Blind Man's Alley (30 page)

39

S
O WHAT
can I do for you, Candace?” ADA Sullivan asked.

“You can confirm for me that you’re about to indict Jack Pellettieri on homicide charges,” Candace replied.

Sullivan’s eyes narrowed in surprise. They’d met up at Mustang Sally’s, a bar a couple of blocks south of Madison Square Garden. Candace figured Sullivan didn’t want her coming anywhere near his own office, risk anyone seeing him talking to a reporter.

Sullivan had already been there when she’d arrived just after seven, seated at a small table in the front corner of the bar, his back against the wall, a glass of clear liquid in front of him. Candace wondered idly whether it was alcohol. Sullivan had found the most isolated spot in the room, a place where he couldn’t be overheard and from which he could keep an eye on everyone else. Paranoid, perhaps, but as head of the Manhattan DA’s Rackets Bureau, Sullivan no doubt had plenty of enemies in low places.

“Grand jury proceedings are secret, as I’m sure you know,” Sullivan finally said.

Candace smiled. “So you’re presenting Pellettieri to a grand jury?”

“Did I say that?” Sullivan replied, mock innocent. “We need some ground rules here. No using my name, no direct quotes.”

“The Aurora accident would never have been referred to you if it wasn’t for my reporting.”

Sullivan offered a slight nod. “Why do you think I’m sitting here?” he said.

“I’m hoping you’re here to tell me what your game plan is on prosecuting it.”

Sullivan smiled dryly, the fingers of his right hand dancing across the table. “And why would I want to do that?”

“I’ve got things to trade, plus you’d have a forum. You’re going up against people who know how to get their voices heard.”

“My arena’s the courtroom,” Sullivan said stubbornly.

“Sure, but I think we both know how the world works,” Candace replied. “Is Pellettieri the only person you’re looking to indict?”

“I read your article on Councilwoman Serran the other day,” Sullivan said. “I hear the attorney general’s office is opening an investigation. Think she’ll survive?”

“My guess is no,” Candace said. “Are you trying to change the subject?”

Sullivan shrugged, looking around the room. “Do we have an understanding as to the terms of our conversation?”

“On background,” Candace offered. “Senior law enforcement with knowledge of the investigation.”

Sullivan nodded, an old hand at this. “Pellettieri’s the first person I’m looking to indict. You build a prosecution one brick at a time, and you start with the case you’re sure you can make.”

“So you think other people were involved?”

“I think it’s worth finding out,” Sullivan said. “Especially given past sins.”

“Meaning you think his company’s still connected?”

“I prosecuted his brother, you know. Back then Pellettieri Concrete was deep into no-shows, skimming, double billing—all the ways the mob likes to bleed the construction industry. All things I’m seeing at the Aurora too.”

Candace realized that Sullivan suspected organized crime was behind the Aurora. She thought he was on the wrong track, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “Why’d you leave the company standing the first time?” she asked instead.

“They were a real concrete company too, and we didn’t have anything on Jack. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything there, but I didn’t find it.”

“Are you looking into whether people above Pellettieri at the Aurora knew what he was up to?”

Sullivan seemed surprised by the question. “Pellettieri wasn’t the lowest bid on concrete for the Aurora, which was a red flag. But that also just happens—somebody’s owed a favor, the contractor doesn’t trust the low bidder to get the job done, whatever. There’s no reason for Omni to let a sub get away with shit like that. My bigger concern is whether the mob was pulling Pellettieri’s strings.”

Sullivan gave her a look, Candace guessing he was hoping she’d offer up some confirmation that organized crime had been involved. “Are you’re hoping to flip Pellettieri?” she asked.

“Premature to speculate about that,” Sullivan said. “So maybe now’s a good time for you to tell me something.”

Candace didn’t like helping law enforcement actually make their case—it put her too close to them—but she also knew sometimes you had to give information to get it. “Has your investigation looked at Sean Fowler at all?”

Candace had half expected Sullivan to already have Sean Fowler in his sights, but the prosecutor looked blank. “Who’s that?”

“He was a security guard at the Aurora. He’s also been murdered.”

Sullivan frowned, the drumming of his fingers increasing in intensity. “He was involved with Pellettieri?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Candace replied, not wanting to say more than she had to. “But I’ve heard whispers, yeah.”

“Has there been an arrest in his murder?”

Candace nodded. “A project teenager.”

Sullivan frowned. “Are you suggesting this Fowler’s death connects to the Aurora in some way?”

“I’m nowhere near being able to prove that,” Candace said. “But it might not be a bad idea for you to take a look.”

“What’s the connection between Fowler and Pellettieri?”

“The money that Pellettieri was moving,” Candace said. “I’m hearing he didn’t keep it all. Fowler may have been the conduit. Have I earned my keep now?”

“You’re saying that I’ve got a dead bagman on my hands?” Sullivan said. “I’m not hearing that.”

“Maybe you haven’t asked the right questions,” Candace replied.

40

D
UNCAN WAS
struggling to pay attention. He was defending Jeremy Roth’s deposition, and it was taking a lot of effort just to listen to the questions and make objections.

Duncan had spent a frustrating day prepping Jeremy earlier in the week. Jeremy had shown up forty-five minutes late, looking hungover (Duncan thinking that it must be Jeremy, and not his father, that Pellettieri had called a drunken creep) and was completely uninterested in actually preparing. Jeremy seemed outright hostile: Duncan wondered if Jeremy knew about his budding involvement with Leah, and perhaps disapproved of her mingling with the help.

Dealing with Jeremy’s depo was the first real work Duncan had done since getting back from his mother’s funeral. He hadn’t been sleeping well, which at least gave him an excuse for his constant irritability. Duncan had been in no mood to try to make the prep session useful in light of Jeremy’s attitude, so they’d ended up going through the motions, the sense of mutual contempt becoming dangerously close to overt.

Jeremy had at least shown up clear-eyed and feisty for his actual deposition. If anything, too feisty: his answers were prolix and arrogant.

Duncan was mildly surprised that this deposition was taking place at all: he’d thought the case would’ve been settled by now. The plaintiffs had their hooks into Pellettieri, and that was what they were going to get. Pellettieri had made a settlement offer, which the plaintiffs had countered, but Duncan had no direct involvement with the negotiations and only a tenuous sense of where things stood.

“Mr. Roth, did you have a supervisory role in the Aurora Tower construction project?” Isaac Marcus asked. They were a couple of hours into the deposition, Marcus finally making his way into the meat of Jeremy’s testimony.

“It depends what you mean,” Jeremy replied. “I was supervising it from the developer’s perspective. Which is quite different from supervising the construction itself.”

“Would it be fair to say that you were the person at Roth Properties who knew the most about the day-to-day operations at the construction site?”

“That would be accurate as far as it goes in terms of our company, but it’s still pretty misleading. We’re not focused on the construction so much, certainly not on a day-to-day basis. That’s the general contractor’s job.”

“Prior to the accident were you aware that Pellettieri Concrete had submitted bills for what’s known as secondary support work—work that is intended to ensure the safety of concrete while it hardens?”

“This is a half-billion-dollar construction project, counsel,” Jeremy said condescendingly. “I wouldn’t be aware of every small invoice.”

“Are you aware as you sit here today that those bills were submitted?”

“Yes, they were.”

“And they were paid?”

“Of course. Contractors’ bills get paid; otherwise they don’t work, put a lien on the property.”

“Do you know whether the actual work was performed?”

“I know now it was not.”

“When did you first become aware that this work had not been performed?”

“I’m not sure,” Jeremy said.

Marcus looked skeptical. “Wasn’t this an important piece of information?” he asked.

“What was important was that three people had died at the construction site. Figuring out why came after, and whether we had paid for the work was hardly relevant.”

“Were you aware that this safety work had not been performed prior to the accident?”

“How could I have been?” Jeremy said irritably. “I was never on site, not since the groundbreaking. All I knew about the actual construction I learned at the monthly status meetings, and there was never any discussion at those meetings of a problem with the secondary supports, or with anything involving the concrete.”

“Do you think your company, as the developers of the building, had a responsibility to know that essential safety work had not been performed?”

“That question shows a basic ignorance of how real estate developers work,” Jeremy said, Duncan wishing Jeremy wasn’t laying it on quite so thick with the superiority. He’d have to try to find a polite way of conveying that at the break, though he doubted it would be of any use. “The developer isn’t hanging around on the site, making sure that everybody’s doing their job right. That’s the general contractor’s job. I’m not an expert on construction safety. We entrust that role to the contractors. I don’t really know what else I can tell you.”

EVEN BY
his standards, Jeremy had been putting it back all night. Alena had asked what was bothering him as they’d sat down for dinner at Chanterelle, but Jeremy hadn’t responded, focusing on the two martinis he’d polished off before the arrival of their entrées. He’d finally loosened up around the end of dinner and their shared bottle of Château Haut Brion, getting more talkative, as he usually did a few drinks in. As soon as they’d arrived back at the apartment (Alena still unable to think of it as
her
apartment), Jeremy lit up a joint, Alena taking one hit but otherwise passing. The pot had only made Jeremy petulant and sulky. Alena ended up surfing the tube while he brooded beside her.

Jeremy had been lost in thought for most of the evening. He’d kept his shit together for the deposition, made it through that fine, but once it was over it was like every bad memory in his head had been awakened. The whole thing had been just about the worst experience of his life. As soon as Jeremy had heard about the accident at the Aurora, he’d suspected that Pellettieri was going to be mixed up in it. He should’ve known that asshole would take advantage of their arrangement.

Their deal had been that the concrete company would overbill Roth Properties, but most of the skimmed money was to make its way to Jeremy, though Pellettieri would get a cut. It would’ve worked out for everybody, but then Pellettieri had gotten greedy. Putting people at risk had never been part of the deal.

Jeremy had felt like shit about the accident. It wasn’t his fault, other than in the sense that it’d started with the skimming. He’d also understood that it created a risk of exposing the missing money. His father had made some calls to Ron Durant at the DOB, not because he was worried about the investigation or had any idea of Jeremy’s potential exposure, but just because a protracted probe would push the building further behind schedule. Back then, Jeremy had been confident that all he had to do was wait it out, not do anything to draw any attention. And sure enough, the DOB had levied some small fines and the whole thing had looked like it was going away.

But then the newspaper article had run, stirring everything up again. It’d been a short time later that Sean Fowler had shown up at Jeremy’s office. No appointment, no warning: Fowler just strolled into the lobby.

“What’re you doing here?” Jeremy had said to Fowler once the two of them were alone in his office, the door closed.

“Nobody’s looking,” Fowler replied as he sat down across from Jeremy’s desk. He was a big guy with a beer belly, still with a cop’s swagger.

“We don’t know who’s going to be looking at what,” Jeremy replied. “We’ve got to be careful.”

“I hear the DA’s got the case now,” Fowler said casually, like he was commenting on the weather, not on a criminal investigation that could land them both in jail.

Jeremy nodded. “Which is why we’ve got to lie low. You need to make sure Pellettieri’s going to keep his mouth shut.”

“Opening his mouth’s not going to get Jack anything,” Fowler said.

Jeremy still wasn’t getting what Fowler was doing in his office. He could tell Fowler was enjoying his discomfort. Jeremy tried to tell himself that he was the one here with power: this was his office, he was the vice president of a major development company, the man across from him was just a step up from a janitor. But it didn’t feel that way, not with Fowler being the one with some kind of agenda. “So you and me, we shouldn’t talk. You shouldn’t be here.”

To Jeremy’s surprise, Fowler smiled at this. He was chewing gum, his mouth open. He looked around Jeremy’s office, making a show of taking it in. “Just wanted to tell you that I won’t be telling anyone what I know.”

Jeremy hadn’t needed to be told this, and he was sure Fowler didn’t think he had. His bad feeling was getting worse. “Of course,” he said.

“But I do think, circumstances having changed, I deserve a little something for staying out of sight.”

There it was: his hand was out. Jeremy had been afraid that this was what it was. Fowler had gotten a cut from the skim, never complained that he wasn’t getting enough. But maybe greed was contagious.

Jeremy looked at Fowler, who looked right back, still snapping his gum, no hint of shame or even uneasiness with what he was doing. “This is money you want?” Jeremy asked.

Fowler reacted like money was Jeremy’s idea. “I’d appreciate that, yeah. A little reward for loyalty.”

“I don’t have much here,” Jeremy said. “A couple hundred bucks, maybe.”

Fowler chuckled, like Jeremy had just told a pretty good joke. “I wasn’t looking to empty your wallet,” he said. “The kind of money I was thinking, you’re not going to have lying around your office.”

Jeremy had wanted to believe this wasn’t full-on blackmail. He was in over his head, wishing he could take a time-out, bring somebody in who knew how to deal with this. “What kind of number were you thinking?”

Fowler shrugged. “Two fifty large, maybe,” he said.

Jeremy was stunned. He hadn’t known what to expect, but hearing that kind of number overwhelmed him with the reality of what was happening. “You’ve got the wrong idea,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of money that I can just grab hold of.”

“Way I count it, you took at least a couple of million out of the Aurora,” Fowler replied. “I think you can pull together two fifty.”

Jeremy felt queasy. “You really want to do this?”

Fowler stood, looking down at Jeremy. “You don’t have to answer right now. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think about it. Don’t take twenty-five.”

Jeremy had suspected Fowler was bluffing, but he couldn’t risk it. Just the thought of having that threat hanging over him was more than he could stand. So he’d pulled together a quarter million in cash, hoping it would buy Fowler’s silence. When Jeremy had agreed to pay, he’d made it clear it was a onetime thing; Fowler had readily agreed.

It had taken less than six months for Fowler to come back for more. He’d again come unannounced to Jeremy’s office. Jeremy had been out in a meeting this time, his secretary giving him the message when he got back. The mere sight of Fowler’s name on the little pink slip had caused Jeremy’s hands to shake.

Jeremy wasn’t willing to spend the rest of his life under Fowler’s thumb. He wasn’t sure what to do, but knew he had to do something. He needed advice from someone, and his sister seemed like the least wrong choice. He’d gone over to her apartment that night.

“There’s a problem with the Aurora,” Jeremy had told her.

Leah frowned at him. “If this is a work thing, why aren’t we talking about it at work?”

“It’s not something we want to talk about in the office. I’m in a jam, Lee.”

“With the Aurora? Now? What’s going on?”

Jeremy had known she was going to be pissed—beyond pissed, probably. But he didn’t think he had a choice but to tell someone. “Pellettieri and I, we had an arrangement. Dad’s always so tight with our money still, these stupid trusts, the property we can’t sell.”

“Life’s hard on a couple of million a year, I know,” Leah interjected. “But what does that have to do with Pellettieri and the Aurora?”

“Like I said, we came to an arrangement. The concrete company was overbilling the project; I was signing off on it. It wasn’t a lot, not for a half-billion-dollar project, nothing that would keep us from making a profit. And it’s our money anyway.”

Seated beside Jeremy on her couch, Leah’s whole body seemed to have clenched together, like her entire being was making a fist. “You were stealing from the Aurora? With Pellettieri?”

“He was just supposed to be overbilling a little, not avoiding doing actual work. That was just him—the safety shit, I didn’t have any idea. I wouldn’t have let him do that.”