Swimming with Sharks (28 page)

Nick Kostidis groped for the receiver, half asleep, when the phone rang at three in the morning. Very few people knew his private phone number, so he wasn’t really surprised to hear Frank’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Frank,” he said quietly, throwing a quick glance at a sleeping Mary, “you don’t rest, do you?”

“I do sometimes,” Frank Cohen replied. “But I’ve been working on the program for Moscow’s mayor.”

“What’s up?” Nick yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“Who is it?” Mary asked in a drowsy voice.

“Captain Tremell from the Forty-First Precinct called me,” Frank reported. “It looks like they’ve arrested Vitali’s son during an illegal operation to evict tenants in the Bronx. One police officer was seriously injured.”

Nick was instantly wide awake.

“I thought this might interest you.”

Could this be the long-awaited opportunity to finally get to Vitali?

“When did this happen?” Nick asked, turning on the light.

“It seems as if the guys from the Forty-First wanted to make an example of him and his accomplices. This gang terrorizes people in the neighborhood and burns down buildings, and they’ve been after them for months.”

“I’m driving over there right away,” Nick said.

“Oh, Nick, one more thing,” Frank said. “All of the buildings that this gang targeted were in Morrisania and Hunts Point between Westchester Avenue and Boston Road. Does that ring a bell?”

“No, not at the moment.”

“Last year, this area was declared as a priority redevelopment project.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“If Vitali is behind the raids, then he was likely in the know about the redevelopment plans.”

Nick felt a sudden chill. The mole was at work again.

“What happened?” Mary squinted sleepily into the bright light. “Do you really need to go?”

“They’ve arrested Vitali’s son. This may be my chance to finally nail that guy.” Nick’s eyes were shining. Vitali was Nick’s obsession.
Mary had hoped that this would stop when her husband quit his job as a US attorney, but no. It was Vitali over and over again. An indescribable feeling told her that a tragedy would occur one day because of this man.

“Don’t go!” she urged. “It’s not your job anymore!”

“Mary,” he said as he sat down on the edge of the bed, “I’ve been after this guy for almost twenty years, and every time when I almost had him, he walked away with a smirk. Tonight, maybe it doesn’t have to be that way!”

“I’m scared,” she said quietly.

“Honey,” he said as he stood up, “you don’t need to worry. I’ll be back in two hours.”

The prospect of getting to Vitali through his son electrified Nick. He remembered all the times he had slipped through his fingers: the wasted hours, days, and weeks that he and his people had spent building a criminal case against him for his dirty deeds, only to be thwarted. Strangely enough, he also thought about Alex Sontheim—the beautiful and hard-to-read woman who had been stuck in his mind since their first meeting at the Plaza. Nick got dressed quickly. Instead of a suit and tie, he slipped into a white T-shirt and pulled a leather jacket out of the closet. Feeling sad and worried, Mary watched as he sprinted down the stairs. Her heart tensed with fear. She wished, for probably the thousandth time that her husband was a simpler man, in a simpler job, working far away from this brutal and violent city. The moment the door closed behind him, she began to cry.

It was four a.m. when the car stopped at the fortress-like building of the Forty-First Precinct on Simpson Street. Reporters crowded in front of the building’s steps, holding umbrellas to ward off a steady drizzle. They
immediately recognized the mayor despite his leather jacket and jeans. Flashbulbs flared and two camera flashes lit up the darkness of the night. The reporters charged Nick.

“Is it true that Sergio Vitali’s son has been arrested?”

“Do you know whether the injured officer is still alive?”

“What do you have to say about last night’s shooting of Vitali?”

“Do you think that this assassination attempt has anything to do with the drug bust at the port?”

Nick pushed himself through the crowd without saying a word. He took a deep breath when he entered the police station.

“What assassination attempt?” he hissed at Frank once they were safely behind closed doors.

“I don’t know either.” Frank shrugged his shoulders.

Captain Tremell, commanding officer of the Forty-First Precinct, approached them with a concerned expression. He was followed by Lucas Morgan, the deputy commissioner of the NYPD. Nick was astonished to see Morgan because he rarely ever left his office. In contrast to Jerome Harding, Morgan wasn’t a man of the streets. A true bureaucrat, who had risen in a persistent, unspectacular way, Morgan was waiting patiently to assume Harding’s job. Nick greeted both men.

“The press people are saying that Vitali was gunned down tonight,” he said. “Is that true?”

“There was a shootout on Fifty-First Street just after midnight,” Morgan confirmed, while the men walked into the captain’s office. “Local residents told us that nobody was injured. But CSI found bullets in the wall, and the entrance of a restaurant was destroyed. Eyewitnesses reported that submachine gun shots were fired from a moving vehicle targeting three men and a woman coming out of Le Bernardin.”

Three men and a woman! Alex!
Nick was sure that Vitali had something to do with the drug bust in Brooklyn.

“And?” he asked.

“The men and the woman disappeared in a limousine. No one fitting their description was admitted with a gunshot wound to any of the city’s hospitals.” Morgan raised his shoulders. “We don’t know if it was actually Vitali. The owner of Le Bernardin wouldn’t confirm that Vitali was there for dinner.”

“Let me know if you find out anything new,” Nick said. He was relieved that Alex wasn’t injured, if it actually was her.

“Mr. de Lancie?”

Manhattan’s US attorney pressed the phone receiver between his shoulder and ear. He searched for his glasses and the light switch since he was still half asleep.

“Y…yes,” he cleared his throat. “Who’s calling?”

“This is Massimo Vitali.”

John de Lancie’s drowsiness vanished in an instant, and his heart started pounding.

“Listen, de Lancie,” Massimo Vitali said in a harsh voice, “my brother was arrested last night in the Bronx. I’d like to ask you to make sure that he’s released immediately.”

“I…um…why are you calling me?” John de Lancie didn’t appreciate Massimo’s tone. Furthermore, he was startled that someone besides Sergio Vitali knew about their secret agreement. Vitali was anything but his friend—especially after the Zuckerman affair last year. And de Lancie had only dealt with Sergio himself so far, which is why he preferred to play dumb. This call could actually be a trap.

“My father was shot an hour ago,” Massimo continued. “So I can hardly bother him with this. We need your help. My brother must not go to jail, do you understand?”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m sure you have a lawyer who—”

“I know that you owe my father a favor,” Massimo interrupted him rudely. Apparently, he had no time to be polite. The wheels started turning in de Lancie’s brain. How could he possibly show up at the precinct in the middle of the night and release a man who had been arrested for perpetrating a crime? After all, his job was to do the opposite.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied and hung up. Less than thirty seconds later, the telephone rang again. It was one of the junior attorneys from de Lancie’s office confirming what Massimo just said. An apartment building had been raided. One police officer was wounded, and one of the gangsters was dead. Vitali’s son was among those arrested, and the Forty-First Precinct had requested someone from the US Attorney’s Office. John de Lancie found himself between a rock and a hard place. He was obliged to Vitali, but it would be extremely difficult for him to help in this situation without exposing himself. He’d promised Vitali his assistance, but he’d always pulled strings in the background. On the other hand, nothing much could happen to him. Most likely no one would notice yet another unsolved shooting in the South Bronx—such incidents were the order of the day. There was hardly a reporter who’d get up on a rainy night to wait for an arrest in the infamous Forty-First Precinct.

“I’ll go there myself,” he said to his staffer—who seemed astonished. “It’s better if I take care of this personally. The press is sensitive at the moment when it comes to Vitali, and we can’t afford any mistakes.”

Lieutenant Patrick Peters broke out in a cold sweat.

“I can’t do this,” he said quietly. “It’s impossible.”

“You’ll find a way.” Luca di Varese didn’t smile. “Here’s three grand. There’ll be more when it’s done.”

The police officer swallowed. Luca didn’t like this, but his boss’s order during their ride back from Brooklyn that day some weeks ago had been
crystal clear. Vitali suspected Cesare would sing like a nightingale in jail out of fear and cowardice. The boss was willing to sacrifice his son to protect his business. This scenario had now come to pass. Sergio Vitali was too incapacitated to make a decision, so it fell to Luca to execute his order. Massimo, Silvio, and van Mieren mustn’t know about this. After a moment’s hesitation, Lieutenant Peters accepted the bundle of bills.

“You want him…dead, if I understood you correctly?” he whispered.

“That’s right.” Luca nodded, his face a mask. He turned around, left the parking lot of the Forty-First Precinct without anyone seeing him, and headed back to Long Island.

Captain Tremell reported on the previous night’s incidents.

“Vitali Junior spilled the beans,” he said in a low voice.

Nick couldn’t believe it.

“It seems that he was part of all this by coincidence,” Tremell continued. “These thugs raided and set fire to the building by the order of someone named Silvio Bacchiocchi. This guy Bacchiocchi is Vitali’s strongman; we’ve known this for a while. He’s got a few prior convictions, but small stuff; that’s why we’ve got him in our computer system.”

“Which means that there’s a connection to Vitali,” Nick stated. He had a hard time remaining calm.