“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.
44
“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.
“Guys been coming around asking questions?”
“Yeah.”
“Like who?” Mike said.
“Like guys who are willing to pay me for information. Do you pay? I didn’t want none of their money, but I’ve got my needs.”
Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills. “I can give you a down payment, Phin. Lots more where this came from.”
The old man turned his head and lifted his glasses for a moment.
“Who’s been here, Phin?” Mike had a couple of twenties. He handed them to Baylor.
“Bobby Hassett, for one.”
“Looking for Brendan, of course,” Mike said. “To kill him?”
“Not up to me to figure that out. I don’t want no part of any of them.”
“But did he tell you anything? Did he tell you what his beef is?”
Phin tapped the great stone floor in front of him with his cane. “How much more of that you got?”
“The green stuff? Coop’s my banker. She’ll go back to the car and get some cash from her handbag before we leave, won’t you, kid?”
“Bobby tried every which way to come at me,” Phin said. “Told me a pretty ugly story about Brendan. A personal one. Maybe too private to mention.”
“We haven’t got time to worry about privacy now, Phin. Brendan’s killed one woman already and he’s still armed. I need to find him before somebody else gets hurt.”
“Yeah, but I got a daughter, too. You don’t need to spread these stories.”
“Is it about Rebecca Hassett?” I asked. “Did Bobby tell you something-something about her that you’re reluctant to tell us?”
Phin lifted the cane onto his lap and studied Mike’s face. “You know about Bex?”
“The medical examiner did another-”
“Bobby told me,” Phin said, shaking his head from side to side. “They should never have disturbed that grave. No good can come of it.”
“So he told you Bex was pregnant when she was killed?”
Phin took a deep breath of the salt air before he answered. “Yeah. Yes, he did.”
“How could he know?” I asked Mike, who held up a hand to stop me from going further. I wasn’t aware that the medical examiner had released that information to the family yet.
“So it’s true then?” Phin was too sharp to miss a beat.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t the doctor who told Bobby. He heard it from his own mother.” Phin’s voice had a slight edge of anger.
“His mother?” Mike asked. “She’s dead.”
“Bobby was playing on my heartstrings, I guess. I’d known his mother a very long time, like everybody else in our isolated little world. She only died half a year ago. Kept this inside her since it happened.”
“What did he tell you?”
Phin Baylor straightened out his bad leg and rubbed his thigh. “The mother was dying for months. Got sick right about the same time you people locked up Brendan Quillian. ’Twas all over the papers, that story about him having his wife killed.”
He stopped talking as two mothers walked by with their kids.
“Nobody’s told you about the fistfight?” Phin asked.
“No,” Mike said.
“I guess it wasn’t clocked up to anything more than the longstanding feud between the families,” Phin said, reaching out to put his hand on Mike’s arm, which was across the back of the bench. “Bobby was pleased as punch when you locked up Brendan for murdering his own wife.”
“I kind of liked it myself.”
“Well, next time he saw Duke Quillian in the water tunnel, while they were working the dig, young Bobby told him that Brendan was a scumbag. Just tweaking him was all. Nobody in the crowd ever liked Brendan, him being such a snob and all.”