Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

The posh St. Regis Hotel had become a major construction site ten days before Christmas. An army of interior decorators and craftspeople worked at full speed to transform the foyer, the ballroom, and the adjoining conference rooms into a magical winter wonderland. Truckloads of fir trees, fake snow, and countless lights hinted at how the finished space would look on Saturday evening.

The chief designer—a young interior architect with a serious face, who chain-smoked and wore her dark hair in a ponytail—walked around the hotel with a clipboard under her arm. She had the chaos totally under control, directing the electricians, the painters, the carpenters, and the decorators.

Sergio smiled happily as he saw what a work of art was being created solely for his charity ball. “Hello, Sharon. You’re doing wonders.”

“Oh, Mr. Vitali,” Sharon Capriati replied with a mixture of impatience and awe. “Do you like it so far? Just wait until everything’s finished.”

Sergio gave her a look that, in his experience, no woman could resist. The young woman threw him a cutting look and then laughed. Her austere face was pretty. Sergio wondered what she was like in bed. He examined her firm, small breasts beneath her gray T-shirt and her well-shaped behind in her skintight jeans.

“Stop!” Sharon Capriati suddenly turned around and waved at two men transporting large wall pieces on a lifting cart. “The pavilion goes over there! Next to the fir forest!”

She turned toward Sergio again, smiled apologetically, and made a note on her clipboard.

“Maybe you should have invited your guests to the Caribbean,” she said. “This is going to be quite an expensive affair.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Sergio said, shrugging his shoulders. “I want everyone to still be talking about this next year. I booked the best bands, and the food will leave everyone speechless. What about the champagne fountain?”

“It’s going to be right at the center of the ballroom,” she answered, absentmindedly sticking a pencil behind her ear. Sergio examined her closely.

“You’re doing a great job,” he remarked. “Would you like to join me for lunch today?”

“That’s very nice of you.” Sharon Capriati smiled the same impersonal smile that Alex had mastered so perfectly. “But I’m very busy. After all, you want to have a party here in twenty-four hours.”

“Maybe another time?”

Sergio felt a prickling feeling of excitement rise inside of him. This woman was a completely different type, but somehow she reminded him of Alex, with her pronounced self-confidence and professionalism. Unexpectedly, the idea occurred to him to take her to the ball as his date. He stepped closer toward her.

“I’m terribly busy before Christmas,” she said, not even looking up from her clipboard and shrugging her shoulders, which annoyed him. What, was she a lesbian?

“Why don’t you accompany me tomorrow evening at the party?” he said.

But instead of excitement, he received polite testiness.

“Listen, Mr. Vitali.” Sharon Capriati sounded like a kindergarten teacher talking to a slow-witted child. “You hired me because I’m the city’s best interior architect. I’m doing my job. That’s what you pay me for. Let’s leave it at that.”

This clear-cut rejection left Sergio speechless.

He nodded and raised his eyebrows. “Whatever you say. I won’t bother you any longer.”

“Okay then.” She smiled briefly, but she had already turned away and walked over to a group of electricians installing spotlights for the stage.

“Dumb bitch,” Sergio muttered, offended. He walked up the stairs leading from the foyer to the ballroom and turned around on the last step. The view was just as grand as his first impression. Sergio could already tell that his party would be a success. It was the pinnacle of the holiday season in New York, and nearly a thousand guests would be arriving from all over the United States and even Europe. New York VIPs, politicians from Washington, Hollywood movie stars, famous athletes, and corporate bosses from all over were expected. But Sergio would be attending by himself, with no woman on his arm this year. Constanzia had vanished, and Alex—who had accompanied him last year—was dead. Sergio’s face darkened thinking about her, and he turned around so abruptly that he almost collided with Luca.

“What’s the matter?” Sergio asked him, still rankled by the interior designer’s rejection. He looked Luca up and down. The otherwise calm and cold-blooded man seemed agitated.

“I just got a phone call from Sandro Girardelli,” Luca said quietly. “He works in the administration of Goldwater Memorial.”

“And?” Sergio suddenly had a queasy feeling in his stomach; he was overcome by a sense of foreboding.

“A woman was admitted during the night three days ago,” Luca continued. “She was immediately brought to the private ward of a Dr. Virginia Summer, and the hospital administration doesn’t know who she is or why she was admitted. No one from the hospital’s staff is permitted to enter the room. It seems as if no one is supposed to know she’s even there.”

“Continue,” Sergio prompted him, looking suddenly petrified.

“Two US marshals guard the room around the clock,” Luca said, “but the woman has a visitor every night. It’s none other than Mayor Kostidis.”

“You told me that you dumped her in the river!”

Sergio struggled to keep his voice down. Alex was supposed to be dead! He’d seen with his own eyes that she had stopped breathing. There was no way she could still be alive.

“My men dumped her into the East River—at the Brooklyn docks where the current is the strongest,” Luca reaffirmed. “I swear to you that she was dead.”

“If this woman at Goldwater Memorial is Alex,” Sergio replied grimly, “then she certainly wasn’t.”

Sergio’s thoughts somersaulted in his head.

“I have to call Jenkins,” he said, biting his lower lip. He walked quickly through the foyer of the St. Regis. Then he stopped and turned around to Luca.

“A hospital is a wonderful place to make someone disappear,” he said. “You do it, Luca. You and Silvio. I don’t want this to go wrong again. Go over there and blow her away. And this time, I don’t want to hear any bad news, capito ?”

Harvey Brandon Forrester was used to tracking down people who had disappeared. He had founded a private investigation practice twenty years ago, and he specialized in lost causes. His four partners preferred to limit themselves to easier cases, like following unfaithful spouses or finding defaulted debtors, but Forrester liked the more complicated cases. Strictly speaking, he was more of a bounty hunter than a private detective. Because of his excellent connections with the US Attorney’s Office and many renowned law firms in New York, he couldn’t complain about a lack of work. His search for the eyewitness in the 1963 murder of the gangster Stefano Barelli turned out to be more difficult than expected. Difficult because Forrester could hardly investigate in Little Italy. His client wanted to avoid anything becoming public about this investigation. Forrester had spent two long days searching the police files they’d provided him. He read the interrogation records and indictments, looked at pictures, reconstructed the sequence of events, and finally reached the conclusion that there had to be not just one eyewitness but at least six or seven. But the US Attorney’s Office was looking for one man in particular: the son-in-law of the owner of the small trattoria where Barelli was shot. His name was Vincente Molto, and he’d been missing since that day.