“For that, Duke fought him?” Mike asked.
“No, no, son. But Duke gave it to Bobby, in front of half the crew. Back and forth it was about each other’s kin, naming every miserable thing each of them had done. Finally, Duke told him his sister-Bex,” Phin said, looking down at his feet, “told him that poor dead girl was a whore. A whore who deserved to die. Said that everybody knew it. And that’s when Bobby started swinging.”
So all those years, Duke Quillian had kept the secret-the one that he shared with his brother, and with Bex-to himself.
“And Bobby hadn’t known about his sister’s pregnancy?” Mike asked.
“Nope. That’s what he told me, just yesterday evening. He went to his mother, practically on her deathbed she was then, to see what she knew.”
“What did his mother tell him?” Mike asked.
“I don’t like saying these things, son.”
“You’re almost there, Phin. Tell us what she said.”
“I can only go by what Bobby’s told me. Is it gospel? I don’t know.”
“I realize that,” Mike said.
Phin’s dark glasses masked his expression. “Bobby said his mother was dying-weak and sick and all that. But she actually wanted to talk about Rebecca, was relieved to tell her story.”
Phin paused and lifted the rubber tip of his cane to point at me. “You’ll excuse me, miss, for talking about this. Mrs. Hassett told Bobby she knew Bex was pregnant-missing her monthly, getting sick every day, starting to act out with all of them. Mrs. Hassett, now she was just a widow, then, trying to deal with this all by herself. Tried to get her child to talk about it, figure out where they could send her to have the baby-give it up for adoption, give it away. And, well, that’s when Bex just started acting all crazy, hanging out in the park, not coming home at night. Yeah, she knew her little girl was pregnant.”
“And she knew it was Brendan who was responsible?” Mike asked.
“She thought it, Bobby said. She always believed it. Bex wouldn’t tell her mother that, but she was pining away for him when he married that rich girl. And she was calling him all the time, just like Brendan was telephoning Bex right up to the day he went on his honeymoon.”
Mrs. Hassett had told her son more facts than she had ever felt comfortable enough to give to the detectives all those many years ago.
Phin hoisted himself up from the bench and walked, leaning on his cane, to look out at the view of the calm Sound and its armada of sailboats.
“So that’s what Bobby told you,” Mike said, walking after him. “Now what is it he was willing to pay to get from you in exchange?”
Phin didn’t answer.
“What does he think you know?”
“How to find Brendan Quillian,” he said, without looking back over his shoulder.
Mike shrugged his shoulders and held a finger to his temple. “I don’t get it. You have any contact with Brendan since he was a kid?”
“Nope.”
“You have any idea where he is?”
“Could be in Timbuktu by now. Wouldn’t you?”
“Hard to get there-or to Newark-when you bust out of jail with fifty bucks and a blind eye that maybe you could hide for a bit behind sunglasses, but sooner or later someone would spot,” Mike said.
“He’s got no form of identification for serious travel. No credit cards to use.” I wanted Brendan Quillian to be as far away from me as humanly possible, but the reality was that he didn’t have the basic resources to let him leave town.
“That’s not why Bobby wanted your advice, Phin. He’d go to a frigging travel agent for that. What does he want from you?”
“Same as you do. Where to look. That is, if Brendan was dumb enough to stay in town. Or hiding here until he can figure a way out of the city. You’ve been huntin’ for him, too, haven’t you?”
The small boats putting around the Sound had a smooth rhythm that contrasted with the sharp tension that was building between Phin and Mike.
“Day and night.”
“Where at?”
“Every place Teddy O’Malley takes me.”
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.”
45
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.”