Nelson van Mieren called Massimo at the warehouse office in Brooklyn.
“You should let your mother know, Massimo,” the lawyer said, trying to disguise his concern. “It doesn’t look good.”
“Things were bad here, too,” Massimo countered. “Cesare was arrested in the Bronx after setting fire to a building with some of Silvio’s people.”
Van Mieren felt an chill come over him. What a disastrous day this was! He’d had a bad premonition after the incident at the port, but Sergio only mocked him when he voiced his fears. This time, his boss was wrong. Ortega had lashed out with a determined act of vengeance. It was clear to Nelson that the Colombian was behind this attempt on Sergio’s life. And to make matters worse, Cesare had been arrested! That was the last thing that they needed now. Nelson could already see the headlines.
Maybe Sergio is right and I’m really getting old, the lawyer thought wearily. I don’t have the nerve I had twenty years ago.
He longed for his house in the country, his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. What was he still doing here? After all, Sergio didn’t even listen to him anymore.
“I won’t call Mama just yet,” Massimo decided, “but you should go to the Bronx to get Cesare out before he risks his neck with careless talk.”
“They’ll set a very high bail,” Nelson reminded him.
“It doesn’t matter. Get moving right now, Nelson,” Massimo said. “I’ll send Silvio with enough money. Cesare needs to disappear before he does something even more foolish.”
“All right. I’ll leave Luca here.”
“How’s my father doing?”
“They’re operating right now. The bullet ruptured an artery. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“He’ll make it. Papa is tough.”
Nelson noticed that Massimo’s voice was similar to his father’s in these situations. He appeared to have everything under control. Still, as long as Sergio was out of action, nothing else should happen.
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.”