Blind Man's Alley Read Online Free PDF Page B

“You mean my life story or my résumé?”
    “Surely you have a life story?”
    Duncan wasn’t in the habit of reciting biographical information to clients, and wasn’t particularly comfortable with the prospect, but then again he was trying to build a long-term professional relationship here, which certainly had a personal component. “I grew up outside of Detroit, went to college in Ann Arbor. I got lucky enough to get into Harvard for law school, so off I went. After clerking I wanted to go to a firm where I’d have more responsibility and less hierarchy than the white-shoe places, so I joined Blake. And here I am.”
    Leah narrowed her eyes at him, although Duncan couldn’t say if her disappointment was real or just for show. “I have to say, even for a lawyer that’s a pretty boring life story.”
    Duncan hadn’t been trying to tell her anything, but he still felt a stab of resentment at Leah’s response. What was she expecting him to offer up? He wondered how she would react if he actually told her a fuller version of who he was, but he wasn’t tempted to find out. Although Duncan didn’t consider his background to be a secret, at least not among his friends, it wasn’t something he routinely disclosed in professional situations. Telling people complicated things, and his interaction with Leah Roth was already complicated enough. “You didn’t expect me to give up my secret identity right off the bat?” he said instead.
    “Are your parents lawyers? I’ve noticed it often runs in the family.”
    Duncan was the second person in his family to graduate from college, the first to get an advanced degree of any kind, but he wasn’t tempted to admit that to a woman who stood to inherit a family fortune. Instead he just shook his head. “My father does a lot of negotiating for his job, but he’s not a lawyer. He chairs a local for the UAW in Detroit.”
    Leah cocked her head slightly, Duncan guessing she was recalculating her initial impression of him. If you only knew, he thought. You think you know who I am, where I come from, the road I took to get here. But you’re wrong about it all. “So what are you doing representing the corporate overlords?” she asked.
    Duncan grinned. “My dad asks me the same question every Christmas,” he said, not truthfully.
    The waiter brought Duncan’s tuna and Leah’s lobster salad. “So,” Duncan said, once they’d started eating. “Why are you interested in the libel case?”
    “I’m not, especially. I tried to talk Dad out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He hates reporters. He thinks they exist to take people like us down, look for anything they can find to smear us with. He knows that we’ll probably end up losing, but he’d still really love to teach the newspaper a lesson.”
    “Win or lose, their legal bills will help see to that.”
    “Why, that never occurred to me,” Leah deadpanned. “Of course, Dad’s known Sam Friedman forever, so that’s part of it too.”
    Friedman, another wealthy and well-known developer, was the owner of the New York Journal . Duncan felt an uncomfortable awareness of being a pawn in a much larger game: two real estate moguls pissing in each other’s flower beds. If the lawsuit actually went back to some personal beef between Simon Roth and Sam Friedman he didn’t want to know about it.
    “Wheels within wheels, I’m sure,” Duncan said. “Anyway, as for the deposition, it went okay. The reporter was defensive and testy, didn’t come across very well. So in terms of atmospherics it was a win. But the case is an uphill battle, and she didn’t give us anything that changed that in terms of substance.”
    Leah nodded. “I remember from Con Law 101, actual malice and all that. It’s part of why I told Dad not to waste his time.”
    “That’s right,” Duncan said. “You’re a lawyer.”
    Leah smiled thinly, not bothering to feign surprise that Duncan knew this about her. “Only technically; I never