approaching partnership vote went as he hoped. Ideally he would establish the same sort of relationship with Simon Roth’s children, who were roughly his age, that his boss had long ago built with their father. Blake had been Simon Roth’s primary litigation lawyer for over twenty years, one of many blue-chip clients he’d maintained. Blake, who billed just under a thousand dollars an hour, was widely acknowledged as one of the country’s leading trial lawyers.
Leah looked over at Duncan while on the phone with her assistant. She didn’t smile or otherwise blunt her gaze, just openly evaluated him. Leah was attractive in a stringent sort of way, with dark straight hair and deep brown eyes, her coloring complemented by her dark pantsuit. She had the particular sort of confidence that Duncan had first encountered a decade previously upon entering Harvard Law: that of the born to it.
Duncan wondered what she in turn saw while looking at him. He was medium height, with honey-colored skin and green eyes that stood out against his complexion, his dark brown hair cropped so short a comb could barely pass through the back and sides. Despite the July heat, he was dressed in a gray Brooks Brothers suit, with a blue oxford shirt and a striped navy blue tie. Duncan had picked out the most conservative outfit in his wardrobe for this meeting—even his business attire usually had at least a little more flair—and such clothing still sometimes felt like a disguise. But he was a background presence at a meeting like today’s, meant to be a quiet backstop for Blake, speaking if spoken to, and he therefore did his best to blend into the environment.
“So,” Leah said, once she’d rejoined him across the conference room table. “You’re Steven Blake’s protégé?”
“One of them,” Duncan said. “Blake brings in too much work to have just one.”
“But you’re the one we get,” Leah said. “Hope we’re not keeping you from more important things.”
Duncan wasn’t actually a fan of the work he was doing for Roth Properties: there were certainly sexier cases at the firm, including some of Blake’s. But there wasn’t an instant where he contemplated giving an honest answer, and he had no doubt Leah wasn’t expecting one. “You’re one of our firm’s most important clients, obviously,” he said instead. “It’s an honor to be trusted to work on your matters.”
Leah smiled dismissively, signaling nice try. “The bills from your firm go across my desk,” she said. “I saw that you billed over two hundred hours to us the other month. That can’t leave you much time to work on anything else.”
Duncan shrugged, a tad uneasy, not sure what Leah was looking for him to say. “It doesn’t really,” he said. “I’ve got a pro bono case, but that doesn’t take much time. As far as paying clients, right now you’re pretty much it. But it ebbs and flows.”
“What’s your pro bono case about?”
Duncan was surprised by the question, not expecting any actual curiosity about his professional life from Leah. “It’s just defending a family in an eviction proceeding.”
“Is that all?” Leah said archly.
Duncan felt a mix of annoyance and embarrassment, but tried not to let either show. His dismissiveness had not been directed at the case itself, which he took seriously, but just at the prospect of talking about it with Leah Roth. This was especially true because the case had a connection, albeit a tenuous one, with Roth Properties.
His clients, a grandmother and grandson named Dolores and Rafael Nazario, were residents of the Jacob Riis housing project on the far eastern edge of Alphabet City. That project was receiving a radical makeover into mixed-income housing, a hugely ambitious transformation in which Roth Properties was partnering with the city. The eviction was based on the grandson getting arrested for smoking a joint outside his project. He’d been busted not by the cops, but rather by private security guards who’d been patrolling around the ongoing construction work.
Rafael had pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge stemming from the weed, not realizing that doing so would open the door to eviction proceedings. Rafael insisted that the whole thing was a lie, that he hadn’t actually been caught smoking pot, although Duncan didn’t necessarily put a lot of stock in the denials, especially since they were being made in front of his client’s grandmother.
Duncan managed a smile at Leah. “I didn’t mean in the sense … Obviously, it’s very important to my clients to stay in their home,