Blind Man's Alley (46 page)

Candace smiled. “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be a reporter,” she said.

“Are there even going to be newspapers in ten years?” Duncan replied.

“Maybe not, but there’ll still be reporters. I’m not married to the actual print newspaper, personally, although a lot of people in the newsroom would view that as treason.”

The waiter brought their pizza, pepperoni and black olives. Candace, who generally ate healthy, had to admit it looked really good. Duncan grabbed a slice, took a huge bite. “Grease meets alcohol,” he said. “A match made in heaven.”

AFTER THEY’D
finished eating, the two of them stood outside the restaurant. “So,” Candace said. “You going to be okay? Tonight, I mean.”

“I’ll get through,” Duncan said. “What’s the alternative, really?”

Before she fully knew she was going to do it, Candace stepped forward and hugged Duncan, who, caught off guard, took a moment to respond. “I need your help,” she said, speaking softly into Duncan’s ear. “Rafael needs your help. Stay in the game.”

Candace leaned back, looked Duncan in the eye, their faces close, then quickly turned to go before he could say anything. Duncan stood, watching her walk away, his catastrophe of a day momentarily forgotten. He wished Candace was coming back to his apartment with him. But the day he’d been fired was not the day to start something, not if he wanted it to have a chance of working. So Duncan headed up Eighth Avenue toward his apartment, knowing he was in for a long and lonely night.

WAKING THE
next morning was an extended exercise in disorientation. There was the hangover, for one thing, although under the circumstances the blurring it caused was almost welcome. At least he’d managed to refrain from asking Candace to come home with him, although the temptation had been strong. It was too soon, and his life was too much of a mess, and their professional interaction was too important. But he thought there was at least a chance she would’ve said yes.

Duncan got up and made coffee, starting his morning as he would any other. But it wasn’t, and the day stretched empty before him. He’d been at the same job for seven years, working close to three thousand hours a year. And then one five-minute conversation had taken it all away.

Duncan was far better off than most people who suddenly lost their job; he knew that. He’d paid off most of his student loans; he had fifty grand invested in mutual funds, over a hundred grand of equity in his apartment. He’d listed his mother’s house with a Realtor, and had also inherited six figures from her life insurance. But his mortgage payments were over three grand a month, and everything else cost so much more in New York as well. He could easily go more than a year before he would really start running out of money, but if Steven Blake was determined to burn him it might take longer than that for anyone to offer Duncan a job.

Candace’s question lingered: Did he really want to try to get back on the corporate law treadmill? The fact was, representing Rafael Nazario had excited Duncan in a way no other part of practicing law had in years. He’d felt a sense of purpose, of actually helping somebody, that he couldn’t pretend his typical case gave him.

Duncan had been completely serious about the idea of representing Rafael again, though the reality of the prospect was daunting. He didn’t have an office, a secretary, letterhead—let alone malpractice insurance. All those things had been provided by the firm. The idea of renting some office and setting out on his own seemed impossible.

But he also knew he couldn’t let Leah Roth win. She’d tried to destroy him, presumably believed that she had. Duncan’s pride wouldn’t let him accept such a thorough defeat. He would expose the truth, bring her down. It was just a matter of how.

Dressed in boxer shorts and a Knicks T-shirt, Duncan took his coffee to his desk. He sat down in front of his laptop and got to work.

68

J
EREMY LET
himself into the apartment where he’d let Alena stay. He’d come back here a handful of times in the increasingly unlikely hope that she would’ve returned. She still had a key, after all: it wasn’t impossible that she would just come back. But as time passed this stopped being a real possibility, and Jeremy knew it.

The fifth of scotch in the kitchen was three-quarters empty; Jeremy poured most of it into a glass. He thought he would’ve forgotten about Alena by now, but instead her absence continued to gnaw at him. He missed her, he realized, marveling a little at the thought of it. Having her just vanish from his life had created a mystery that seemed only to grow with the passing of days.

All this drama over a stupid misunderstanding. Of course Jeremy hadn’t meant to suggest that she should sleep with Mattar; could that really be what she thought? Have a drink with the guy, maybe flirt a little, sure, but nothing else. Just basic friendliness. It wasn’t anything the least bit different from what she used to do around the clubs. Show Mattar a good time while he was in town, let him look at a pretty girl who was there to be seen. That was the only idea. He wanted to explain to her, make Alena understand that he hadn’t been whoring her out, not at all. He wouldn’t do that; they were dating, for Christ’s sake. He had feelings for her, real feelings.

Jeremy walked over to the living room window, which faced the Hudson River, New Jersey vaguely visible in the distance. It was time to grow up, Jeremy told himself, as he often did. It was time to put away childish things, straighten himself out, stop drinking so much, getting high, focus his energies on the company. The Aurora was still a mess, but at least the full truth hadn’t come out, not even to his father, and Jeremy didn’t lose sleep anymore thinking he was going to jail. It’d been too close a call, though, and if that didn’t tell him it was time to change things, then he didn’t know what would.

Jeremy took a sip of scotch, the whiskey warming his chest. Fucking idiot: all these grand pronouncements about changing his life with a drink in his hand. And all this crap about how Alena had misunderstood him, when Jeremy himself had only the vaguest of understandings of what he’d been up to that stupid night. He hadn’t trusted Alena, wanted to hurt her before she could hurt him, wanted to show her who had the power. He was no different from his sister or his father, the way they all wielded their money as a weapon, let its power isolate them.

If he was going to try to change his life, it needed to start with Alena. He needed a chance to explain, to give them both an opportunity to really try to be together, no bullshit this time. He pictured her on this couch, her robe undone, her body all soaring curves and sharp angles. He wanted to fuck her so bad right then and there that her absence made him feel like screaming.

He could track her down, Jeremy realized. Of course he could, with the resources at his disposal. Why not? Jeremy pulled out his cell and made a call.

“Darryl? What’s up, it’s Jeremy here. Listen, I’ve got a little situation I’m hoping you can help me out with.”

“My man JR,” Darryl Loomis replied. “Helping out with situations is what I do.”

69

R
IKERS STILL
had Duncan listed as one of Rafael’s lawyers, so he was able to schedule an attorney-client visit. He felt furtive as he was processed through, half expecting someone to stop him. But he made his way to an interview room without incident. About ten minutes later Rafael was brought in, stopping in surprise upon seeing Duncan.

“What’re you doing here?” Rafael said as he sat down. “Thought you fired me.”

Duncan smiled at this, though Rafael didn’t. “I certainly didn’t fire you, Rafael. It was never my decision to drop your case.”

“But you did. So what you want now?”

“I heard you were going to take a plea,” Duncan said.

“What do you care what I’m doing?”

“Of course I care. I know you didn’t shoot Sean Fowler, Rafael.”

Rafael shrugged, not making eye contact. “My new lawyer got me this deal. Says I’ll have to do fifteen years, but if I go to trial I could get life, no chance to get out.”

“But if you didn’t do it—”

“Nobody gives a shit whether I done it or not,” Rafael interrupted, his voice harsh with anger. “Took me a while to figure that out is all. You didn’t give a shit neither, quitting on me.”

Duncan shook his head, feeling defensive and embarrassed. “That’s not what happened.”

“Whatever. I don’t feel like arguing with you about it.”

“I understand you’re angry with me, Rafael. But the reason I’m here is that I’d like to be your lawyer again.”

This at least got Rafael’s full attention. He cocked his head at Duncan, puzzled. “You just got done quitting on me.”

“That was my firm, not me,” Duncan said. He didn’t know quite how to explain recent events. “Long story short, I don’t work there anymore, so the conflict is gone. It may be a little complicated, but I’d like to help you keep fighting this. I’ve got a better idea now what actually happened.”

“You going to promise me you can get me out?” Rafael challenged.

Duncan looked away, uncomfortable. “You know I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do everything in my power. You really want to spend years in prison for something you didn’t do?”

“Course not. But I don’t want to spend my whole life up in here neither.”

“I don’t understand what’s changed,” Duncan said. “You wanted to go to war on this.”

“That was back when I thought I could have a fair fight,” Rafael said, his eyes dark and wrathful. “Look around you; see where you are. Fair got nothing to do with this place.”

Duncan decided to offer a simple plea. “I’d like to help you, Rafael, if you’ll let me. All that’s left of the DA’s case is the one eyewitness, and I have a good angle of attack on him. What do you say?”

Rafael was clearly unmoved. “Look, I liked you, Mr. R, and I don’t want to get in a big thing with you now. But I trusted you and you dumped me, and now I don’t trust you no more. You’re part of the system, same as the rest of them. I know you say you’re not, but you are.”

“I can’t even tell you how much I’m not,” Duncan said, scrambling for a way around Rafael’s defenses.

“I’m keeping my head down, doing the time. I can’t take the chance of spending the rest of my life in here.”

“Fifteen years in prison. A real prison upstate—Sing Sing or Green Haven. You realize what that’ll be?”

Rafael waved his hand dismissively. “For a white boy like you, sure. But I got people in here. I’ll be protected.”

Duncan wondered if bringing up his racial background might create a bridge to Rafael, but this didn’t feel like the time. “Your people in a maximum-security prison won’t be people like you. This is everything you’ve managed to avoid becoming—don’t give in to it now.”

Duncan’s words backfired; he could see the anger overtaking Rafael. “Man,
fuck you
. What do you know about me, what I’ve been through? You don’t know
shit
about none of it, so quit talking like you do.”

Rafael stood abruptly and turned to the bars. Duncan didn’t know what he’d done to lose him, but he could see he had. “I really think I can take the case against you apart if you give me the chance,” he said, offering one last try.

But Rafael didn’t turn. “Guard,” he called instead. “We done in here.”