Justin Peacock

by Blind Man's Alley (v5)

  “What about your deal with Sam Friedman?” Jeremy asked. “I thought he was keeping the reporter away from us.”

  “If she’s really got enough to take us down, Sam will sharpen the knife for her personally. Our understanding will last only as long as it benefits both of us.”

  “So there’s nothing you can do?” Jeremy asked, pleading, just like when he’d gotten into trouble as a teenager and it had fallen on Simon to fix it.

  Simon looked at him sharply. “There are always things that can be done,” he said. “You just stay out of the way.”

  “Listen, Dad,” Jeremy said, “I know I fucked up on this, big-time. I’m sorry, okay?”

  Simon studied his son, his gaze more calculating than anything else. “Once this is over,” Simon said, his voice calm, “once you’re safe, I’ll expect your resignation.”

  Jeremy leaned back in his chair, caught off guard. Simon was stone-faced, outwardly calm except for a small vein throbbing on the side of his forehead. “I said I was sorry—”

  “And I don’t give a fuck about any apology from you,” Simon interrupted. “Getting you out of this is the last thing I’m ever going to do for you, understand? You’re on your own.”

  Jeremy had a queasy smile on his face. “I get that you’re angry—”

  “I’m not angry,” Simon said, again interrupting. “I’m past anger, past disappointment. I’m giving up on you, Jeremy. I’ve given you everything I can imagine a person having, every advantage, and you’ve turned it all to shit.”

  Jeremy started to say something, then abruptly stood up and walked out. After he was gone, Simon had sat perfectly still for several minutes. He wondered if this was all his fault somehow. On some level he was sure it was—that he’d let things be too easy for Jeremy, made him spoiled and soft. Although if anyone was to blame for spoiling his son it was his late wife. Simon pushed that thought aside: he wasn’t going to blame Rachel for the sins of her son.

  Perhaps it was simply that wealth always corrupted. Simon himself had been raised quite comfortably, but with nothing like the money he now possessed: his father, Isaac, had started the business, eventually owning a string of apartment buildings in Harlem and Brooklyn. Isaac Roth had come to this country as a boy, grown up on the Lower East Side with nothing to speak of. He had started Roth Properties with a single four-story building and ended up with over a dozen, accomplishing it all on a City College education and an appetite for risk.

  Isaac Roth had been, technically, a slumlord, though Simon considered the label unfair—there’d been no horror stories of rat-infested apartments or holes in the roofs of his father’s buildings. But they’d been tenements, their occupants poor and mostly nonwhite. Isaac’s business model had been simple: he spent as little as possible on buildings that had fallen into disrepair, often those with numerous citations from the city, fixed them up, and then doubled the rent. Many existing residents hadn’t been able to afford the new prices, and a certain amount of displacement had followed.

  His father had been criticized for this, of course. But the reality was that he had often taken over buildings that were barely inhabitable and made them into someplace livable. Entire neighborhoods would’ve fallen apart completely if it weren’t for people like his father. You were damned either way: you left the buildings in their squalor and you were exploiting the poor; you fixed things up and charged rent accordingly and you were disrupting their neighborhood.

  Not that his father had been a saint. Sometimes, yes, it was necessary to remove tenants who didn’t want to leave, and the best way to accomplish that was by making staying too unpleasant. Isaac had employed people—off the books—who specialized in such things. Lack of heat was one way; breaking the front lock of the building to allow vagrants to sleep in the lobby was another. Actual violence was rarely necessary, but Simon had no doubt that his father had done things he wasn’t proud of, and which his son had never known about.

  While his father had never tried to hide his humble origins, Simon had joined the company after obtaining a Columbia MBA. The education hadn’t just taught him different ways of conducting business; it had taught him how to interact with the city’s blue bloods in a way his father had never even considered attempting. Simon had understood from his first day that the company needed to go more upscale, that no matter how much money came from renting out tenements in the city’s minority neighborhoods it would never buy them real power. His father hadn’t concerned himself with such things: the idea of joining New York society had never crossed his mind as a possibility. But things had changed, and New York’s WASP elite could no longer afford their snobbery: people like Simon had simply taken over too much of the city from them.

  From the start, Simon’s focus had been on commercial real estate, betting big on Midtown office space just as many of the large Wall Street players had started migrating uptown. The money had grown exponentially, until the family was one of the top five developers in the city.

  Simon had thought of the Riis development as taking the family business full circle. His father had owned tenements; now Simon was playing a central role in transforming the city’s housing for the poor. He wanted to turn a profit on it, sure, had authorized Loomis’s people to be on the lookout for evictions—a mistake, he now realized, although it’d seemed harmless at the time. But Jacob Riis was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put his stamp on the city, his Robert Moses moment. Simon thought it would end up being his most enduring legacy, assuming they weren’t engulfed by scandal.

  Twenty years ago he’d expected Jeremy to one day grow the family’s empire, though certainly not as dramatically as he himself had. He’d even imagined his only son going into politics, expanding the family’s position that way. Of course, that particular dream had been dashed by the time Jeremy was a teenager, when he’d nearly been thrown out of Horace Mann after getting caught with ecstasy.

  Perhaps Simon’s big mistake had been not cutting his losses with Jeremy early, doubling down on Leah instead. She’d always been the more talented of the two; there was no doubt about that. Simon had been old-fashioned about it, unable to imagine that his daughter would one day run a major development company. When Leah was born, there were no women in the upper reaches of New York real estate. But that too had changed, and once he’d realized it Simon had welcomed Leah into the business. Still, he hadn’t encouraged her to think that way when she was growing up, and she’d never quite forgiven him for initially favoring Jeremy as the heir apparent.

  And now here Leah was, maybe even more exposed than Jeremy, even though she’d just been trying to protect her brother. Simon was pissed that she’d tried to handle it on her own, that she’d dug them in deeper rather than gotten them out. Leah had always been protective of her brother; even as a child she’d had that. She’d taken that loyalty too far, but as faults went it was better than most. And no doubt she’d worried that if she’d brought it to him, he would respond by cutting Jeremy off. She hadn’t been wrong about that.

  It was too late for Simon to undo any of it now; all that was left was trying to keep it from destroying his family completely. So that was what he would do. He would finish it. He would stop the reporter the only way that was left. If suspicions fell on him, he’d just have to ride it out.

  So yesterday Simon had picked up his office phone and called Darryl Loomis.

  It was the first time Simon had even contemplated having someone killed, and he still couldn’t quite believe it. Simon had hired Darryl a couple of years ago, and he’d quickly proved indispensible. Roth Properties had always had private security guards on retainer, used them on-site. They were the people on the front lines, doing battle with the assorted unions that controlled the city’s construction industries. Although the situation was much better than it used to be, the unions were still occasionally entangled with organized crime, and even the ones that weren’t tended to corruption of one sort or another. Bargaining took you only so far; you needed to
be able to back it up. Simon had hired Darryl because he was tougher than the rest, and Darryl’s ability to intimidate had quickly paid dividends.

  Darryl had certainly gone right up to the line for him before, if not past it—wiretaps, surveillance, snatching up the trash of competitors and scouring it for information. But Simon had never known just how far Darryl would go, had never wanted to know. It appalled him that Leah had authorized Darryl to kill someone, no matter how big a jam Jeremy was in. But he couldn’t undo what had already been done.

  They were already all in: both his children at risk of going to prison for the rest of their lives. Simon was used to thinking big-picture; it was part of his job description. There were all sorts of cost-benefit trade-offs to any big real estate project, people whose lives were hurt by it in one way or another. Murder was different, of course, but how different was it, really? Construction workers died, as they had at the Aurora, and no one called for the abolition of skyscrapers.

  He was a builder; that was his function, and society needed its builders to be capable of ruthlessness. So the only question for Simon was whether they could pull it off. There was nothing for him to do now but wait, and there was nothing Simon hated more than waiting. He felt powerless, but he also knew that he had his best soldiers on it, that both Blake and Loomis would go to the wall, and would keep their mouths shut if things broke badly.

  He wasn’t letting himself think about what came next. Simon hadn’t talked to Leah since Jeremy had told him the truth. He would forgive her eventually, but wasn’t quite ready to do so yet. As for Jeremy, Simon had meant what he said: his son was not getting another chance from him.

  He’d have someone’s blood on his hands, have to see what living with that was like. But what Simon could not live with was the destruction of everything he’d built.

  84

  DUNCAN STUDIED Leah as Alena announced that she’d made a recording. Even from across the room he could see the muscles in her jawline clenching. He wondered if there was any part of her that felt relief, or if she’d been willing to just keep fighting, no matter how many more crimes it meant committing and how many more people it hurt.

  Duncan turned his attention to Blake, who was uncharacteristically hesitating. Blake was clearly aware that he’d fallen into a lawyer’s worst nightmare on cross. On the one hand, asking further questions was risking more unpleasant surprises, but on the other, there was no way to shove the genie back into the bottle. If Blake sat down now it would just allow Duncan to apply the coup de grâce.

  It was the judge who spoke first. “You recorded conversations between yourself and Jeremy Roth?” he asked Alena.

  “Just one conversation.”

  “And you have that tape here with you?”

  “I do.”

  Blake turned to the judge. “Your Honor, obviously there are issues of authenticity, of chain of custody, not to mention the legality of any purported recording.”

  “New York is a one-party-consent state to recording conversations, Your Honor,” Duncan said, his mind flashing briefly to Candace and the digital recorder she kept in her pocket—the very same recorder that Alena had used. “Ms. Porter did not make this recording at the direction of law enforcement, so there’s no issue of entrapment or the like.”

  “I’ll hear the recording,” Lasky said. “I’m reserving judgment on its admissibility. Let’s get all the cards on the table, then go from there.”

  Alena stayed in the witness box while Duncan produced a CD containing the recording of her conversation with Jeremy Roth. There was some wrangling among the lawyers and the judge over the disc’s origins, but Alena didn’t pay attention. Those years on the runway had made her an expert at separating her mind from her body. So while she sat poised attentively in the courtroom, her thoughts went back to the events that had brought her here.

  She never would have imagined that calling the reporter would ultimately bring her to the witness stand at a murder trial. She hadn’t even heard of Sean Fowler or Rafael Nazario when she’d first met with Candace Snow. If she’d had the slightest idea where it would all lead, she was pretty much certain she would’ve kept her mouth shut.

  But it hadn’t been the reporter who’d made it go this far; it’d been the sudden appearance two days ago of the man who’d been waiting for her outside Ivy’s apartment. They’d talked out on the street for a few minutes, Darryl trying to get her to come with him right then to go see Jeremy. Alena hadn’t even considered doing so; she’d claimed to have an appointment for later that afternoon. Darryl clearly hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer, but was trying to seem nice about it too. She’d finally agreed to meet Jeremy for a drink that night.

  Alena had felt something like terror at the thought. She’d been frightened of Darryl the whole time they were talking, even though it was on a busy street in broad daylight. She hadn’t been able to shake the thought that Jeremy must’ve found out she’d talked to the reporter. She knew too much about the Roths, and now she also knew the danger that could bring.

  She was scared of Jeremy now. People who’d stood in his way ended up dead; she believed that. She recognized that there was no limit to his selfishness, nothing that restrained him from hurting other people—or causing them to be hurt—to get what he wanted. The way he had treated her before, how he had used her, was just a symptom of his larger disease.

  So she’d called the reporter, told her about the man who’d been waiting for her outside Ivy’s apartment. “The first thing you should know is that you may be being followed,” Candace said. “They can probably get inside your apartment too, so don’t leave anything around you wouldn’t want them to see.”

  “You’re not helping,” Alena said after a moment.

  “We don’t have time for sugarcoating. How did you leave things with Darryl?”

  “I said I had an appointment with someone from my agency this afternoon, but that I’d meet Jeremy tonight for a drink.”

  “Then you should go meet somebody, in case they’re watching you. Listen, Alena, you can get an innocent man out of jail, help solve two murders. Are you willing to do that?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Alena said. “I’m an unemployed model who doesn’t even have an apartment. I’m not a lawyer or a reporter or anything like that.”

  “Which is exactly why you can do things here that we can’t.”

  Alena had closed her eyes, trying to figure out how she’d gotten herself in the middle of this. The reporter couldn’t stop Jeremy; neither could the lawyer. Both had admitted they didn’t have the ammunition. And neither could even begin to penetrate the layers that insulated him from the actual violence. There was only one person who could slip through, Alena realized. There was only her.

  She was scared, but also angry, and she had never really had a chance to help someone like this. “What is it you want me to do?” she’d heard herself say.

  As arranged, Alena had waited an hour and then walked up to a coffee shop called Mud, a few blocks from Ivy’s apartment. A few minutes later a man she’d never seen before had come in, looked around, and then hesitatingly come over to her. He’d introduced himself as Alex Costello, said he was a reporter at the Journal. He’d made a call on his cell phone, and then handed it over to Alena. The lawyer, Duncan Riley, had been on with Candace, and they’d walked her through the plan they’d scrambled together. Costello had given her a small padded envelope containing a digital recorder, telling her not to open it until she was home.

  At nine o’clock she’d met Jeremy at the Flatiron Lounge, a deliberately retro bar in Chelsea that Jeremy had always been partial to—Alena suspected it was because the drinks were so strong. Jeremy was already there, seated at a far back table, nobody else near him. He’d stood in greeting upon seeing her, kissing her awkwardly on the cheek. Jeremy was dressed in a suit without a tie, and seemed as eager as a teenager on a first date as he got her a drink.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for a while,” he
said. “I’m glad you agreed to meet. I’m sorry for whatever misunderstanding we had before.”

  She wasn’t here to fight with him, Alena reminded herself. She wasn’t going to get what she’d come for if she reacted honestly. “Okay,” she said, unable to come up with something more that would seem even remotely plausible.

  “That’s what you were mad at me about, leaving the bar that night? I was just tired, is all, and Mattar wanted to stay out and I needed to be on his good side. He was harmless, though, right?”

  “I’m not sure ‘harmless’ is a good word to describe Mattar,” Alena said. “He didn’t end up doing business with you, did he?”

  “But I mean nothing weird happened? I tried calling you a few times later on that night, but you never picked up.”

  Christ, Alena thought, Jeremy was actually jealous of Mattar after leaving her alone with him. She didn’t know how to respond, especially given her awareness that every word was being recorded and might end up on the front page of a newspaper. “Mattar was just fucking with you, you know,” she said. “It was a power play is all. They’d already decided not to buy in.”

  “It’s not like I liked him either,” Jeremy said, Alena surprised by his lack of reaction. “I just had to hang out with him. It was always business. Did he make a move on you that night?”

  “I left a few minutes after you did,” Alena said, wondering if the whole reason Jeremy had been so desperate to see her was simply because he needed to know whether she’d slept with Mattar. She doubted that Jeremy was self-aware enough to know it, if that was the case. “But listen, before we talk more about anything else, there’s something I’ve got to tell you about. A reporter tracked me down yesterday. She said some pretty wild things.”

  Jeremy’s reaction was immediate: he leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “Was it the woman from the Journal?”