who’s been here, Phin?” Mike had a couple of twenties. He handed them to Baylor.

“Bobby Hassett, for one.”

“Looking for Brendan, of course,” Mike said. “To kill him?”

“Not up to me to figure that out. I don’t want no part of any of them.”

“But did he tell you anything? Did he tell you what his beef is?”

Phin tapped the great stone floor in front of him with his cane. “How much more of that you got?”

“The green stuff? Coop’s my banker. She’ll go back to the car and get some cash from her handbag before we leave, won’t you, kid?”

“Bobby tried every which way to come at me,” Phin said. “Told me a pretty ugly story about Brendan. A personal one. Maybe too private to mention.”

“We haven’t got time to worry about privacy now, Phin. Brendan’s killed one woman already and he’s still armed. I need to find him before somebody else gets hurt.”

“Yeah, but I got a daughter, too. You don’t need to spread these stories.”

“Is it about Rebecca Hassett?” I asked. “Did Bobby tell you something-something about her that you’re reluctant to tell us?”

Phin lifted the cane onto his lap and studied Mike’s face. “You know about Bex?”

“The medical examiner did another-”

“Bobby told me,” Phin said, shaking his head from side to side. “They should never have disturbed that grave. No good can come of it.”

“So he told you Bex was pregnant when she was killed?”

Phin took a deep breath of the salt air before he answered. “Yeah. Yes, he did.”

“How could he know?” I asked Mike, who held up a hand to stop me from going further. I wasn’t aware that the medical examiner had released that information to the family yet.

“So it’s true then?” Phin was too sharp to miss a beat.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, it wasn’t the doctor who told Bobby. He heard it from his own mother.” Phin’s voice had a slight edge of anger.

“His mother?” Mike asked. “She’s dead.”

“Bobby was playing on my heartstrings, I guess. I’d known his mother a very long time, like everybody else in our isolated little world. She only died half a year ago. Kept this inside her since it happened.”

“What did he tell you?”

Phin Baylor straightened out his bad leg and rubbed his thigh. “The mother was dying for months. Got sick right about the same time you people locked up Brendan Quillian. ’Twas all over the papers, that story about him having his wife killed.”

He stopped talking as two mothers walked by with their kids.

“Nobody’s told you about the fistfight?” Phin asked.

“No,” Mike said.

“I guess it wasn’t clocked up to anything more than the longstanding feud between the families,” Phin said, reaching out to put his hand on Mike’s arm, which was across the back of the bench. “Bobby was pleased as punch when you locked up Brendan for murdering his own wife.”

“I kind of liked it myself.”

“Well, next time he saw Duke Quillian in the water tunnel, while they were working the dig, young Bobby told him that Brendan was a scumbag. Just tweaking him was all. Nobody in the crowd ever liked Brendan, him being such a snob and all.”

“For that, Duke fought him?” Mike asked.

“No, no, son. But Duke gave it to Bobby, in front of half the crew. Back and forth it was about each other’s kin, naming every miserable thing each of them had done. Finally, Duke told him his sister-Bex,” Phin said, looking down at his feet, “told him that poor dead girl was a whore. A whore who deserved to die. Said that everybody knew it. And that’s when Bobby started swinging.”

So all those years, Duke Quillian had kept the secret-the one that he shared with his brother, and with Bex-to himself.

“And Bobby hadn’t known about his sister’s pregnancy?” Mike asked.

“Nope. That’s what he told me, just yesterday evening. He went to his mother, practically on her deathbed she was then, to see what she knew.”

“What did his mother tell him?” Mike asked.

“I don’t like saying these things, son.”

“You’re almost there, Phin. Tell us what she said.”

“I can only go by what Bobby’s told me. Is it gospel? I don’t know.”

“I realize that,” Mike said.

Phin’s dark glasses masked his expression. “Bobby said his mother was dying-weak and sick and all that. But she actually wanted to talk about Rebecca, was relieved to tell her story.”

Phin paused and lifted the rubber tip of his cane to point at me. “You’ll excuse me, miss, for talking about this. Mrs. Hassett told Bobby she knew Bex was pregnant-missing her monthly, getting sick every day, starting to act out with all of them. Mrs. Hassett, now she was just a widow, then, trying to deal with this all by herself. Tried to get her child to talk about it, figure out where they could send her to have the baby-give it up for adoption, give it away. And, well, that’s when Bex just started acting all crazy, hanging out in the park, not coming home at night. Yeah, she knew her little girl was pregnant.”

“And she knew it was Brendan who was responsible?” Mike asked.

“She thought it, Bobby said. She always believed it. Bex wouldn’t tell her mother that, but she was pining away for him when he married that rich girl. And she was calling him all the time, just like Brendan was telephoning Bex right up to the day he went on his honeymoon.”

Mrs. Hassett had told her son more facts than she had ever felt comfortable enough to give to the detectives all those many years ago.

Phin hoisted himself up from the bench and walked, leaning on his cane, to look out at the view of the calm Sound and its armada of sailboats.

“So that’s what Bobby told you,” Mike said, walking after him. “Now what is it he was willing to pay to get from you in exchange?”

Phin didn’t answer.

“What does he think you know?”

“How to find Brendan Quillian,” he said, without looking back over his shoulder.

Mike shrugged his shoulders and held a finger to his temple. “I don’t get it. You have any contact with Brendan since he was a kid?”

“Nope.”

“You have any idea where he is?”

“Could be in Timbuktu by now. Wouldn’t you?”

“Hard to get there-or to Newark-when you bust out of jail with fifty bucks and a blind eye that maybe you could hide for a bit behind sunglasses, but sooner or later someone would spot,” Mike said.

“He’s got no form of identification for serious travel. No credit cards to use.” I wanted Brendan Quillian to be as far away from me as humanly possible, but the reality was that he didn’t have the basic resources to let him leave town.

“That’s not why Bobby wanted your advice, Phin. He’d go to a frigging travel agent for that. What does he want from you?”

“Same as you do. Where to look. That is, if Brendan was dumb enough to stay in town. Or hiding here until he can figure a way out of the city. You’ve been huntin’ for him, too, haven’t you?”

The small boats putting around the Sound had a smooth rhythm that contrasted with the sharp tension that was building between Phin and Mike.

“Day and night.”

“Where at?”

“Every place Teddy O’Malley takes me.”

Phin laughed.

“What are you snickering at?”

“He’s a kid, O’Malley. Where’s he had you at?”

“Water Tunnel Number Three-and anything connected to it. The valve control center in the Bronx. The digs in every part of the city. The hole for the new subway on the East Side.”

Phin swiveled on his good leg and leaned against the battlement. “Surely he knows Brendan Quillian couldn’t be hiding in any of those places.”

Mike had hardly slept, chasing after O’Malley to every underground tunnel and construction project.

“Why not? Suppose someone-someone loyal to Duke, maybe even friendly once with their old man-part of the incestuous fraternity you guys make of yourselves-figured a way to shelter him till they could help him get out of town?”

“That’s perfectly logical, son. But not in any of the places O’Malley’s been going. A wild-goose chase-that’s what he’s had you do.”

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause they’re all active digs, the spots he’s taken you to. There’s a place to hide someone in every one of them-that’s for certain. But Brendan wouldn’t make it in any holes like those. He’s spooked, the boy-spooked ever since the explosion that took his eye. He won’t make it in a place where they’re still blasting, still setting off the dynamite. His nerves would kill him before he got to the end of the first day. I’ll bet firing a gun in the courtroom-even though he did it himself to get his freedom-that probably set him on pins and needles all over again.”

Mike was nodding his head, absorbing Phin’s point.

“Is that what you told Bobby Hassett?” Mike asked, knowing we were at least a day behind the man who hated Brendan Quillian with renewed passion.

“I didn’t have to tell him that. He knew it.”

“Then what did he want from you?” Mike bored in on the old man. “Exactly what, Phin?”

“What you folks should have been smart enough to think of,” Phin said, brooking none of Mike’s swagger and poking him in the chest as he answered.

“Okay, so we’re ignorant. Give us a hand.”

“Some Quillian history,” Phin said, now pointing the same finger at his own head. “The Quillians worked on every sandhog job in this city going back five generations. Bridges, tunnels, viaducts, subways, sewers-there ain’t nothing below or above the streets of New York that they weren’t part of.”

“The Hassetts, too,” Mike said.

“Yeah. Sometimes they worked the same job sites and sometimes different ones. Bobby’s clever enough to know that Brendan Quillian would want to be someplace he’d consider safe.”

“Where he’d be comfortable. A familiar setting,” Mike said, picking up on Phin’s logic. “Maybe a place his father took him to when he was a kid. That’s what Bobby was asking about.”

Phin Baylor cracked a smile. “Now you’re on track.”

“You tell him anything? You give him a list of the ones you could remember?”

“I told you I wasn’t looking for more trouble, Mike.”

“What’ll buy us that same list from you, Phin? A hundred bucks?”

“That might get me thinking.”

“Start thinking out loud.”

“Stay out of all those active tunnels where O’Malley’s had you scrambling around. If Brendan Quillian’s still in this city, then he’s in some sandhog ghost town. An abandoned space. Nothing there but him and the rats.”

Mike was listening intently.

“And one thing for sure. He’ll need it to be deadly quiet, Chapman. Brendan’ll want the place to be silent as a tomb.”