Mike had told me to hide my blond hair under a baseball cap and wear sweats or something that would call no attention to myself. Iggy would be our backup outside the bar.
We drove from the airport in Queens, over the Triborough Bridge, to the Bronx. Mike knew the territory and steered us to the neighborhood, which seemed to be a clumsy assortment of tenements wedged between redbrick housing projects. We found the bar and, a block beyond, saw Iggy waiting for us in her car.
Mike pulled up alongside. “You scope it out yet?”
“Yeah. I been in. Sleepy little place. I’m not sure you’d want to eat anything there, but there’s enough rum behind the bar to float a navy.”
“Anybody home?”
“A bunch of old guys wearing polyester guayaberas and watching soccer on the tube. A few roosters in the back and I’d think I was in Humacao,” Iggy said, referring to the small town in Puerto Rico where she’d been raised. “There are four booths along the wall. That last one is where you want to be.”
“Thanks. We got some time to kill. I’ll take Coop for something to eat.”
“Pelham Parkway. You could get some good bacalaitos. We’ll sit on the place,” Iggy said, pushing herself up off the car seat to look at me. “You taking her in with you?”
“Yeah. That’s the plan.”
“Well, I better set myself up at the bar with the boys,” the petite detective with straight black hair and dark brown skin said to Mike. “If you think you’ve camouflaged that white-bread prosecutor with a Yankees hat and workout clothes, you’re thicker than I thought. I’ll keep the old geezers occupied inside. Give me ten for a couple of Coronas.”
Mike passed her a bill and we drove off for a late lunch.
This kind of thing-a mysterious caller offering useful information-had happened to us scores of times before. Once, the night before my closing argument, a woman who lived in a penthouse apartment on Central Park West had called to tell me she had seen the real killer while walking her dog just minutes before the murder inside the Rambles had occurred. If we ignored the information, we might be missing an essential clue, a possible witness, or a piece of exculpatory evidence. The dog walker had been a whack job and a waste of time, but one of us had to follow up on every lead and evaluate its usefulness.
We discussed that old case while we ate at the counter of the diner. Mike told me about Brendan Quillian’s short reunion with his family-quiet and uneventful-at the funeral parlor yesterday afternoon. Mike and the other detective had waited at the door of the small chapel in which Duke’s body was laid out, and for an hour Brendan had been allowed to visit with his relatives. I described Joan’s wedding and extended regards from the friends who had asked after Mike. Neither of us talked about anything more personal that had happened over the weekend, which had been the nature of most of our conversations since Val’s death.
“Let’s go get comfy at El Borricua,” he said, getting off the stool to pay the check.
We doubled back to the narrow street and walked into the dingy restaurant. The men at the bar all turned to look as we slowly made our way to the back of the room. Mike was fooling himself if he thought no one made him as an NYPD detective.
Iggy, whose tight black jeans and slinky white shirt had caught the eye of the regulars, was standing among them and drinking. As we passed by, she said something in Spanish about policía and waved us off as she encouraged them to ignore us. Mike wasn’t the one trying to hide his identity. It was the caller who preferred this spot to her home or a police station.
Mike sat with his back against the wall, facing the door. We each ordered a beer to make the proprietor happy, and I sipped the soda chaser as we waited.
When the woman came in, she must have noticed Mike immediately in the darkened room. I saw him sit up straight as the footsteps approached our booth.
His mouth fell open as she revealed herself to us at the table, untying the black scarf that she had wrapped around her head.
“I’m Trish. Patricia Quillian. Brendan’s my brother-Duke was, too.”
Mike was on his feet. “I’m Mike Chapman. I saw you there yesterday. I-uh, I’m sorry about Duke.”
“It’s no accident at all, Mr. Chapman. He was murdered in that tunnel, that’s the truth. I can tell you who did it and I can tell you why it happened. But you’ve got to help me, Mr. Chapman. They’d kill me for talking to you.”
19
“This is Alexandra Cooper, Ms. Quillian. She’s the assistant DA on-”
“I know very well who she is.” Trish’s speech was sharp and clipped, and if she could have spit at me, I think she would have. “She’ll have to leave.”
The woman was younger than I but had hard features, pale skin lined prematurely with creases, and eyelids reddened from crying. She was tall and gaunt-unlike her brothers-and her shoulders slumped, perhaps from the weight of the week’s events.
“Alex is working this investigation with me. There’s nothing you can tell me that I won’t be telling her.”
“She’s railroaded Brendan, that’s what I know. I won’t have her here.”
“We’re a team, Trish. You think you’ve got something to help us on Duke’s case, give me another call,” Mike said.
“She’s not one of us. She won’t understand me.” I assumed Trish was referring to the Irish Catholic bond she expected to make with Mike.
“C’mon, Coop. Let’s move on.”
I was halfway out of the booth as Trish Quillian stopped chewing on her lip and told me to sit down. Mike had heard the desperation in her voice and knew that as much as she must have hated both of us, she needed something only Mike could do for her.
“Will you sit?” he asked.
She looked at the door and then down at me. I slid over to the wall and she sat beside me, clutching the black cloth coat that seemed way too heavy for the warm afternoon.
“Are you okay here? We can go somewhere else.”
“Back when I was a kid, this was McGinty’s Pub. Had a cousin who worked here till the whole neighborhood turned over. No one knows me here anymore.”
“Who are you afraid of, Trish? We ought to know that before we get started.”
The question provoked the hint of a smile. “I’d have to start with my own blood. I’ve got two brothers left now-that’s besides Brendan, even though he doesn’t really count anymore. The both of them would kill me just for talking to you.”
I wondered why Brendan didn’t count.
“Any others?” Mike asked.
“I take it you know something about sandhogs? Not a one of them wants you people snooping around their business. They’ll be promising me Lord knows what to just be still and let them find out what happened in the hole, what got Duke killed, themselves. Screw the cops.”
“Is that because you think whoever murdered Duke is also a sandhog?”
“Of course he is.”
“And the young men from Tobago?” I asked. “They were part of the murder plan?”
“I don’t know what they were, Ms. Cooper. I’m not here to talk about them. Maybe they just got in the way.”
“Does this have anything to do with Brendan’s case?”
She hesitated when the bar owner came back to ask if she wanted a drink. “Also a beer, lady?”
“No. I’ll take a shot of whiskey. Straight.” Trish then answered me without turning her head to me, “I can’t prove that yet, but I’ll bet that it does.”
“So, why don’t you tell us your theory? Tell us who did it and why,” Mike said, waiting as the shot glass was placed in front of her and letting her take a drink.
I could tell from his tone that Mike was skeptical of Trish’s usefulness. She seemed to be the bitter voice of the hapless Quillians, and he wouldn’t want to head off on a wild-goose chase just to assuage her while his task-force colleagues were following solid leads.