Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

With these words, he pushed himself through the crowd of journalists. He swiftly disappeared into the hallway leading to his ground-floor office. Frank approached him at the door.

“How did the press find out about this?” Nick yelled at his assistant in a rage. “What the fuck is going on?”

“The press?” Frank gave him an astonished look.

“Yes, damn it.” Nick quickly paced along the hallway. “They ambushed me in the entrance hall, bombarding me with questions. I wasn’t prepared. They asked me whether I was involved in Zuckerman’s death!”

“You?” Frank asked, surprised. “Who gave them that idea? How did the press find this out anyway?”

Nick stopped so abruptly that the young man almost ran into him.

“That’s exactly what I’d like to know. It looks like no secret whatsoever is safe here! Not even ten hours have passed, and everyone in the city appears to be better informed than I am!”

His eyes flashed angrily, but he wasn’t really mad. He had a sense of futility, as if someone had taken the helm out of his hands.

“By the way, Truman McDeere has been waiting in your office,” Frank said, “for the past half hour.”

They reached the west wing of city hall. The hustle and bustle usually reigning here was absent on the weekend. The offices were empty. Only Nick’s secretary, Allie Mitchell, sat at her desk, as well as Raymond Howard.

“The press is bombarding us with phone calls,” Allie said to Nick. “And Mr. de Lancie called, and Governor Rhodes wants you to call him back.”

“Great.” Nick frowned. “They’ll have to wait. I first want to hear what McDeere has to say.”

He disappeared into his office, while Frank, Ray, and Allie exchanged telling looks.

Truman McDeere rose from the chair he was sitting in when Nick Kostidis entered his office. He looked even more pinched than usual.

“How could this happen, McDeere?” Nick snapped at the FBI officer.

“I’m not accountable to you, Mayor Kostidis,” the bald federal agent responded sharply. “We’re not guilty of anything.”

“Except that a man who was supposed to be protected by fifteen FBI agents was shot to death.”

McDeere’s expression turned even grimmer.

“The men weren’t informed properly about this operation. They were just briefed about the identity of this man on-site,” he snapped. “They didn’t know each other. Just your people and I knew about this.”

“What interest would any of us have in seeing Zuckerman killed?”

McDeere shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarillo. Nick watched him closely. He had known Truman McDeere for some time and he suspected that there was more to this story than the FBI agent was willing to admit.

“So, Truman,” he said in a conciliatory tone, “what really happened?”

After a brief internal debate, McDeere took a deep breath and started to speak in a quiet voice.

“Our people were positioned throughout the entire hotel. At all of the back entrances, the kitchen, the underground garage, and the elevators. One man stayed in the room with Zuckerman the whole time. It was about eight thirty when someone knocked at the door of the room. That person knew the agreed-upon knocking signals, and he also reached the sixth floor unchallenged. So the officer opened up. The agent thought he recognized the man from the meeting the night before and assumed that he was part of the squad. When the agent was told that he should go to the lobby to report the changing of the guard, he left the room.”

Nick closed his eyes. An old, brazen Mafia trick, and the Feds fell for it! McDeere apparently had trouble admitting the mistake.

“When the agent got downstairs to see the others, it was immediately clear that something was fishy. They rushed back upstairs, but it was already too late by then. Zuckerman was dead as a doornail. Two shots at close range to the heart and one to the head. The murder weapon was a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson with a silencer. We found it.”

“Oh?” Nick opened his eyes again.

“It was in a cart with dirty laundry.”

“Did you trace it?”

“We couldn’t. It has no serial number, no fingerprints, nothing. Ballistics are examining the gun, but there’s no way to trace anything by way of the weapon. This guy was a pro.”

“Looks like Mafia.”

“Definitely.” McDeere nodded, his face sullen. “We made a mistake precisely because we wanted to be absolutely sure that nothing went wrong. This is why we only used officers who didn’t know each other. And that was exactly the opportunity for the killer to do his thing.”

“He must have known all the details,” Nick said. His darkest fears seemed to prove true. Only Vitali could be behind this cold-blooded execution.

“Yes,” McDeere replied, “Zuckerman’s killer was well informed. Nothing can bring this man back to life, but I want to know who provided the killer with this information. There were very few people who knew the exact details, which narrows the circle of possible suspects considerably.”

“Lloyd Connors from the US Attorney’s Office knew about it, the police commissioner, and your people.”

“And you.”

“No.” Nick shook his head. “I knew which hotel Zuckerman was brought to, but I wasn’t informed about the operation’s details.”

McDeere extinguished his cigarillo in the ashtray.

“I admit,” he said, “that we won’t be getting any accolades for how we handled this, but I firmly reject the suspicion that any of my men divulged any information.”

Both men looked at each other in silence.

“The mole,” McDeere said, “is at the US Attorney’s Office, the police, or here in city hall.”

Nick wiped his hand across his face. He wished that he could reject the accusation of having a traitor within his own ranks as resolutely as McDeere did. But he couldn’t. About fifteen of his closest staff knew about this matter—fifteen people whom he could no longer trust.

“Nick, unfortunately, there has always been corruption in the city administration,” McDeere said. “If you want, we can check your people.”

“No, no,” Nick quickly silenced him. “I have to find out another way. Maybe it’s someone from the US Attorney’s Office.”

He thought about his staff members, all of whom he had known now for many years. In the future, he’d have to suspect that anyone he spoke to could be an informer for one of his enemies. This was a terrible thought, and Nick wished that he had more influence on his people’s paychecks. Given their immense workload, their salaries were downright laughable. No wonder one of them might be open to receiving additional sources of income.

McDeere said good-bye a few minutes later. Nick sat there in a very pensive mood. In the 1960s, John Lindsay—the mayor at the time—had called New York City ungovernable. Corruption, a disastrous infrastructure, the extreme contrast between rich and poor, high unemployment in the poverty-stricken districts, and a chronic shortfall in the city’s budget all made reasonable government policies virtually impossible. Nick had never let himself be discouraged by this up to now. With much enthusiasm and a healthy dose of optimism, he vigorously tackled the problems that his predecessors had failed to resolve. He had already accomplished so much. Continued support from the majority of his constituents confirmed his actions.

Nevertheless, there were plenty of people who were displeased by his fight against crime and his strengthening of the police force. The police’s tough stance was publicly criticized time and again, and only the obvious accomplishments of his no-tolerance policy could take the wind out of his enemies’ sails. In just one and a half years, he’d managed to drastically lower the crime rate in the city, and the Mafia bogeyman had faded away thanks to his persistent crackdowns. But now three damned shots threatened the success of his work! Nick had a feeling that Zuckerman’s murder would trigger active lively debate about safety in the city. He could already see the sensational headlines: “Mafia Murder in Manhattan,” “How Safe Is the City?” People would question the effectiveness of his security policy, and all the positive things that Nick had achieved with regard to quality of life and infrastructure improvements would be forgotten. He buried his face in his hands. He was a fighter. For his entire life he’d had to fight, but he didn’t mind it. Now, the terrible suspicion of having a traitor in his own ranks deeply discouraged him.