Bad blood

by Linda Fairstein

  The first shot lit up the tunnel as the primer ignited the gunpowder in Brendan Quillian’s weapon. The noise sounded as loud as a cannon in the vaulted space. A bullet slammed into the side of the platform just inches over my head.

  “Take Coop and run as fast as you can,” Mike said softly to Mercer. It looked as if his theory about how much ammunition Quillian still had in his gun was wrong.

  “Don’t move your hand, Wallace,” Quillian said, his head cocked to the side so that his left eye-the good one-could focus on what his two armed adversaries were doing.

  Mercer glanced at the red sticks I had lined up. “Okay, Alex. Ready?” he whispered.

  I palmed the matchbook and nodded my head.

  “If you know Bobby Hassett killed my brother, why don’t you arrest him, dammit? He’ll be along any minute,” Quillian said.

  “What?” Mike said, puzzling out the answer. “So Teddy O’Malley double-crossed you? He went to Trish to get the money you wanted, but then he called Bobby Hassett to tell him where you were hiding. Let him even up all the old scores by trapping you in here and finishing you off-his father’s death, Bex’s murder. Your sandhog instincts are awfully primitive. How’d you know, Brendan? How’d you know Bobby Hassett is coming here?”

  Quillian was taking baby steps along the curved wall in our direction. He was angry now, the bad-tempered Brendan Quillian who was responsible for so many deaths.

  “’Cause I asked Teddy O’Malley if I could use his cell phone to call Trish. And when I opened it to dial her, I saw the last number he had called before getting here to meet me. It was Bobby Hassett’s phone.”

  “Go ahead, Brendan. Take the tunnel,” Mike shouted. Quillian was getting uncomfortably close to the three of us. “We’ll let you run before the rest of the cops show up.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Chapman. That’s obvious. But that leaves Mr. Wallace and Ms. Cooper to chase after me. And I don’t really like that idea.”

  Every time he moved, Quillian squinted and tilted his head to adjust the vision in his eye.

  “Stand up, Mr. Wallace. Stand up now, will you?”

  “No!” I said to Mercer as he lifted a knee, acting as though he were going to obey the command. He was far too big a target to put in Quillian’s way.

  But as he shifted his weight, Mercer gave me the cover I needed to light the first match. I held it to the wire sticking out of the tip of the firecracker and lobbed it in Quillian’s direction. As soon as it was in the air I got two more off, throwing them over Mercer’s back and as close to the mouth of the tunnel as I could.

  The loud barrage of explosions filled the small tube as the earth seemed to rattle and the hollow vaults burst with a deafening series of blasts. The black hole we were all in, backlit from the subway car that had disappeared behind the curving wall, came alive with a blinding series of colorful streaks and sparks-orange, yellow, green, and a searing white flash.

  “Dynamite, Brendan,” Mike yelled out as I kept lighting firecrackers and throwing them as near to Quillian as I could. “They’ll blast you to kingdom come if you don’t make it out of here.”

  The killer had panicked at the sound and sight of the explosive devices as they landed all around him. It was a combination of every noise, every vibration, every fear that had kept him for all of his young life out of the tunnels in which his father had worked, ever since the accident that had taken the sight of his right eye.

  He lifted his gun to shoot in our direction over the other thunderous booms, but fired wildly as he bobbed his head to try to protect his eye from the streaking lights bursting around him.

  I watched as he clapped a hand over his left eye, turning away from us before uncovering it to run toward the cylindrical tunnel that led off the side of the platform.

  Phin was right-Quillian was so spooked by the noise that he didn’t stop to think that the cops would never use real explosives in a subway tunnel.

  But the fireworks forced him to the exit he had been seeking-the one Mike said was an old pneumatic mail tunnel-and I had no idea where it led.

  50

  Within minutes, because of our proximity to both City Hall and One Police Plaza, Peterson had been able to assemble a sophisticated team of sharpshooters to send in to retrieve us. A handful of men in helmets and bulletproof vests, armed with rifles and handguns, surrounded us to learn what had happened, while two transit crewmen who had entered with the police worked to extricate Mike’s foot from under the railroad tie.

  Mercer pointed with his flashlight at the narrow tunnel into which Brendan Quillian had fled.

  “You know where it ends?” one of the cops asked, while two others, rifles at the ready, positioned themselves on either side of the black hole.

  “Murray Street,” Mike said, still on his back. “A few blocks west of here. It used to feed into a building that was rented out by the city as a wine cellar.”

  “I’m Gary Passoni,” the group leader said to Mike. “Let’s get you topside. The commissioner himself is on this. There’s a SWAT team going in from above at every one of those old station exits. They’ll find the wine cellar. They’ve got the maps.”

  Passoni put his walkie-talkie to his mouth to transmit the information about Quillian’s flight into the Murray Street tunnel wing.

  Another officer took my arm. “Ms. Cooper? The lieutenant wants you out of here yesterday, okay? You’re with me.”

  “I’d like to wait until Chapman’s leg is free.”

  “Let’s go, blondie,” Mike called to me from the tracks. “Don’t hold up the traffic. I’m bringing up the rear.”

  I looked back and saw that he was being helped to his feet by the crewmen. I started to move along the platform with my escort, worried that Mercer was going in the opposite direction, to help the new arrivals find Quillian.

  Someone gave a signal that the track was clear, and again the train started a slow approach to meet us.

  Before it pulled within range of me, a volley of gunshots rang out, this time from the cylindrical cave into which Brendan Quillian had disappeared.

  The men guarding the black hole dropped to their knees, and one screamed out for all of us to get down.

  A voice called Passoni’s name from within the tunnel.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hold your fire on that end. I think we hit him after he took a shot at my first man in. My guys are coming toward you, sweeping for him. Stand away.”

  The police had clearly found the Murray Street entrance and encountered Quillian on his way to a last-ditch effort to escape.

  Mercer yelled at the cop holding on to me, “Move her out. Move her out now, understand?”

  The man tugged on my arm and I went forward, but continued to look at Mercer, calling out to him, “You get out, too. You don’t have a vest, you don’t have-”

  Passoni held a finger to his lips. I stopped midsentence and could hear the sound of someone whimpering, crying softly, out of sight but not far away.

  The two sharpshooters saw something through their night-vision goggles that caused them to lower the aim of their rifles.

  Seconds later, Brendan Quillian crawled out of the darkened tunnel, one hand pressed against his throat. He rolled onto his back at the foot of the subway platform.

  One cop stepped on his neck, pinning him in place while three others were upon him immediately, wresting a revolver from his hand and searching him for the other gun.

  Mercer was on his knees closest to the fugitive when the officer lifted his boot and the gunshot in Quillian’s neck spurted blood like a small geyser.

  “Get him in the bus!” Passoni shouted, waving his team to carry the dying man to the subway train and out to the ambulance that had been summoned for Mike.

  I broke away from the cop who was trying to escort me when I saw Mike hobble toward Quillian.

  “How does your fucking neck feel, Brendan?” Mike asked. “At least it’s a faster way to die than strangulation.”


  One of the guys pushed Mike back while they worked to stop the bleeding and lift their prisoner to get him to help. I could see Quillian gasping for breath like a fish out of water, his one good eye darting wildly around at his captors.

  He looked harmless now, his long body limp and his face almost gray, as the blood ran out of him.

  “What’s your hurry?” Mike asked Passoni. “If anyone ever deserved a long, slow, painful-”

  “Shut up, Chapman.”

  “Easy, Mike,” Mercer said, stepping back to let four of the men carry the fugitive toward the waiting subway car.

  As they passed in front of me, Brendan Quillian’s left lid opened wide. He searched the vaulted ceiling above the platform as though hoping to see the sky. He groaned loudly, and his head tossed backward, convulsing several times before he fell still. The fire within his good eye-the left one-went out as he died in the arms of the four cops, deep within one of the blackened tunnels he had feared almost all of his life.

  51

  The #6 chugged in close again as a second team of EMTs carried Mike onto the empty train for the ride up to Thirty-fourth Street and the Bellevue emergency room.

  He stretched out on the long, gray vinyl seat of the brightly lit car. One of the medics had removed his shoes and was sitting at his feet, beginning to examine them to determine the nature of the injury.

  “They’ll x-ray you, but my guess is you’ve got a torn ligament. Maybe a fracture, too, the way you said you landed on it when you fell. There’s a lot of swelling. You’ll have to stay off this for a while.”

  “Hurts like hell. You got a pillow handy? This bench is hard as a rock. My tail and my head hurt more than my foot.”

  I laughed and sat down, gently lifting Mike’s head and resting it in my lap, brushing the hair back off his face.

  He looked up at Mercer. “Has she been useful today or what? Coop earned her stripes. What’s up with those firecrackers, kid?”

  “Mercer and I met Uncle Charlie a couple of years ago. Kept a bad gang supplied with what the Chinese used to call ‘exploding sticks’-baozhang.”

  “What made you think of that?”

  “When I saw the bamboo seats on the old redbird inside the terminal, it reminded me of things Charlie told us about firecrackers-that the earliest ones were made of bamboo. It grows so fast that pockets of air and sap get trapped inside. Over fire, the air expands and bursts out with a loud noise. So eventually, the Chinese started wrapping gunpowder in bamboo tubes. I figured if Quillian was anywhere around, the noise would cause flashbacks to his accident-unhinge him-scare him out of hiding.”

  “How did you know Uncle Charlie would have any?”

  “Fourth of July’s only a few weeks away. He does a huge business in illegal firecrackers this time of year. And Mercer gave Charlie a pass on our big case-he’s a friend for life. Didn’t lock him up ’cause he was so cooperative.”

  The motorman got the signal from the medic and the car moved forward, rounding the rest of the loop before heading up the incline past the northbound side of the Brooklyn Bridge station.

  Commuters stepped forward expecting the train to stop and the doors to open, but we were on a private ride with our special patient.

  “I thought you hated the subway,” Mike said, looking up at me, pressing my hand in his. “You’re almost smiling. I know you won’t say it, but Brendan Quillian got what he deserved.”

  “It’s over. We’re all okay. And I’m almost back, out of the center of the earth. There really is an underground city of death, and I can’t wait to leave it.”

  Mercer was hanging on to the pole as the train continued uptown.

  “Marley Dionne-your snitch,” Mike said to Mercer. “Is he still at Bellevue?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Talking yet?”

  “No way.”

  “Maybe we’ll do a drop-in while I’m waiting to be x-rayed. Dig a little deeper, we’re going to prove that Duke Quillian tried to hire him to kill Amanda. Probably through some Jamaican sandhogs. There’s got to be a connection there. People like Dionne and that guy Larry Pritchard, they’re likely to start talking to us now. Both Duke and Brendan are out of the picture, so they’ve got to feel a whole lot safer. When the deal fell through with Dionne, I’ll bet you Duke kept the contract on Amanda for himself. Delighted in doing it. Brought the whole family breakup back full circle. Duke doing Brendan’s dirty work, just like the good old days.”

  “How’d you figure that out about the cash that O’Malley got from Trish?” Mercer asked.

  “Hey, Coop and I had every bank record, phone record, contact that Brendan Quillian made in the year before his arrest. His brother’s name never came up a single time. But once we got the story from Trish herself, how Duke had always protected his little brother, done his fighting-it seemed logical to me that Brendan would go to him in the end when he needed the biggest favor of all.”

  “Kill Amanda but keep the Keating fortune,” I said.

  “What else would he have to give Duke but money? Trish probably found the stash after he was killed, cleaning out his apartment.”

  “And Teddy O’Malley?”

  “Playing two sides against the middle. Quillians and Hassetts-both families go way back in the business. I tell you it’s tribal with those sandhogs. It was a classic blood feud, and O’Malley wasn’t any damn good at choosing sides. So he gambled with each of them. He was ready to sell Quillian to the highest bidder, and he lost big.”

  The train had cruised by the Bleecker Street and Astor Place stations, slowing through the crowded platform at Fourteenth Street, before speeding up again.

  “I guess Peterson has the squad looking for Bobby Hassett right now,” Mike said to Mercer. “After the docs check me out, bandage me, you and I can catch up with them.”

  Mercer shook his head. “By the time they’re through with you tonight-thin ankle, thick head, and all-I expect Mr. Hassett will be snug behind bars.”

  “Screw the hospital. Want to take this damn thing all the way to the end of the line?” Mike asked. I could feel his relief, the tension easing in his body.

  “Get me off this chariot, Mr. Chapman. I want to smell fresh air and see the daylight-well, moonlight-as soon as possible. I want to get your ankle taped up so you can take me dancing. I want to be sure that everyone Brendan Quillian hurt throughout his life knows he can’t ever do that again. I want to turn on my faucets every day and find the best-tasting water in the world still coming out of them, and be grateful to all the people who’ve been digging the holes to get it here. I want you to promise me that-”

  “Go easy on me, Coop. Way too many demands. Do I have to apologize for taking you into the loop tonight, too?” Mike asked.

  “Buy me two drinks and ask me then. If I can hold on to the glass without shaking, without spilling a drop of my Scotch-you’ll be forgiven.”

  “What do you think, Mercer? I got the best seat in the house, don’t I?”

  The train rocked from side to side and Mike squeezed my hand again.

  Acknowledgments

  Beneath the streets of New York is a multitude of labyrinthine systems, dug deep into the bedrock of Manhattan Island, which give life to the city above. Subway tubes, gas mains, housing for electrical wiring, sewers and shafts of every variety-as well as the two antiquated tunnels that have carried billions of gallons of fresh water daily, for almost a century, from upstate to the five boroughs-were all built by a small cadre of construction workers known as sandhogs. They have not only created this underground kingdom, but they are the only men ever to see most of it.

  I first read about the plans for City Tunnel Number 3-and those who have died making it-in a riveting article called “City of Water” by David Grann, in The New Yorker magazine (September 1, 2003). Two years later, Lesley Stahl and her 60 Minutes crew took the Alimak cage dozens of stories down and went into the dangerous arms of the tunnel’s building site to explore this brilliant feat of moder
n engineering…and led the way for me to follow.

  Nonfiction works that provided fascinating historical information include David McCullough’s The Great Bridge; Paul E. Delaney’s Sandhogs; Gerard T. Koeppel’s Water for Gotham; Lorraine B. Diehl’s Subways; and Edward F. Bergman’s Woodlawn Remembers.

  I lost a great friend when Bohn Vergari died-way too young-and it was his beloved wife, Jane, who suggested to me that I research the lifesaving work of the medical teams at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. My special thanks to Dr. Ann Jakubowski for her wisdom and courage.

  Thanks to everyone (and I do mean everyone) at Scribner and Pocket Books, and especially to Colin Harrison, whose guidance and insights are invaluable. Boundless gratitude to my great friend Esther Newberg at ICM, along with her trusty aides, Kari Stuart and Chris Earle.

  This book is for Hilary Hale of Time Warner/Little, Brown, who found Alex Cooper shortly after her “birth,” and has introduced my books to readers in more places than I ever dreamed possible. Hilary’s intelligence and kindness, her editorial eye and firm friendship, have been a treasured partnership for more than a decade.

  And once again, to Justin, who-this time-has truly given me his heart.

  About the Author

  LINDA FAIRSTEIN, America ’s foremost legal expert on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence, led the pioneering Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for twenty-five years, leaving in 2002 to write, lecture, and continue her advocacy for victims of violent crime. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a member of the International Society of Barristers, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Her first novel, Final Jeopardy, which introduced the character Alexandra Cooper, was published in 1996 to critical and commercial acclaim. All eight Alex Cooper novels also achieved international bestseller status, and her most recent, Death Dance, debuted at #4 on the New York Times bestseller list. Fairstein’s nonfiction book, Sexual Violence, was a New York Times Notable Book in 1994. She lives with her husband in Manhattan and on Martha’s Vineyard. Her website is www.lindafairstein.com.