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.Lily gave him a look, leaving Duncan no doubt that she saw right through him.“Do you know what you said to me once?” she asked, Duncan’s stomach clenching at her expression.“You remember that time I was late—you know, late.And I’m freaking out a little, and what you said was that our kid would come out looking like America’s future.Did I ever love you when you said that, even though it was pretty clear that the last thing you wanted was to have some kind of crazy tri-racial baby with me.I was weak at the knees, kiddo.I was ready to sign on the dotted line.”Duncan, uncomfortable, tried to derail her.“And then I said I’d put Golf Digest in the crib,” he said.“Just in case that Tiger Woods thing turned out to be genetic.”Lily brushed off his attempt to change the mood.“I’m serious.”Duncan sighed and rubbed at his face, not understanding why Lily wanted to revisit all this.“Look, yes, sure, I remember.”“You remember what?” Lily demanded, her eyes cloudy.“I remember saying that to you, about our theoretical kid.I remember the look you gave me, hearing it.I remember all of it, okay? And we came close, damn close, you and I, but we didn’t get there, not all the way.And I don’t quite know why not, and I don’t think you know either, but here we are.”Lily swiped at her eyes.“So it wasn’t fair of me, the other night, saying you don’t understand what my version of this is like.Because I can’t understand what your version of it is like either.But okay, you’re right, that bridge is underwater.There’s no right way to do any of this, and I’m sorry if I’ve acted like there is.”Duncan smiled at her, mostly out of relief that they’d finally been able to talk about this without it turning into a fight.“I appreciate your blessing,” he said.12NUGENT WAS giving Candace only a small amount of rope.Her editor wasn’t convinced that she’d find a story in a Roth Properties lawyer representing a teenager accused of murder.But he at least trusted her instincts enough to let her look.Candace didn’t know exactly what she was looking for.Whatever it was, it wasn’t apparent in the murder case itself.The only thing that linked Fowler to Roth Properties was that he was doing construction security for them at the time he was killed.The only link between the accused and Roth was the lawyer, Riley.Candace had done due diligence on Blake and Wolcott back when the libel suit had been filed against her; she still had the research folder on her computer.She went through it, looking to see if anything popped out differently in the context of the Fowler murder.The firm had been founded about a decade ago, and had already grown to nearly two hundred attorneys—small for a major law firm, but large considering the firm’s youth.Its undisputed star was Steven Blake, who’d been a corner-office partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell—one of the city’s most prestigious law firms, whose own white-shoe history dated back well into the nineteenth century.Blake had been a standout—at a firm whose culture was not known for having standouts—before going off on his own, leaving behind the millions a year he’d been making as Davis Polk’s leading litigator and announcing plans to start a small trial-oriented boutique.His new firm had taken off with a bang, cementing Blake’s place as one of the country’s leading trial lawyers while attracting dozens of lateral attorneys to his firm.But after years of explosive growth and a high-profile winning streak, the firm had come back down to earth in the last year or two.Part of this was no doubt the inevitable backlash to the firm’s quick success, but the glow had nevertheless faded a bit.Her review of the firm’s history didn’t tell her much of use to her now.There were a couple of references to Simon Roth being a long-standing client of Blake’s, and the libel suit itself had triggered a fair amount of press, but she didn’t see anything that connected the firm to the changes at Jacob Riis.She turned to the specific lawyer, Duncan Riley, Googling him to see what popped.The first hit was from the firm Web site, a brief professional bio and head shot.The bio informed her that Riley had an undergraduate degree from Michigan and a law degree from Harvard, and that he’d clerked for a federal judge in Manhattan before joining Blake’s firm as an associate in the fall of 2001, back when it was only a few years old.It was an impressive pedigree, but probably little different from most of Blake and Wolcott’s associates.Duncan did look like an up-and-comer at the firm: his bio listed a number of cases he’d worked on, and Candace had heard of several of them.Including, of course, the one in which she was a defendant.She studied his picture, a professional studio shot, Duncan in a suit, smiling, clearly striving to look welcoming and competent.His tie and shirt echoed each other, matching baby blue.His smile was slightly self-conscious, or ironic maybe, perhaps an awareness of the fact that he was presenting himself as a white-shoe lawyer.There was something about his face she couldn’t quite put her finger on—his dark green eyes seemed out of place against his almost Latin complexion.His dark hair was cut quite short, little more than a buzz cut.Candace couldn’t place him in terms of background—she thought maybe Mediterranean or Jewish or even light-skinned Hispanic by his looks, though his name didn’t support any of those.He was good-looking, Candace reluctantly conceded, and she’d had to admit that he’d been an adroit questioner, listening carefully to her answers, following up on any evasion or ambiguity, politely but persistently pressing her, always on the lookout for an opening.She’d recognized his skill, even as she’d hated being on the receiving end.The fact that Riley was fast approaching a partnership vote, and appeared from the outside at least to have a decent shot at making it, only made his representation of Rafael Nazario more baffling.She logged onto a search engine for New York’s courts and ran a search for cases in which Duncan was a lawyer of record.She found that a couple of months before Rafael Nazario had been accused of killing Sean Fowler, the city’s public housing authority had launched eviction proceedings against him, along with a woman who Candace guessed must be Rafael’s mother.There was only one filing available electronically: an opinion from the trial court dated a week before the murder.Candace downloaded a pdf.To her surprise, the order was granting a motion to dismiss the eviction [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]