Swimming with Sharks (59 page)

“No, she can’t,” Nick countered. “Vitali would kill her.”

Connors didn’t seem convinced.

“She called me today,” Nick said calmly. “I’ve heard many people lie before. She’s not lying. I believe her—without a doubt.”

“She called you?” Connors’s eyes widened. “Fifty US marshals, the police, and the FBI are tracking her down for murder, and you tell me with a straight face that you had a phone conversation with this woman?”

“For God’s sake, Lloyd, she didn’t do it!” Nick replied vehemently. “I know something is seriously fishy here, and my instincts have rarely failed me. De Lancie and Harding are contradicting each other when it comes to the evidence. And why would the police commissioner get personally involved in a homicide investigation? He didn’t even step in when Roddy Burillo, quarterback for the Giants, was killed—and that was a truly newsworthy case!”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Harding is Vitali’s man. Just like de Lancie and Governor Rhodes.”

“Come on, Nick! That’s ridiculous!”

“Absolutely not.” Nick handed the bank statements to the deputy US attorney. “Look at them closely and then tell me whether or not we have a case here.”

He crossed his arms. Connors’s face was first filled with astonishment, then with shock.

“For God’s sake,” Connors said, lowering the papers, “if all of this is true, then…then…”

“It’s true. Raymond Howard’s name is on the list. He was one of my closest employees for eight years. I often wondered why many of my secret plans were already known before they were officially made public. Howard was Vitali’s mole in my office.”

He paused for a moment and remembered Raymond Howard’s terror when Mary and Christopher got into the limousine. He had known that there was a bomb in the car. A bomb that was meant for Nick.

“It was Howard who informed Vitali about Zuckerman’s hideout. He was also the one who shared redevelopment plans for certain neighborhoods in the South Bronx. And as a result, Vitali purchased entire apartment blocks and sent his people there to intimidate the tenants. Vitali’s son was arrested during one of those raids.”

Connors stared at Nick with his mouth wide open.

“Alex Sontheim personally overheard the same man who shot at me at the cemetery in Brooklyn reporting Zuckerman’s murder to Vitali. Vitali had Zuckerman killed because he was afraid he would reveal to the grand jury how he secured the contract to build the World Financial Center. By the way, you can ask Paul McIntyre about this. He’s also on the list.”

“But de Lancie…”

“Do you remember the incidents at the Forty-First Precinct in the Bronx the night of Cesare Vitali’s arrest? Did you ever wonder why de Lancie personally showed up there?”

“Yes, I did.”

“There you go. He had to show up because he’s obligated to Vitali. I was also there, which he didn’t like at all. He was acting strange for a US attorney. I told him straight to his face that I questioned his loyalty.”

Connors nodded slowly.

“It was also strange that they captured the guy who allegedly shot at Vitali within just a few hours. Furthermore, there was this obscure terrorist case that—in my opinion—served to distract from Vitali and his son’s death.”

“So who actually shot at him?”

“I suspect that it was the Colombian drug cartel. Vitali tipped off customs, which in turn busted a huge cocaine shipment. The shots at Vitali were the Colombian’s revenge. I saw through it, but I made the mistake of publicly announcing it. The attempt on my life was the final proof of how dangerously close I got to the truth.”

“Good Lord. Nick, do you know what all of this means?”

“Yes,” Nick said, frowning, “I know very well.”

“But how does Sontheim fit into this? Why did she disappear?”

“She’s understandably frightened after everything that’s happened.”

Connors started pacing. He frowned, chewing on his lower lip.

“I hope you get this, Lloyd,” Nick said. “I’m pretty sure Vitali spread the rumor that Alex killed St. John to create a distraction. A murder suspect is useless as a witness in court.”

The deputy US attorney stopped.

“Looking at it that way, it doesn’t sound as absurd anymore.” He took a deep breath and exhaled again. “But I can’t rush things. A case like this must be prepared carefully.”

“We don’t have much time left. With every passing hour, Vitali has more opportunity to destroy the evidence.”

And he could find Alex. And kill her
…

No, he mustn’t think about that now. Above all else, he had to make sure that no one caught on to his feelings for this woman, who was the key witness in one of the biggest corruption scandals in New York’s history. Connors leaned forward, his hands braced on the tabletop; he stared at the papers spread out in front of him.

“I don’t know what kind of avalanche we may trigger here,” he said to Nick’s relief, “but we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“We have a lead,” Luca announced. “She bought something at a department store in Boston this morning with her credit card.”

Sergio had been lying on the sofa with his eyes closed; he jumped up. Alex had gotten out of the city. Did she make a purchase with her credit card on purpose, or was it just poor judgment? She must know that credit cards could be traced.

“The FBI is watching every international airport,” Massimo said. “She won’t be able to leave the country.”

“Of course she can,” Sergio replied, annoyed. “She probably has new papers and a different appearance by now. Alex is damn clever.”

Massimo, Luca, and Silvio looked at each other. They had never seen Sergio Vitali admit to a mistake.

“We have to catch her before the cops do,” Sergio said, more to himself than the other three men. “Luca, send two guys to the airport in Boston. And Silvio, what about this lawyer in LA?”

“We’ve got all the documents,” Silvio responded. “Our man is already on a plane back to New York. His tracks have been covered up carefully.”

“Will the lawyer keep his mouth shut?”

“Yes, he will,” Silvio confirmed. “He swallowed a bit too much water.”

Sergio nodded in satisfaction. Levy would fly to Georgetown tomorrow morning to close all of the secret accounts. He hadn’t heard anything yet, but there was still the possibility that Alex had told someone about these accounts. It was better to temporarily close them. The US Attorney’s Office seemed to have swallowed the bait. The television news reports were all about the fugitive Alex Sontheim. The evidence against her was overwhelming. The FBI’s involvement in the search had
blown St. John’s murder so out of proportion that MPM’s bankruptcy had become a side issue. Exactly as planned. Sergio’s friends at the SEC and the US Attorney’s Office would pursue the investigation in their usual superficial way, and in two weeks no one would give a damn about it anymore. Oliver Skerritt was in a single cell at the police department. Alex’s closest employee, Mark Ashton, was in a basement at LMI. All they could do now was wait.

The telephone rang shortly before midnight.

“The money was wired from California S&L to an account at Bank of America at eleven this morning,” Levy announced. “A few hours later, it was transferred out of the country. This was all done electronically.”

“Do you know where it was sent?”

“Of course,” Levy replied with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “That’s one of the advantages of modern data communication. It was wired to Switzerland.”

“There are hundreds of banks in Switzerland.”

“Exactly. And this is where we lose the trail. It was transferred to an anonymous numbered account. Alex knows what she’s doing. We’d better just accept it: that money is gone.”

Tracy Taylor and Jason Bennett—Lloyd Connors’s two closest staff members—arrived at city hall just after midnight. Frank had ordered some pizza and brewed a pot of coffee, and now they were sitting at the conference table with all of the papers spread out in front of them as they worked through a strategy. It was almost like old times, when Nick was still a US attorney planning the takedowns of Mafia bosses. But in contrast to those days, they needed to proceed with extreme caution because they could not discern friend from enemy. They couldn’t trust a soul. Anyone working in the city could be on Vitali’s payroll.

“We have to keep de Lancie out of this,” Nick said. “He’s one of Vitali’s most important connections at the moment.”

“We still don’t know how bulletproof this evidence is,” Connors said. “Where did this woman get these statements? Who obtained them?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Yes,” the deputy US attorney objected, “it does. We must prove without a doubt that these people actually used this money. We also need to prove how they accessed these accounts. They may be totally unaware of it. In that case, we’d have a case of attempted bribery, but no criminal offense.”

“Above all, we need the woman,” Jason Bennett spoke up. “She’s the only one who understands all the connections.”

Nick leaned back in exhaustion. If they confronted the people on this list with the bank statements, then they’d willingly testify just to save their own skin—he had no doubt about that. He didn’t care whether or not Alex was the key witness, but he was still seriously worried about her. There was no doubt Vitali had ordered his people to track her down.

“We need to bring in the FBI,” Connors added. “This thing is too big for us alone. Imagine what will happen when we arrest Governor Rhodes…”

“So what?” Nick walked back and forth restlessly. “He accepted money from a criminal.”

“Did he really?”

Someone knocked at the door, and Allie Mitchell peeked in. She had come back to the office when Frank called her at home.

“There’s a gentleman here by the name of Justin Savier,” she said. “He claims to be a friend of Alex Sontheim.”

“Send him in!” Nick exclaimed.

A skinny man in his midthirties with shoulder-length dreadlocks entered the office of New York City’s mayor. “Excuse me for interrupting, but Alex Sontheim asked me to come here.”

Nick looked at the man suspiciously. Was he really one of Vitali’s spies just pretending to be Alex’s friend?

“How do I know you are who you claim you are?”

“Do you want to see my ID?” the man asked. “I can prove to you that all of the documents Alex gave you are real.”

Connors interrupted: “Then show us your evidence.”

“Who are you, if I may ask?” Justin Savier challenged with raised eyebrows. Nick quickly introduced the US attorneys and offered him a seat and a cup of coffee. Justin accepted both. Then he explained that he was a college friend of Oliver Skerritt’s and Alex’s trusted employee Mark Ashton, and that he worked at MIT in Boston. He reported that Mark, Alex, and Oliver had approached him last summer because they wanted to find out more about the dirty dealings that she’d uncovered at LMI. Nick and Connors exchanged a glance.

“Where is Alex Sontheim now?” the deputy US attorney inquired.

“On an airplane to Europe,” Justin replied.

“Impossible. All airports are under surveillance.”

“I got her a fake passport,” Justin admitted in front of the assembled US attorneys. “You’ve got to believe her. I have the e-mail that Alex printed from St. John’s computer last night. Mark Ashton and Oliver Skerritt disappeared because this monster’s already got a hold of them.”

“Not so fast,” Connors cut him off. “What do you have to do with this whole thing?”

Justin told them how he managed to get the information that Alex had handed over to Kostidis. Then he recounted what he had learned last night about the ownership structure of the SeaStarFriends partnership.

“Whew,” Connors exhaled, running his hands through his hair.

“You don’t believe me?” Justin asked.

“We’ve questioned the authenticity of the statements,” Nick answered on Connors’s behalf, “but they do appear to be real.”

“They definitely are,” Justin confirmed. “We were totally shocked when we realized the magnitude of this conspiracy.”

“What makes you so sure that it wasn’t Alex Sontheim who killed St. John?” Connors asked.

“She had absolutely no reason to kill him,” Justin replied. “After all, he could have testified to what actually went down at LMI. After reading St. John’s e-mails, you’ll see that he had no intention of blowing his brains out. Alex believes that Vitali’s thugs killed Zack, and now they’re blaming her for the murder in order to divert attention.”