“Let’s go,” Nick said to him. “Vitali has already confessed anyway. He did so under pressure, but we know that these guys worked under the orders of Vitali’s henchman. So the connection is there.”
Frank stared at his boss.
“De Lancie is Vitali’s man,” Nick said in a low voice. “I had a hunch. He knows that I suspect him too. I stepped on his toes pretty badly. I’m afraid that now he won’t leave a stone unturned to discredit me in public.”
“Hmm.” Frank had a concerned expression on his face. At that moment, commotion broke out near the holding cells. Captain Tremell and two officers came running from the cell block with faces as white as sheets.
“Goddamn, shit!” The otherwise calm commanding officer of the Forty-First Precinct was beside himself. “Vitali hung himself in his cell!”
“What?” Nick and Frank asked as if speaking with one voice.
“Yes, goddamn it! They forgot to take away his belt! He hung himself from the heating pipe!”
De Lancie lunged out of the interrogation room, his bloodshot eyes bulging out of his face.
“What is this bullshit!” he roared. “Am I surrounded by idiots?”
The police doctor who just happened to be there at that time of night ran past them, followed by van Mieren and the other officers. De Lancie’s gaze fell on Nick.
“This suits your plans exactly!” he said spitefully.
“No, not at all,” Nick replied. “He would’ve been far more useful to us alive. Good night, John.”
“Go to hell!” de Lancie growled after the mayor. Despite his fear, he was secretly relieved that Cesare Vitali was dead. Now he only had to deal with a corpse instead of keeping a guilty criminal from going to the slammer.
“This stinks to high heaven,” Nick said as they walked up the stairs.
“De Lancie will try to cover up this whole thing,” Frank said. “If your suspicion that he’s Vitali’s man is correct, then he won’t let the truth come out under any circumstances.”
“Shit.” Nick stopped, contemplating this. “And we have no way of preventing it.”
“Yes, we do,” Frank replied. “They can’t cover it up if Cesare Vitali’s arrest and confession is covered in tomorrow’s newspaper.”
“Tomorrow’s newspapers are already printed.”
“Crews from NBC and NY-1 are waiting outside.”
Nick thought for a moment, and then he grinned.
“Okay. That’s how we do it. Come on, Frank.”
John de Lancie didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. When he entered the US Attorney’s Office building on St. Andrews Plaza behind the federal court on Foley Square at nine on Sunday morning, he felt absolutely exhausted. Shortly after the medical examiner determined Cesare Vitali’s death and issued the death certificate, de Lancie left the police station through the back exit. He had no desire to face the vultures from the press and was glad that he didn’t run into Kostidis again. It wasn’t Cesare Vitali who gave de Lancie stomach pains, but the fear that the mayor saw right through him. An agitated crowd bombarding him with questions was waiting outside his office, but he forced his way through indignantly.
“What’s going on here?” he asked his assistant irritably. “Why are all these people here?”
“But you were there last night,” the woman replied in surprise. “Didn’t you watch television this morning? Yesterday’s incident in the Bronx is the lead story on every channel!”
An uneasy feeling overcame de Lancie. He opened the door to his expansive, mahogany-paneled office. Autographed head shots of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and J. Edgar Hoover hung on its walls. De Lancie stared at the television screen, which stood on his bookshelf alongside his legal books. Almost instantly, Nick Kostidis appeared on the screen, standing on the steps of the Forty-First Precinct police station. That same second, de Lancie realized that he had made a grave mistake leaving the building through the back exit. He had ceded the stage to Kostidis without a fight, and the media-obsessed mayor naturally took advantage of it.
“As the mayor of this city, I’m responsible for the safety of its citizens,” Kostidis was saying. De Lancie felt a murderous rage, but it quickly gave way to a feeling of helplessness. “I cannot and will not allow ruthless criminals to terrorize law-abiding citizens in this way. This group of six young men attempted to set an apartment building on fire—a building in which many families live. One of them was shot by the police after he critically wounded an officer in the line of duty. The other five perpetrators were arrested.”
“Is it true that Sergio Vitali’s son is among them?” a young female reporter asked.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Kostidis replied. Standing there in the drizzling rain, unshaven in his leather jacket, he fit the image of a man who sacrificed himself for his constituents. De Lancie reluctantly acknowledged that Kostidis was anything but a bland politician. Time and again, Kostidis managed to turn even the most trivial incidents into media events. In contrast to his predecessors, the many other politicians who seemed artificial in front of a camera or microphone, Kostidis seemed completely authentic. His enemies cynically called him a gifted actor who was a better fit for Hollywood than New York. But they also had to admit that he was the most popular mayor since Fiorello LaGuardia.
“Is that why you’re here now, Mayor Kostidis?” one of the reporters asked. As usual, Kostidis didn’t shy away from telling the truth.
Or what he believes to be the truth, de Lancie thought bitterly.
“Yes, this is one of the reasons. We’ve had reason to believe that Mr. Vitali was involved in numerous recent raids on apartment buildings in the Bronx, and the participation by his son Cesare in last night’s events offers conclusive evidence. Cesare confessed that he and his accomplices acted under someone’s orders. Real-estate speculators keep trying to oust tenants from their homes in order to raze those buildings and repurpose the properties. This is pure terror, which I won’t tolerate in my city!”
Kostidis’s eyes sparked angrily.
“It is a well-known fact,” one of the reporters began, “that you and Mr. Vitali aren’t close friends—”
“This is nothing personal!” the mayor interrupted the journalist. “I fought vehemently against any type of crime during my tenure as US attorney, and the fight continues to this day. As mayor, I am responsible for the safety of the citizens of our city. It makes no difference if the son of Mr. Vitali or anyone else is involved.”
“US Attorney de Lancie is also here tonight. It seems as if this case is a political issue.”
“Without a doubt, this arrest has a heightened political profile due to the involvement of the son of such a well-known figure as Sergio Vitali,” Kostidis said plainly. “At the very least this could prove Vitali’s connection to illegal business, even if he continues to deny it publicly and invest large sums of money in protecting his image.”
He spoke with confidence and eloquence. His lively facial expressions and gestures said more than he expressed in words. He was careful not to communicate his suspicions directly, but the way he spoke allowed viewers to connect the dots.
“Besides, I believe that Mr. de Lancie shares my opinion that this case should not be handled any differently than that of any other perpetrator. A prominent name doesn’t protect a criminal from the full force of the law.”