Linda Fairstein - Bad blood

“I briefly entertained the notion of leaving town, but Mercer reminded me that I’d have no one to badger me if I left you behind. Imagine how lonely I’d be.”

“What do you guys think happened?” Mercer asked, while I went into the kitchen to get plates. “Teddy, what are you drinking?”

“I’d give my right arm for a couple of beers.”

“Coming up.”

Mike took the lead answering Mercer. “Too early to tell. The shaft into the tunnel is so narrow and the smoke was so intense the fire department couldn’t even get a man in the hole by the time we left.”

Mercer served the drinks while I handed out napkins and Teddy opened the first pizza box.

“Don’t give the blonde any anchovies, O’Malley. Coop’s fine with dead bodies, but she’s squeamish about oily little fish. Pepper-oni’s for her.”

“Bomb squad there?” Mercer asked.

“Running the show,” Mike said, adding crushed red pepper to his slice. “You’ve got a school day tomorrow, little girl. You’d better get some sleep. Lem Howell’s probably deep into his REMs by now, dreaming about ways to make you look bad.”

“You must be kidding. Nobody’ll be closing their eyes tonight. I’m glued to the news. What’s going on out there?”

“Unfortunately, you got some folks taking this terror stuff seriously. Whichever idiot at City Hall came up with sending that message public has screwed us up completely.”

“Yeah,” Mercer said, “but heads would be rolling if they didn’t put it out since there have been actual threats to the water system.”

“Now there’s already a lot of traffic heading for the bridges, and the PD’s doing car checks at all the tollbooths and tunnel entrances so every skittish New Yorker trying to get to his bunker in the Hamptons or her secluded corner of Connecticut is going nowhere very fast.”

Teddy O’Malley was on his second slice.

“You don’t buy the terrorist theory?” I asked.

Mike looked at Mercer as he talked through his impressions. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit the pattern of what we’ve been expecting, but nobody’s ready to rule it out yet. I would have thought the Al Qaeda signature would be multiple blasts in different parts of the system timed to go off at once, or following each other an hour or two apart. Besides that, it’s the original old tunnels that are their best targets. A good hit to either one of them would be cataclysmic. There’d be no water in this city for at least a year.”

Teddy’s arms bulged like those of a weight lifter on steroids as he lifted the bottle to his lips before speaking. “It ain’t outsiders. We got enough turmoil going on among ourselves to blow each other to kingdom come. I’d like to see a bin Laden-type bastard with a towel on his head try to get past the guard gate with the Daugherty brothers and the McCourts on the watch.”

“Spoken like a true sandhog,” Mike said, laughing as he reached for his second slice.

“A what?”

“Teddy’s a sandhog, Alex. It’s like Skull and Bones for micks. A very secret society that does its best work underground. You never met one before, did you?”

“No.”

“We’ll tell you about ’em, but before I forget, maybe Mercer can take over for me and stop by the hospital in the morning. One of us needs to keep the heat on Marley Dionne. Make sure he’s still with us.”

“Will do,” Mercer said before turning back to Teddy O’Malley. “What did you mean when you said bad stuff is going on among yourselves that could lead to this kind of thing?”

“You know our business?” Teddy asked, letting his third pizza slice rest on his plate while he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Not well.”

“First of all, you can’t ever rule out an accident when you’re working six hundred feet under the surface, blasting through bedrock with dynamite.”

“Six hundred feet below city streets?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Sixty stories down. What we do for a living is dangerous. And then there’s the politics of it. We’ve got a powerful union on one side, and you got your usual crop of corrupt officials on the other. A lot of hands have been greased to keep the men moving. There are scores of unhappy people on both sides-union guys, city councilmen, clubhouse politicians, mobsters trying to get a foothold in the union. Goes round and round like that, and bribery’s been standard operating procedure for a very long time.”

“Anything else?” Mercer said.

Teddy looked to Mike before answering.

“Nothing he hasn’t heard before, Teddy. You think Mercer could rise to the top of the detective division and not know what racism is?”

“Old news. Tell me about it. I thought you hogs were all very clannish-very band-of-brothers.”

Teddy exhaled and seemed to be through with his meal. “We are. Mostly. It’s two very different bands, and lately there’s been some ugly business going on.”

“Don’t Irish-Americans have a stranglehold on the sandhog work?”

“’Twas that way from the start, Detective, more than a hundred years ago. Who else would want it?” Teddy asked. “Uneducated immigrants with no skills and thick heads. They made great money doing the digs. But in short order they brought in some West Indians, for the very same reasons. In the old days they were known as the iron men. We were the miners and muckers-we did the shoveling-but the strong workers coming in from the Caribbean bolted together all the curved iron sections that formed the tunnel linings.”

“And there was never tension between them before this? Hard to believe.”

“From time to time, sure. But once you’re hundreds of feet down in the hole with someone, you trust him with your life every time you start a new shift, even if-you’ll excuse me, Detective-you wouldn’t necessarily want him marrying your sister.”

“What’s the beef now?” Mercer asked.

“So many of the jobs in the dig have been replaced by new, advanced machinery that not all the men can promise work to their sons anymore, like we did for generation after generation. The blacks are complaining that they’re being forced out first, even though as many of them have been there for generations, like we have. I’ll be giving Mike the names of guys he needs to talk to. It’s not everybody, you know.”

Mike went to the refrigerator and helped himself to a large glass of milk. He walked behind me and leaned against the dining room wall.

“You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but believe me, you don’t,” Mike said, trying to imitate someone, although I couldn’t make out who it was. He went on with the accent. “That’s what the DA used to tell me-in Chinatown…Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

I rubbed my eyes. “What does this blast have to do with Chinatown?”

“Now you really do sound like a dumb blonde. Didn’t you get my best Jack Nicholson impression? My John Huston? Chinatown-the movie, not the neighborhood. The flick was all about stealing water to get it to Los Angeles, don’t you remember? You could tell the same story about New York-we had to steal the water from somewhere, only nobody remembers that.”

I walked to the den and checked the television before returning to the table. Julie Kirsch was still live from Tenth Avenue and still speculating wildly about the cause of the explosion.

“Can you put on a pot of coffee for Teddy and me before we get back to work?”

“Sure.”

“How old are you, Teddy?” Mike asked.

“Forty-three.”

“Same as Mercer. You married?”

He nodded and picked at the crust of another slice.

“Be on the lookout underground for a man who likes black coffee, English muffins, and a dinner of strong runny cheese and stale crackers. That’s all she knows how to cook. Coop’s available, and maybe a guy who packs a mean sledgehammer could handle her. Your wife from a hog family?”