33
MR. SPEAKER,” Simon Roth said, gesturing David Markowitz to a seat. “What can we do for you?”
Leah sat in the chair next to Markowitz, facing her father’s desk, while their general counsel, Roger Carrington, was seated on a couch off to the side. Markowitz had not only come to them, he’d come alone: clear signs that he was worried about something and trying to keep a lid on it.
“This reporter who’s out to get you, Snow from the Journal, she’s calling my office, trying to come in to see me,” Markowitz said. He was looking only at Simon. “She’s dug up all the LLC contributions to my campaign, seems to have figured out they’re companies controlled by you.”
“Did you confirm that we own them?”
“I haven’t talked to her directly, just had my staff say they’ll look into it, and that LLC contributions are perfectly legal.”
“Which they are,” Carrington said, from his perch on the couch behind them. “The campaign contribution limits only apply to individual businesses. If someone happens to own fifty LLCs, each one still has its separate contribution limit.”
Markowitz shook his head impatiently. Leah assumed Carrington hadn’t been talking for the speaker’s benefit anyway, but rather to assure her father that the company wasn’t exposed. “Legal doesn’t cut it in my line of work,” Markowitz said. “How it looks is the question.”
“What is it you want me to do, David?” Simon asked, Leah noting how her father spoke as though there wasn’t a company at all, like she wasn’t even in the room.
“You’re the one she’s after,” Markowitz said. “My political career is just collateral damage, far as she’s concerned.”
“Your political career is not in any danger,” Simon said. “This is widely done, even if not widely known. We’ll get in front of it, put it in context, and also see about getting this little vendetta of hers tamped down.”
“It sounds like she’s trying to make it connect to Riis, look like quid pro quo between you getting the project and the contributions.”
Leah could tell that her father was struggling to keep his patience. “She can look all she wants for that,” he said. “Seeing as there’s nothing to find. We know better than to put something like that in writing, don’t we?”
Markowitz looked aghast, even after he realized Simon was joking. “It’s not funny,” he said. “Somebody puts two things next to each other in a newspaper article, people jump to conclusions. I’ve seen federal pay-to-play cases get started on less.”
“There’s nothing here that isn’t politics as usual,” Simon said.
“I also hear she’s poking around about evictions at Riis, with your security guys. Is there a problem there?”
Leah was surprised to see an uncomfortable look from her father. She wondered if he was noticing the same thing about her. “What kind of problem?” he asked.
“From what I’m hearing, she’s looking into whether they are involved in getting people evicted, something so you wouldn’t have to move people back in.”
“There’re nearly five thousand residents at Riis,” Simon said. “She think we’re going to pick them off one at a time?”
“All I know is, she’s after blood,” Markowitz said. “What did you do to this woman?”
“Called her a liar,” Leah said.
“THIS IS going to take some navigating,” Simon said to Leah after Markowitz had left, Roger Carrington showing the speaker out.
“I told you not to file the libel suit,” Leah said. “You flashed the red cape at her, and now she’s on the rampage. What’s this eviction thing she’s gotten hold of?”
Simon hesitated. “For mixed-income to work over there, we have to get rid of the bad apples.”
Leah wasn’t letting him off that easy. “Get rid of them how, exactly?”
“Every apartment we don’t have to rent back to an existing resident brings in about twenty-five grand a year more in revenue,” Simon said, ignoring her question. “We reduce who we have to bring back by even forty households, that’s a million a year in additional market-rate money coming in. Play that kind of reduction out over a few years, you’re talking serious money.”
Leah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. All developers did a lot of give and take with the city over building some below-market-rate units as part of getting permission to build, and a certain amount of gamesmanship was expected in fulfilling such obligations. But this was public housing, for Christ’s sake. Bad publicity could jeopardize the entire project, if not worse. “So you’re having the security guards throw people out?”
“We’re not throwing people out for no reason. I simply told Loomis’s people to be on the lookout for bad behavior. The Housing Authority understands that eliminating the dregs before bringing in market-rate tenants is a necessary step for this thing to work. Getting rid of people who aren’t going to fit into the new version makes sense for everybody.”
Leah didn’t think this was the whole story. “Did you give Loomis’s crew an incentive to do this?”
Simon refused to look embarrassed. “What if I did?”
“Well, then, Jesus, Dad, did it ever occur to you that maybe they’d cut some corners on who they kicked out?”
“Darryl’s guys know better than to set people up.”
Leah didn’t share her father’s optimism in this regard, but there was no point in arguing. “The reporter’s digging into it now, and we know she’s going to paint a dark picture. How do we cut that off?”
Simon looked away, Leah wondering if he was still uncomfortable plotting strategy with her. “I’m going to tell Darryl to turn it up a notch on her.”
“That could just add fuel.”
Simon shrugged, clearly not interested in an extensive discussion. “She’s used to Marquess of Queensberry rules,” he said. “Let’s see how she likes a street fight.”
“You really think Darryl can scare her off the story?”
“That’s only a step in the dance. I’m going to reach out to Friedman, who’s trying to stop the bleeding over there. But we’ve also got to get in front of the LLC thing, for our own sake as well as David’s. We’re going to have to respond to the reporter on that front—we can’t leave David to take the hit. Why don’t you grab the reins? Talk to Roger, make sure you’re up to speed on the LLC issue, and give the PR girl a call to go over things.”
Their outside public relations person was a brassy woman in her fifties who was nobody’s idea of a girl, but Leah wasn’t in the mood to confront her father’s provocations. “Anything else?” she said, shifting in her chair.
“What’s going on with the Aurora wrongful death?”
Leah didn’t want to talk to her father about the Aurora case, but if she wasn’t forthcoming her father would eventually hear it all from Blake. “Depos are under way,” she said. “They just did the concrete contractor. Sounds like he’s facing liability, though the rest of us are clear.”
“Why is the contractor on the hook?”
Leah hesitated, wanting to limit the extent that she had to get into this as much as possible. “He didn’t do the safety work.”
For a moment Simon just looked at her, frowning. “And nobody caught this?” he said.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Leah said. “We certainly wouldn’t have.”
“Did we pay him for it?”
“He was overbilling generally, is how it looks. But it’s not like he was going to submit invoices saying he wasn’t performing work.”
Simon was full into a slow boil. “How much did he take us for?”
“That can’t be our priority right now, Dad,” Leah said. “Let’s get the lawsuit taken care of, then worry about it.”
Simon did not react well to being told what to worry about, and he fixed his daughter with a skeptical look. “What are you not telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Leah,” Simon said. “I’ve seen all your report cards.”
“I’m sparing you the details, is all. Everything’s under control,” Leah said, doing her best to hold her father’s gaze. She never had been good at lying to him.