Bad blood

45

We paid our informant enough to keep him in cheap beer for a week and started the drive back to Manhattan.

“Pick up Teddy O’Malley and meet us in Coop’s office. We should be there by six for some sandhog brainstorming.” Mike was on the phone with Mercer. “Peterson put a detail on him when we saw him leave Trish Quillian’s house this afternoon. Get in touch with those detectives. They should know exactly where he is and bring him in.”

I waited until Mike finished to call Battaglia and ask him to appeal to the mayor’s office to get some juice for what we needed to do. I wanted experts-if not tonight, by tomorrow-from every city agency that had tunnels and construction projects, people who knew exactly where every one of them was. DEP, Transportation, Port Authority. I told Laura to reserve the conference room so that we could spread the crew out with maps in order to chart together every deserted dig in the five boroughs.

Traffic snarled the Deegan Expressway and the Triborough Bridge crossing, slowing the ride back into the city. We were stalled in gridlock just above Canal Street as it approached 7 p.m., both impatient to get to my office and start a fresh look at Brendan Quillian’s options.

“It’s like Saddam’s spider hole, Coop. We’re sitting on top of it, somewhere. We just need to find the right opening.

“You got Teddy yet?” Mike called Mercer again to let him know we were getting closer to Hogan Place. “What do you mean those mopes lost him? Jeez. I should have followed him myself. Did you leave a message on his cell?”

Mercer answered and Mike spoke again. “Good.”

He listened and then exploded as he pulled the car over to the curb and threw his laminated plaque onto the dashboard. “Shit! How could they lose him in the subway? There? It makes no sense. Meet us at the entrance to the City Hall Station…Yeah, the East Side one-that old kiosk right across from the Municipal Building. Fifteen minutes, half an hour. Bring company, Mercer. Coop’s with me.”

Bring company was a command Mike rarely gave. I got chills at the idea that he thought we needed backup.

He took a small flashlight from the glove compartment and stuck it in his rear pants pocket, got out of the car, and started jogging lamely to the intersection of Lafayette and Canal streets, just a block ahead. It was the entrance to the downtown #6 train-the Lexington Avenue local. Pedestrians walking north from the hub of government offices and courthouses slowed our southbound run, and I caught up with Mike as he headed down the steps into the station.

“Stay with me,” he called out to me. He swiped his MetroCard to get through the turnstile, then swiped again so I could get in, too.

“What did Mercer say?”

“Those jerks lost O’Malley after tailing him all afternoon. He left his car a few blocks from the station, then got on the six going downtown. Took it one stop to the Brooklyn Bridge,” Mike said. “The dicks got off there, but never saw Teddy again.”

“You mean they lost him in the crowd?”

“They told Mercer they saw him on the platform-and no, it wasn’t even that busy. But when the group of people cleared, O’Malley was gone.”

“Doesn’t everybody have to get off the train there? You can’t go any farther south, can you?”

The Brooklyn Bridge stop of the IRT #6 train was the last station on the route from lower Manhattan, at the foot of the great bridge, all the way uptown to Pelham Bay Park.

“Not unless you ride the loop,” Mike said.

The train pulled into the station and opened its doors to admit us. Tired workers on their way home rested their heads against the windows behind them, while several reading books and newspapers glanced up. I walked briskly behind Mike, moving through three cars to get to the front of the train, behind the motorman’s cab. I grasped on to poles and straps as I moved ahead, the train rolling from side to side as it barreled forward.

Mike turned to reach for my hand as we stepped into the front car.

“What’s the loop? What are you talking about?”

We were face-to-face. I grabbed on to Mike’s shoulder to steady myself.

“Just the kind of place we’re looking for, only Mercer didn’t have the advantage of our conversation with Phin Baylor. And Teddy O’Malley may have led us there unwittingly.”

“Where?”

“City Hall Station. The ceremonial terminal of the first subway system in New York. Maybe the most elegant station ever built.”

“But it’s closed. It’s been closed for fifty years. You’ve been inside it?”

“It was reopened briefly, to prepare for its centennial in 2004. We had to check it out as part of our Terrorist Task Force duties. The commissioner ordered it shut down again pretty quickly after 9/11. It’s directly under City Hall-too risky to chance an attack.”

“And the loop?”

“When all the passengers are disgorged from the Number Six at the Brooklyn Bridge platform, the empty train makes a sharp right turn off the local tracks onto a loop. The cars go onto the actual track of the original City Hall Station. That one was way too short to handle the longer modern subway cars, so it’s only used for a turnaround.”

“Of the Number Six?”

“Yeah, the local makes the tight curve and reappears on the uptown side-completely empty-for the ride north. In the process of looping around, it goes underground deep enough to cross under the express tracks, below grade.”

“A typical sandhog job, dug into the bedrock,” I said. “And a phantom subway station. There was even a photograph of the Quillian boys at City Hall with their father in the living room of Trish’s house.”

“You saw that? Fits Phin’s theory. Figures Brendan’s old man would have gotten them in for a visit. Transit used to give tours of the place until a few years back.”

The train jolted to a stop and the motorman announced the end of the line.

Mike charged forward, displaying his gold shield.

“You gotta get off here, buddy. I don’t care who you are. Take your date and go,” the motorman said, turning back to his controls and sliding the panel shut behind him.

Mike blocked the closing door with his body. “We’re coming with you.”

“I can’t ride nobody around. It’s the rules. You oughta know that,” the young man said, his annoyance turning to anger. “You’re making me late.”

“And you’re making me mad. Move it.”

“I could lose my job over this.”

“Go slow,” Mike said, as the car lurched ahead, around the curve into a darkened tunnel. It was listing to the right side, and I balanced myself against the railing of the first bench.

“Stop it. Right here.”

“First you wanna ride with me, now you want me to shut it down. But I can’t,” the motorman protested.

“I’ll bet you can,” Mike said, lifting his jacket back far enough to reveal the revolver on his hip.

Another sudden stop and the doors opened.

“Jump down, Coop. Be careful.”

I held on to the door handle and lowered myself to the platform, trying to adjust to the blackness around me. Mike followed as the motorman closed the doors and pulled away, the lights from within the cars flickering to reveal the arched ceilings over the narrow walkway, and the deep blue-and-tan glass lettering of the words CITY HALL.

The last rumblings of the long train grew more distant. There was nothing but darkness around us and the exquisite silence of a tomb.