Justin Peacock

by Blind Man's Alley (v5)

  Candace was puzzled by Leah’s confidence in that regard. But the most interesting thing was that she was virtually certain that Leah had seen this coming. “I’m not just making this up,” she said. “I do have sources. If you won’t comment, perhaps your brother would?”

  “I really don’t think you do have sources. Tommy Nelson was pulling your chain. He’s got a funny sense of humor.”

  Candace knew her composure had failed her. She remembered her call to the Aurora after the break-in, being told that Nelson was off the project. “I didn’t say anything about who my sources are,” she managed to say.

  “And I didn’t ask,” Leah said. “I don’t ask people to tell me things I already know.”

  55

  YOU WANTED to see me?” Duncan said.

  Blake didn’t look up from his computer monitor as Duncan came in and sat down in his office. Duncan had lost his comfort level with his boss: Blake had always been brusque—virtually all of the firm’s partners were; it was an inevitable outgrowth of a life spent billing in six-minute increments—but before, Duncan had always been confident that he was on the man’s good side. Lately that felt far from clear.

  When Blake finally spoke, it was without shifting his gaze from the screen. “The murder case,” he said. “We can’t keep it.”

  Duncan thought he must have misunderstood. “What do you mean?”

  Blake finally looked over, already seeming hostile. “A positional conflict has arisen with an existing client. We can’t represent the guy on the murder anymore.”

  Duncan just sat there for a second, his mind scrambling, completely at a loss. “This is Roth pulling us off?” he finally said.

  Blake frowned. “Are you under the impression I have to explain myself to you?”

  Duncan shook his head but made no effort to hide his frustration. “It’s not that simple, though. Rafael’s indigent, for one thing, there’s a trial date on the judge’s calendar. We’ll need the judge’s permission to stop—”

  “So we’ll get the judge’s permission,” Blake interrupted. “I’ll handle it.”

  “But the case is going really well,” Duncan couldn’t stop himself from saying, though he already realized that there was no point in arguing with Blake about it.

  “So you’ll pass on what you have to the kid’s new lawyer, and he’ll go from there. You’re not irreplaceable, Duncan. We’re off the case, and this is not a debate.”

  NOT KNOWING who else to talk to about it, Duncan went to Lily, going up to her office and closing her door behind him.

  Lily looked up at him with a smile. “Again with the closed door?” she said. “Isn’t it a little late in the day to get rumors started about us?”

  “Blake’s taking me off the Nazario case,” Duncan said. “The firm is dropping it, saying we have a positional conflict. I don’t even know what that fucking means.”

  “I think it just means that while there’s not a conventional conflict, in the sense of two clients being on opposite sides of a case, the position we would take for one client conflicts with positions we’re taking for another. Though how that connects to a murder …”

  Duncan had a pretty good idea of how it might relate to the murder, but Lily didn’t need to know that. “It’s something to do with Roth, obviously. Blake won’t even confirm that.”

  “I thought Roth signed off on your taking the case?”

  Duncan hesitated, wondering how far in he wanted to bring Lily. “I think the plan was that we’d plead it out quickly.”

  Lily frowned at that. She started to say something but thought better of it. Duncan didn’t blame her for stopping to think about whether she wanted to know the answer before she asked a question. “I’m not sure I’m following,” was all she said.

  “The point is, they wanted it to go away. When I started to break apart the DA’s case, then all of a sudden there was a conflict. So what the hell do I do about it?”

  Lily looked at him quizzically. “What can you possibly do about it?”

  “I could resign,” Duncan said, partly just to hear himself say it, see how it sounded.

  Lily looked incredulous; then she smiled. “And do what, open up a solo criminal defense practice down on Pine Street? With your one nonpaying client? Your protest is duly noted, but let’s be serious.”

  Duncan shrugged, acknowledging the absurdity of it. Lily was right, of course: he wasn’t going to resign. “Don’t I have some kind of obligation here, though?”

  “Duncan Riley trying to do the right thing,” Lily mused. “How long have I slept?”

  “This guy’s my client, and I was getting it done for him. Am I really supposed to just turn that off on command?”

  “If you’ve got another choice,” Lily said, “I’m not seeing what it is.”

  Duncan went back to his office, if anything more frustrated. Out of nowhere the thought occurred to him that he was never going to speak to his mother again, that she was no longer alive. Not that he would’ve asked her for advice at a moment like this anyway, but if he could there was no doubt she would tell him that he had to do something.

  “WHAT’S SO urgent?” Leah asked as she showed Duncan into her office.

  Duncan understood the risk of coming here, knew he’d back out of doing so if he gave himself too much time to think. He owed this to Rafael; he owed this to his own sense of self.

  “The Nazario case,” Duncan said. “Suddenly Blake’s telling me we’re off it.”

  “And you’re coming to me about this why?”

  “You closed it down, didn’t you?”

  Leah smiled thinly, letting him see her ebbing patience. “If I’d felt the need to discuss this with you, don’t you think I would have?”

  She had sat down behind her desk while Duncan was still standing. He decided to sit across from her, hoping that would maybe cool the dynamics a little. “You guys knew I represented Rafael,” he said, speaking slowly and softly. “I thought you wanted me to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Leah said, her voice also going soft, though it only made her sound more threatening.

  Duncan knew he was on a tightrope but tried to go forward. “I just mean it surprised me when I was allowed to keep Rafael’s murder case at the start. I figured you guys wouldn’t want us anywhere near it. And then the clear message I got from Blake was to plead it out right away. I assumed that message was actually coming from your family.”

  “I think we’re having a misunderstanding of what’s an appropriate way for you to interact with me,” Leah said.

  “I don’t like being manipulated. Even by a client. Even by you.”

  Leah sighed and looked over at her computer, signaling her lack of interest in continuing the conversation. “Why are you so involved in this kid’s case, anyway? If you’d wanted to be defending murderers, you wouldn’t be working for Blake.”

  “I don’t want to be defending murderers. But Rafael’s my client. Look, it’s easy to get lost doing this job. Fighting for my clients—no matter who they are, no matter what they’ve done—is what being a lawyer is. If I compromise that, then it’s like it never really meant anything.”

  Leah considered Duncan carefully. “It’s not your decision to make.”

  “I’m not starry-eyed. I’m not looking to draw some big line in the sand here. But no one will even explain to me what’s really going on.”

  “What if it turns out you don’t actually want to know what’s really going on? You can’t press ‘undo’ when it comes to finding things out.”

  “I understand that,” Duncan said, wondering if he fully did.

  “All I can say is that Fowler’s murder had the potential to embarrass our business. We preferred that it be handled quietly. But that’s not what you’ve been doing.”

  “You mean I’ve been doing too good a job,” Duncan said. “But how does that embarrass your family?”

  “I’m not going to draw you a map.”

  “He’s i
nnocent, Leah. I’m not trying to hurt your family or anyone else. I’m trying to get an innocent man out of jail.”

  Leah looked away, Duncan thinking maybe he was getting somewhere. “Did you know that back in the 1930s the rule of thumb on skyscraper construction was that one worker would die for each floor built?” Leah said after a moment. “Think of that the next time you walk past the Empire State Building.”

  “So you’re saying what—Rafael’s a broken egg needed for your omelet? I don’t have a responsibility to help everyone, but I do have a responsibility to help him.”

  “Don’t be naive, Duncan; it doesn’t suit you. I’m saying any large building in New York has got some bloodstains hidden beneath its foundations. That’s the reality of doing something on the scale we work on. I’m not being cavalier about the cost; I’m just being realistic about it. You can be on our side, or you can be on Rafael’s side, but you can’t be on both. It’s your choice, but I would imagine it to be a very easy one.”

  Duncan, feeling helpless, shook his head. “I don’t want to be a part of this, Leah.”

  “You already are,” Leah replied.

  56

  DUNCAN HAD been waiting about twenty minutes when corrections officers finally brought Rafael in. A short time in jail had changed him: his thin features had turned a little puffy; bad food and lack of exercise had put some weight on him. But it wasn’t the physical change that was the most noticeable: it was how Rafael’s youthful enthusiasm had been burned away, leaving him sullen and withdrawn. Rafael hadn’t been the same since his time in solitary, and Duncan knew his visit today was certainly not going to make things better.

  “I’m afraid I’m here with some bad news,” Duncan said once they were settled in. Rafael responded with a hard stare that made Duncan hesitate before continuing. “Something’s come up with my firm, a conflict. As I told you before, we represent Roth Properties, the developer behind all the changes at Riis. Long story short, they’ve decided that our representing you conflicts with our representing them. I tried to talk them out of it, but …”

  Rafael looked puzzled as Duncan trailed off. “What’re you saying?”

  Duncan hated to say it, but he forced himself to meet Rafael’s eyes as he did. “My firm’s going to have to withdraw from representing you. Meaning I won’t be able to be your lawyer anymore.”

  Rafael shook his head, clearly struggling to process what he was hearing. “You’re quitting on me? I don’t have a lawyer no more?”

  “You’ll still have a lawyer—the court will supply you with one, a public defender probably. I’ll turn over all my files to your new attorney. You’ll end up with a far more experienced criminal lawyer than you had with me. Your defense shouldn’t lose a step.”

  Rafael’s response was a curled lip. “You told me I could trust you,” he said bitterly.

  “This ended up being out of my hands. But your case is in great shape. We’re about to get the police statements from Dwayne Stevenson. Your new lawyer will hopefully be able to use him as a witness.”

  “You had me thinking you really believed I didn’t do this shit.”

  “I do believe that,” Duncan said. “That’s not the issue at all.”

  “I should have known someone like you wasn’t really going to be in my corner. Nobody ever been there for me; why you going to be any different?”

  “If it was up to me—”

  Rafael wasn’t having it, his angry look unforgiving. “That’s what people always say when they setting up to let you down,” he said.

  BY THE time Duncan made it back to his office his concentration was as shot as his morale. Not being fit for doing anything billable, Duncan turned to the mail his secretary had stacked in his in-box. Virtually nothing important came to him by mail; it was mostly law journals and pitch letters from legal service providers, so Duncan generally went through it only once a week or so.

  At first the envelope didn’t mean anything to him, the Bank of America return address not enough for his frazzled brain to make the connection. He opened it, only mildly curious what it was, then unfolded the half dozen sheets of paper. Bank records, he realized, for Sean Fowler. He’d subpoenaed them over a month ago, unsure whether the bank would really comply. But here they were.

  “What the fuck,” Duncan muttered to himself as he looked through the statement. Sean Fowler, an ex-cop who was working construction security, had well over two hundred thousand dollars in the bank at the time of his death.

  57

  CANDACE FINISHED writing her article on the Roth shell corporations’ campaign contributions to Speaker Markowitz and sent it to her editor. It wasn’t a breaking news story, and she had no reason to think any other reporter was sniffing around it, so Candace didn’t expect it to run immediately. It was the kind of piece that would require careful review because of the potential political fallout, and especially because it touched on the highly litigious Roths. Because of the paper’s recent history with the family, Candace expected that Nugent would loop their lawyers into the vetting, which meant it would take twice as long.

  She e-mailed the story to Nugent around lunchtime, expecting to hear back in an hour or so. Instead most of the day crept by, and when Nugent finally did respond it was to ask her to come to Henry Tacy’s office.

  Candace had a bad feeling as she made her way to the editor in chief’s lair. Tacy’s office was in the far corner of the newsroom, the only proper corner office claimed by the paper’s editorial side. It was spacious and open, one wall lined with grip-and-grin photos, Tacy alongside everyone from Bill Clinton to Bill Gates. Tacy was seated behind his desk, Nugent on the couch along the far wall.

  “Am I being fired?” Candace asked as she sat down, only partially to break the tension.

  “Nonsense,” Tacy responded, a bit too brightly, Candace thought. Tacy was not really a man who did enthusiasm well. “I’d gotten some calls about your story, so I asked Bill to give me a heads-up when you had a draft.”

  “You’ve been getting calls about a story I hadn’t even written yet?”

  “Friends of Speaker Markowitz,” Tacy said. “Apparently a lot of people think his future will be quite sunny.”

  “And they’ve been calling to tell you that?”

  “People call to tell me all sorts of things,” Tacy said. “It doesn’t mean I listen. But here they’ve been calling Mr. Friedman too, and him I do listen to.”

  “So an up-and-coming politician has friends in high places,” Nugent said. “Whoever would’ve thought?”

  Candace smiled at Nugent as a way of thanking him for speaking up. Perhaps people put pressure on the paper’s editor and its owner more often than she knew, but this was her first direct experience of it. She had no doubt the Roth family was playing a role.

  “In any event,” Tacy said, “I’ve had a chance to take a look at your article. It’s all bloody good stuff, of course, but it seems to me you don’t quite have the full story here. Now don’t get me wrong; it stinks of quid pro quo, it looks unseemly at best, and clearly there’s a loophole in the campaign finance laws that they’re exploiting. But what we don’t yet have is whether Roth and Markowitz are the only people doing this, either in terms of politicos receiving or big-ticket donors giving. Is the Roth family the only people using LLCs in this way, or is it a common practice among their kind? How many politicians are getting money?”

  Candace wasn’t sure she was seeing where this was leading. “I agree it’d be good to see how much of this is going on, but that’s going to take a couple months of Freedom of Information requests and combing through public records to piece together. We can get the party started by printing what we know now.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to rush part of the story out there when right now we have it to ourselves,” Tacy said. “It’s your get, and we’ll free you up to pursue it.”

  Candace was trying to figure out whether Tacy actually believed he was doing her a favor, rather than shutting her dow
n. “It’s just that it’s going to be a long project, and I’m in the middle of tracking down all the angles on the Aurora.”

  Tacy frowned slightly, then shot a quick look over to Nugent. “But this story doesn’t have anything to do with the Aurora,” he said.

  “Not directly, but the trail from the Aurora is what led me to all of this.”

  She’d clearly lost Tacy. “This isn’t a story about Simon Roth,” he said. “And it’s certainly not about the Aurora. It’s about money and politics. Besides, it’s going to be good for you to branch out a little.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Candace couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  Tacy shrugged but didn’t meet her eye. “Just that I’ve seen it before, a reporter getting obsessed with their white whale.”

  “I don’t have a white whale,” Candace protested.

  Tacy sighed, loudly. “Let’s not make this something it’s not. Everybody thinks you’re doing slam-bang work. You’ve found a rich vein to mine here, something you can really dig into. So go do that, happily, and leave whatever else you were doing to the side for a while.”

  “And this is an order?”

  Tacy’s smile was not amused. “I wouldn’t characterize it as a suggestion.”

  Candace realized she was being petulant and told herself to stop it. Tacy was right; it was going to be a big story. Who knew how broad the scope of it would prove to be?

  Yet as they left Tacy’s office Candace couldn’t stop herself from confronting Nugent. “Did you sign off on this?”

  “Henry didn’t put it to a vote,” Nugent replied. “I have bosses, same as you.”

  “My story isn’t the LLC contributions; it’s Roth buying off politicos so he can have the Riis project. Which in turn connects back to the Aurora, and buying people off there.”

  Nugent sighed. “Now let’s stay within the reality-based community here. You’re getting a lot of rope to dig deep into a story you’ve uncovered. You could close a major loophole in the state’s campaign financing—and who knows what else you’ll uncover along the way.”