Linda Fairstein - Bad blood

“Like I said before, we’re still looking for Brendan.” Mike lowered his voice. “You’ve talked to him, Trish, haven’t you?”

“Why don’t you just move right in here, Detective? I’ll set an extra place at the table for you. Bring your own whiskey. No, I haven’t been talking to him.”

Mike stayed on her, gently but firmly. “He called you just hours after the shooting in the courthouse, Trish. Why would you lie for him after all these years?”

She stood up as the groaning sound became louder.

“I’ve got no need to lie for anyone. I got more important things to do.”

“Can you come with us down to the station house?” Mike asked.

“You’ve had your best shot at me already. Can’t leave my mother.” She pointed over her head.

“Make arrangements for tomorrow, then. You’ll need help, won’t you?”

“The help of God, Mike Chapman.” Trish walked toward the front door, mustering a laugh. “Wasn’t my spit any use for you?”

“It was, actually. Led us right back to Duke. Right to how you saved his life.”

The frightened young woman stopped in her tracks. “What about Duke?”

“We learned about the transplant,” I said. “We found his medical records from all those years ago. He must have been very grateful to you, Trish.”

She bit into her lip again. “Maybe he’d have been grateful if he’d lived a little longer. What’s that got to do with my saliva? It’s the blood I gave him.”

Mike brushed back his hair and tossed his head at me. “You come down to my office tomorrow and I’ll explain everything.”

He knew he wasn’t getting any more from her today. He wanted to tease her to take the next step with us in finding her estranged brother.

Mike put his hand on the door handle to let us out as Trish started up the staircase to her mother. “We’ll tell you all about that autopsy, too. Your friend Bex-I guess she kept some secrets to herself back then.”

Trish had one hand on the banister, gripping it as she turned slowly in response to Mike’s bait.

“What kind of secrets, Detective? There wasn’t nothing she didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t mean to shock you when you’re already so upset over other things.”

“I’m too numb to shock anymore. Speak what you mean.”

Mike squared his back against the frame of the door. “Bex Hassett was pregnant when she died, Trish. She was almost three months pregnant.”

“Those bastards,” she said, rocking back and forth as she stood in place on the second step. “Those little bastards took such advantage of that poor girl. Find them for me, Detective, that’s what you can do. Go to the Dominican Republic if you have to and lock their asses up. I’d kill whoever did that to her if I could get my hands on him.”

Mike took a step toward her and spoke softly. “Then help us with this.”

She was staring down at the step.

“Look at me, will you?” Mike said, waiting for her to lift her eyes to meet his. “It’s not what you’d like to think it was. It’s your brother Brendan who impregnated Bex Hassett. It’s Brendan who was the father of her baby.”

Trish Quillian crumpled to the floor as if a baseball bat had slammed against the back of her knees. She slid off the steps onto the landing, the balled-up apron rolling across the scuffed wooden floor.

I grabbed it as I kneeled to help her, and a torn envelope dropped from the apron’s pocket.

“Don’t!” she shouted at me.

Her mother’s mumblings got louder, perhaps because of the commotion we were making.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Don’t touch that,” she said as I picked up the envelope, torn at the corners as though it had been stuffed with something at one time.

I could see a postmark and noted that the recipient had been Duke Quillian. I passed it to Trish, who stretched out her bony thumb-not quite fast enough to cover the return address of her brother Brendan-as she pulled the paper from me and buried it in her lap.

“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.