16
YOU HAVE a lovely home,” Candace said to Dolores Nazario. This wasn’t quite true: all the careful decoration couldn’t disguise the fact that the building itself was falling apart. She’d accepted Dolores’s offer of coffee; the two of them were seated in the living room.
“I live here for fifteen years,” Dolores said. “I make it the best place I can.”
Candace was talking to Dolores because her initial research into Jacob Riis had failed to uncover any hook between the transformation of the project and the murder of the security guard. She had the lawyer, Riley, but that was clearly nowhere near enough, as her editor had made clear. The obvious place to look for the connection was the murder itself. She knew Riley wouldn’t talk to her, and getting in to see Rafael at Rikers was going to be a long shot at best. That left the grandmother.
“So as I said on the phone,” Candace said, “my focus isn’t on the shooting that happened, but on what’s going on with all the changes they’re making around here. How did you and Rafael end up facing eviction?”
Dolores told the story of the security guard, Fowler, claiming to catch her grandson with a joint, and Rafael’s arrest and guilty plea, which then led to the eviction. Candace tried not to show her skepticism, but the story didn’t quite add up. “I know how it sound to you,” Dolores said. “But I raised Rafa not to lie. He tells me something, swears it’s true, then I believe him.”
“How did you end up with Duncan Riley as your lawyer?”
“Through my church, they told me to go to this place that helps people with free lawyers. They say they have volunteer lawyers who are helping people. They got us to Mr. Riley.”
“Did Mr. Riley tell you that he’s also the lawyer for Roth Properties, the developer who’s behind all the changes here?”
Dolores looked uncomfortable with the question. “He tells us that he do work for Roth, yes, but Mr. Riley say that is no problem because it is the city who is against us.”
Candace wasn’t going to pretend she understood the nuances of legal ethics, but Riley’s involvement with the Nazarios still felt wrong to her. “Roth is one of his firm’s biggest clients.”
“Mr. Riley, he been working hard for us, taking our side. He went to court, got the case thrown out. Now he trying to get my nieto out of jail, doing that for no money.”
Candace got the message: she wasn’t going to get between Dolores and the lawyer who was trying to get her grandson off a murder charge and herself from being kicked out of her home. Candace was still skeptical that was what Riley was actually doing. “What about the Alphabet City Community Coalition?” Candace asked. “Did you reach out to them about the eviction?”
“I know other people who have gone to them, but nothing happens. I needed a lawyer to help us, not someone to make a protest.”
“Other people who were getting evicted had told you the coalition wasn’t helpful?” Candace asked, Dolores nodding. “Do you know a lot of other residents who are facing eviction?”
“These security guards, they like to bother people here. Rafa’s not the only one.”
“What do you think of the idea of what they’re doing to Jacob Riis more generally? Mixing market-rate and affordable housing? Couldn’t it make things better for the people who live here?”
“It could be good, sure, less crime,” Dolores said. “For those of us who get to come back maybe, though how many that will be I don’t know.”
“You don’t think they’ll bring everybody back?” Candace asked, not surprised that such rumors would be running rampant at the project.
“They need to make room for the new people, the ones with money. That’s why they’re getting rid of people like us.”
This got Candace’s attention. “What do you mean?”
“Like how they’re doing with Rafa and me. The security guards, always making up reasons to throw people out of their homes.”
Candace leaned forward, unsure what Dolores was getting at. “Are you saying that the security guards are planting drugs on people so they can evict them?”
“Like they did with Rafa, yes. I hear there are many others.”
“Do you have proof that this is happening?”
Dolores shrugged. “Me and Rafa, we are proof, yes?”