Blind Man's Alley (14 page)

14

L
EAH ARRIVED
an hour before her father’s seventieth birthday party was scheduled to begin. The house she’d grown up in—a four-story town house on East Seventy-second, between Madison and Park avenues—usually felt ghostly when she returned to it, but this evening it was already bustling with the catering crew setting up.

Leah ignored the swirl of preparation as she searched the house for her father. She was dressed for the party in a backless Dior dress. She preferred business attire, the anonymity it gave her, but she also recognized that one advantage of her thin frame was that it was well suited to cocktail dresses.

She finally found her father in the back garden, where he was smoking a cigar. He was wearing a dress shirt and blazer with no tie, his version of party casual.

“Happy birthday, Daddy,” Leah said, kissing him in greeting.

“Where’s your brother?” Simon asked.

“God knows I actually am my brother’s keeper,” Leah replied. “But that doesn’t mean I always know his whereabouts.”

“The mayor canceled,” Simon said grimly. Leah could tell he was in a foul mood, which didn’t come as a surprise. Her father had been cajoled into throwing the party, despite protesting that no birthday after thirty was cause for celebration.

“I’m sure a person or two worth talking to will show up.”

“I actually enjoyed socializing back when your mother was alive,” Simon said, giving his town house a puzzled look, as though he were seeing it for the first time. “She was a gifted hostess.”

“I remember,” Leah said softly, looking at her father. While most men his age of comparable wealth and position had helped themselves to second or even third wives by now, usually younger versions of their predecessors, Simon had been married to Leah’s mother for nearly twenty-five years, only her death from cancer during Leah’s senior year of high school separating them. Although he’d had the occasional involvement over the past decade or so, as best Leah could tell her father had never come close to remarrying. While she was fully aware that Simon was often calculating and even brutal in his treatment of others in business, as far as she knew he’d been a good and faithful husband. A fundamentally conservative man, Simon believed in marriage, in its civilizing influence. He made no secret of his disappointment that both his children had entered their thirties without wedding rings.

Leah dutifully stood by her father’s side as the first guests arrived, shrugging aside her own discomfort at filling her mother’s role. Stripped of his customary bluster, Simon was visibly ill at ease in the role of jovial host.

Jeremy didn’t show up until the party was well under way. Leah made a beeline over. Jeremy saw her coming and offered a fuzzy smile. “Dad’s already pissed at you,” Leah said. “So don’t act too stoned in front of him.”

“I’m not stoned,” Jeremy said, some vague approximation of offense on his face.

Leah did not even pause to consider whether she bought his denial. “You know, this might be a good time in your life to maybe take stock of some things. Perhaps learning something from recent events might not be a bad idea for you.”

Jeremy pretended he thought she was kidding, offering her a toothy grin. “But then what would you do all day?” he asked.

Leah didn’t feel like the usual banter with her brother. She spotted Duncan Riley over at the bar, glass in hand, looking alone and uncomfortable. “I’ve got to go talk to someone,” she said.

Jeremy leered at her. “I heard you were bringing a date here tonight. Very brave.”

Leah ignored this—Jeremy teased her about boys like they were still in high school. She hadn’t met anyone her brother was involved with in as long as she could remember. “Stay away from Dad and try not to cause any trouble,” she said.

DUNCAN WAS
doing his best not to gawk at his surroundings. He felt the same way he had during his first week at Harvard, wandering around the campus like a tourist rather than a student, staring at the ornate buildings, trying to grasp all the accumulated power and influence they carried. Duncan was now used to being around millionaires: many of his firm’s partners cleared a couple million a year. But this was on a different level: he guessed a town house like this must be worth tens of millions, not to mention the lavish furnishings and high-priced art on the walls.

“You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

Duncan turned to the voice of Leah Roth. She looked different; her hair was down, and she was wearing a sleeveless dress that hugged her willowy frame. There was a softness to her, a femininity that Duncan hadn’t previously seen. For the first time Duncan allowed himself to entertain the thought of going to bed with her. Over Leah’s shoulder he saw Jeremy Roth staring at him, his upper lip curled slightly.

“Actually, I was just plotting how to steal that painting,” Duncan replied, nodding to the late-period Picasso on the wall behind the bar.

“It’s wired,” Leah said. “To an alarm, I mean. You’d better cut the power or wait until the next blackout.”

Duncan, who had mainly been looking at the painting because he didn’t know what else to do with himself, turned back to it. It was a portrait of a couple, their complexions baby blue in color, the man holding a sword. Duncan guessed it was a riff on one of the old masters, perhaps Rembrandt, a musketeer channeled through abstraction. “Do you think someone would stop me if I just grabbed it off the wall and made a sprint for the door?”

“Well, there’re at least three people in the room carrying concealed weapons.”

Duncan laughed; Leah’s expression didn’t change. “You’re serious?” he asked.

“I’m not sure they’d actually shoot you if you tried to make off with the painting—as you probably know, New York’s got pretty stringent laws on the justified use of deadly force—but I can’t promise they wouldn’t.”

Duncan had understood that this was a different sort of party from those he was used to; he hadn’t expected that to include armed guards. “Any particular reason for the show of force?”

“It’s not a party without firearms.”

A black man in his late forties came over and greeted Leah. He was tall—easily six-three—in a perfectly tailored suit, with a shaved head and a trimmed goatee. Duncan had noticed the man earlier—he was one of the few nonwhite people at the party.

“We were just discussing whether Duncan here would get shot if he made a dash for the exits with our Picasso. Darryl, would you shoot?”

The man turned to Duncan. “You actually want that, or you’re just thinking about what it’s worth translated into money?”

“I like it,” Duncan said. “Though I can see why not everybody would.”

“Actually, Darryl,” Leah said, “this is the lawyer I mentioned to you the other day.”

Duncan didn’t understand what was going on, but he saw the man stiffen, giving him an abrupt once-over. He looked at Leah questioningly. She looked back at him with a slight smile that he couldn’t read. Not sure what else to do, Duncan extended his hand to the man, introducing himself.

Darryl looked at Duncan’s hand, holding the pause just long enough for it to be awkward before shaking it.

“So are you finding your pro bono work livelier these days?” Leah asked.

Duncan put it together: this was Darryl Loomis, the man who ran the security firm that Fowler had worked for. He felt blindsided. “I take it Blake talked to you?” he said to Leah.

“And I in turn ran it by Darryl.”

Duncan looked back at the grim-faced Darryl, doing his best to appear contrite. “I’m sorry about Mr. Fowler,” he said. “And sorry we’re on opposite sides of the case, as it were.”

“You got a job to do,” Darryl said.

“I appreciate that.”

Darryl smiled, viciously. “Course, Sean was just doing his job too. In fact, doing his job was the last thing he ever did.”

SIMON ROTH
was in the midst of quietly scolding his son when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Simon turned, found himself looking down into the raised red face of Sam Friedman. “You’re too short for that gesture, Sam,” Simon said.

“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve,” Friedman said.

“Thank you,” Simon said. “You do too. But what’re you talking about?”

“Inviting me to your birthday party while you’re suing me for a hundred and fifty million.”

After making his fortune in real estate, Samuel Friedman had bought the
New York Journal
fifteen years ago, back when a newspaper was still considered a trophy worth owning. Friedman was Roth’s age, the two men encountering each other at board meetings, benefits, and cocktail parties a few times a year. They were too alike to ever be anything more than brusquely cordial to each other.

“The lawyers came up with the numbers; you know that,” Simon said. “And it’s not like I’m suing
you.”

“Sure it is,” Friedman said. “Whose pocket do you think the money comes out of?”

“Your insurance company’s,” Simon said with a laugh. “In any event, I’m pleased to see it didn’t keep you from coming tonight.”

“I came to tell you you’ve got a lot of fucking nerve.”

“That’s what everyone comes for,” Simon said. “But they stay for the crab cakes.”

“Seriously, thirty years we’ve known each other, and you don’t even call before unleashing the dogs?”

“What were you going to do? The article had already run. And besides, I thought you didn’t interfere with the content of the paper.”

“Interfere, no, but my guidance is certainly listened to. You know what’s happening to the newspaper business? The
Journal
lost twelve million dollars last quarter. Last fucking quarter! You put our ad revenue on a chart, it looks like a guy jumping off a cliff. That paper needs legal bills like it needed that asshole Craig to come up with free Internet listings.”

“You didn’t buy a newspaper to get rich, Sam.”

“I didn’t buy it to piss money away either. We can’t resolve this thing like gentlemen?”

Simon smiled, his attention caught as Steven Blake approached them. Blake saw who Simon was talking to, and immediately turned on his heel. “Perhaps we can,” Simon said. “But not here. My wife strictly forbid me from doing business at a party we were hosting.”

“Your wife’s dead, Simon,” Friedman said, not unkindly.

“But I still follow her rules,” Simon replied.

OBEYING HIS
father’s hissed order, Jeremy Roth sought out Mattar Al-Falasi. To his surprise, he found Mattar smoking a cigarette in the garden, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“I didn’t know you drank,” Jeremy blurted, before wondering whether pointing out that a Muslim was drinking alcohol was some kind of faux pas.

“I don’t in front of my father,” Mattar said. His English was very fluent, crisp, his accent a slight variation on an upper-class Englishman’s. Mattar was tall and thin, with a beard he kept trimmed to stubble. He combed his dark hair forward, giving him a boyish look, though he was just a couple of years younger than Jeremy. “He knows I drink occasionally.”

“Me either,” Jeremy said. “In front of your father, I mean, not mine.”

Mattar smiled before taking a drag of his cigarette. “The other night at the restaurant, yes. My father appreciated the gesture, I am sure. He can seem old-fashioned, especially when in a city like this. But then I suppose fathers always seem old-fashioned to their sons.”

“He couldn’t make it tonight?” Jeremy said, struggling to keep his wandering mind on the topic at hand.

“He and my brother had to go to Washington.”

“Business?”

“We like to think we have friends in your country as well, not just people interested in our business.”

“Of course,” Jeremy said, offering up a smile, worried again that he’d just offended Mattar.

“Many of our friends live in your capital, of course.”

“Makes sense,” Jeremy said, wondering how many American politicians this Middle Eastern family had in its pocket.

“But my father wanted me to stay in New York so that I could come here tonight.”

“Just for our party? You certainly didn’t have to stay for this.”

Mattar took a sip of his whiskey. “Birthdays are important. Seventy years—a milestone, yes? My father thought it important that someone from our family be here.”