Blind Man's Alley (21 page)

25

R
AFAEL HADN’T
known his mother was coming to New York until she showed up at the jail. Yara had come alone, which surprised Rafael: he would’ve expected her to hide behind his grandmother.

Yara had given birth to Rafael when she was little older than he was now. His parents had never been legally married, though they’d lived together in Vieques for the first few years of his life. When Rafael was about three his father had come up to New York, looking for work. The idea had been for Yara and Rafael to follow a month or so later, but that month had somehow turned into a year of waiting to be summoned north.

So Yara had finally taken matters into her own hands, bringing Rafael with her on an unannounced trip. Rafael was too young to remember any of it himself, but what Yara had discovered in New York was that his father was living with another woman.

Looking back, Rafael understood that his mother must have suspected what she was going to find. Nevertheless, she’d decided to stay in New York. A short time later Yara’s mother had come up from Vieques and moved in with them. In Rafael’s earliest memories, he was already living in Jacob Riis with his mother and grandmother. He had never seen his father again, had no actual memory of the man, wouldn’t recognize him if they passed on the street.

When Rafael was twelve his mother had been arrested and sent to prison, and his grandmother had brought him up on her own from there. Rafael gave her most of the credit for seeing that he came up right: she’d been stuck with the hard years, when the temptations of drugs and gangs claimed so many of his classmates from the projects. Rafael had stayed in school, graduating from high school last spring, been working full-time at Alchemy ever since. He loved it at the restaurant, was taking classes so that he could one day become a proper chef, maybe even open a restaurant of his own.

But those dreams were distant now. It was hard to imagine any kind of future at all while in the harsh confines of Rikers. So Rafael focused on the present, and the surprising sight of his mother in the visiting room.

This was the first time Rafael had seen Yara in almost a year. It’d been nearly seven years since they’d last lived together, since her arrest. She’d been caught in her then-boyfriend’s apartment in a raid, charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. Yara had insisted she wasn’t involved, resisted taking a plea till the last possible second, and even then she’d refused to testify against her boyfriend. She’d ended up being sentenced to eight to twelve years and doing over five. Upon her release Yara had decided to return to Vieques. Rafael hadn’t considered going with her: he’d grown up in New York, it was home, and by then his grandmother felt more like his parent than his mother did.

Rafael had gone down to Puerto Rico the last two Christmases, but other than that he hadn’t seen his mother since right after she got out of prison. She hadn’t previously come up to New York since moving back to Vieques: Yara blamed the city for what had happened to her, though Rafael thought that bullshit, just a way of making excuses for herself.

“You didn’t need to come up here,” Rafael said in Spanish as she sat across from him in the visiting room.

“Of course I did,” Yara replied, also in Spanish. Her eyes were already welling with tears. She’d just turned forty, although Rafael thought she looked older: she’d grown heavy, her hair fast turning gray. “My only son in jail.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should’ve made you come back home with me,” Yara said, a tear escaping. She made no effort to wipe it away, as though she didn’t even know it was there. “It’s this city; it just eats our people up.”

“Don’t cry, Mom,” Rafael said. “I don’t want to see you cry.”

“You were always so good. I know I disappointed you, but I tried.”

Rafael’s own vulnerability came out in anger. “How could you try from a jail cell?” he said.

Yara looked stung; he could see her fighting her own anger down. “I held you in my heart every day I spent in jail,” she said. “I said a prayer for you first thing when I woke up and last thing before I went to sleep.”

Rafael didn’t know why he’d brought it up, why they were rehashing all of this again. But now that it was there it was hard to let it go. “You could have made a deal right away; you could have testified against Emilio. You didn’t have to end up spending all that time in prison.”

Yara finally took out a tissue to wipe the tears off her face, Rafael feeling bloated with guilt and shame for making her suffer more than she already was just by seeing him like this. “It was nothing but hard choices back then,” Yara said. “If I could make things come out different I would.”

“I know, Mom,” Rafael said, trying to make peace.

“I wish you’d come back with me after I’d got out. Things can be hard in Vieques too, but people stick together there.”

“I thought New York was where I belonged,” Rafael said, realizing as he said it that he was no longer sure it was true. “One thing I’ve learned in here—I’ll always be a Puerto Rican, not an American.”

“When this case gets cleared up, maybe you can think about coming down to Vieques to live. What does your lawyer say?”

“The DA offered a plea if I’d do twenty-five years. Turned that down, so now we got to fight it.”

“I don’t understand why they can’t just clear this up.”

Rafael had felt the same way when he’d first been arrested, but not anymore. Now he found it naive. “Nobody cares what really happened,” he said. “Just find the first Puerto Rican who might have a reason to shoot the white guy, put him in jail for it. How it’s always been.”

Yara started crying again, more fiercely this time. “I know I messed things up with you. This city, I just couldn’t live here anymore. I haven’t been there for you when you needed me.”

“You didn’t need to come back here,” Rafael said, coldness seeping back into his voice. He wasn’t going to trust his mother to be there for him, wasn’t going to open up to her. She couldn’t help him here—she’d never helped him, and he didn’t need to be let down right now. “I’m going to get through this same way I have everything else—on my own.”

26

D
UNCAN HADN’T
bothered to try to talk to the eyewitness to Fowler’s shooting while he’d been assuming the case would reach a quick plea. Chris Driscoll, like Fowler, was an ex-cop, which presumably meant both that he’d be a good eyewitness and that he’d do what he could to see Fowler’s alleged killer put down. The point in talking to him was to see if there were any flaws in his story, anything that could be exploited down the road, and also to get a sense of how the man came across. There were established methods for attacking eyewitness identifications—the unreliability of interracial IDs, the weapons-focus effect—but at the end of the day a believable witness was just that.

Unsure whether Driscoll would agree to meet, Duncan decided to go over to Jacob Riis unannounced in the evening and try to find him there. He left the office around seven, took a cab to Twelfth Street and Avenue D, since Alphabet City was largely off the subway grid, a relic of its tenement past.

This wasn’t his part of town, and Duncan had no doubt it showed. He kept his pace brisk, walking purposefully even though he wasn’t exactly certain where he was going, wanting to seem sure of himself. Not that he was worried: while daylight was fading, the time was long past where the lettered avenues of Alphabet City had been said to stand for Attention, Beware, Caution, and Death. Avenue D still lagged far beyond the others in terms of gentrification, but you no longer took your life in your hands by walking down it.

This was particularly true because the transformation of Jacob Riis was already well under way. The city was tearing down the existing buildings one block at a time, putting residents in another project as they were displaced, or else giving them federal Section 8 vouchers that they could use to cover rent at private residences. They’d taken out two square blocks so far—from Thirteenth Street to Eleventh. That was where the security guards were concentrated; it was where Duncan eventually found his way to Chris Driscoll.

Driscoll was in his late forties, burly but fit, with sandy brown hair and pale blue eyes that gave him a ghostly look. Duncan had found him walking along the edge of the new buildings, where they met the remaining project. When he’d introduced himself as Rafael’s lawyer, Driscoll hadn’t seemed surprised.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about that night?” Duncan asked, he and Driscoll standing somewhat awkwardly next to a plywood wall blocking off the construction site. Duncan realized they were less than a block from where Fowler had been shot.

“I was expecting someone from his side,” Driscoll said. “But nothing I know is going to help your guy.”

“How long have you been working for Darryl Loomis?”

“Almost two years now.”

“Did you know Sean Fowler well?”

“I saw Sean pretty much every day once we were both detailed to Riis. Can’t really help but get to know a man you work with that closely.”

“What exactly do you guys do here on site?”

“It’s a mix of foot patrol and manning the booths we set up by the equipment. Main thing is to make sure you don’t get people sneaking into the construction site and making off with stuff. Because nobody’s actually living there now, people see it as an easy target.”

“Had there been any trouble before the shooting?”

“Some kids trying to climb the fence for kicks, that sort of thing, but in my line of work we don’t call that trouble.”

“Did Fowler ever have problems with anybody around here?”

“You mean other than your client?”

Duncan didn’t take the bait, grinning instead. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

One side of Driscoll’s mouth curled into something like a smile. “We’ve busted some people around here on some minor stuff. There were things that people got used to getting away with ’cause cops don’t give a fuck what happens on Avenue D unless a body drops. Now they got us writing it up. You don’t make a place like this ready for civilians without skimming the scum off the top. That’s what we’re doing, and we’re getting it done, but it don’t make us any friends. Actually it probably does, ’cause there’s some perfectly decent people stuck in this shit-hole, but they’re never going to tell us thanks.”

Against his better judgment Duncan found himself liking Driscoll. “You guys ever break anything up that might’ve made you enemies?”

“The drug boys weren’t exactly putting out a welcome mat. You transform this into someplace livable, you take down the neighborhood dealers as collateral damage.”

“Drug dealing was pretty entrenched here?”

Driscoll shrugged. “Same as any other project like this.”

“But they didn’t ever give you any problems?”

“Dealers are like cockroaches. You shine a light somewhere, they know to avoid it. They just go somewhere else.”

“That doesn’t mean they liked the disruption.”

“What it does mean is, they’re generally going to know better than to do battle with the keepers of the peace. They don’t need the attention. We never had any problems with the dealers here.”

“How much actual dealing is there?”

“Fair amount. Used to be everything from Avenue B on over was pretty much little Amsterdam. Back when you had squats and abandoned buildings everywhere, there were guys on every corner. Now you got an East Village yuppie with a jones, he lives on Avenue A, but his condo development chased out the corner dealer. So he hits the projects.”

“Do you guys go after them?”

Driscoll laughed. “You kidding? We’re here to provide security to the construction site. We’re not here to be cops.”

“But Fowler allegedly busted my client for smoking a joint.”

“Somebody wants to shove it in our face, sure, we make a citizen’s, call in the NYPD Housing Bureau, hand it off. Get rid of the people who won’t be able to live in a civilized version of this place.”

“But drug dealers don’t fall into that category?”

“Hey, in a perfect world, right? But we’re not in a position to take down a real crew, and plus my guess is those guys will take themselves out of the mix anyway. They can’t operate in a functioning environment. Once this place is livable they’ll be moving on.”

“You’re sure of that?”

Driscoll shrugged. “I’m just the hired help,” he said. “What do you want from me?”

Duncan figured that was as much big picture as it was useful to get. “Can you walk me through what happened that night?” he asked.

“There’s not a whole lot to walk through. Sean had been on a patrol. I was coming over to sub him out for his break. When I saw him he was arguing with someone. They were standing under a streetlight on Tenth, Sean with his back to me while the kid, your client, was facing me. I was less than a block away when your client drew down and shot him. It happened real quick; I didn’t see it coming, so I didn’t react like I would’ve in my prime, twenty years ago when I was a uniform walking a beat. I yelled; he took off, cut into the project. I wanted to go after him but I needed to check on Sean first. A couple of cops from the housing unit showed up a minute or so later.”

“So you never went chasing after the shooter?”

Driscoll shook his head. “I stayed with Sean. By the time the cops got there I was pretty sure he was gone, but I wasn’t going to leave him. But once the ambulance arrived we wanted to work quickly to try and make an ID. The Housing Authority has photos of every resident, so I went down to the station and they showed me pictures of everybody who was about the right age and description. It only took about five minutes before I found him.”

“Then what?”

“They went and picked him up, had me take a look in person. I made the ID, and here we are.”

“And you were sure of your ID? Even though you’d never seen Rafael before that night?”

Driscoll laughed off the suggestion. “I’ve been doing this since you were in middle school. Making somebody is second nature to me.”

“Sure, but they brought him to you in the back of a squad car. Obviously the police were letting you know they thought this was the guy.”

“They thought he was the guy; I thought he was the guy. We all thought he was the guy. That’s because he was the guy.”

CANDACE WAS
making her way east on Tenth Street, heading back to Jacob Riis, when she saw them. It was only the lawyer, Riley, whom she recognized, but she figured it had to be Driscoll that he was talking to, the two of them up the block on the far side of Avenue D. Driscoll, the very guy she herself had come down here looking for.

Instinct told her to hang back, and so Candace dawdled on the sidewalk, moving around slowly without going anywhere. Her first reaction had been to assume there was something sinister in spotting the two of them together, but as she thought it through Candace realized that she had nothing but her gut to back that up. If confronted, Duncan could simply say that he was interviewing the eyewitness in the murder case against his client. And for all she knew, that was what he was actually doing.

But she didn’t for a second believe it. Both these men served the same master. Whatever they were talking about right now, it was in Simon Roth’s interest. The fix was in. She didn’t have the pieces, but she could feel it.

This Riley was fairly young, still getting himself established. He was quite possibly in over his head on this. Maybe he’d talk. Hell, maybe he’d want to talk. She decided to take a swing, see where it got her. If she had something to lose, she couldn’t see what it was.

Finally the two men went their separate ways, Duncan heading south on D, walking right toward her. Candace stood still on the corner, looking straight at him, waiting for him to notice.

He was still across the street, waiting for the light to change, when he did. Duncan quickly looked away, pretending he hadn’t seen her. As he crossed Avenue D, Candace realized he was planning to walk right past. Even people with something to hide weren’t usually this obvious about it.

She sidestepped directly into Duncan’s path, giving him no choice but to look up. “Remember me?” Candace said.

“I can’t talk to you,” Duncan said. He’d stopped, but wasn’t looking at her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re a represented party on the other side of a case. I’m not allowed to talk to you. You know, ethically.”

“I’m not here to talk about the libel suit.”

This didn’t appear to make Duncan any more comfortable. “Look, I’m not just making this up. If Rosenstein found out I was talking to you without him around, he’d bring me up before the bar.”

“Whatever it is, I hereby waive it, okay? I’m the one who came up to you.”

“Did you want to call me an asshole again?”

Candace felt herself flush. “I’m sorry I called you an asshole. I know you were just doing your job. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been called worse things in the line of duty myself.”

“I don’t find that so difficult to believe,” Duncan said. “Moving on, just for a second, are you following me?”

“Why would I be doing that?”

“I have no idea. Is there some other reason you’re standing here?”

“You and I should talk.”

“About what?”

“Simon Roth,” Candace said.

“That’s not something that you and I are going to talk about.”

“Why not?”

Duncan made a face. “I’m not allowed to talk
to
you, and I’m also not allowed to talk
about
him. So talking to you about him is pretty much out of the picture.”

“Rafael Nazario then.”

Duncan’s surprise was visible, as Candace had hoped it would be. “How do you know about Rafael Nazario?”

“It’s not a secret that he’s your client, is it?”

“Of course not. But I don’t know why it’s of interest to you.”

“Let’s go talk about it. I’ll buy you a drink.”

Duncan was looking away from her, as though mapping out an escape route. “I’m still working,” he said.

“So I’ll buy you a latte. There’s gotta be a Starbucks on Avenue B by now.”