10
IT TOOK Duncan and Blake about an hour to make their way through the bureaucracy at Rikers Island to the claustrophobic interview room where they were to meet with their client, then another fifteen minutes waiting for Rafael to be brought in. Duncan could see Blake’s rising frustration at all the wasted time that he could be billing to any number of paying clients, and wondered anew why Blake was making the trip in the first place.
Finally Rafael was brought in. The prison jumpsuit dangled loosely from his spindly frame; his body was hunched, tense, as if bracing for a blow. Duncan performed introductions, feeling a little irrationally disappointed at Rafael’s lack of reaction: in the circles in which Duncan generally traveled Blake was a rock star.
“So Duncan has given me an overview of your case,” Blake said. “But it’s best if I hear everything from you. Tell me about your initial run-in with the security guard.”
Even though he’d gone over all this when he’d first taken on the eviction, Duncan paid careful attention: often new details emerged when a client repeated a story; plus the stakes were obviously much higher now that Rafael faced life in prison. If he’d missed anything before, now was the time to catch it.
Rafael told them he’d been coming home from work a couple of months ago when Fowler had accosted him about fifty feet from his building. The security guard had bent down and picked up a half-smoked joint off the ground near Rafael’s feet, claimed to have seen Rafael drop it. Rafael didn’t take it seriously until two Housing Authority cops had appeared on the scene. Rafael tried to figure out if Fowler was lying or crazy, but the cops took the guard at his word, and the next thing Rafael knew he’d been arrested.
After stewing in a holding cell for about twenty-four hours, Rafael had finally met with a public defender. Clearly not believing Rafael’s version of events, the lawyer had encouraged him to plead out to disorderly conduct, saying that time served and a small fine would be his only punishment. Exhausted, and not wanting to risk a real criminal record if he fought it, Rafael took the plea.
Rafael thought the whole stupid mess was over with, but then the following week the Housing Authority issued an eviction notice against him and his grandmother. Rafael’s grandmother had gone to a legal services organization seeking help, which was how they’d come to be referred to Duncan.
When instructed by the firm to devote some time to pro bono, Duncan had picked an eviction case because it seemed like a straightforward option, one that would potentially get him on his feet in court. When he’d first heard the facts of the case Duncan had thought he’d at least be able to keep Dolores Nazario in her home, but that confidence had quickly dissipated once he familiarized himself with the relevant law. Just a few years earlier the Supreme Court had ruled that an entire household could be evicted from public housing if any one of them was caught with drugs on or near the property. So if the city could make a case against Rafael, it followed that Dolores too would be on the street.
Rafael had insisted that he’d been set up, claiming that the security guards had pulled the same stunt on other residents. This would have been a promising lead to pursue at the start of the case, but it was basically irrelevant once Rafael had entered his guilty plea in criminal court. Which meant that Duncan didn’t really have a legal or factual leg to stand on, other than a long shot like attempting to vacate the plea. That would have been nearly impossible even before Rafael was arrested for Fowler’s murder.
After going through the initial run-in with Fowler, Blake turned to the shooting, asking Rafael to take them through what had happened that night. Rafael, who worked in the kitchen of an East Village restaurant called Alchemy, had been there until just past eleven. After his shift he’d walked home, not seeing anyone he knew. He was home listening to music when the cops had arrived less than an hour later, his headphones cranked so loud he didn’t even hear them knocking. They’d first brought him to the Housing Authority station on Avenue C, had a man in a security guard’s uniform take a look at him through the window while Rafael was handcuffed in the back of the police car. After that he’d been brought to the precinct, where the cops tested his hands for GSR; then the detectives had questioned him briefly before Rafael had asked for a lawyer, at which point they’d put him into the system, sent him down to Central Booking.
“Let’s go back over a few things,” Blake said when Rafael was finished. “Did you hear the gunshots?”
Rafael nodded. “I wasn’t sure it was somebody shooting, but I thought it was.”
“Where were you when you heard the shots?”
“I was walking on Avenue D. I thought maybe it was just a car, but I couldn’t really tell where it was coming from, thought it was from behind me.”
“You didn’t see anything? Didn’t see Fowler or the shooter?”
“Like I said, I wasn’t even sure it was a gun. And not like I’m going to go check it out. I got enough sense to just keep moving.”
“What did you tell the police that night?” Blake asked.
“Just that I didn’t do nothing.”
“Did you tell them you knew Fowler?”
“They already knew about how we were getting thrown out ’cause of him.”
Duncan wondered how the police had put that together so quickly. It was a straightforward motive, though he certainly didn’t think that Rafael would believe that shooting Fowler would make the eviction case go away. But revenge had its appeal, and he’d certainly heard his client call Fowler all sorts of names.
“Did the police ask you about the eviction?” Blake asked.
“Just to say that was why I’d capped Fowler.”
“Did they tell you about the gunshot residue?”
“They come out with that right before I say I wasn’t gonna talk to them no more. I thought they were just playing with me, didn’t take it for real until Mr. R tells me they’re really saying that.”
“Did you touch a gun at any point that night?”
“I work in a kitchen,” Rafael said. “If I was going to take somebody out, I’d get a butcher knife.”
Duncan laughed at this; Blake did not. “Mr. Nazario,” Blake said, “I assure you the question of whether you handled a gun that night is no joke.”
“Course I didn’t,” Rafael said angrily. “I’ve never shot a gun, don’t have nothing to do with guns.”
“The security guard who’s the eyewitness against you,” Blake said after a moment. “You ever seen him before that night?”
“I don’t think so. Not that I noticed anyway.”
“Any idea how or why he ID’d you as the shooter?”
“Either he’s wrong or he’s lying. All them security dudes are straight-up motherf*ckers.”
“What’s the problem?”
Rafael’s lip curled. “They treat us like a bunch of dogs. Course, people are nice to dogs, so maybe like we were rats.”
“So other people in the project had problems with them?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“You know of anything with Fowler specifically? Anybody else who might have had a motive for shooting him?”
Rafael shrugged. “I don’t know nothing like that. But I got an easy time believing somebody else wanted that a*shole dead.”
THEY SPENT a couple of hours with Rafael, going back over his initial encounter with Fowler as well as the night of the murder. Blake asked virtually all of the questions, methodically covering the bases in a way Duncan had seen him do dozens of times before in different circumstances, though Duncan still felt confounded at the sight of his boss in a Rikers interview room.
“So what did you think?” Duncan asked, once the interview was over and they were out in the prison parking lot making their way to Blake’s car. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d felt inside the jail until he was back out under the sky.
“He’s got a motive and nothing much in the way of an alibi. The eyewitness and gunshot evidence are strong, and even in his version he was walking right by the shooting when it happened.”
“That bad?” Duncan said, looking over at his boss as he opened the car door.
“You see a defense here? I’m not saying he did it, but if not, he must’ve stepped in the world’s unluckiest dog shit on his way home that night.”
“But he doesn’t have a motive, really. Killing the guy isn’t going to make the eviction go away. And he had confidence that I was going to win that case. Too much confidence, if anything. He was pissed at Fowler, obviously, but I don’t see how he was pissed enough to shoot the guy.”
Blake shrugged. “Rule of thumb, criminals don’t have an especially good reason to do what they did. That’s why we call it crime.”
“Sure,” Duncan said. “But what I’m saying is, I don’t actually think Rafael is a criminal.”
“This isn’t one to try to make your bones on,” Blake said dismissively. “You’re not doing your client any favors riding in on a white horse here. Part of winning is defining a realistic goal. Getting him a plea that doesn’t mean jail for the rest of his life—that’s what a win looks like here.”
“The first-degree murder charge seems pretty weak,” Duncan said. Generally in New York, first-degree murder was reserved for special cases, like the killing of police officers, but it also applied when the victim was killed in retaliation for giving testimony in a previous criminal case. If Rafael was convicted on first-degree murder, he would face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Duncan wasn’t convinced that the DA could make it stick here; he suspected they’d only filed it because Fowler was an ex-cop.
“So then the goal is to get him a decent deal on murder two,” Blake replied.
Duncan understood that Blake was giving instructions, not asking for debate. He was surprised at himself for feeling disappointed—he didn’t want to write the case off as a loser quite so quickly. “It’s a little soon to go looking for a deal, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, they haven’t really nailed him yet.”
Blake looked over at Duncan, then shrugged. “From where I’m sitting, he looks to be hanging on the cross,” he said.