“How long ago did he get divorced?”
“Couple of years. Probably past the point where Liz would shoot him. Plus I don’t think Chris would ID her as a teenage male Hispanic.”
Under the circumstances, Duncan viewed Darryl’s sarcasm as progress, and so pretended to be amused by it. “What about problems at Jacob Riis?”
“Nothing that ended up on my desk. Chris would’ve been the person for you to ask that.”
Duncan had expected Darryl would know that he’d already spoken to Driscoll. He also wasn’t surprised by Darryl’s sullen attitude: he couldn’t blame the guy for not wanting to help him. Leah Roth’s intercession was no doubt the only reason Darryl was speaking to him at all. “I assume you know that Sean Fowler had allegedly caught my client smoking pot, which is what led to his eviction?”
“I do now, yeah. It wasn’t anything I paid attention to when it happened. The eviction part didn’t have anything to do with my people.”
Now or never, Duncan thought. “What about all the other evictions?” he asked.
Darryl shifted slightly in his seat, but his gaze didn’t leave Duncan. “Evictions are done by the city,” he said.
Duncan studied Darryl, looking for signs of unease. “But your guys have caught at least a dozen different people at Riis with drugs, and those all led to the city seeking to evict their families.”
“And your point?” Darryl said brusquely.
Duncan wasn’t getting a read on Darryl’s response one way or another. It could just be vexation at hearing the accusation, or it could be something else. “Word on the street is that the drug busts are a way of getting the Riis numbers down, so the city doesn’t have to move everyone back.”
“You here to teach me something about word on the street?” Darryl said, smiling but not in a way that took the edge off. “Word on the street is conspiracy shit, way to keep people from owning their fuckups. You got any proof?”
“Do you?” Duncan said immediately, smiling as he said it, though that didn’t blunt Darryl’s angry response.
“I was a cop for twenty years,” Darryl said, speaking slowly. “I’ve dealt with a lot of lawyers. I know what a defense lawyer does—tries to put together some kind of story out of whatever rumors they can find.”
“I’m not talking about rumors. I’m talking about the fact that there’s a consistent story out there that your guys are planting drugs on people and busting them, with an eye toward evictions.”
Darryl’s expression turned harsh. “You’re accusing my people of a crime? Based on what some project kids they caught with drugs are claiming? Negro, please.”
Duncan was caught off guard by the last bit, Darryl catching it and smiling. “I don’t think even I would’ve have been able to tell,” he said.
Duncan wondered if there was any way he’d misunderstood. “Tell what?”
“If I hadn’t seen a picture of your dad.”
So much for any misunderstanding, Duncan thought. He tried to tamp down his reaction, not wanting to give Darryl too much of an upper hand. It wasn’t that Darryl had discovered something Duncan tried to keep hidden—although the man seemed to think he had—it was just that Duncan didn’t understand why Darryl had been poking into his personal life. “Why were you looking at a picture of my father?” he asked.
“We run background on anybody before they set foot in my office. Can’t be too careful, know what I’m saying? And you never know what you’re going to find out, not until you find it. Don’t worry, my brother; your secret’s safe with me.”
AS SOON as the lawyer had left, Darryl picked up his phone and called Chris Driscoll at home, summoning him to his office. Driscoll arrived forty-five minutes later, looking bleary-eyed. He worked nights, had sounded like he’d been sleeping when Darryl called. Not that Darryl gave a shit.
“That lawyer handling Nazario was just here,” he said as Driscoll sat down across from him. “He’s claiming that you and Fowler were planting drugs on kids at Riis.”
Driscoll’s gaze didn’t waver, but Darryl could see the effort behind it. “We were doing like you told us Roth wanted, keeping an eye out for criminal stuff we could turn over to the housing cops, helping trim down how many people they had to bring back.”
“I know what I told you to do,” Darryl said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Were you guys actually planting shit on folks?”
Driscoll hesitated, but he knew better than to lie to his boss. “It was Sean’s idea,” he said. “You know he was always on the make for extra money. He said since Roth was going to throw us a couple grand for anybody we got rid of, we shouldn’t wait for the opportunity to present itself.”
Darryl couldn’t believe the stupidity of it, the unnecessary risk. “And you went along with this nonsense? And then you didn’t tell me, even once we had problems with that motherfucker?”
“I didn’t see how it would ever come out. We weren’t going crazy with it, and we were focusing on teenagers, so it’s not like anybody would believe them.”
“You don’t make that call,” Darryl said. “You follow orders here, my orders. This shit’s trouble enough without you keeping something like that from me.”
Driscoll nodded, his gaze downcast. “I fucked up; I’m sorry. What can we do about it?”
“Nothing we can do now but gut it out,” Darryl said. “And know that the only reason I’m not firing your ass is because I can’t.”
“Got it,” Driscoll said.
30
DAYS STARTED early at Rikers: breakfast was usually served in Rafael’s cell block around six a.m. Rafael had gotten used to falling asleep by ten o’clock at night; when he’d been free he’d routinely stayed up until two in the morning or later. He’d usually worked in the restaurant until at least eleven, then often hung out with people from the kitchen after his shift, so it hadn’t been unusual for it to be past one by the time he got home on a typical workday, even if he wasn’t partying.
He was woken at around five thirty by noise outside his cell. Yawning and barely awake, Rafael dutifully got out of bed, assuming it was the breakfast crew coming a little early. But instead it was the tactical unit, charging in full force for a spot search.
Surprise cell searches were a part of life at Rikers, but that didn’t make them any less jarring. It was like some sort of military invasion; the tactical guards came in full gear: helmets with protective visors down, shields that could deliver an electric jolt severe enough to temporarily incapacitate a prisoner.
They searched the cells a dozen at a time, the prisoners lining up for a body-cavity search while their cells were gone through. This was done through a special chair that was wheeled in, the BOSS. It was a clunky device, gunmetal gray, with a scanner that could detect metal or other contraband that was hidden in the body.
When his cell door was opened Rafael stepped out, getting into line for his turn on the BOSS. He was standing there, still mostly asleep, when he heard raised voices from behind him. Rafael glanced over his shoulder, knowing the guards wouldn’t like it if he actually turned around. An inmate a few cells down from his was refusing to come out, though Rafael couldn’t hear why. It was a newbie on the cell block, a middle-aged white guy with stringy long hair and missing front teeth. Everyone had given him a wide berth: the guy was jittery, talked to himself, seemed to be seeing things the rest of them weren’t. A crackhead, Rafael was pretty certain, though it also seemed like the miswiring of the guy’s mind was more fundamental than that.
A half dozen of the tactical guards had quickly flanked out around the cell door, their electric shields at the ready. Another guard turned on a video camera to film the forced extraction. The prisoner was yelling something from inside his cell, but Rafael couldn’t make out the words. There was an edge to everybody now, prisoners who’d been sound asleep five minutes ago tensing up. The tang of imminent violence was in the air, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks. “Stay in line, stay cool,” a guard nex
t to Rafael said, his voice sharp.
Then the tactical unit moved into the cell, which hardly seemed big enough to contain them all. There was a loud scream, then nothing but the sound of moving feet in heavy boots as the guards carried the prisoner, who even from a distance was clearly unconscious, out of the cell. He’d been hit with an electric shield; Rafael could smell it, like burning plastic. There was muttering from other prisoners, vague noises of protest at seeing one of them treated this way, but Rafael thought it a little halfhearted. This was a white guy, a crazy dude: he had no allies on the block; nobody really wanted to stand up for him. Rafael guessed the man’s refusal to leave his cell hadn’t even been because he had something to hide, but was just a reflection of his crumbled mental state.
Once the unconscious prisoner had been taken out of the block, the guards began moving back into cells while prisoners were placed on the BOSS. There was still tension in the air, the energy flowing from the proximity to violence, but it felt contained.
Rafael made his way to the front of the line. Once there, he first had to place his chin on the back of the BOSS, the machine working its magic on his mouth. Then he sat in the chair, the scanner looking for something hidden up his ass. That was the most common hiding place on the body in Rikers, and Rafael had heard some pretty unbelievable stories about things that had gotten smuggled in that way—cell phones and the like. He couldn’t even think about it without squirming.
Once cleared through the BOSS, Rafael went to stand in front of his cell, which a corrections officer was still inside of. His bedding had been removed and was being scanned by another CO with a wand like those used at airports.
He noticed that a guard was waving a scanner around the common areas. Rafael felt his nerves tighten as the guard held the scanner up to the air-conditioning vent that ran above the top of the cells and then began walking in his direction. Rafael knew something was in that vent right above his cell, but he didn’t know what, or if the scanner would detect it.
A few days ago he had seen Luis Gutierrez fiddling with the vent. Rafael had been fifteen feet away, watching TV. He hadn’t been able to tell what exactly Luis was doing, but had assumed he was hiding something. Rafael had wanted to tell Luis to put whatever it was somewhere else, but hadn’t had the nerve.
The CO with the scanner was now waving it right above Rafael’s cell. There was a high-pitched whine as the device reacted to something. A couple of other guards came over, and one started unscrewing the vent’s grille.
Rafael watched nervously as the guard gingerly reached up into the opened vent. The CO pulled out a homemade shiv, a thin piece of metal that had been sharpened at one end, the other end wrapped in duct tape. Other guards quickly gathered around. Rafael could sense movement behind him, and he tensed, trying to keep himself still, not wanting to give the guards any excuse to take out their leftover adrenaline from the forced extraction on him.
“What you got?” a CO called out as he approached. His uniform had officer’s stripes on the sleeve; Rafael assumed he was in charge.
“We found a shank hidden in the vent right above this cell,” the guard holding the scanner said.
The head guy nodded brusquely, then turned to the gathered prisoners. “Who’s cell is this?”
There wasn’t any point in denying it, so Rafael stepped forward. “That blade’s not mine,” he said.
“Never heard that one,” the CO holding the shiv said.
The head guy’s eyes were locked onto Rafael. He had the hood of his visor lifted, the rest of him cloaked in the riot gear the entire tactical team was wearing. All Rafael could tell was that he was a middle-aged white guy with a graying mustache. “I’m Deputy Warden Ward. You’re who?”
“Rafael Nazario.”
“Nazario—you’re that kid who killed a cop?”
Rafael was surprised that Ward knew who he was. “I didn’t kill nobody,” he replied. “And he wasn’t a cop anymore.”
“You mouthing off to me?” Ward barked, taking two quick steps forward, so that he was fully in Rafael’s face. They were about the same height, but Rafael reckoned Ward had nearly fifty pounds on him.
Rafael hadn’t been mouthing off, didn’t think Ward really thought otherwise. The CO was just trying to provoke him. “No, sir,” Rafael said, casting his eyes down, trying to appear subservient, just get through this.
“You affiliated, Nazario?”
Rafael shook his head, keeping his gaze on the floor. “I’m not in no gang,” he said.
“You going to fess up that this is your blade?”
Rafael shook his head. “I never seen that before.”
“What’s it doing in the vent right above your cell? If you didn’t put it there, you must’ve seen who did.”
Ward was staring at him, awaiting a response, but Rafael knew that fingering Luis would lead to far worse problems than taking the blame himself. Whatever the guards could do to him was nothing compared to what prisoners would do if they considered him a snitch. Especially if he crossed Luis, who was with a gang. “I didn’t see nobody messing around with that vent,” he said.
“You planning to take out a guard here like you did that cop?”
“I never seen that blade before,” Rafael said again, trying to keep his voice calm.
Ward sneered at him, moving still closer, their faces just inches apart. Rafael forced himself to meet the man’s stare, his whole body braced for a blow. “Cuff him,” Ward said to the COs behind Rafael. “We’ll write him up for the shank.”
“It’s not mine,” Rafael protested.
“You going to tell me whose it is, then?” Ward said. When Rafael didn’t respond, Ward nodded to the guards. “Then looks like it’s yours now.”
31
CANDACE HAD arranged to meet Councilwoman Serran at her East Village office and speak to her on the walk to a school board meeting in the neighborhood. Candace had been as vague as possible about what she wanted to discuss, saying only that she was reporting on the changes to Riis. She figured there was a good chance that Serran already knew about her meeting with Dewberry, but that wouldn’t necessarily be enough to make the councilwoman nervous.
Serran was a short, stocky Hispanic woman in her early forties, dressed in a light cotton business suit. She was wearing tennis shoes and carrying both a formal attaché case and a rumpled shopping bag.
“Hope you don’t mind walking,” Serran said as she shook Candace’s hand. “The school’s about fifteen minutes away.”
Candace was wearing flats, as she usually did when working. “No problem,” she said.
The heat of day was just starting to cool, and although it was too early for the East Village’s nightlife to have kicked in, there were already plenty of people crowding the streets: the teenage punk rockers whose look hadn’t changed since Candace’s own teenage years in the city, the newer yuppies, heading home to their condos in buildings that twenty years ago had been squats, the Ukrainians and Puerto Ricans who still claimed dwindling slices of the neighborhood.
Serran turned out to be a quick walker, Candace having to increase her own pace as they headed up Avenue A. Candace wondered if it was a conscious effort on Serran’s part to make their time as short as possible. “So I understand you’re doing a piece on the changeover to mixed-income at Riis,” Serran said.
Candace nodded. She was planning on doing her best Columbo impression today, not wanting Serran’s guard up. People who spoke with her often failed to realize how much prep she did prior to any interview, all the time on the computer she logged before actually sitting down with someone. Information was power, never more so than when asking someone questions that you knew they weren’t going to want to answer. Candace was confident Serran was going to be pretty unhappy by the time they were done.
“One basic thing I haven’t been able to figure out is why Riis was chosen as the guinea pig, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“First I heard of the proposal, it was alr
eady attached to Riis. That’s how it was brought to the council’s housing committee.”
Given that Serran chaired the city council’s committee on public housing, Candace’s guess was that Riis had been chosen to sweeten the pot for Serran, ensure her support for the development. “Was it the mayor who brought it to you?”
“Actually it was Speaker Markowitz.”
David Markowitz, the council’s speaker, was young and preppy and photogenic, widely considered the most promising and ambitious city politician of his generation. Candace guessed, perhaps unfairly, that Serran must hate his guts.
“But you don’t know why the speaker wanted it to be Riis?”
Serran shrugged. “I don’t think he has any public housing in his own district,” she said, before adding quickly: “That’s off the record.”
An interview subject couldn’t place something off the record after saying it, which Candace certainly expected any politician to know. But she wasn’t looking to work up a snarky quote (though perhaps accurate: Markowitz’s district was in the Upper East Side) into anything—she was after bigger game. “How did Roth Properties come to be the developer on the Riis project?”
“There was a bidding process, but that was handled by the Housing Authority. The council didn’t have a direct role.”
“You probably know the Riis project better than anyone else in city politics,” Candace said, intending it as flattery but also thinking it could well be true. “What do you really make of the idea of changing it to mixed-income?”
Serran glanced at her, Candace guessing the politician was gauging how honest she wanted to be. “I had some concerns, sure. I didn’t want it to just end up being an excuse for dispersing poor people out of the neighborhood so that the city could do to the East Village what it just did to Times Square. Tourists own enough of this city as it is. But I’m a realist, and I can’t pretend to much nostalgia for the Jacob Riis I grew up in. Avenue D wasn’t pretty back then. I know some people in the community are opposed to anything that can be called gentrification, but it’s not that simple. My constituents who live or work near the project—the people who own stores over there—I can tell you they supported this one hundred percent.”
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