Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

Just two days before, Zuckerman had been transferred from the Metropolitan Correction Center to a hotel in a cloak-and-dagger operation while guarded by fifteen FBI agents. Their job was to keep him completely shielded before his testimony. And now he was dead. Shot dead. It was quite clear that Vitali had found out about Zuckerman’s decision to cooperate with the authorities, contracted an assassin, and duped the FBI. Frank sighed. He would have liked for his boss to spend a quiet evening with his wife, but he had to deliver the bad news right away before the mayor read about it in the morning newspapers.

“I’ll inform him right away,” Frank said to the FBI officer. “Thanks for calling, Truman.” He hung up and rushed out of his office.

“Fucking bullshit,” he muttered on his way out the door.

A half hour later Frank was standing with his boss. He had been expecting a fit of rage over the FBI’s stupidity, but instead Nick Kostidis merely acknowledged the news with a resigned nod of his head. He let himself sink onto one of the benches outside Central Park’s Delacorte Theater and rubbed his eyes wearily.

“Vitali is behind this, there’s no doubt,” he said in a somber tone.

Muted voices and applause could be heard from the theater’s fully occupied semicircular pavilion.

“I’m really sorry,” Frank said quietly. In the bright light of the park lanterns, he noticed the wrinkles and dark shadows on Kostidis’s face, and saw that the fire in his eyes had gone out. Kostidis looked as if he had aged years in the past few minutes. His energy and enthusiasm had vanished. Kostidis stared at his closest staff member for a moment and then sighed.

“Sometimes I wonder whether I’m doing the right thing or making big mistakes because I’m too zealous.”

“Mistakes?” Frank was taken aback. He didn’t think of his boss as someone who doubted himself.

“Yes.” Kostidis leaned back and closed his eyes. “Zuckerman would still be alive if I hadn’t insisted on keeping him locked up for so long until he came clean. Now his wife is a widow and his children are fatherless. He’s dead, and we still haven’t made any progress.”

Frank was shocked.

“Vitali is stronger than me,” Nick Kostidis continued. “He’s stronger because he’s ruthless. Because he has no conscience and doesn’t give a damn about human lives. What have I done?”

“But Nick,” Frank objected, “we did the right thing. How could we possibly know that Zuckerman would be murdered? With his testimony, we could have killed ten birds with one stone.”

“Do we really have the right to risk someone’s life in the name of justice?” Kostidis opened his eyes. “I’m not so sure about that anymore. I used to think that I was doing the right thing.”

His boss’s doubts and dejection affected Frank more than any fit of rage could have, but he couldn’t think of what to say to console him.

“Go home, Frank.” Kostidis placed his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “You’ve more than earned your time off after work.”

Frank nodded. “I didn’t mean to spoil your evening, but I thought that it would be better for you to hear the bad news from me than the radio.”

“Yes, you’re right. Thank you.” Nick Kostidis sat up straight, now that the first spectators poured out of the open-air theater. “Call Jerome Harding and Michael Page. I’d like to meet them tomorrow morning at ten o’clock in my office.”

“On it,” Frank nodded. He said goodnight to his boss and headed home with much on his mind.

Mary Kostidis slowly flowed with the crowd and searched for her husband. Once again, something so important had happened that it couldn’t wait until morning. She hadn’t been able to follow the rest of the theater performance because she wondered what was going on. When she finally caught sight of him, his facial expression said everything.

Mary had known her husband for thirty-two years. She had always supported him and admired his dedication, but she observed with concern how hard he fought. The wrinkles in his face had grown deeper, and the first gray strands had begun to appear in his thick dark hair. As the mayor, he was more vulnerable than ever before. He was always in the public eye, and any small mistake he made was greedily seized upon and mercilessly exploited by his enemies. He had been so tense the past few weeks that he didn’t often really listen to her. Something occupied his mind, but she knew that pushing him for information was pointless. He would tell her if he deemed it necessary. On the outside, Nick appeared as strong and fearless as ever. His circumstances and the grueling years of fighting had made him hard as granite, but on the inside, he remained a sensitive and compassionate human being who suffered when his efforts failed.

Mary was often worried about her husband because he antagonized many powerful men. He had never been afraid. She still loved him as much as when they first met in the reading room of the New York Public Library. Mary admired his ambition and straightforwardness and loved his ability to admit defeat gracefully. Time and again, he foiled other people’s business with his plans. He had been at the receiving end of many death threats, hostile newspaper articles, and anonymous phone calls. But none of this ever deterred Nick from doing what he thought was right. Mary was worried, but she never bothered him with her concerns. If there was anyone who knew what he was doing, it was Nick. She’d support any actions he took to fulfill his lifetime dream of improving the quality of life for the residents of New York.

“What happened?” she asked when she reached her husband.

“David Zuckerman, the man who agreed to testify in front of the investigation committee, was shot,” Nick said after they had been walking for a while. “Frank was here and told me.”

“My God!” Mary knew how much it meant to her husband to find a witness to provide testimony against Sergio Vitali and to nail his powerful enemy—who had triumphed over him time and again. “That’s terrible.”

“No,” Nick said, walking with his head down. “It’s sickening.”

They left the park through the Metropolitan Museum exit. Passersby greeted Nick, but he didn’t respond. Nick was normally in his element in public, known for having an open ear for anyone, but tonight he looked exhausted. They crossed the street, and Nick signaled the passing taxis.

“I wonder whether Frank has a private life at all,” he said pensively.

Mary smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

The third taxi stopped.

“Christopher is coming home this weekend,” Mary said as the yellow taxi turned from Fifth Avenue onto Eighty-Sixth Street toward Carl Schurz Park, the location of Gracie Mansion.

“Oh,” Nick mumbled, lost in his thoughts, “how nice.”

“He’s bringing his girlfriend.” Mary noticed that her husband wasn’t really listening. “He wants to introduce her to you. You can spend some time with them on the weekend, right?”

“Pardon me?” Nick gave his wife an apologetic look. “I was just thinking about something.”

Mary sighed and patiently repeated what she’d said.

“Chris has a girlfriend?” Nick asked in surprise. “This is the first time I’ve heard about it!”

“That’s why he’s coming to the city,” Mary replied. “Her name is Britney Edwards, and she’s studying art history and philosophy at Harvard. Her family lives somewhere in the Hudson Valley, and her father is a high-ranking officer at West Point.”

“Aha. And how serious is Chris about her?”

“I think he’s very serious. He told me he wants to marry her.”