Swimming with Sharks (13 page)

“Ah, here’s my wife,” he said. Alex froze for a second, and then she forced a friendly smile. Constanzia Vitali was a cultivated woman, and her elegant dress concealed her round shape perfectly. She might have been very pretty once, but her beauty had long since faded. At fifty-five, Sergio was so incredibly attractive and full of energy that his wife looked like a withered rose next to him. He casually pushed himself away from the wall.

“Constanzia,” he said as he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, “may I introduce Alex Sontheim? She is one of Vince Levy’s best employees. Alex, this is my wife, Constanzia.”

The two women shook hands. Alex felt a twinge of guilt at Constanzia’s inquiring look.

“You work at an investment bank?” Constanzia Vitali’s face was friendly and without any expression. “That must be quite exciting.”

“Yes, it certainly is.”

Constanzia Vitali turned toward her husband and said something in Italian. Alex, who spoke Italian quite well, understood that Constanzia was asking her husband to give his speech. Sergio answered her in a low voice, whereupon Constanzia turned around without neglecting to throw another probing look at Alex.

“Unfortunately, I have to look after my other guests now.” Sergio placed his hand briefly on Alex’s arm. “Can you take me to the city with you later?”

“Maybe. I don’ know whether I’ll stay that long.”

“It would make me so happy.”

For the rest of the evening, Alex only saw Sergio from a distance. He was in a splendid mood, joking with his business partners’ wives and his friends, dancing with his wife. He was the perfect host. Even without him on her arm, Alex enjoyed the evening to the fullest. Just a week ago, she had moved into the penthouse on the Upper West Side. Now she was a guest at a private party of one of the country’s richest men, and she was treated as someone who quite naturally belonged in this crowd. She felt flattered that so many of the people at the party knew her name.

While the wives listened in boredom, Alex conversed with their husbands about the expected rate hike by the Fed, the higher leverage in option trading versus stocks, the rapidly rising prices of technology stocks and the resulting opportunities for the market, and the consequences of political decisions on the stock market. She was sitting at a table with Zack, Levy, Weinberg, Friedman, David Norman, a board member of the NYSE, and a young man named Jack Lang from a brokerage firm called Manhattan Portfolio Management. The food was provided by New York’s best catering company, and the heavy French red wine was pure poetry; the cocktails, perfectly mixed, contributed to Alex’s failure to notice how quickly time passed.

It was already dark when she looked around for Sergio. He was nowhere to be seen. With one ear she overheard Zack, Rudensky, and Jack Lang whispering about the sensational profit margins possible when investing in venture capital companies. They talked about international business companies, or IBCs, that were incorporated in offshore financial centers such as the Cayman Islands, Samoa, Labuan, or other exotic locations. Alex didn’t jump into the conversation because she was more interested to know where
Sergio was. His wife sat a few tables away and was engaged in a conversation with an older gray-haired woman.

Alex eventually excused herself and walked toward the house to find the restroom. As she walked through the vast salons and long hallways, she realized that she’d had too much to drink. She winced as she noticed a man standing across from her. He was smaller than she was; he was skinny, and his ferret-like face was disfigured by acne scars. An ice-cold shiver ran down Alex’s spine. It wasn’t his ugliness, but his strangely lifeless eyes that instilled fear in her.

“
Buona sera
,” he said with a coarse voice, walking past her. Alex stared after him. What kind of horrible person was this? Suddenly sober, she had the feeling that she needed to get back to the other guests as quickly as possible.

Cesare Vitali was in a bad mood. The laughing hordes annoyed him just as much as the schmaltzy Italian music, but he was especially mad at Silvio, Luca, and his brother Massimo. They treated him like a child. They had walked past him on their way into the house about a half hour ago. When he asked where they were going, Massimo replied that they had something to talk about. The men simply left him behind and disappeared into the house, where his father was likely expecting them like a king waiting for his subjects—confident, fearless, and powerful. Cesare wanted to earn his father’s attention and respect, but he somehow always screwed up. His buddies respected him, and the prostitutes on the Lower East Side feared him—which felt good—but in his father’s eyes, he was a failure who had to be kept away from the family business.

Despite the warm temperature outside, Cesare was suddenly freezing. He needed a line of coke desperately. The white powder could
make his bad mood disappear instantly and turn him into the big man he wanted to be. He dumped his whiskey over the terrace railing in disgust and stood up. He had a burning interest in what they were talking about in there. Nelson was there too. Something big was brewing. In a surge of anger, he briefly considered just barging into the library. Wasn’t he, just like Massimo, also one of Sergio’s sons? Didn’t he also have the right to be part of those meetings? But he wasn’t invited. He wouldn’t put it past his father to kick him out in front of his brother and the others.

In the guest bathroom, Cesare quickly fished out a tinfoil packet of white powder, tapped some onto a small pocket mirror that he always carried with him for that purpose, and formed two lines with a golden razor blade that hung in a case around his neck. Then he skillfully rolled up a dollar bill and snorted the powder forcefully. It burned in his nose and brought tears to his eyes. Cesare relished the bitter flavor of the cocaine at the back of his throat and took in a deep breath. The chill disappeared from his body, replaced by an intoxicating heat. A wonderful feeling of security enveloped his body. He smiled at his reflection in the mirror and opened the door.

Alex wandered through all the colossal salons until she realized that she was at the far end of the house and nowhere close to the terrace. She was just about to turn around and retrace her steps when she heard muted voices from an adjacent room. She didn’t usually eavesdrop at doors, but this repulsive man with his yellow predator eyes had sparked her curiosity. She held her breath and stopped in front of the room’s double doors. Through the narrow crack between them, she could see a library. Sergio was standing behind a massive desk made of marble and glass with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves behind him. Alex recognized three of the men.
One of them was Nelson van Mieren, Sergio’s lawyer, the other Massimo, Sergio’s oldest son, and the third was Luca di Varese, one of Sergio’s confidants. The skinny man with the acne scars and yellow eyes was standing in front of the desk.

“Do you have any news for me, Natale?” Sergio asked in Italian.

“It is done,” the man responded in a coarse voice. “Zuckerman won’t utter another word.”

Alex caught her breath. At first she thought she’d misheard him.

“Bene,”
Sergio triumphantly. “What about the Irishman at the docks, Luca?”

“As they say in the movies, he’s sleeping with the fishes,” Luca replied, “and no one will find him.”

“Good work.” Sergio nodded and sat down at his desk. Alex felt a wave of horror pulsing through her. Her heart was beating so loudly that everyone must have heard it. Confused thought fragments whirled around her head. The men in this room were talking about people who had been murdered! Today, on this beautiful August day, two men had died. Someone had given an order to kill them. Alex closed her eyes. This someone was no other than Sergio Vitali. He had assured her that he had nothing to do with these rumors circulating about him in the press. She had believed him because he was so convincing. She had
wanted
to believe him. Now she realized that he had shamelessly betrayed her trust. She remembered Oliver’s words again:
His entire empire is built upon blood and crime. He is an unscrupulous and brutal gangster.

Alex’s mouth was dry from fear. She was miserable, but she couldn’t run away. Some part of her pleaded to learn the opposite of what she’d just heard was true. She didn’t want to think badly of Sergio. Maybe she’d simply misunderstood his words…

“I’m very satisfied, Natale,” Sergio said. Alex could see his face through the crack in the door. She couldn’t understand the ugly man’s response, but she certainly understood his salutation.

“I wish you a happy birthday and a joyful evening, Don Sergio.”

Don Sergio.
Sergio acknowledged this man’s reverence with a casual nod. Alex felt the ground shaking beneath her, and it seemed like an ice-cold hand had grabbed her heart. None of the stories in the papers were invented. They seemed to be grossly understated.
Gangster’s whore,
she thought. Oliver was completely right, but she’d refused to believe him! She, Alex Sontheim, was the mistress of a Mafia boss, a man who hired killers to solve his problems. She turned around to flee from this house, but then she froze in shock. A man stood in front of her and gazed at her with frightening blue eyes.

“Are you lost?” He looked her up and down in an obscene way.

“I…err…I’m looking for the restroom,” Alex stuttered. The voices of the men in the library could be heard through the doors. She snapped out of it and tried to sneak past the man, but he grabbed her by the wrist.

“Not so fast,” he said suspiciously. “What were you doing in front of this door?”

“I told you that I was looking for the restroom.” Alex thought she might pass out any moment. “Would you please let go of me now?” she asked, with all of the assertiveness she could muster.

“Oh no, I won’t. Because I don’t believe that you got lost. And I don’t think that my father will be amused when he finds out that you’re eavesdropping at the door.”

My father…

Alex stared at the young man, and she recognized the astonishing resemblance. This is exactly how Sergio must have looked at twenty-five. The young man was Sergio’s son. She felt sick with fear. She had overheard the men in the adjacent room talking about two murders. She thought about the Mafia movies that she had seen in which accidental witnesses were thrown into the East River with a concrete block strapped to their feet.
Sleeping with the fishes.
And Sergio, the man she thought she knew, was Don Sergio—the godfather of New York. It would be very easy for him to make her disappear.

“Listen,” she whispered, “this is nothing but a misunderstanding.”

“We’ll see about that in a minute.” Without knocking, the young man pushed the door open and dragged Alex with him. Sergio stopped midsentence and stared at his youngest son and Alex in surprise.

“Cesare, what is this?” Sergio snarled at his son.

“Papa!” Cesare exclaimed in triumph and tightened his grip on Alex’s wrist. “This woman was standing outside the door eavesdropping!”

Sergio looked at Alex in astonishment.

“Let her go!” he ordered. Cesare obeyed reluctantly and gave her another push that almost made her lose her balance.