Justin Peacock

by Blind Man's Alley (v5)

  Duncan had once spent twenty-five straight days in a warehouse in suburban New Jersey, digging through lab notes in a patent dispute, most of what he was looking at way too technical for him to have any sense of what it meant. He didn’t need Neil to tell him how mind-numbingly tedious document review could be. “There’re dues to be paid, is all,” he said. “You’ll get to more interesting stuff if you’re patient.”

  “Like a murder case? What’s going on with that, anyway?”

  Duncan told Neil about turning down the plea; his recent consultation with Professor Cole about challenging the GSR. He could see Neil’s eyes light up, feel his envy of the case. On some level it didn’t make sense: Neil could have become a criminal defense attorney if he’d wanted to. Of course, any such job would pay a fraction of what Blake and Wolcott did.

  “You need any help on it?” Neil asked. “Working with the expert or anything?”

  “We’re keeping staffing light, since it’s pro bono,” Duncan replied. In truth, he felt territorial about the case, was enjoying having it to himself.

  Neil finished his drink, looked around for the waitress. He seemed to be fighting back a smile. “So I heard a rumor about you,” he said.

  Duncan’s first thought was something to do with his upcoming partnership vote, though on reflection Neil seemed unlikely to have the inside track on that kind of office gossip. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I heard you and Lily were an item.”

  Duncan had long been braced for this to make the rounds, though he didn’t understand why it was happening so long after they’d broken up. “We went out a couple of times like a year ago,” he said, as much of a concession as he was willing to make. “But it’s old news, and we were never really an item.”

  Neil looked disappointed. “I heard you guys broke up or something at the Rainbow Room party.”

  Duncan didn’t like the idea that this was being gossiped about, but if it was he preferred to know about it. “Lily was pissed about something at the party, but it wasn’t me. And we certainly couldn’t have broken up that night, since we weren’t together.”

  “You one of those white boys with yellow fever?” Neil asked.

  Duncan tried not to react. People said things like this; they didn’t mean anything by it. He’d never mentioned his background to Neil, couldn’t expect the guy to have picked it up on his own. It wouldn’t be fair to Neil to make a thing out of it, Duncan thought. “Like I said, we only went out a couple of times,” he said.

  “Not that you’d need an Asian fetish to go out with Lily,” Neil said quickly, clearly sensing that Duncan wasn’t going along. “She’s pretty, though she cracks the whip a little when dealing with junior associates.”

  “Lily could teach you a thing or two,” Duncan replied.

  Neil arched his brows. “I’ll bet she could.”

  Duncan was a little pissed, but trying not to show it. “About practicing law, asshole,” he said.

  “That too,” Neil agreed.

  33

  MR. SPEAKER,” Simon Roth said, gesturing David Markowitz to a seat. “What can we do for you?”

  Leah sat in the chair next to Markowitz, facing her father’s desk, while their general counsel, Roger Carrington, was seated on a couch off to the side. Markowitz had not only come to them, he’d come alone: clear signs that he was worried about something and trying to keep a lid on it.

  “This reporter who’s out to get you, Snow from the Journal, she’s calling my office, trying to come in to see me,” Markowitz said. He was looking only at Simon. “She’s dug up all the LLC contributions to my campaign, seems to have figured out they’re companies controlled by you.”

  “Did you confirm that we own them?”

  “I haven’t talked to her directly, just had my staff say they’ll look into it, and that LLC contributions are perfectly legal.”

  “Which they are,” Carrington said, from his perch on the couch behind them. “The campaign contribution limits only apply to individual businesses. If someone happens to own fifty LLCs, each one still has its separate contribution limit.”

  Markowitz shook his head impatiently. Leah assumed Carrington hadn’t been talking for the speaker’s benefit anyway, but rather to assure her father that the company wasn’t exposed. “Legal doesn’t cut it in my line of work,” Markowitz said. “How it looks is the question.”

  “What is it you want me to do, David?” Simon asked, Leah noting how her father spoke as though there wasn’t a company at all, like she wasn’t even in the room.

  “You’re the one she’s after,” Markowitz said. “My political career is just collateral damage, far as she’s concerned.”

  “Your political career is not in any danger,” Simon said. “This is widely done, even if not widely known. We’ll get in front of it, put it in context, and also see about getting this little vendetta of hers tamped down.”

  “It sounds like she’s trying to make it connect to Riis, look like quid pro quo between you getting the project and the contributions.”

  Leah could tell that her father was struggling to keep his patience. “She can look all she wants for that,” he said. “Seeing as there’s nothing to find. We know better than to put something like that in writing, don’t we?”

  Markowitz looked aghast, even after he realized Simon was joking. “It’s not funny,” he said. “Somebody puts two things next to each other in a newspaper article, people jump to conclusions. I’ve seen federal pay-to-play cases get started on less.”

  “There’s nothing here that isn’t politics as usual,” Simon said.

  “I also hear she’s poking around about evictions at Riis, with your security guys. Is there a problem there?”

  Leah was surprised to see an uncomfortable look from her father. She wondered if he was noticing the same thing about her. “What kind of problem?” he asked.

  “From what I’m hearing, she’s looking into whether they are involved in getting people evicted, something so you wouldn’t have to move people back in.”

  “There’re nearly five thousand residents at Riis,” Simon said. “She think we’re going to pick them off one at a time?”

  “All I know is, she’s after blood,” Markowitz said. “What did you do to this woman?”

  “Called her a liar,” Leah said.

  “THIS IS going to take some navigating,” Simon said to Leah after Markowitz had left, Roger Carrington showing the speaker out.

  “I told you not to file the libel suit,” Leah said. “You flashed the red cape at her, and now she’s on the rampage. What’s this eviction thing she’s gotten hold of?”

  Simon hesitated. “For mixed-income to work over there, we have to get rid of the bad apples.”

  Leah wasn’t letting him off that easy. “Get rid of them how, exactly?”

  “Every apartment we don’t have to rent back to an existing resident brings in about twenty-five grand a year more in revenue,” Simon said, ignoring her question. “We reduce who we have to bring back by even forty households, that’s a million a year in additional market-rate money coming in. Play that kind of reduction out over a few years, you’re talking serious money.”

  Leah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. All developers did a lot of give and take with the city over building some below-market-rate units as part of getting permission to build, and a certain amount of gamesmanship was expected in fulfilling such obligations. But this was public housing, for Christ’s sake. Bad publicity could jeopardize the entire project, if not worse. “So you’re having the security guards throw people out?”

  “We’re not throwing people out for no reason. I simply told Loomis’s people to be on the lookout for bad behavior. The Housing Authority understands that eliminating the dregs before bringing in market-rate tenants is a necessary step for this thing to work. Getting rid of people who aren’t going to fit into the new version makes sense for everybody.”

  Leah didn’t think this was the
whole story. “Did you give Loomis’s crew an incentive to do this?”

  Simon refused to look embarrassed. “What if I did?”

  “Well, then, Jesus, Dad, did it ever occur to you that maybe they’d cut some corners on who they kicked out?”

  “Darryl’s guys know better than to set people up.”

  Leah didn’t share her father’s optimism in this regard, but there was no point in arguing. “The reporter’s digging into it now, and we know she’s going to paint a dark picture. How do we cut that off?”

  Simon looked away, Leah wondering if he was still uncomfortable plotting strategy with her. “I’m going to tell Darryl to turn it up a notch on her.”

  “That could just add fuel.”

  Simon shrugged, clearly not interested in an extensive discussion. “She’s used to Marquess of Queensberry rules,” he said. “Let’s see how she likes a street fight.”

  “You really think Darryl can scare her off the story?”

  “That’s only a step in the dance. I’m going to reach out to Friedman, who’s trying to stop the bleeding over there. But we’ve also got to get in front of the LLC thing, for our own sake as well as David’s. We’re going to have to respond to the reporter on that front—we can’t leave David to take the hit. Why don’t you grab the reins? Talk to Roger, make sure you’re up to speed on the LLC issue, and give the PR girl a call to go over things.”

  Their outside public relations person was a brassy woman in her fifties who was nobody’s idea of a girl, but Leah wasn’t in the mood to confront her father’s provocations. “Anything else?” she said, shifting in her chair.

  “What’s going on with the Aurora wrongful death?”

  Leah didn’t want to talk to her father about the Aurora case, but if she wasn’t forthcoming her father would eventually hear it all from Blake. “Depos are under way,” she said. “They just did the concrete contractor. Sounds like he’s facing liability, though the rest of us are clear.”

  “Why is the contractor on the hook?”

  Leah hesitated, wanting to limit the extent that she had to get into this as much as possible. “He didn’t do the safety work.”

  For a moment Simon just looked at her, frowning. “And nobody caught this?” he said.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Leah said. “We certainly wouldn’t have.”

  “Did we pay him for it?”

  “He was overbilling generally, is how it looks. But it’s not like he was going to submit invoices saying he wasn’t performing work.”

  Simon was full into a slow boil. “How much did he take us for?”

  “That can’t be our priority right now, Dad,” Leah said. “Let’s get the lawsuit taken care of, then worry about it.”

  Simon did not react well to being told what to worry about, and he fixed his daughter with a skeptical look. “What are you not telling me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Leah,” Simon said. “I’ve seen all your report cards.”

  “I’m sparing you the details, is all. Everything’s under control,” Leah said, doing her best to hold her father’s gaze. She never had been good at lying to him.

  34

  LEAH WAS making Duncan dinner. They’d been e-mailing every day or so since dinner at Jean Georges, but it’d taken a while for their schedules to mesh for meeting up again. Duncan hadn’t been in any hurry; whatever was going on here, he needed to proceed slowly and very carefully. But then Leah had complicated that by proposing Friday-night dinner at her apartment.

  She lived in a penthouse loft in Tribeca, walking distance from where the Aurora Tower was under construction. While considerably smaller and less ostentatious than her father’s town house, Leah’s loft was far more stylish, with muted colors, exposed brick, and hardwood floors.

  Only the bedroom and bathroom were walled off; the rest of the apartment was open space. Like most New Yorkers, Duncan was an old hand at eyeballing the size of an apartment: he put this one at over three thousand square feet, which he guessed in this neighborhood put the price around six million. It was a rich person’s apartment without a doubt, but Stephen Blake’s lavish Westchester mansion was probably worth nearly the same.

  “This place is amazing,” Duncan said.

  “I feel a little weird living like this. Me without an artistic bone in my body.”

  “I’m sure your family has sold plenty of downtown lofts to people who weren’t artists.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not part of the problem. Drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve got both colors of wine, vodka, gin, scotch, brandy, and port.”

  “Cigars?” Duncan said, arching an eyebrow.

  Leah smiled. “I know, I’m a sixty-something man trapped in a thirty-something woman’s body.”

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” Duncan said. “So long as you’re not having port.”

  Leah headed to the kitchen, instructing Duncan to sit, so he went over to the couch. He looked around the room, his attention caught by a large piece of contemporary art, two shadowy figures enveloped in an abstract red landscape, like they were emerging from flames.

  Leah returned with two glasses of white wine. She handed one to Duncan and settled onto the couch beside him. She was dressed casually, in a dark skirt and a short-sleeved cream-colored shirt. Her hair was loose, unlike whenever Duncan had seen her in a professional context.

  “So there’s something I need to talk to you about,” Duncan said.

  “That’s your business voice, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Leah shook her head. “It’s Friday night, Duncan, and I just poured us wine. Are you one of those lawyers without an off switch?”

  “I wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t important,” Duncan said, though he was already having second thoughts.

  “Is it something that you want me to do something about tonight?”

  “It’s not urgent in that sense, no.”

  “Well, then, shut up and drink,” Leah said with a smile.

  “Will do,” Duncan said, feeling chagrined. He still wasn’t sure where the line was between business and personal stuff between him and Leah, but clearly being in her apartment on a Friday night was not on the business side of it.

  “Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes,” Leah said, clearly talking to fill the dead air.

  “You really didn’t have to cook, you know.”

  “Of course I didn’t have to. But I thought it would be nice. Plus I get to show you that I’m actually capable of doing it, which I thought would impress you.”

  “I never had any doubt that you could fend for yourself,” Duncan said. “Though I certainly feel honored that you’d go to such trouble on my account.”

  “You didn’t answer my question before,” Leah said. “About whether you have an off switch.”

  “From being a lawyer? Not as much as I would like. It becomes harder to turn off with each passing year.”

  “That was one of the reasons I never practiced,” Leah said. “I thought law school was useful in terms of learning some methods of thought, but ultimately the lawyer’s view of the world always struck me as a little parched.”

  “Parched?”

  “Yeah, you know, dry. Desert-like. I worried that it appealed to the side of me that I didn’t want to give myself over to.”

  “What side is that?”

  “The side that plays my life like a chess game,” Leah said, putting her wineglass down on a coaster on the coffee table before standing up. “I’ve got to step back into the kitchen. Why don’t you put some music on?”

  “Sure,” Duncan said. He made his way over to the iPod that was plugged into Leah’s stereo receiver. Duncan shuffled around on it for a couple of minutes, checking out Leah’s taste, before selecting an old Sade album he hadn’t heard in over a dozen years, Leah giving him a bemused look as it came on.

  “Is th
is what you played to seduce girls in college?”

  “No,” Duncan said. “But come to think of it, I think maybe a girl played it once when she wanted to seduce me.”

  Dinner was broiled swordfish with a rice pilaf, simple but well prepared. Leah dimmed the track lighting over the dining room table, which served to accentuate the extent to which “Smooth Operator” was indeed booty music.

  “You’re smiling to yourself,” Leah said.

  “Was I?”

  “Can I take that as a sign that you’re finally relaxing a little?”

  “It’s probably the wine,” Duncan said.

  “Then by all means keep drinking if that’s what it’s going to take.”

  “Take to do what?”

  “For you to forget you’re my lawyer.”

  Duncan forced a smile, feeling uncomfortable with the subject. “The swordfish is terrific,” he said after a moment.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Not at all. I’m sure you succeed at everything you try.”

  “Right,” Leah said dryly. “I’ll never know where I would’ve ended up without the running start of my family. That’s the trade-off of being born with money: you never really get to take your own measure.”

  After dinner Leah poured them both glasses of port. Duncan took it in the spirit offered. “This is mad tasty, actually,” he said, after sipping.

  “Port is underrated,” Leah said. “Even without cigars. So should I give you the tour?”

  “The tour?” Duncan said, gesturing out at the room. “Can’t we do that from here?”

  “You can’t see everything from here. The bedroom, for example.”

  “By all means, then,” Duncan said. “Give me the tour.”

  LEAH KEPT her eyes open while making love. Duncan found it disconcerting: it added a different level of intimacy—almost too much, at least for the first time. Leah had a pale, thin body, the arc of her rib cage visible as she lay on her back. Duncan worked his way down her body, tasting her, then slowly back up, kissing her neck as she guided him in. He took his time, moving slowly, catching her gaze, then kissing her small breasts as a way to avoid eye contact. Leah was quiet in bed, hard to read. Duncan lasted as long as he could, unable to detect any approach of an orgasm in her, and finally let himself go. She kissed his neck as he subsided, her hand stroking his hair.