Blind Man's Alley (36 page)

It’d never been intended as anything permanent, Jeremy thought. The longer he stayed with Alena, the more risk that he’d forget that, and if he forgot that, the more risk she’d end up hurting him. Sooner or later one of them would betray the other; that was how these things went.

And besides, it wasn’t like Alena would sleep with the guy. If Mattar wanted to take his shot in exchange for $300 million, that was his business.

When their drinks arrived Jeremy bolted his down. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve actually got an eight a.m. call tomorrow morning. The government of Singapore. You guys don’t need to call it a night on my account, though. I can leave the limo, just grab a cab.”

Mattar feigned something like concern.

“I’m pretty much ready to go too,” Alena said quickly.

“But you’ve got an untouched glass of wine before you,” Mattar said. “I can at least keep you company until you finish it.”

“It’s fine if you want to stay,” Jeremy said. “With my early morning, I was just going to go home.”

Alena looked at him, and rather than anger what Jeremy saw in her eyes was sadness. “Is that what you want, for me to stay?”

“Sure,” Jeremy said. “Give Mattar a chance to enjoy the view. We just got here, after all.”

“Okay, then,” Alena said softly, not looking at either of the men. “I’ll let you go.”

48

D
UNCAN WAS
finally getting around to looking into Candace’s tip about the bogus evictions at Jacob Riis involving the private security guards. He hadn’t made it a priority because it was a double-edged sword: while it would potentially call into question Driscoll’s honesty if he could establish that the security guys as a group were involved in framing people to set them up for eviction, Fowler’s lying to get Rafael evicted gave his client more of a motive to shoot the guy. He thought of just tracking down the girl LaShonda whom Candace had quoted in her article, but he decided instead to start from scratch—there was no point in chasing after what Candace already knew.

Duncan searched the online court database, sifting through all the cases in which the Housing Authority was a plaintiff to find those involving people at Jacob Riis, a tedious task that consumed a few hours. Once he had a list of defendants, he looked for phone numbers, finding listed numbers for only about half.

The first couple of people he tried didn’t answer; the next one hung up on him. Then he reached a woman named Betty Stevenson. Duncan explained that he represented Rafael Nazario and was calling regarding evictions at the project.

“My son already got a lawyer,” Betty said. “For all the good it done.”

“I’m not looking to represent your son,” Duncan said. “What I’m looking into is whether the security guards at Jacob Riis are setting people up with drug busts in order to get evictions. The city is claiming that drug possession is the reason they’re evicting your family, right?”

“On account of my oldest, Dwayne.”

“Were the private security guards involved in Dwayne’s arrest?”

“Why are you asking about this?” Betty asked suspiciously.

“I represent Rafael Nazario, who lives in Riis. He’s been accused of shooting that security guard a while back. Do you know the Nazarios? Rafael or his grandmother, Dolores?”

“The police just been hassling my boy about that,” Betty said. “He don’t know nothing about it.”

Duncan was doubly surprised: first that the police would be questioning this Dwayne about the murder, and second that they’d done it recently. Clearly the cops were up to something that Duncan knew nothing about. “The police were talking to your son about the shooting of Sean Fowler?” Duncan said carefully, wanting to make sure there was no misunderstanding here, while also trying to make sure he didn’t spook Betty.

“I don’t know the Spanish boy, but the police want my son to go up in court and lie about seeing him. They took him the other day, saying how they would help keep us from being thrown out of here if he’d say he saw that other boy running away from shooting the security guard.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m not sure I understand,” Duncan said. “The police have tried to get your son to be a witness against Rafael in the shooting?”

“That’s what I just got done telling you,” Betty said impatiently.

Duncan’s mind was racing with what this meant. “What is it they wanted him to say he saw?”

“The Spanish kid running away after he shot that man.”

Duncan sucked in his breath. “Is Dwayne home?”

“Last thing my boy needs is to be mixed up in some kind of murder.”

“I understand that, but my client is also a young man who lives in Jacob Riis, and he’s looking at spending the rest of his life in jail for something he didn’t do. I need to talk to your son.”

Betty finally relented, saying that Dwayne wasn’t home but that if Duncan came by that evening she would try to have her son waiting. So around eight o’clock Duncan took a cab down to Avenue D. Night was falling, and despite himself Duncan felt nervous as he approached Jacob Riis. He was used to housing projects; they were stitched into the city’s fabric. But getting used to them really just meant learning to ignore them. A key to successfully living in New York was developing the ability to tune out the depressing aspects of the city.

Duncan found himself fighting against his own instinctive resistance as he headed directly into the project, looking for the Stevensons’ building. He had no doubt that anyone glancing his way pegged him as an outsider. He caught a hard look or two from people gathered on the benches along the project’s walkways, but nobody said anything to him.

In the lobby of the building was a bored-looking security guard behind bulletproof glass, who asked Duncan for ID before calling up to the Stevenson apartment. It was clear as soon as Duncan walked into the apartment that Dwayne Stevenson didn’t want to talk to him. He was sitting stiffly on the ragged living room couch, looking like he was serving detention.

Duncan sat down in a chair across from Dwayne. Betty stood behind him, not joining them but not leaving the room either. The apartment was roughly the same size and condition as the Nazarios’ apartment, though it lacked the decorative flair that at least somewhat brightened his clients’ home. Dwayne was stocky, hard-looking: Duncan would’ve been intimidated by him if their paths had crossed on the street. He introduced himself, explained why he was there, the kid dead-eyed the whole time. “The private security guards have been faking drug busts as a way to be able to throw people out of here, so they don’t have to move them back when they rebuild the project. When you got arrested, did they have anything to do with it?”

Dwayne shook his head. “It was the housing police that took me in. I don’t know shit about the security guards.”

“Do you know Rafael Nazario?”

“I know who he is. You’re helping him out on the murder beef?”

“That’s right. Your mother said the police are trying to get you to be a witness against Rafael.”

“They want me to say I saw your boy running away from where he dropped that guy. They brought me in the night of the shooting. I told them I ain’t see nobody running except the five-oh, but that wasn’t good enough. Then the other day they come and got me again, saying that if I lie for them they’d help us with getting thrown out of here.”

“What was it they wanted you to lie about, exactly?”

“Me and my boy Lamar was on a bench outside our project. These two po-po come running up, start asking us did we see somebody go by. We say we didn’t see nothing like that. They took us in, kept us all night, trying to get us to say we saw Rafael. I told ’em I’m not no snitch, and besides that I never seen him go past that night.”

“Would you have definitely seen Rafael if he had run by?”

Dwayne clearly thought this was a stupid question. “Not going to miss somebody booking past us,” he said.

“Got it,” Duncan said, getting to his feet. He figured he’d gotten what he’d come for, at least for now. “Thanks for speaking to me, Dwayne. This has been very helpful.”

Dwayne didn’t seem to like being told he’d been helpful. “But I didn’t see nothing,” he said.

“Exactly,” Duncan said.

49

C
ANDACE WASN’T
sure when the feeling she was being followed first came to her. It’d crept up slowly, starting in a far corner of her awareness. As a woman in the city, she was always at least dimly aware of strange eyes on her when she was on the street, men checking her out. At first this feeling just blended with that, but gradually it grew into something else. She couldn’t nail it down, though, couldn’t tag a specific person who was always behind her. But even without that, the feeling persisted, grew solid, and after a while Candace stopped doubting its basic truth.

She wanted to talk it through with someone, but nobody seemed right. Her parents would freak out, insist that she call the police. If she told anyone at the paper, they’d feel obligated to have meetings about it, maybe even rope in the lawyers. That is, if they believed her—if not, they’d probably rope in a shrink. She told herself as soon as she had anything concrete she’d take it to Nugent.

She started walking around with her cell phone in hand, set to camera, wanting to be ready if she ever identified someone. After two days of doing this and not coming up with anything she started feeling stupid and gave it up. Candace knew that she could be paranoid, feel like people were conspiring against her, but she’d never in her life felt like she was being spied on before this. If it was actually happening, she had little doubt who was behind it.

After separating from her husband, Candace had rented a one-bedroom just off Smith Street in Boerum Hill. As soon as she walked into her apartment that night she knew something was wrong. The first thing she noticed was that her cat was not at the door to greet her as he almost always was.

Someone had been here. It was obvious as soon as she started looking around: the apartment was a mess, books dropped on the floor, her television’s screen bashed in.

Candace’s first impulse was to leave. She stood frozen in the open doorway, straining to hear whether someone was still in the apartment. After a moment her cat came padding out from the bedroom. Candace relaxed a little at the sight: Lazlo was scared of strangers and wouldn’t have emerged from under the bed if a burglar was still in the apartment. Candace went to her bedroom, first stopping in the kitchen and grabbing a butcher knife, even though she felt sure she was alone. Her bedroom was also trashed, her dresser drawers open, clothes on the floor, the top mattress of her bed askew. Candace’s heart was still pounding; the knife in her hand was quivering like a struck tuning fork.

Candace called 911, reported the break-in. Her nerves were still jangled—first the purse snatching, now this. Life in New York could be tough, but two incidents like this in one summer seemed a little much. She wondered if someone was sending her a message.

Candace pushed the thought out of her mind and set about figuring out what was missing before the police arrived. Her jewelry box had been emptied, although for the most part it held little of actual value. Her iPod was gone, her almost-new bottle of Vera Wang perfume. Only then did it hit her, and she hurried back to the living room to double-check.

It was true: her laptop was gone. As soon as she realized it, everything else missing seemed trivial. She occasionally e-mailed notes and even drafts between her laptop and her office computer. Her home computer was like a second brain. More than that, it was a window into what she was working on, where she was with it.

It was the most valuable thing stolen out of her apartment, and its value to her went well beyond its cost. Her mind quickly went to the question of whether the laptop was what the thieves had come for.

A couple of uniformed cops arrived fairly quickly in response to her 911 call. Candace listed for them everything that was missing, stressing the laptop as the most important. She resisted the urge to tell them that she thought Simon Roth was behind the break-in.

Candace ended up packing a suitcase and taking a cab back into Manhattan to stay at Brock Anders’s apartment. She planned to call a locksmith, maybe even get an alarm installed—she wasn’t sure what it was going to take for her to feel safe inside her apartment again. Brock told her she could stay as long as she needed. He insisted that she share his king-size bed, rather than sleep on the couch, and though Candace acted reluctant she found comfort in having someone there in the room with her; it made her feel a little safer.

At work the next morning she went straight to Nugent, filling him in. Her editor looked dutifully concerned, but also a little unclear as to why Candace was telling him about it.

“Do you need the day to take care of stuff?” he asked.

Candace shook her head impatiently. “I’m worried about whether what I’ve been working on has been compromised.”

“By a break-in?” Nugent said, frowning as he looked at her.

“They stole my laptop. It had work-in-progress stuff on it—interview notes, some research.”

“You’re not suggesting this was a targeted thing coming out of your reporting?” Nugent asked.

“I’m saying, yes, that possibility has occurred to me. You think it’s so far-fetched?”

“You name sources in your notes?”

“Not full names, but initials sometimes, yeah. Someone who understood what they were reading could probably figure some of it out.”

“You should be more careful.”

Candace resisted the urge to stand, pick up her chair, and throw it at her editor’s head. “I didn’t leave the fucking thing in the back of a cab, Bill,” she snapped. “Somebody stole it out of my apartment.”

Bill held up a hand in silent apology. “What did the police say?”

“They took down a list of the missing stuff, said you never know, sometimes things turn up. But they were just going through the motions.”

Nugent nodded, the two of them sharing an awkward gaze. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he finally said.

“Not sure how I’m looking at you, but don’t you think it’s a little strange that somebody breaks in and steals my laptop while I’m digging into this Roth stuff? They’ve already shown how willing they are to play hardball.”

Nugent cocked his head, making no effort to hide his skepticism. “You think Simon Roth broke into your apartment?”

“Not personally.”

“Should I even bother to ask if you have any proof of this?”

Candace tried to force herself to stay calm. She thought Nugent was condescending to her; she wondered if he’d be so dismissive if she were a man. Of course, he didn’t know that Candace also thought she was being followed, but she certainly wasn’t going to bring that up now. “Look, I understand that break-ins happen, that coincidences happen. But I think you could be underestimating what we’re up against in Roth. I’m not saying I know he’s behind it, but it certainly doesn’t strike me as outside the realm of the possible.”

Nugent was still giving Candace a look she didn’t like. “You know what I’m wondering?” he said. “I’m wondering if you’ve been on this story too long.”

Candace gave up on Nugent and went back to her desk. She was too angry to think about anything else, though. After a minute an idea came to her and she picked up the phone.

Tommy Nelson’s phone at the Aurora construction site was answered by a brusque woman who informed her that Nelson was no longer working on the project. When Candace asked where she could reach him she was told he was out on medical leave.

Candace found herself wondering if Roth had somehow gotten to Nelson. Christ, she thought, maybe Nugent was right: she was getting paranoid.