Candace tried not to show her frustration. She’d hoped Duncan would be more forthcoming. “I know you want to help Rafael. I saw that in you. Here’s what I think happened: you uncovered the truth, or at least too much of it.”
“What truth would that be?”
“You found something showing that Fowler’s death went back to the shenanigans at the Aurora. You discovered proof that he was the bagman for divvying up the spoils of what Pellettieri took.”
Duncan picked up his beer bottle, held it for a moment before taking a drink. Candace was wrong: he hadn’t ever come close to linking Fowler’s murder and the Aurora. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “There is one thing I can tell you, but you can’t say it came from me. I subpoenaed Fowler’s bank records. He had way too much money at the time he died.”
Candace leaned forward. “How much money?”
“Nearly a quarter million.”
Candace showed surprise at the number. “That seems like a big cut for a bagman, I would think.”
“I wouldn’t know what the going rate is, but yes.”
“I can try to look into it. You really have no leads on where it came from? If you still want to help Nazario, talking to me is your only way now.”
Duncan chuckled in response. “You don’t even trust me,” he said.
“That’s not true,” Candace said. “I think you’re basically honest, and that you’re legitimately trying to help Rafael. I also think you’re in over your head.”
“And you’re my way out,” Duncan said skeptically. “Why on earth are you telling me your suspicions of the Roths in the first place?”
It was a good question, Candace had to admit. The answer was that she didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it. Nobody at the paper wanted to hear it anymore. She didn’t have the full story, and the only person she could think of who could potentially fill in the blanks was Duncan. But she didn’t think she could say all that, and wasn’t inclined to try.
“My apartment’s been broken into,” Candace said instead. “My laptop was stolen. One of my sources had the shit kicked out of him because he’d talked to me. I was mugged on the street a little while back. I’m being followed.”
Duncan looked stricken. “Obviously I don’t know anything about stuff like that—Jesus.”
Candace believed him. “You still underestimate just how dirty they’re playing,” she said.
Duncan suspected she was right. He’d never thought of himself as naive, but when it came to the Roths he was beginning to think that was exactly what he’d been. “I thought about resigning,” he said abruptly.
Candace looked over at him, surprised, before laughing quietly. “Me too. When they took me off the story.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Nobody wins every battle, right? What good’s it going to do—I’ve worked really hard to get where I am, and throwing it away won’t change anything.”
“I never felt bad about playing hardball, pushing up against the edge of the rules, because I was doing it on behalf of my clients. But a lawyer who doesn’t stand up for his clients isn’t a real lawyer anymore.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Duncan leaned forward, giving way to an impulse. “What if you really broke the story open? Would your bosses keep you from publishing it?”
“If I handed it to them on a platter, said if they didn’t run with it I was going to the Times, yeah, I think so. Why?”
“I want to get Rafael out of jail,” Duncan said. “I want to blow this whole mess up.”
“How’re you gonna do that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Duncan replied. “Want to help?”
Candace gave Duncan a skeptical look. “Have a guilty conscience?” she asked.
“About what?”
Candace smiled. “Your career.”
“Your father doesn’t seem to have given you a good impression of the practice of law,” Duncan replied. “Where’s he a partner?”
“Cleary Gottlieb. And he doesn’t complain about it, really. But I guess what always struck me was the disconnect between how all-consuming the job was and how little passion he felt for it.”
“I know lawyers who are passionate about the job—Blake is. But it’s the battle itself, you know? And I have that too, at least somewhat. But it can be a little … I mean, sure, it’s nice to actually feel like you’re on the side of the angels.”
“A lawyer who wants to be on the side of the angels,” she said. “Sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
Duncan thought she might be right. “So you really think they broke into your apartment? And if so, who exactly are ‘they’?”
Candace shrugged. “I have no idea who actually broke in. And I can’t prove it was related to my reporting. But I think more likely than not it was someone acting on behalf of Simon Roth.”
“Either way, it must be scary. You’re still living there?”
“I stayed with a friend for a couple of days right after, changed the locks and all that. But if Roth’s behind it, moving wouldn’t solve the problem.”
Duncan felt guilty: he was on Roth’s team, after all, which implicated him in what they did. “And you’re really being followed?”
“I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure. I snuck over here, just in case.”
“Are you scared?”
“Of course I’m fucking scared,” Candace replied with a laugh. “I’m a reporter, not a CIA agent. These aren’t things I signed up for, and they scare the shit out of me.”
“But they haven’t driven you off the story.”
“I’m supposed to just let them run over me? First with the lawsuit, and then when that didn’t work by breaking into my apartment? It’s bad enough that Roth has managed to bully the paper. But I let him bully me, then I can’t do my job.”
Duncan found himself admiring Candace. He’d been skeptical of her at first, but he was increasingly impressed with her determination, especially in light of how she was being harassed. He restrained an impulse to say any of this, instead hoisting his beer and emptying the bottle. “You want another?” he asked, though as he said it he noticed that Candace’s beer was still half-full.
Candace glanced over at her bottle as well, then hesitated. “I should probably let you get back to your evening,” she said, standing up.
The thought of asking her to stay pushed into Duncan’s mind, but things were too messy in his life right now as it was, and he also had no idea how she’d respond. Duncan stood, taking a step toward the door to show her out, and as he did so he found himself standing close to Candace, the two of them freezing for a second at the sudden proximity.
“Good night, Candace,” Duncan said. “Be careful out there.”
“Good night,” Candace replied, turning toward the door. “And you’d better be careful too.”
61
WANTING A chance to talk the case over with Rafael’s new lawyer, Duncan arranged to personally deliver a copy of the file down to him. The file half-filled a banker’s box, tiny as far as Duncan was concerned—most of his cases had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pages of documents going back and forth.
Rafael’s new lawyer, Robert Walker, had a solo practice out of an office on Thomas Street downtown. The building had an Art Deco charm, although it did not seem well kept: the slow and tiny elevator wheezed and clanked as it took Duncan up. Walker’s office was small and derelict, the sort of office Duncan pictured a thirties private eye having. It was also a mess: papers everywhere, no sign of organization. Duncan’s office looked the same way, but he had a support staff and a file room that kept track of originals.
“Thanks for the personal service,” Walker said, gesturing for Duncan to put the box down on an empty patch of floor, the carpet discolored with age. He was a burly, bearded guy in his late forties who had clearly bought his suits twenty pounds ago. “But you could’ve just stuck it all in the mail.”
“I thought it would be
useful for us to talk,” Duncan said.
“About?”
Duncan didn’t quite know how to begin. “There’re some unusual aspects about this case that may not be reflected in the file.”
“I don’t really know anything about it at this stage of the game,” Walker said. “I can always give you a call if I have any questions after I’ve gotten up to speed.”
“Sure,” Duncan said, taking a card from his wallet.
Walker took Duncan’s card. “Blake and Wolcott, huh?” he said, looking back up at Duncan. “This must have been what, pro bono for you?”
“It was, but—”
“I may not have a fancy office, but I’ve been practicing criminal law for over twenty years. I’ve handled literally thousands of felonies.”
Duncan did not find the volume of cases reassuring; rather it just confirmed his impression of Walker as a low-end court-appointed lawyer who made his living by the sheer number of people he helped shuffle through the system. “It’s not that I have any doubts about your ability or experience, Mr. Walker. I just wanted a chance to go over some things that you’re simply not going to be able to pick up by reading the file.”
“That all sounds very mysterious, Mr. Riley. I hope you’re not taking everything your client says at face value, because in my experience most criminal cases are exactly what meets the eye.”
“I have reason to suspect that the victim here was killed by completely different people for completely different reasons, and that Rafael was set up. Perhaps I need to back up.”
Walker looked at his watch. “I have to be in court in twenty minutes,” he said. “I’m sure your theory is a fascinating one, and if you want to write it up and send it to me I’ll give it a read. But I’ve got a lot of cases, and I don’t generally go looking for a conspiracy theory.”
“If I could just have a couple of minutes—”
“As I just said, I don’t have a couple of minutes, Mr. Riley. I’ll turn to Mr. … this case as soon as I can. Thanks for dropping off the files.”
62
DARRYL LOOMIS was driving in a loose circle through the congested streets of Midtown, Leah Roth in the Town Car’s backseat. It was early evening, the rush-hour traffic so dense pedestrians were moving faster than cars.
“So,” Leah said. “We’ve finally gotten things under control.”
Darryl glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Not so sure,” he replied.
“We’ve got the reporter boxed in; we’ve got the Nazario case out of Riley’s hands. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t think we’ve really gotten either of them off our backs.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she was over at his apartment the other night,” Darryl said. He had laughed out loud upon hearing about the reporter’s trying to lose her tail by sneaking out of her office and then dodging around Macy’s before making her way to the lawyer’s apartment. She’d succeeded in getting away from her physical tail, but it hadn’t mattered. His men following Candace were mostly just meant to intimidate her.
After stealing Candace’s purse, Darryl had downloaded a surveillance program onto her BlackBerry, then made sure it’d gotten back into her hands. Not only could he read her e-mails, but the device now worked as a GPS, allowing Darryl to pinpoint its whereabouts anytime it was on. Since the reporter carried it with her at virtually all times she was outside her apartment, Darryl could know her location even without any actual surveillance on her.
Leah felt personally jealous as well as professionally betrayed, her jaw clenching tight. “How long was she there?” she asked.
Darryl glanced back at her. It was clearly not a question he’d been expecting. “Maybe an hour.”
“I just offered him a job at the company,” Leah said. She tried to keep her expression composed, not wanting Darryl to glimpse the depth of betrayal she felt. “He was mad about being taken off the Fowler murder. I thought it would be a way to calm him down.”
“How much does he know?” Darryl asked.
“He knows some, and I’m sure he suspects a good deal more,” Leah said. “He’s a long way from the full story,” she added quickly, impulsively protecting Duncan.
“You’re sure about that?”
Leah nodded briskly. “Besides, he’s too much of a lawyer to have given the reporter anything that would directly hurt us.”
“Maybe.”
“His being too much of a lawyer is the whole problem. That’s why he won’t let the case go. Anything else on the reporter?”
“I’ve gone through her computer. She’s trying to make a connection between Fowler and the Aurora, but it doesn’t look like she has all the pieces. Mostly, though, she seems to be digging into Riis and the politicians. Could she take down Markowitz?”
“I doubt she can even try. Dad has an understanding with Friedman as part of dropping the libel suit, so Snow shouldn’t have any room to operate at the paper.”
“Let’s say the reporter and Riley are pooling everything they know. They could piece most everything together, couldn’t they?”
“Even if they could, it’d just be speculation, and what’re they going to do with it? The Journal’s not going to print it without direct evidence. Riley isn’t even Nazario’s lawyer anymore. They can’t hurt us.”
“I’m not sure we’re that protected,” Darryl said, turning back onto the block where Leah’s office was located.
“I’ll deal with Duncan Riley and the paper. Everything went okay with Pellettieri?”
“He’s off the map.”
“I’m not going to ask for any details,” Leah said as she opened the car door. “I don’t want to know.”
AS SHE made her way back to her office Leah wondered for the hundredth time how things had managed to come to this. When exactly had the line been crossed? It’d started with her insistence on knowing what Darryl was going to do about Fowler. That’d led to their next conversation, when she’d become an active participant in planning a man’s death.
After Darryl’s reluctance to say much during their initial conversation as he drove her to work, Leah had insisted on their talking again the following evening. That’d been the same day that Duncan had taken her to lunch at Blue Fin, she recalled now. Darryl had parked the Town Car in front of her office around six o’clock, Leah going out and sitting in the back while he drove through Midtown.
Darryl clearly still hadn’t wanted to tell her anything about what he was going to do. “I’m already in the middle of this, regardless of whether I want to be,” Leah had said. “My biggest concern is how we eliminate the risk of someone connecting anything that might happen to Fowler to my brother.”
“Like I said before, there are ways to contain the scope of a police investigation.”
“By giving them someone to arrest?” Leah asked. “Is that what you mean?”
Darryl raised his eyebrows slightly, though his eyes stayed on the road. Leah had the sense she’d just impressed him. “That’s a possibility, yes. Doesn’t really matter what answers they come up with if they’re asking the wrong questions.”
“Because I had an idea with that,” Leah said, speaking quickly, fully aware that she was an amateur giving advice to a pro. “A lawyer at our outside firm has a client who’s being evicted from Riis because Fowler caught him smoking pot. A teenager. I was thinking, with the law firm, we could have some control over it. Make sure things didn’t end up pointing in our direction.” Leah couldn’t read Darryl; she trailed off, unsure whether she was making a fool of herself.
Finally Darryl spoke. “That could work,” he said. “We wouldn’t want the lawyers in the loop, though. Too risky.”
“The lawyers wouldn’t even know,” Leah said. “That’s the beauty of it.”
It’d been improvised, essentially, bringing in Duncan’s client as the fall guy. Leah hadn’t figured Duncan would find out. If he somehow did, she’d assumed his loyalties, like most people’s, would be
decided by pragmatic considerations. Choosing to be on the side of her family was an easy call, or at least Leah had expected it to be.
It’d been stupid to get involved with Duncan romantically in the midst of it. She’d seen it as a way to guarantee his loyalty; but instead it’d just put him on guard. Not that her own motives in seducing him had been limited to the strategic. She’d found him intriguing, especially as she waited to see when or if he would tell her the thing about himself that she already knew.
Darryl had run a background check on Duncan shortly after the murder, part of his due diligence. He’d presented Leah with a brief summary of what he’d found, including the unforeseen detail that Duncan’s father was black. Once they’d started seeing each other she’d been waiting for Duncan to tell her himself, had been surprised when he hadn’t. It hadn’t mattered to her—if anything it’d made him more interesting. Leah had always felt slightly imprisoned by being born into a powerful family: she was attracted to those who were self-invented, and Duncan was his own invention more than just about anyone else she’d ever met.
Leah knew not everyone would feel the way she did about Duncan’s background. Her father wouldn’t approve of her getting involved with someone who wasn’t white, as such, though he’d be smart enough not to say anything. She wondered if Duncan hadn’t told her because he’d been worried she would have such feelings herself.
Leah remembered what she’d said to Duncan about playing her life like a chess game. Never had that been truer than the last couple of months. She’d seen a way she could use Duncan, and she’d done so, despite her interest in him.
But Duncan had made his own choices too. When the time had come for him to pick a side, he’d gone against her. His loyalty to a poor teenager from the projects apparently trumped his personal ambition. Duncan would have nobody but himself to blame for what was about to happen to him.
63
LIZ PIERCE was in ADA Castelluccio’s office for an update on the case against her ex-husband’s killer. Castelluccio’s least favorite part of her job was dealing with victims’ families. Some DAs took inspiration from it. The families were not their clients in a literal sense—that was the state—but they were obviously the people most invested in the case. And that was the problem: a grieving family reeling from the death of a loved one had little patience with the arcane procedures, evidentiary burdens, and loopholes of criminal law. No one could blame them for that, but that didn’t make getting yelled at for the faults of the justice system any more pleasant.
Justin Peacock Page 37