Justin Peacock

by Blind Man's Alley (v5)

“Jesus,” Leah said. Hurting Nelson seemed like a foolish risk, but she also knew better than to try to micromanage Darryl’s end of things. It wasn’t like the man was a sadist; if he’d hurt somebody, it was because he’d deemed doing so necessary, a means to an end. “To find out what?”

  “The reporter’s got that money was coming out through Pellettieri, and that he’s facing charges.”

  Leah hissed in a breath. “What about my brother?”

  “Sounds like she’s pretty much there too,” Darryl replied. “And it gets worse. She’s got that Fowler was in the loop.”

  “Nelson gave that to her?” Leah said incredulously. “How does he have that?”

  “He’s supposed to have open eyes around the site. Sean wasn’t always the most careful of men, so there’s that.”

  “So she could piece together …”

  “Pretty much everything, yeah.”

  “That can’t be allowed to happen,” Leah said firmly, with a conviction she couldn’t support.

  “Meaning?” Darryl said, turning around in his seat to look at Leah directly.

  “Christ, no, not that,” Leah replied immediately. “For a reporter?”

  “It works for the Russians.”

  “We’re way too exposed on this as it is,” Leah said.

  “I can keep raising the pressure on her,” Darryl said. “But backfiring’s always a possibility with that.”

  “Dad’s already worked the paper,” Leah said, calmer now that she’d moved on from absorbing the bad news to trying to deal with it. “He and Friedman go way back.”

  “But we should assume Pellettieri’s going down,” Darryl said. “If it’s not the reporter, it’ll be the DA.”

  “I’ve never actually met Pellettieri,” Leah said. “What’s your sense of whether he’ll hold up?”

  “I wouldn’t much count on it.”

  Leah sighed heavily; that was not what she’d hoped to hear. “What do you think we should do about him, then?”

  “Money’s not going to do anything more to get his loyalty than it’s already done. I don’t think we can scare him worse than going to the big house does. You could buy him a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires.”

  “What’re the odds he’d take it?”

  “Given his options, he might be looking for an escape hatch. Want me to ask?”

  “Never hurts to ask,” Leah said neutrally. She closed her eyes for a moment. “All right, so you make an offer to Pellettieri and keep up pressure on the reporter. Fingerprint-free, of course. But we have to stop just escalating this. Every time we shut one thing down we seem to end up opening two more. That’s got to stop.”

  “That how these things tend to go,” Darryl said.

  “For the people who get caught,” Leah replied.

  45

  UNDER ORDERS from Castelluccio, Detectives Jaworski and Gomez had brought Dwayne Stevenson back in. Dwayne was one of the corner boys who the beat cops had tagged as a possible eyewitness to Nazario’s rabbiting from the murder scene. Castelluccio wanted them to take another run at him now that their forensic evidence had gone south.

  Because they’d made such a quick arrest the night of the shooting, neither Jaworski nor Gomez had interviewed Dwayne then. Instead he’d been handed off to a couple of other detectives, who’d mainly left him stewing in an interview room all night, the idea being that the best way to get him to talk was by tiring him into it.

  “Dwayne Stevenson,” Jaworski said, paging through a small file, angling the pages so that Stevenson couldn’t see that they were nearly all blank sheets of paper. Stevenson was short and stocky, already seeming hardened beyond repair despite his youth. “See here you’ve got a possession with intent hanging over you now.”

  Dwayne crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I’m waiting on my day in court. You want to talk about that, you best be getting me my lawyer.”

  “You don’t need a lawyer here, Dwayne,” Gomez said. “We don’t want to talk to you about your own not-so-successful ventures into criminal enterprise. We want to talk to you about the shooting of Sean Fowler.”

  “I don’t even know nobody named Sean Fowler.”

  “The security guard killed outside your project,” Jaworski said.

  “I didn’t have nothing to do with that,” Dwayne said. “You all kept me here all night on some bullshit.”

  “We didn’t bring you in, then or now, ’cause we thought you’d done the shoot,” Jaworski said. “We know who did it. And after he shot that man, he ran right past you and your friend making his getaway. You know Rafael Nazario, don’t you?”

  “We was in school together back in the day,” Dwayne said. “But not like we tight.”

  “But you saw him running back to his project after he shot the security guard, didn’t you?”

  “That’s what them other cops were saying back when it happened. All’s I saw running that night was the black five-oh.”

  “We know what’s happening with your family, Dwayne,” Gomez said, softening his voice, playing good cop.

  Dwayne wasn’t buying it, curling his lip in response. “You don’t know shit about shit,” he sneered.

  “We know your family’s being evicted because of your getting busted for touting rock,” Jaworski said. “Putting your own mother out on the street—that’s pretty much the definition of ghetto there, Dwayne.”

  “I got that on me,” Dwayne said, showing more shame than Jaworski was expecting. “But that don’t have nothing to do with some security guard getting shot.”

  “No, it doesn’t, unless you make it.”

  Dwayne glared at Jaworski. “Make it how?”

  “You know how this works,” Jaworski said. “You help us; we help you. You manage to remember what you actually saw that night—Nazario running from the scene, a gun in his hand maybe—then we put in a good word for you, see if we can get this eviction to go away.”

  Dwayne was openly incredulous. “That’s what you drag me here for? Ask me to lie for you, and all you’re going to even offer up in return is some shit ’bout how you gonna see if maybe you can help me out? You must be thinking somebody dropped me on my head and never even bothered to pick me back up.”

  “We can help you out,” Gomez said quickly. “The DA’s on board with this. It’s for real.”

  “Can I go now?” Dwayne said. “I don’t even want to be breathing the same air as you.”

  “We can help keep your mother in her home,” Jaworski said.

  “You said I couldn’t call my lawyer, so I ain’t under arrest. Guess that means I can go, right?”

  Jaworski shooed him away with the back of his hand. “Christ, get out of here already.”

  “YOU NOTICE what he said?” Gomez asked Jaworski. They were back at their desks, which faced each other, in the squad room. They’d switched back to day shifts a couple of weeks ago, right about the same time Gomez’s wife had let him move back in, and now he was showing up to work on time and bright-eyed, maybe still drinking some but keeping it under control. The downside for Jaworski was that his partner had become almost hyperactive on the job, a little too full of energy, making him a pain in the ass.

  “He didn’t really say anything.”

  “He said we were asking him to lie about seeing Nazario.”

  “So?”

  “We assumed the bangers weren’t talking because of some kind of stop-snitching shit,” Gomez said. “But if that’s all it was, he could’ve just said he didn’t talk to cops, given us the usual on that. But that’s not what he said. Instead he told us that he didn’t see Nazario running through the courtyard that night.”

  Jaworski didn’t feel like indulging this. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe he just doesn’t want to cooperate. Maybe Nazario snuck behind him, or maybe this Dwayne kid was stoned out of his mind that night. Who the fuck knows? Doesn’t mean Nazario didn’t run back to his project.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Where you going with
this?”

  “Nowhere,” Gomez said. “But I’m not pretending I didn’t hear it either.”

  “Meaning what? Now you don’t think Nazario’s the guy?”

  “I’m not saying that. But I’m maybe starting to wonder.”

  “The case is down,” Jaworski said, clearly finished with the conversation.

  Gomez gave his partner a look. “So I guess that means we shouldn’t worry about whether it’s down right,” he said.

  46

  E-MAILS REGARDING Candace’s article claiming that Jack Pellettieri was facing imminent indictment by a grand jury on manslaughter and fraud charges had started hitting Duncan’s BlackBerry before he’d even woken up, and as soon as he’d read the story he got himself in gear to get to the office ASAP.

  Blake summoned Duncan as soon as he got in, Lily already in Blake’s office when Duncan arrived. “We need to get as close to in front of this as we can,” Blake said. “Obviously the concern for our client is whether there’s any way this goes higher up the food chain.”

  “How can Pellettieri blame anyone else?” Lily asked.

  “People facing a murder indictment can get real creative.”

  Pellettieri’s behavior at his deposition flashed unbidden to Duncan’s mind. Pellettieri knew something that could hurt the Roths; Duncan could feel it. He tried to figure out how to say that to Blake.

  “I think maybe we need to ask Jeremy Roth point-blank what Pellettieri has on him,” Duncan said.

  Blake turned to Duncan, clearly not liking the sound of that. “This is from the depo?”

  “Right,” Duncan said. He’d told Blake about Pellettieri’s outburst the day it happened, Blake remaining poker-faced in response, thanking Duncan for telling him but showing zero interest in discussing what it might mean. Jeremy’s name hadn’t come up in that initial conversation.

  “I’ll talk to Jeremy,” Blake said. “See if there’s something specific we need to be worried about.”

  LEAH ROTH called Duncan almost as soon as he returned to his desk.

  “Why haven’t you called me?” Leah demanded, her voice tight. She sounded panicked, Duncan thought. He was surprised she was so quick to show fear—it made him wonder what it was exactly she was afraid of.

  “Blake is calling your dad in a minute,” Duncan said. “It’s not my place to preempt him.”

  “They’re really trying to make this into murder? It was an accident.”

  “It can be an accident and still be manslaughter,” Duncan said. “Like driving drunk. Pellettieri knew he was putting people’s lives at risk.”

  “We can’t be dragged into this.”

  Duncan didn’t understand how Leah, a lawyer herself, not to mention a shrewd and coolly reflective businesswoman, could be looking for the sort of assurance that he clearly was not going to be able to provide. “What is it you want us to do, Leah?” he asked.

  “It sounds like you’re telling me there’s nothing you can do,” Leah replied, her voice rising.

  “We’re on it,” Duncan said. “But we can’t magically make a sitting grand jury disappear.”

  “I’m not asking for magic; I’m asking for results. And I expect to see some.”

  “I think you’re being a little—”

  “I’d be very careful right now if I were you,” Leah interrupted, her voice steely. “Don’t think our personal relationship affects your firm’s representation of my family. Understood?”

  “Of course we’ll get results,” Duncan said after a moment. But he’d said it to an empty room—Leah had already hung up on him.

  47

  WHY DO I have to come?” Alena protested. She was putting on her makeup in the bathroom with the door open, calling out to Jeremy, who was leaning forward on the couch, rolling a joint.

  Jeremy was taking Mattar Al-Falasi out to dinner. The Al-Falasi family had left the country a few weeks ago without anything being decided on going into business together. Simon Roth had met with Mattar’s father, Ubayd, right before they’d returned to Dubai, finally making the formal pitch, but without getting much in the way of a clear response. Then a few days ago Mattar had sent Jeremy an e-mail saying he was going to be in New York and proposing dinner. It was less an invitation than it was a summons, Jeremy thought resentfully, though he had dutifully feigned enthusiasm in reply.

  “Mattar seemed to like you the last time,” he called back to Alena.

  “You don’t want me to pimp out Ivy again?”

  Jeremy resisted the impulse to tell her about Mattar’s faux pas at the club. “I got the sense he wasn’t so into her,” he said instead.

  “Don’t the two of you need to talk business?”

  “It’s the dads who will be doing that. I’m just supposed to provide the entertainment.”

  “And what is it I’m supposed to provide?” Alena asked, strolling into the room. She was dressed for going out, in a wine-colored sleeveless dress. Jeremy felt a stirring of desire just looking at her. Alena had a virtually flawless ability to clothe herself in a way that showed her body off to maximum advantage.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what it means.”

  “Jesus, what—are you studying Zen now or something?”

  “It means I don’t understand why you want me to come.”

  “It’ll make it more comfortable, having you there. I don’t really know how to talk to this guy either. He can’t just come out and say anything; it’s all gotta be in code.”

  They were due to pick up Mattar at his hotel in ten minutes. Jeremy had a limo waiting for them downstairs. He lit the joint, wanting a quick smoke before going down. They had dinner reservations at Peter Luger, Mattar’s idea, the Brooklyn steak house’s legend apparently carrying all the way to Dubai.

  “What am I going to eat at Peter Luger?” Alena said, shaking off the offered joint as Jeremy exhaled.

  “You could eat steak for once in your life.”

  “You know I don’t eat red meat.”

  “You’re not on the runway tomorrow or anything.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped taking care of myself.”

  “Taking care of yourself is overrated,” Jeremy said.

  THEY HAD to wait at the bar for fifteen minutes for their table, Peter Luger not being the kind of place where the concept of VIP meant much. Bill Murray was having a drink a few feet away from them, and to Jeremy’s surprise this prompted wide-eyed enthusiasm in Mattar, whose recall of the plots of Ghostbusters and Stripes far exceeded Jeremy’s own. Even after they were seated Mattar was still buzzing about seeing the movie star.

  Jeremy didn’t really understand the purpose of the present outing. His father was having dinner with Mattar’s father in a couple of days, which figured to be the do-or-die discussion on the Dubai family’s coming on board. Jeremy knew full well that his dad wouldn’t want him to be involved in the seduction dance if Simon had felt confident that the deal would close.

  An awkward silence descended after they’d ordered, which Jeremy fought to clear. He was feeling talkative, as he often did when high, but he didn’t want to babble on, make a fool of himself. Alena had retreated into herself, not making any effort, clearly intending to coast through the evening. Mattar also seemed slightly tense, as if he too was there subject to some larger plan. Jeremy ordered a martini, Mattar doing the same, Jeremy hoping some alcohol would loosen things up.

  “So,” Jeremy said, “I hope we have many more dinners to come. As business partners, I mean.”

  “My father, he has some concerns.”

  Jeremy was irritated but told himself to focus, wondering where the hell this was going. “What sort of concerns?”

  “You must, of course, understand that we from the Middle East who are supporters of your country realize that some Americans distrust us. The business with your country’s ports, that was most unfortunate. And embarrassing for us too, I must say. Dubai is a friend to America, and we hope to be tr
eated as a friend is treated.”

  “Absolutely,” Jeremy said emphatically, utterly lost as to where Mattar was going with this. Mattar sat ramrod straight in his chair, maintaining eye contact with Jeremy, poised and assured.

  “When engaging in business deals here, we need to be very careful about how they are perceived. We need to try to make sure they will not involve us in controversy, because when they do, there is focus on us, the Arabs, which can be most unfortunate. You understand?”

  Jeremy didn’t. “Sure,” he said.

  “The accident that happened last year … The police are still investigating, is what we understand.”

  Jeremy was blindsided. He felt hot, a prickle of sweat on his forehead, his tie tight on his neck. He took a sip of his martini, too big, so that he then coughed, needing to reach for his water to wash down the vodka. Alena was staring at him like he was a bug that had just started crawling across the table.

  “That’s all going to blow over,” Jeremy said, trying to force some confidence into his voice. “The accident was tragic, of course, but these things do happen in construction. If anyone was to blame, it was a subcontractor.”

  “But there has been quite a lot of publicity regarding it, even to this day. You sued the newspaper.”

  “My father did, yes, for libeling him.”

  “I understand in this country lawsuits are part of how some people choose to do business. When you have a disagreement, you can choose to fight. But we do not have that luxury.”

  Jeremy wondered why Mattar was bringing this up with him, before the meeting between their fathers. He was sure that Mattar wasn’t acting on his own initiative; this had to be something that the Dubai family had decided on. A warning shot across the bow, perhaps, or a way of setting the stage for walking away from the deal.

  “I hear you,” Jeremy said, fighting against his indignation at Mattar’s presumption. Did he expect Jeremy to pretend that his father was going to change the bare-knuckled way he did business at this stage of the game, just to please some towelheads who had a place at the table only because a perverse God had stuck oil under their otherwise wretched portion of the earth?