the boys home, too. Bex and me, we slipped into town and sat on a bench across from the church, just so we could see them when they stood out in front, all dressed up and such, posing to have their pictures taken before they went off to the reception at some club the Keatings belonged to.
“Brendan had called my mother one last time to urge her to come, but she told him to get on with his new life, to just act like we all had died when Dad did, if we embarrassed him so much.”
“And that’s what he did?” I asked. It seemed unthinkable to someone like Mike or me, to whom family was paramount.
“I never saw him again until yesterday, at the wake,” Trish said. “Can’t blame him too much, can I? He really made it, my big brother. Really crossed the tracks and created a fine life for himself without all our baggage. Until somebody set him up for Amanda’s death.”
“So now we know something about the Quillians,” Mike said. “I still don’t follow why you think the Hassetts killed your brother Duke. You never mentioned-”
“Did I give you a flavor of my father, Mr. Chapman? Could you get the sense he might have crossed a few folk along the way?”
“Sounds very proud, very tough,” Mike said, struggling for words.
“Feared and despised. I heard them words pretty often growing up. About six months or so before all this happened with Brendan, when the digging began in the Bronx for Water Tunnel Number Three, there was a dreadful accident in the hole.”
“A blast?” I asked.
“Not like that,” Trish said. “Old man Hassett-the boys’ father-he was somehow pinned against the side of the wall and crushed to death by a piece of machinery.”
“You called it an accident,” I said. Another painful way to die added to the tally.
“I was only a kid at the time. I grew up believing it was. But that was the last time the Quillians and the Hassetts ever went down in a shaft together. It was my father who was foreman of that job-it was Duke who was working the shift with Mr. Hassett.”
“It’s been more than twelve years, Trish,” Mike said. “What makes you think…?”
She reached under her coat and removed a folded envelope from the pocket of her skirt. “I guess for some people patience really is a virtue.”
She opened the letter and handed it to Mike, who flattened it on the table so we could read it together.
“See the date?” she asked, pointing to the postmarked envelope. “That’s the morning after you arrested Brendan, when the story that he hired somebody to kill Amanda was all over the newspapers.”
“It’s written to Duke,” Mike said. “Where did you get it?”
Trish wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Cleaning out his things yesterday morning. Found it in the top drawer of his dresser, under the watch my father left him.”
I read the note again, thinking of the sign affixed to the side of the Alimak that had taken us down the shaft last Thursday. Duke-The one-eyed wonder is gone. Keep your hands away from the door. Danger of amputation.
20
“Trish,” Mike said. “There’s nothing here to connect this to anyone named Hassett.”
“The ‘one-eyed wonder’-that was their nickname for Brendan-that’s how they teased him because of his blind eye. They’re the ones that called him that.”
She pushed up the sleeve of her coat and looked at her watch. “I’ve got to be at the wake,” she said, folding up the letter and replacing it in the envelope. “You don’t believe me, they’ll be more deaths to follow. Suit yourselves.”
Mike took the envelope from her. “We’ll give it a run. No promises, but it’s something to work up. When you saw Brendan yesterday, did you tell him about this?”
“See that rip in the piece of paper? He wanted to keep it himself. Didn’t want me anywhere near you.”
“You mentioned you were going to call me?”
“I asked him whether I should. He was furious with me. Told me it was a stupid idea and it wouldn’t help to open all those old wounds,” Trish said. “What the hell-it’s not like I owe Brendan anything. I got to do what’s right by Duke.”
Mike pulled his steno pad from inside his jacket pocket. “How many Hassett kids are there? Where do they live?”
“There’s three boys,” Trish said, listing their names. “Bobby’s twenty-four, like I mentioned, and the twins must be twenty-two by now. They all live in Queens. Douglaston. Moved away from here after their father’s accident.”
“That’s a good neighborhood,” I said.
“It’s not like the old days,” she said. “Sandhogs make a pretty decent wage. My younger brothers do okay for themselves. Duke had the same damn curses my father did, though. Horses and hooch, my mama used to say. A little less of both and we’d have been on easy street.”
“So these guys weren’t in the tunnel when their father died, were they?” Mike asked.
“No, no. They were all in grade school at the time.”
“They couldn’t have witnessed anything then?”
“Tall tales. That’s what they’re going by.”
Mike flipped the page. “You know any other men who were down there at the time Hassett died, with your father and Duke?”
She thought about it for thirty seconds. “Nobody who’s a friend.”
“Trish,” Mike said, “I’m not looking for Duke’s friends or his enemies. I’m looking for an eyewitness who might tell me the truth.”
She put her elbows on the table and covered her eyes with her hands. “My mother knew every one of the crew. Too bad those memories are all locked up inside her head now.”
“Think, Trish,” Mike urged. “You’ve heard this story so many times.”
She remembered the names of two of the older men who had died of the same black-lung disease that had killed her father, and two more who’d retired out of state. She recalled some common surnames-Powers, Ryan, O’Callahan-that Mike would have to find by checking through union records going back more than a decade. Reluctantly, she decided to give us someone who might have been an eyewitness.
“Phin-Phinneas Baylor. If he’s still alive, maybe he’ll talk to you. Phin was crippled that day in the crash. Never got back to work so far as I know. He never blamed Duke-everyone said it was my brother who saved Phin’s life.” Trish’s attitude was growing in defiance. “Used to live over in Throgs Neck with his daughter. I knew her from school. She and Bex and me-we were all good friends in junior high.”
“You remember what address?” Mike asked.
“Right next door to St. Frances de Chantal. Hollywood Avenue, just to the left of the church. I don’t know the number, but the house is right there,” Trish said. “Too bad Bex is dead. She’d have kept the boys’ heads on straight. She knew better than to blame Duke.”
Trish slid out of the booth and stood next to Mike. “I’ve got to be going now.”
“Bex?” I asked. “Your best friend? What did she have to do with this?”
“She was a Hassett, too. Rebecca Hassett, the boys’ older sister. Bex was my age-we were like sisters from the time we were four or five.”
“What did she know about the accident?” Mike asked.
Trish hesitated. “You think she would have stayed so close to me if she thought anyone in my family had killed her father?”
Mike’s impatience was beginning to show. “Look, Trish. That’s just-just…I don’t want to say it’s of no value, but-”
“It’s the truth, Mr. Chapman. You just want it all made easy for you, don’t you?”
Trish started to walk past the bar. Mike and I followed. “Can I give you a ride?”
