Bad Blood by Linda Fairstein

already a lot of traffic heading for the bridges, and the PD’s doing car checks at all the tollbooths and tunnel entrances so every skittish New Yorker trying to get to his bunker in the Hamptons or her secluded corner of Connecticut is going nowhere very fast.”
    Teddy O’Malley was on his second slice.
    “You don’t buy the terrorist theory?” I asked.
    Mike looked at Mercer as he talked through his impressions. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit the pattern of what we’ve been expecting, but nobody’s ready to rule it out yet. I would have thought the Al Qaeda signature would be multiple blasts in different parts of the system timed to go off at once, or following each other an hour or two apart. Besides that, it’s the original old tunnels that are their best targets. A good hit to either one of them would be cataclysmic. There’d be no water in this city for at least a year.”
    Teddy’s arms bulged like those of a weight lifter on steroids as he lifted the bottle to his lips before speaking. “It ain’t outsiders. We got enough turmoil going on among ourselves to blow each other to kingdom come. I’d like to see a bin Laden–type bastard with a towel on his head try to get past the guard gate with the Daugherty brothers and the McCourts on the watch.”
    “Spoken like a true sandhog,” Mike said, laughing as he reached for his second slice.
    “A what?”
    “Teddy’s a sandhog, Alex. It’s like Skull and Bones for micks. A very secret society that does its best work underground. You never met one before, did you?”
    “No.”
    “We’ll tell you about ’em, but before I forget, maybe Mercer can take over for me and stop by the hospital in the morning. One of us needs to keep the heat on Marley Dionne. Make sure he’s still with us.”
    “Will do,” Mercer said before turning back to Teddy O’Malley. “What did you mean when you said bad stuff is going on among yourselves that could lead to this kind of thing?”
    “You know our business?” Teddy asked, letting his third pizza slice rest on his plate while he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    “Not well.”
    “First of all, you can’t ever rule out an accident when you’re working six hundred feet under the surface, blasting through bedrock with dynamite.”
    “Six hundred feet below city streets?” I asked.
    “Yes, ma’am. Sixty stories down. What we do for a living is dangerous. And then there’s the politics of it. We’ve got a powerful union on one side, and you got your usual crop of corrupt officials on the other. A lot of hands have been greased to keep the men moving. There are scores of unhappy people on both sides — union guys, city councilmen, clubhouse politicians, mobsters trying to get a foothold in the union. Goes round and round like that, and bribery’s been standard operating procedure for a very long time.”
    “Anything else?” Mercer said.
    Teddy looked to Mike before answering.
    “Nothing he hasn’t heard before, Teddy. You think Mercer could rise to the top of the detective division and not know what racism is?”
    “Old news. Tell me about it. I thought you hogs were all very clannish — very band-of-brothers.”
    Teddy exhaled and seemed to be through with his meal. “We are. Mostly. It’s two very different bands, and lately there’s been some ugly business going on.”
    “Don’t Irish-Americans have a stranglehold on the sandhog work?”
    “’Twas that way from the start, Detective, more than a hundred years ago. Who else would want it?” Teddy asked. “Uneducated immigrants with no skills and thick heads. They made great money doing the digs. But in short order they brought in some West Indians, for the very same reasons. In the old days they were known as the iron men. We were the miners and muckers — we did the shoveling — but the strong workers coming in from the Caribbean bolted together all the curved iron sections that formed the tunnel linings.”
    “And there was