Free Blind Man's Alley by Justin Peacock Page B

firm about the sudden change in Rafael’s case; it was quite another to be talking to the press about the case. “Look, I don’t have any comment, okay?”
    Costello tilted his head quizzically at Duncan’s reaction. “But I haven’t even asked you anything yet,” he said.
    “I’ve got to go,” Duncan said, turning his back on the reporter and walking quickly down the hall.
    “Can I get your card?” the reporter called out behind him.
    “Left them in my other suit,” Duncan said.
    THE FEELING of being in over his head at the arraignment was nothing compared to how Duncan felt at the prospect of discussing Rafael’s arrest with his grandmother. Duncan took a cab to Tenth and D, the project buildings occupying the entire east side of the street for blocks. Nobody paid him any attention until he had to check in with building security. Once up to Dolores’s floor, Duncan found her standing in her opened doorway, a shredded Kleenex clutched in her hand.
    Duncan followed her inside, sitting down across from her in the living room. The apartment was a mess; Dolores explained that the police had executed a search warrant, looking for the gun, and they’d made no effort to put things back. Trying to look past the chaos caused by the police, Duncan could see that the apartment was relatively spacious and bright, but Dolores’s attentive decorating couldn’t fully disguise its dilapidated condition. There were numerous cracks running along the walls; the ceiling was blotched and sagging with water damage; the outside of the windows smudged with layered grime.
    “Rafael didn’t kill nobody,” Dolores insisted. She was a small, portly woman, her English thickly accented and pocked with Spanish words.
    “We just went before the judge. I’m afraid Rafael’s going to be held in jail until this is resolved.”
    Dolores shook her head, tears wet on her cheeks. “But if they understand he did not do it,” she said.
    Duncan knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. “I’m sorry, but whatever this is, I don’t think it’s just some misunderstanding we’re going to be able to clear up.”
    “But you can do something, no?”
    Expecting the question didn’t make answering it any easier. “I’m not sure that I can,” Duncan said softly, forcing himself to make eye contact as he said it.
    “But please, Mr. Riley,” Dolores said, looking at him with her brimming eyes. “If you do not help my nieto , who will?”

7
    C ANDACE SNOW arrived late to the five p.m. news meeting, ignoring the looks as she made her way to an empty chair in the corner, all the chairs around the table already occupied. She was the only reporter there among the editors—the I-team sent a reporter to the meetings to see if there was a story that looked like it might be worth going deeper on, something with more meat on the bone. The I-team’s editor, Bill Nugent, believed that what separated investigative reporters was an ability to see the big picture, to make the connections those in the daily trenches might miss. He wanted them looking into the daily slash and burn in order to see past it.
    As with any city newspaper, the bulk of the Journal ’s stories were ephemeral, the endless loop of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God tales of city life that nobody much remembered a week later. However terrible for the people involved, their outcome did not affect the larger patterns in the city’s grid of power and influence. The I-team stories were different, or at least they aspired to be. At their best, their stories altered the city’s trajectory: they launched investigations, ruined careers, even righted the occasional wrong.
    Once she’d started working for the I-team, Candace began finding the articles that filled the paper—the steady hum of the city’s scandal and strife—less and less interesting. Not that she disapproved of its content: the Journal , though a tabloid, was nevertheless a real newspaper: it steered clear of the cheap-shot