Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-seven
Iris had been an official full-time employee of Wolff Development for only a few days, and she was still battling her “syndrome of the impostor” as she sat in her shiny new office in the sky.
It was an upgrade from her old job in every way.
While Candela’s offices had been located on a low floor in a midtown Manhattan building with perpetual scaffolding, Wolff Dev was at One World Trade Center with panoramic views of the Hudson River and all of downtown.
At Candela she’d shared a long desk smack in the middle of their open plan office, where she was interrupted so often that she sometimes placed client calls from the women’s restroom in order to find quiet.
At Wolff Dev, she had her own private office with a window overlooking the Battery Park Marina, a sleek desk with floating drawers, and a brand-new desktop computer.
Her office even had its own thermostat, so she no longer needed the ratty cardigan that had lived on her old chair.
And the greatest perk of all, Wolff Dev offices were dog-friendly, so Hugo didn’t have to stay at home. Presently, he was snoring at her feet.
After Iris completed placing an order for more than two thousand hallway lights for Oasys, her next call was to Brianne Woolworth, the attorney Jonathan had hired for James’s sister, Veronica.
She and Brianne first caught up on the progress of their eviction case, which unfortunately sounded as though it could take months to settle.
Iris spun her chair to gaze out at the yachts and sailboats.
“How long can Veronica and her kids stay at the apartment they’re in now? ”
“Mr. Wolff has indicated they can stay until the case is resolved, however long that takes.”
Iris was ever surprised at Jonathan’s generosity. “But what if they lose, could they afford to live there permanently?”
“Oh no. It is in one of his mixed-income buildings, and the apartment is technically below market rate, but it’s nowhere near public-housing-affordable.”
“Ah.” Iris sometimes forgot how astronomical “market rate” really was in Manhattan.
“But I’m optimistic for their case. Now that Mr. Wolff is poised to take on a leadership role in the Hendricks Houses redevelopment, there will be a place for the Pattersons.”
Iris nodded, satisfied. “I’m also calling to get a referral from you for a friend of mine, Mireille Rapacine…” She filled her in on everything Rapacine had been put through.
Brianne cooed. “Aw, I have a cat, I’d be beside myself. I’m sorry your friend is going through this, it’s absolutely grounds for harassment charges. My caseload is heavy, but I can refer her to a colleague.”
Iris remembered Rapacine’s words: All rich people have cameras.
No one in Hendricks Houses was rich, but the housing project was surrounded by much more expensive residential real estate and businesses.
“Just to go back to the Pattersons for a second. You know, we wouldn’t have gotten the cat back if not for the neighbor’s Ring camera footage.
Do you think something like that could help with Veronica’s case?
The cause for eviction was that her daughter violated visitor policy and let in that group of guys, which she denies, but what if a home or business across the street had footage showing she was innocent?
Have you looked into that nearby surveillance? ”
Brianne scoffed. “We don’t need a business across the street, Big Brother is alive and well in public housing. The problem isn’t not enough surveillance footage, it’s too much.”
Iris swiveled her chair back to her desk. “What do you mean?”
“NYCHA buildings have on average one camera per every nineteen residents. More surveillance cameras than JFK airport.”
“They can’t even afford to repair an elevator. How can they afford security cameras?”
“Because it’s not NYCHA that pays for them. It comes out of the police budget. And that’s upwards of five billion dollars.”
“I had no idea.” Although she flashed on the expensive “toys” of the digi-dog search robots.
“You’d think with all those eyes, the projects would be the safest places on earth.
But no one is manning the watch tower until after a crime happens.
But NYCHA admin uses the footage to charge residents with petty infractions like the ones Veronica faces.
I don’t typically represent many public housing residents, but in my research, I found a case where an elderly resident in Brooklyn was evicted because she allowed her nephew to move in with her while she recovered from hip surgery, they accused her of lending her key to a nonresident.
It’s shameful. But as you know, NYCHA’s finances are in dire straits, so they’re cracking down on evictions. ”
“Rent revenue was never supposed to sufficiently fund public housing, that’s the whole idea of subsidizing, no?”
“Exactly. But tenants are easier to squeeze than politicians.”
Iris shook her head. “Would they ever let you access the footage?”
“Oh sure, they’ll bury you in it! They were more than happy to give me six months of twenty-four-hour surveillance, thousands of hours of footage, which is unhelpful by design.
And honestly, I only asked in case the threat of accountability inclined them to drop the case, but no luck.
The complaint is imprecise about when exactly the infractions occurred, so it wouldn’t be worth my hours to comb through it.
It’s only useful if you knew exactly the time and date you were looking for. ”
“Can you share it with us?”
“If Veronica really wants it, yes. But I hope she and Kiara won’t make themselves crazy sifting through it. Tell them I have other grounds to fight this, okay?”
“Thanks. Veronica doesn’t have a working computer right now, so why don’t you send it to me instead, I’ll give you my new work email.”
They exchanged info and said their goodbyes.
She had just hung up the phone when someone rapped his knuckles against her open door, making her and Hugo jump.
Nate Childers was standing in her doorway with a messenger bag across his chest. “Working hard or hardly working?”
Iris rose to welcome him, warm but wary. “What are you doing here? Come in.”
Nate bent to pat Hugo, who had shuffled over. “You thought you were free of me. But I’m just here to drop off some contracts for Oasys. Don’t forget, that’s still a Candela project.”
“Aren’t you a little high up to be playing courier? I thought they promoted you to partner.”
Nate smiled. “Okay, I was curious. And now, jealous.”
Iris followed his gaze to the cityscape behind her. It was spectacular—and yet she still felt a little melancholy. “You know I never thought I’d leave Candela.”
“Yeah, you had to, though.” His voice sounded wistful. “Frank should’ve promoted you earlier.”
Iris was surprised.
He noticed. “Don’t look at me like that. We all knew you’ve been ready for more. I certainly saw it. And Wolff saw it too.”
“Thank you. What’s different about you, you look…healthier?”
Nate brightened. “Allergy shots! It’s the first summer in ages that I can breathe. Now I can actually wake up and smell my coffee.”
The allergies—he couldn’t smell her before, she realized.
Nate set the package on her desk. “I’ve been reading the gushing headlines about Wolff taking over at that public housing complex, Hero Developer Saves Public Housing, and, what was the Post ’s line?
‘Projects’-manager . Great press, they make him sound like Bruce Wayne.
But are you really excited to design the cheapest possible institutional lighting?
You won’t be getting into Arch Digest with that. ”
“You know? I’m genuinely looking forward to lighting those apartments.
Those residents deserve as much warmth and good design as someone paying fifteen hundred per square foot.
The budget will be a challenge, but I didn’t get into this field to pick out Murano glass pendant lamps.
I want to make buildings feel like homes. ”
Nate whistled. “Wolff’s offer must have been rich!”
Iris chuckled. “Stock shares, baby.”
“Oh!” Nate pantomimed a dagger to his heart.
“It pays to do the right thing. You should try it sometime.”
He laughed. “Seriously, I’m gonna miss you. Will we still be friends?”
“Why not?” she said, feeling suddenly generous. “In fact, you should bring your family to this Italian Giglio festival in Williamsburg. My boyfriend, Gabe, is a lifter in it, they carry some big religious statue down the street—”
Nate’s eyes lit up. “Like Godfather Two ?”
“I don’t know, but don’t make that joke at the Giglio. I’m going on Wednesday night, but it’s on the weekend too. Maddie might like it.”
“Sounds cool. All right, so I gave you the Candela Oasys paperwork, and that’s it. I’ll finish my snooping on the way out, unless Scary Marilyn intercepts me.” Nate gave her a last look. “Good to see you, Iris.”
“You too. Give my love to Frank.”
—
Iris smiled to herself after Nate had left.
She’d thought his animosity toward her was deep-seated and unchanging because he couldn’t smell the perfume, but his kind words today were hardly a snap judgment.
Now she wondered if it had been only the competition keeping them from being friends, and maybe she’d had his respect all along.
She swiveled back to her computer, woke up the screen, and was delighted to see she already had a new email from Brianne with a zip file.
She opened it and a deluge of files populated her screen.
It was indeed an incomprehensible quantity of video.
Even the trash depot was better organized.
Without a time and date to search on, the footage was useless to exonerate the Pattersons in their eviction case.
Iris recalled what Nate said about good press calling Wolff the savior of Hendricks.
She still believed that Kiara’s heroism that day deserved to be a news story, one that would pressure the admin to back off with the eviction.
Nothing helped a news story sell like pictures, or even better, video .
Iris knew the gas explosion had occurred on June 29 at 3:58 p.m. thanks to Joshua Keaton’s articles, the journalist she met at Hendricks on move-out day.
She received New York Times alerts for his new pieces in her inbox, although disappointingly he still hadn’t written about the Pattersons.
Iris thought if she could find video of Kiara leading the evacuation, she could make Joshua reconsider.
Iris clicked folders with varying location names like “Tower A—N,” and “Tower D—SW” to find the one trained on the entrance that had been destroyed.
She oriented herself via cardinal directions and cross streets until she found the correct lobby camera.
Then she opened the interior folder for June 29 and estimated where to toggle the playback on or before four in the afternoon.
Iris landed just shy of two o’clock and watched with faster playback speed to see when the evacuation began, praying there would be a clear shot of Kiara.
The black-and-white video resolution wasn’t the best, especially at 4x speed, and Iris wasn’t sure she would recognize Kiara from the high angle, but she figured she was looking for somebody young, people moving extra fast, or any behavior out of the ordinary.
She didn’t expect to slow it down until she was very close to four o’clock, but something unusual caught her eye about a particular man entering the building.
Iris paused it; it was only 2:47 p.m . She rewound and replayed it at normal speed.
Even when she slowed it down, the man was walking swiftly, with long strides, as if he was quite tall.
She couldn’t see his face; he was wearing a ball cap and surgical mask, but she could tell he was white.
And still his race wasn’t what tweaked her memory.
Slowly Iris toggled the cursor, frame by frame, so that she could get a clear image of his feet—in some frames his shoe simply looked blurry gray, but when she stopped the video at the moment his leg was farthest forward, the shoe’s design came into crisp focus.
A checkerboard.