They turned onto First Avenue, just a few blocks below P.S. 19. Candace was already running out of time. But she still didn’t think an all-out attack was the way to go. “I assume you’ve been following the recent murder case at Riis?”
Serran’s face went dutifully somber. “The security guard? A terrible thing—not just for the victim, but for the community. But it didn’t have anything to do with the changes to Riis, did it?”
“The family of the accused, the Nazarios, are getting evicted because of the private security guards. Have you heard anything about problems between the private security and residents, or issues concerning evictions?”
Serran shook her head. “There’re always evictions going on at Riis, unfortunately.”
“I’ve got sources telling me that the security guards are setting people up on minor drug charges, then using that to evict the families.”
Candace watched Serran for a reaction, but saw nothing other than surprise. “If people have claims about that, you should have them call my office.”
Candace nodded noncommittally. She was generally reluctant to broker such contacts, not wanting to take an active role in a story she was reporting, even when doing so might help her subjects. She decided instead to throw a curve. “Your brother Antonio hasn’t told you anything about it?”
It worked: Serran’s gaze darted toward Candace, then quickly away. “You mean because of his work at the ACCC,” she said after a moment.
“Right,” Candace said.
“I don’t recall him mentioning it.”
“I assume you follow the ACCC’s work carefully,” Candace said, studying Serran as she spoke. “Not just because of your brother. Most of their funding comes from you, doesn’t it?”
Candace had expected Serran to be on guard for the question, but the councilwoman appeared unnerved. An ambulance with its siren on went screaming by, giving Serran an opportunity to pause for a long moment before answering. “I’ve helped them secure some funding from the city, yes,” Serran said once the noise had died down. “There’s nothing surprising about that. Riis is in my district, and I’m very active with public housing issues through chairing the council’s committee.”
“But aren’t you then essentially helping both sides? I mean in that you’re supporting the redevelopment, while also financing its opposition?”
“The existing community at Riis deserves protection. That’s what the ACCC is doing. My focus was on helping to ensure that the existing residents had a voice.”
Bombs away, Candace thought. She wasn’t getting anywhere interesting playing nice, and she lacked the time for a subtle approach. “What about the fact that you allocated a half million dollars to the ACCC, and a short time later you got a few dozen donations from people who were in some way connected to the organization? It looks to me like in the month or so after they got the city’s money, you must’ve received at least a couple hundred thousand dollars in contributions linked to the ACCC. And that’s just what I’ve been able to track down so far.”
“What are you suggesting?” Serran said. She’d stopped walking right in the middle of the sidewalk, so Candace stopped too, looking the councilwoman in the eye.
“I’m not suggesting anything. But it is a fact that those two things happened in quick succession. You arranged for a lot of city money to go to the ACCC, and people connected to the ACCC then gave a lot of money to your reelection campaign.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Serran protested, but it sounded feeble to Candace. Serran looked thoroughly rattled; she looked, Candace thought, like somebody who’d just been caught. “What’s your agenda here?”
“I’m simply going where the story takes me,” Candace said. “I was just trying to get a handle on the redevelopment, which brought me to the ACCC. That organization appears to consist of a storefront, a telephone number, and a couple of desks. If they’ve made good use of a half million dollars in city funds, it’s not readily apparent. Perhaps that’s because a lot of that money just passed through them on its way to your reelection campaign.”
“Jesus,” Serran said, the councilwoman appearing so shaken that Candace found herself momentarily entertaining the possibility that she really hadn’t known. “To the best of my knowledge, all campaign contributions I’ve received are legitimate. It isn’t illegal for employees of a nonprofit that receives city funding to donate to a city politician.”
“There’s probably something illegal about it if they were simply laundering the city’s payments to the ACCC back to your campaign,” Candace said.
Serran flushed, but held her anger in check. “If they were contributing taxpayer money, I’ll certainly return it. But I don’t know that’s true.”
“Your position is that you had no idea that so many people connected to the ACCC were donating to you?”
“Maybe my brother was encouraging people,” Serran said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Candace wasn’t going to argue the point, though she didn’t find it convincing. “You want me not to focus on you, what you need to do is put the focus somewhere else.”
“And how would I do that?” Serran asked. They were still planted in the middle of the sidewalk, people giving them dirty looks as they walked by.
“You’re the council’s point person on public housing. I’m assuming Simon Roth wanted you on his side in terms of becoming the developer on Riis. Did somebody suggest to you setting up the ACCC, getting it established as the visible opposition to the transition to mixed-income; you could fund it with one hand and take the money for your campaign with the other? Was that your reward for supporting the project?”
“Is that what you want me to say?” Serran said, studying Candace carefully.
Candace realized she’d overplayed her hand. “I want you to tell me the truth,” she replied.
“What you just said would mean I was taking a bribe for my support of Riis.”
“I was speculating is all,” Candace said. “My point is just that if there’s a larger context you want to put this in, I’m listening.”
“Nobody bribed me to support the changes to Riis,” Serran said after a moment. “I believe in what’s happening there.”
Candace was irritated with herself for feeling disappointment; she shouldn’t have come into the interview with preconceptions that Serran would lead her to Simon Roth. “So how did your brother come to be working for the ACCC?”
“Can you keep Antonio out of it?” Serran pleaded, her voice strained. She looked on the verge of tears. “My brother’s not a public figure. I understand that I’m fair game, but my brother’s just a regular guy, trying to get through the day. He doesn’t need you destroying him on the front page of a newspaper.”
“I’m not out to destroy anyone,” Candace protested, a little taken aback. Anger in a subject she could deal with, but pleading was hard, and unexpected from a politician. “But you see how this looks from my angle on it.”
“I see how you can make it look if you choose to,” Serran replied.
Candace didn’t like the sound of that: it wasn’t a matter of her using insinuation to manufacture a scandal. “I think things usually look like what they actually are,” she said. “And this looks like taxpayer money being funneled into your campaign coffers. If you want to get back to me with a different story, by all means, but you have very little time.”
WHEN SHE returned to the newsroom, Candace left a voice mail for Nugent, giving her editor a heads-up that she thought she was well on her way to breaking a significant story. Next she turned to David Markowitz, wanting to see if she could find anything indicating why he would be leading the charge on having Roth Properties transform Jacob Riis. She started by reading through some archived articles from her paper from when Markowitz had been elected speaker, reminding her of his privileged upbringing on the Upper East Side (not so different from her own); college at Princeton followed by law school at Yale, a handful of years as a staffer f
or Senator Schumer, then a couple of years with the state attorney general’s office before winning a council seat his first time in the race, followed by becoming speaker four years later. Term limits were going to force the current mayor out at the next election, and Markowitz was among the names rumored to be running.
Candace searched for connections between Markowitz and the Riis development. She came across references to his support for the project, but nothing that explained its origins. Next she searched for links between Markowitz and the Roth family. She didn’t find anything other than some passing mentions.
She went on the Secretary of State’s site, printing out a list of Markowitz’s donors. The first thing she noticed going through them was that he had a lot more contributors than Serran, and that they’d generally given a lot more money. Many of his donations were for the maximum allowed, a couple thousand a pop. And while virtually all of Serran’s donors had been individuals, with Markowitz many were companies.
Candace noticed that many of the business donations were from corporations she’d never heard of. She circled a number of them, then searched for their registrations with the Department of State.
On her third try, a limited liability corporation with the unrevealing name MTS LLC, the listed address for the business rang a bell. Candace couldn’t actually place it until she saw that it matched the address of the company’s registered service agent: the law firm Blake and Wolcott.
32
DUNCAN WAS sitting in on the deposition of Jack Pellettieri, the head of the concrete company at the Aurora Tower. Pellettieri had his own lawyer defending him; Duncan was just there to observe, see if the guy said anything that would harm Roth Properties.
They were in the office of Pellettieri’s lawyer, Harvey Peters, who practiced a good deal farther down the legal hierarchy than Blake and Wolcott. His office was in a nondescript building just off Madison Avenue. The conference room was small, stuffy, and windowless: a depressing place to spend a day.
Duncan had arrived a little before nine, everyone else already in place. Although usually the mood in the room before a deposition was at least polite, the tension here was palpable, especially coming from Pellettieri. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Isaac Marcus, was also more withdrawn than usual, going through his papers and barely looking up to acknowledge Duncan’s entrance.
The tension was understandable: Duncan figured this was the most important deposition of the case. He didn’t see any way Pellettieri himself wiggled out of liability; the question was more whether he was going to take anyone else down with him.
Marcus came out swinging from his opening questions, going straight to the failure to support the concrete as it set. Peters began objecting strenuously and loudly, lecturing Marcus about his questions while the plaintiffs’ lawyer snapped back at him. Duncan leaned back, aloof from the squabbling, his focus on Pellettieri, who also seemed to be ignoring the skirmishes.
It quickly became clear that Pellettieri was taking the hit all by himself. He agreed that the pouring had fallen behind schedule. He conceded that the steel rebar that was supposed to undergird the concrete while it settled had not been properly anchored. He further admitted that the temporary supports that were supposed to be in place to provide backup while the concrete hardened had not been correctly installed, and that as a result they’d collapsed as soon as the rebar had given out. Pellettieri had no real choice but to concede that all of this violated established construction techniques.
Marcus followed up on these concessions by introducing a number of Pellettieri’s invoices into evidence. With little fight, Pellettieri agreed that his company had billed for safety work that it had never actually performed.
Not that Pellettieri took personal responsibility for any of it. On the contrary, he denied knowing that corners were being cut. Duncan didn’t believe him, didn’t think anybody in the room did. Not that it mattered, anyway: Pellettieri’s company would be on the hook regardless.
Even though he was nailing Pellettieri to the wall, Marcus did not appear satisfied. The plaintiffs’ lawyer went on to ask a series of questions about whether anyone at Omni, the general contractor, had pressed Pellettieri not to do the safety work, or had known he wasn’t doing so. Pellettieri flatly denied it, not taking anyone down with him. If the plaintiffs couldn’t get to Omni, that pretty much ensured they couldn’t get to the developers either. Roth Properties was entitled to rely on the general contractor for updates on the construction; if Omni didn’t know about problems, there was no reason to think that Roth did.
Pellettieri clearly was not enjoying his battering at Marcus’s hands. He was big, with a sloping gut and a receding hairline. There was a suggestion of violence about him; he was the kind of guy you could picture getting into a bar fight. His beefy face was flushed, sweat beading his temples, which he angrily stabbed at with his fingertips. Duncan hoped Pellettieri wasn’t about to have a heart attack on them.
By the time they broke for lunch Duncan thought the end of the case was pretty much in sight. Pellettieri would have little choice but to offer a generous settlement—Duncan guessing the case would close out at ten million tops, maybe as low as four or five. One of the dead guys was an illegal, which put his future earnings into question, dragging the number down.
Duncan joined Peters and Pellettieri for lunch, the three of them going to a bar and grill down the street, Pellettieri not talking the entire way, still pissed. Once they were seated and the waitress came over, Pellettieri ordered a Glenlivet on the rocks. “That’s really not a good idea,” Peters said, putting a hand on his client’s arm. Pellettieri jerked away, the movement so violent the waitress took an instinctive step away from the table.
“What’s it matter?” Pellettieri demanded, his voice shaking. “The whole thing’s over now anyway.”
Peters leaned in toward Pellettieri, speaking softly into his ear while Duncan looked away, feeling something like embarrassment. Finally they were at least able to get through ordering, though Pellettieri still insisted on having his whiskey.
Duncan was a bit thrown by the extent of Pellettieri’s anger: the guy must’ve seen this day coming, and he had no one but himself to blame. Peters was still trying to calm Pellettieri down, telling him that the worst of the deposition was over. Pellettieri didn’t pretend to listen, looking around the restaurant like he was alone at the table. Only when the waitress brought his drink did his focus return; he downed half of it in a gulp before turning his baleful glare on Duncan. “You tell that fucker I held up my end,” he said.
Duncan was thrown for a loss. “Excuse me?” he said.
“That drunk creep,” Pellettieri said. “You tell him.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Duncan protested. His first thought had been Blake, but “drunk creep” didn’t fit.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Pellettieri said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Duncan still wasn’t putting this together for sure, though his guess was that Pellettieri was referring to someone connected to the Roths. “I’m not bullshitting,” he said, feeling himself acting guilty as a nervous reaction.
“Jack,” Harvey said. “Come on now. Let’s drop it.”
Pellettieri held his glare on Duncan a moment longer. “Maybe you don’t know anything. Probably makes it easier for you.”
Duncan looked to Harvey, but the other lawyer wouldn’t meet his eyes. “What’s this about?” Duncan asked.
“Ask your own people,” Pellettieri said, “you really want to know.”
Duncan hesitated, unsure what his next move was. If Pellettieri’s deposition testimony was untruthful, Duncan didn’t want to hear about it. Knowing would ethically obligate him to do something, and that would be a mess. His instinctive curiosity battled against his lawyer’s training, and his training won out.
“I’m sorry you’re upset,” he said blandly, closing the door on the subject.
“You just tell him,” Pellettieri s
aid. “Tell him I gave it up like I was supposed to.”
DUNCAN WAS still trying to figure out what to make of it when he met Neil Levine for a drink that night at the Royalton. He asked Neil if he’d come across anything about Jack Pellettieri when reviewing Roth Properties’ files on the Aurora.
“The concrete guy? I remember there was some back-and-forth with Jeremy Roth telling Omni he didn’t like something about the company that had made the lowest bid, wanted to go with Pellettieri instead. But that was way early, obviously.”
“You never saw anything about any problems with Pellettieri? In terms of billing, or not getting work done properly, anything like that?”
Neil shook his head before taking a sip of his Manhattan. “Why, what’s up?”
Duncan didn’t think Neil needed to know the full story. “Pellettieri was acting weird today at his depo, is all. You ever see any direct communication between him and anyone at Roth?”
Neil thought for a moment. “Don’t think so. Nobody at Roth was really dealing with the subs, far as I know.”
No surprise, Duncan thought: normally a developer wouldn’t be directly communicating with the subcontractors. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Have the staff attorneys tag any communication involving Pellettieri, or even where his name comes up, and make sure you take a look at it.”
“Sure,” Neil said. “But what am I looking for?”
“Beats me,” Duncan replied. “Just anything that doesn’t seem right.”
“I can’t believe how many documents we still have to look through. None of them have anything to do with the accident.”
“The DA’s casting a wide net.”
“It’s still a little hard for me to get my mind around how much of our time is spent dealing with this stuff that’s just categorically irrelevant,” Neil said.
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