the curb.
“Let me do this,” I said to Mike.
I walked up the path and introduced myself to the pair, asking if this was where Phinneas Baylor lived.
“Yes, and I’m his daughter, Janet,” the fairer one said, standing to come toward me. “Something wrong?”
“No, we’d just like to talk to your father.”
“Depends on what it’s about. I don’t need you bothering him.”
“We’re actually with-”
“I know it’s not a courtesy call. Your automobile kind of gives the both of you away in this neighborhood,” Janet said, trying to back me down the path, putting distance between our conversation and her friend. I could hear the door slam behind me and figured Mike didn’t like the dynamic he was watching.
“Mike Chapman here. NYPD,” he said, both hands in his pants pockets. “Nothing to get perturbed about. You’re…?”
“Janet. Janet Baylor.” She looked back and forth between Mike’s face and mine and made her choice. “This a problem for my dad?” she asked him.
Mike took her arm and steered her toward the car, smiling at her to reassure her. “Ancient history, Janet. We need a lesson. Hear your pop has some stories about the old days that might be a help in something we’re doing.”
She cocked her head. “Quillians it’ll be, won’t it? They’re all over the news. You won’t be mixing him into that stuff, will you? He don’t know the first thing about it.”
“Fair enough. We’re just trying to get a handle on some of the background.”
“That’s all? Honest?”
Mike held up his hand and smiled again. “Blood oath.”
“Phin took a walk down to the water, at the end of Pennyfield Avenue,” Janet said. “Fort Schuyler. Sits up on the ramparts there every day he can, May to October, until sunset. Silver hair-and I think he’s got on a black T- shirt and baggy pants. Got a bad gimp. You’ll know him by the cane.”
“Do you mind my asking whether you know Patricia Quillian?” I said.
Janet looked up. “Went all through school with Trish. Haven’t seen her since we got out.”
“Any reason why?”
She shrugged. “Just went separate ways, that’s all. We had another friend-Bex-and-”
Mike wanted to show her we knew about Bex. “Rebecca Hassett, right?”
Janet paused. “Yeah, yeah. Guess you’ve got a good start on your history lesson already, Detective. Well, her murder shook up our whole crowd. Just never knew what happened. Me, I used to keep all the newspaper clippings about the case.”
“You still have them?” I asked.
“Nah.”
“Why did you save them?”
She pushed the hair off her forehead. “Bex’s murder made her the most famous person we knew. Had her name in the paper every day for a couple of weeks. Seemed like the cops were coming around talking to us all the time at first. Seemed like the most important thing in all our lives. Then they just stopped coming. Stopped caring about Bex. Most people did. They always figured it was the druggies in the park.”
“And you?” Mike asked. “What did you think?”
She shrugged again. “Same as everybody else. She should have stayed with our crowd. Bex, I mean. Started running with hoodlums. People who weren’t like us. Lots of people thought she was asking for it.”
I closed my eyes, stung by words I had heard far too often about victims of violence.
“How well did you know Brendan Quillian?” Mike asked.
Janet Baylor frowned. “Not at all. Too much a pretty boy for me. Never really saw him around here anyway.”
“And Duke?”
She didn’t answer.
“Did you know Duke?”
“Had firm orders from my mother to keep away from him. We all did. Now that was a nasty boy, Duke Quillian.”
Mike was standing as close to Janet Baylor as he could get. “Tell me what you mean. Tell me why you say that.”
She hesitated again and licked her lips. Then she shook her head from side to side.
“Janet?” Mike said, trying to get her attention again.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m remembering wrong.”
“He’s dead now. He can’t hurt anybody.”
“Terrible things, he did. At least that’s what I used to hear.”
“What? Like shooting squirrels and skinning cats?”
Janet laughed and pointed a finger in Mike’s face. “You’ve been watching too many of them serial-killer shows, Detective. Not that stuff.”
“What then?”
She took a deep breath. “It’s only stories I heard, mind you. Nothing I witnessed.”
“Tell them to me,” Mike said.
“Duke had a fight with a kid once,” Janet said, pointing down the street. “A boy who lived over there, but the family moved right afterward. Duke tied his one arm to the fence in the backyard to keep him still. Had a pair of pliers-big, rusty old things he carried around in his pocket to break locks open and such. Pulled all the fingernails out of the kid’s other hand to teach him a lesson.”
My stomach heaved, but I tried not to show any reaction, hoping that Janet would keep talking.
“And one of the girls who made a fool of him in front of his friends? He doused her hair in some kind of oil and set fire to it.”
“I can’t believe he was never locked up for these things,” Mike said.
“Please, Detective. Nobody dared call the cops. We’ve got our own way of settling things. Duke Quillian didn’t need to practice on squirrels and cats, Mr. Chapman. It was people he liked to torture.”
22
Mike followed Schurz Avenue down to Pennyfield, an eclectic mix of row houses and white stucco buildings that resembled the sides of small cruise ships, with railings that fronted on the unusual waterfront setting. The smell of the salt sea air was a refreshing change from the odors of the liquor and beer in the dark bar.
“You seem to know this area well,” I said.
“Fort Schuyler. Built in 1833, named after General Philip Schuyler. You probably don’t know anything about our seacoast fortifications,” he said.
“Guilty as charged.”
Mike always shifted into high gear when he could display his knowledge of military history.
“After the French revolution,” he said, “the Founding Fathers were afraid we’d be drawn into the European wars that broke out all over. They started to build military forts for defense along the coastline, calling them the First System. They started the Second System in 1807, when Great Britain became a threat, too.”
“Not much help, I guess, if you count the War of 1812.”
“Brilliant deduction, Coop. You can tell they hadn’t been very successful with the first two stages. So this one- and Totten, across the sound in Queens-were built as part of the Third System, later on.” He got out of the car and slammed the door, pointing as he surveyed the vista. “The idea was to be able to use cannon fire from these two fortifications to stop any enemy ships that tried to enter the Sound in order to approach New York City.”
The monumental building across the strait, an impressive partner to Fort Schuyler, had its granite bastion jutting out toward the water like the prow of an ancient Roman sailing vessel. I caught up with Mike, marveling at
