Linda Fairstein - Bad blood

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.”

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.