27
DUNCAN MADE Candace send her lawyer an e-mail from her BlackBerry before he’d talk. Duncan dictated the e-mail while Candace wrote, the two of them huddled in the street. He felt stupid, certain he was further convincing Candace what a lawyerly douche bag he was, but talking to a represented adversary in the absence of her lawyer really was the kind of thing that could get him hauled before the disciplinary committee. He also declared their conversation off the record; he wasn’t going to give her a quote on anything until he’d had a chance to run it past Blake.
No Starbucks in sight, they ended up at Life Café on Tenth and B. “I have to admit, I only know of this place because of Rent,” Candace said as they sat down at a small and rickety wooden table with their coffees in tow.
“Because of rent?” Duncan asked, not following.
“You know—the show? You never saw Rent?”
“Not really my thing,” Duncan said, looking around the cramped café. “Seems like a hard place to do a song-and-dance number.”
“Not onstage, it wasn’t,” Candace said. “I think a bunch of it was actually written here.”
“Those were the days, huh?”
“I can’t say I’ve liked watching the whole of Manhattan turned into a habitat for the hedge-fund crowd.”
“On the list of things that killed off the edgy version of the East Village,” Duncan said, “Rent must make the top five.”
“What about tearing down the Jacob Riis projects?”
“What about it?”
“What’s that going to do to the neighborhood?”
“I don’t know, make it safer maybe. But that’s bad for the drug dealers and the muggers, so there goes the neighborhood, right?”
Candace didn’t disagree; she’d never really understood people who treated gentrification as a categorical evil. “I don’t have a problem with the idea of changing housing projects into livable places, but last time I checked, Simon Roth wasn’t a humanitarian.”
“If you bought me a latte to get me talking about Simon Roth, you wasted five dollars.”
“I’ll just ask about you, then. You do know that Roth’s developing the new and improved Jacob Riis, right?”
“Sure,” Duncan said readily. “That’s public knowledge.”
“And you know that Sean Fowler was working security for Roth’s company, right?”
“Are you cross-examining me?”
“What I’m doing is wondering how you can represent Simon Roth on the one hand, and represent someone accused of killing his employee on the other. You’ve been talking a lot about ethics; isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
“It’s not, actually. Rafael’s being prosecuted by the State of New York, not by Simon Roth. There’s no legal conflict.”
This didn’t seem quite right to Candace, but she wasn’t versed in the finer points of legal ethics. “But how can you represent Nazario when the victim worked for your client, the eyewitness works for your client? Roth can’t want you to be helping a guy who shot someone who worked for him.”
Duncan was trying to figure out the balance between not telling her anything about internal firm discussions while talking her down from assuming he was masterminding some kind of conspiracy. “I’m not going to discuss any privileged conversations that may have taken place, but I will assure you that there are no concerns from any of our clients regarding anything that might be perceived as a conflict here,” Duncan said, clearly choosing his words with care. “So if that’s why you were stalking me, I’m afraid you had the wrong idea.”
Candace felt herself losing ground. “What about the fact that they were throwing people like Nazario out of Jacob Riis on fake drug charges?”
Duncan tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”
“The eviction proceeding against your client and his family. You really don’t know that Fowler and the rest of the security crew had racked up over a dozen of those?”
Duncan didn’t hide his surprise. “All on drug possession?”
“That’s right. And yes, I know that drugs are a part of a housing project, but even at Jacob Riis there can’t really be that many people who stand around smoking joints in front of security guards.”
Duncan was intrigued, though he didn’t know quite what to make of it, or whether it could help his case. Dolores Nazario had told him that there were a lot of other recent evictions at Riis, but he hadn’t paid much attention, not finding it surprising that the city would be aggressive in throwing lawbreakers out of public housing. And while he’d gone along with Rafael’s protestations that he hadn’t actually been caught smoking pot, Duncan had never fully believed it. “So what are you saying?” he asked.
“It looks to me like the security guards are faking drug busts to kick people out of Jacob Riis, empty the place so that they can refill it with yuppies. You should know more about this than I do.”
“Why should I know about it?” Duncan asked defensively.
“You’re defending somebody who’s a victim of it, and the obvious suspect in terms of being behind it is also a client of yours. Now’s your chance to get in front of this, Duncan.”
Duncan looked at her incredulously, his mouth open, eventually forming some forced approximation of a smile. “You’re serious? You think I’m involved in some sort of setup?”
“It’s a bit much to all be a coincidence. Listen, my dad’s a big-firm lawyer; I know a thing or two about how they operate. You must be up for partner soon, right? You’re not at a point yet where you make the calls; you’ve still got to follow orders. Somebody comes to you, says Roth wants this done, you might think it’s weird, but you don’t really have a choice but to do it. Maybe you didn’t piece it together. Maybe you didn’t ask questions that you didn’t want the answers to. But now you’re in the middle of it, and I’m your way out.”
Duncan’s smile grew broader, more genuine. “Wow,” he said. “It must be really exciting to live in your version of the world. Conspiracies, dirty tricks. I’m sorry to say that I’m not in the middle of anything. When I took on Rafael’s case it was just a straightforward eviction, nothing else. His family was being evicted by the New York Housing Authority, not by Simon Roth. Look, I understand you’ve got it in for Roth; he sued you, and I get that you might not like me after I deposed you, but I haven’t done anything wrong, or unethical, or that I’d be ashamed to read about in the newspaper, provided it was accurately told.”
Candace didn’t know what to make of it. She didn’t get the feeling Duncan was lying. But that wasn’t enough to convince her that she was wrong. “Something’s not right,” Candace insisted. “Maybe you’re not part of it, but I know something’s wrong with these evictions.”
“If what you’re saying about evictions is true, I want to know about it. It might help my client.”
“What if Roth’s behind it?”
Duncan didn’t have an answer for that, and made no effort to act like he did. “I don’t even know that there’s actually an ‘it’ for Roth to be behind. I just have what you’re telling me.”
“Why should I trust you with anything I know?” Candace asked.
“Why should I trust you with anything I know?” Duncan retorted.
“I’m not connected with Simon Roth.”
“You’re one of his enemies. That can be a pretty close connection.”
“My only goal here is to find out the truth.”
“Yeah, ’cause that’s all that reporters are ever worried about. You’re just the world’s referees, right? If we’re going to talk to each other, let’s do better than that.”
“Are we?” Candace said.
“Are we what?”
“Going to talk to each other?”
“I don’t know,” Duncan said. “I’ve tried to convince you that I’m not the Antichrist. And I’m interested in the evictions at Jacob Riis.”
“You have to promise me something.”
“I don’t think I do, but what is it you want me to promise you?”
“That if what I tell you can help Rafael Nazario, you’ll use it. No matter who it hurts.”
Duncan paused, clearly not liking the idea of making a promise of any kind, lawyers being creatures of contingencies. “I promise that if you tell me something that can help Rafael, I’ll make sure it does.”
Candace thought about it. “How do I know you’re not going to take everything I tell you right back to Roth and let him know what I’ve got?”
Duncan smiled, leaning back in his seat. “If you’re asking me why we should trust each other, I can’t really think of much in the way of a reason.”
“So if the eviction thing helps you, what do I get back?”
“I’ll give you the inside track on the Nazario case. Anything happens that’s newsworthy, I’ll give it to you.”
Candace figured this really could be worth something—not necessarily to her, but to the paper. She could pass it off to Costello, maybe get him off her back. “Like what?”
“Okay, how about this? You might have read, say in your newspaper, that the cops found gunshot residue on Nazario’s hand?”
“Rings a bell.”
“It wasn’t because he’d fired a gun. The particles were almost certainly picked up while he was sitting in the back of the police car. Your paper can be the first to print it.”
“I’m not sure that’s enough for a story, but I guess it’s a start.”
“Think of it as a peace offering then, or a sign of good faith.”
Candace considered it for a moment, then nodded. “On the evictions, I’m not going to lay it out for you, in terms of telling you who specifically I’ve talked to or anything. You’ll have to read that in the paper. But I can tell you that there’re enough people telling the same story that there must be something to it. I think the security guards are targeting teenagers on minor drug charges, then kicking out their families. Just like they’re doing to your client.”
“And they’re doing this why?” Duncan asked.
“If I answered that question honestly, you’d probably add it as a count in Roth’s libel suit against me,” Candace said. “So I’m afraid you’re going to have to draw your own conclusions.”
“You think Fowler and Driscoll, specifically, were planting drugs on teenagers in order to evict families from Jacob Riis?”
“Look, if you don’t know how to add one plus one by now, I’m not here to teach you,” Candace said.
“So Rafael’s story about that can be backed up?”
“Do you want me to just wait until you catch up, then we can talk?”
“I’m stating the obvious,” Duncan conceded.
“You just did it again.”
Duncan smiled at her despite himself. “The DA wouldn’t see this as exculpatory necessarily. I bet they’ll say it just gives Rafael more of a motive if Fowler had set him up.”
“But what about Driscoll? This would suggest he wasn’t exactly the impartial observer he presented himself as. Presumably he’s lied to the police about something here.”
She had a point, Duncan thought. Showing Driscoll was involved with planting drugs could be very useful. “If he’s had some practice framing people, that would certainly call his ID into question,” he said.
“That leads down an interesting road, now, doesn’t it?”
“Driscoll and Fowler wouldn’t be throwing people out of Jacob Riis just for their own amusement,” Duncan said carefully.
“So who stands to benefit from having fewer poor people to fit back into the new and improved Jacob Riis? Who had the ability to give Driscoll and Fowler marching orders to do this?”
Duncan wasn’t going to say it; there wasn’t even a chance of that. Studying Candace, he saw she wasn’t going to either. It didn’t matter whether it was spoken, anyway. Clearly they both knew there was only one person who met the criteria Candace had suggested.
Simon Roth.