Murder at City Hall

By Philip Lentz

New Mayor Jeff White has just reached the apex of the local political world. Who knows? Maybe this will lead to more lofty aspirations. There's just this one little problem: His mistress. She's a local TV news reporter and she also happens to be sleeping with a very powerful mobster. Not good. The Mayor stumbles into a way to resolve his dilemma

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ink Start Media
• Release date: Mar 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781958004753

Philip Lentz

Philip Lentz is a veteran observer of local, state and national politics - having worked as a journalist, public relation executive, lobbyist, political adviser and speechwriter. He has been a political reporter for several publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Crain's New York Business, the Newark Star-Ledger and the late Philadelphia Bulletin. He also served as press secretary for several public officials, including Paul Tsongas' 1992 presidential campaign, and as a speechwriter for Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He has published two novels - both political thrillers: "The Corcoran Affair: and "Murder at City Hall." He is also a jazz pianist and recently released his first album of original compositions: "Phil Lentz Presents..."

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Chapter 1

The dark cool hallways of New York’s City Hall are usually quiet in the summer. The marble floors of the first floor echo with the high heels of assistants scurrying with the paperwork of government—to the Mayor’s offices on the west side or the City Council offices on the east side. Occasionally, a reporter will dart from Room 9—the cramped first-floor press room on the east side—to catch a quote from a councilman or a commissioner walking by.

This day was not one of those quiet days. By mid-morning, a swirl of bodies and motion suddenly enveloped the 200-year-old limestone and marble landmark in Lower Manhattan. All over the building, cell phones bleeped with calls and text messages. On the west side—the Mayor’s side—somber aides gathered at their desks, commissioners appeared without being summoned. Eyes were glued to television screens bolted high on the walls. Reporters scanned news sites for fresh tidbits. In the Mayor’s first floor corner office, his top deputies convened, staring gravely at a 42-inch plasma television screen in silence.

Across the street, in the city’s Municipal Building, the 25-story government office building that towers over City Hall, Public Advocate Jeff White was presiding over a staff meeting on city zoning. Suddenly, a press aide barged in.

Jeff, you should turn on the TV, the aide said.

What—we’re in the middle of—

Seriously. Turn it on. You may be Mayor soon.

For a moment, everyone froze. Then White grabbed the remote and turned on the television. Slowly, other staffers drifted into the office, sitting on window sills, end tables, the floor. No one said a word. As Public Advocate, Jeff White was next in line to succeed the Mayor. So the news that Mayor Jimmy Tucker had suffered a heart attack while visiting the Pope in Rome created an eerie stillness in an office usually located far from the reigns of power. While White and his staff starred intently at the television, a contingent of plain-clothes policemen quietly appeared in his outer office. White’s small police detail had begun to expand.

Mayor James Aloysius Tucker was a beloved figure in the lore of New York City politics. An old fashioned pol, he had worked his way up from the streets—beat cop, hero detective, popular city councilman, council majority leader, congressman and, finally, Mayor. His shock of white hair made him look older than his 65 years, almost like a benevolent grandfather presiding over city affairs. So did his practice of cupping his right ear to hear a question (his hearing aid was never properly adjusted—he hated all the ambient sound he heard when he turned it up all the way). Mayor Tucker fervently sought to avoid controversy. He was a master of the politics of personality. To some, he was the ultimate pol who knew how to keep most of the people happy most of the time. To others, he was an out-of-touch old man more adept at spewing meaningless bromides than proposing innovative public programs. With Tucker nearing the end of this second term and term-limited, the city’s political world had already begun to ponder the post-Tucker landscape.

Now, it appeared, the post-Tucker era would begin a bit earlier than anyone had expected. The bulletins from Rome were increasingly grave. Meanwhile, a city waited, its civic life suspended in mid-air. By the next morning, he was gone. Jeff White was roused at 5 a.m. by the commander of his police detail. Let’s find a judge, a drowsy White mumbled.

Jefferson Jackson White’s mother was a history major in college. A life-long Democrat, she studied early American history and the origins of the Democratic Party. Her area of specialty: Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. She considered her family to be heir to their political legacy, so it made sense to name her first son after those presidential giants. He hated the name. Made him sound pompous, which he was, when he preferred to be man-of-the-people, which he definitely was not. The Whites came from old money, old real estate money. Jeff’s grandfather was one of the Jewish real estate barons who helped build the city, literally, and the income from that empire smoothed his path through life. He never paid rent on an apartment or owned a home. He just lived in family apartments. Easily earned his degrees—Harvard undergrad, Princeton law. Always first in his class. The golden boy without a hair out of place or a hesitation in his voice. Tall and charming and square-jawed, he was a man with a firm handshake who was always ready with a self-deprecating quip. But he hated the law and dreamed of becoming a journalist. He worked at a think tank, wrote earnest policy papers and a book or two. Took a stab at Congress at age 28 with family money and lost badly. Then, a state Senate seat opened in Manhattan and the White family money did the trick. Ten years later, he ran in a crowded primary for New York City Public Advocate and, with a hefty dollop of family money and a smattering of support from liberal and civic do-gooders, he won.

New York City’s Public Advocate’s office, created in 1989 when the city charter was revised, is an odd duck of municipal government. The official duties are few—second in line to the mayor, presiding officer of the City Council, government watchdog and ombudsman. There are frequent calls for the office to be abolished, its responsibilities are so limited. But in the hands of an ambitious politician, the Public Advocate’s office can be a platform—a megaphone—for whatever he or she wants it to be. And Jeff White was an ambitious politician.

The political establishment—the party regulars, the business elites, the union bosses—did not like or trust Jeff White, not that he cared. He was the darling of the goo-goos—the good government crowd. His mantra was reform, reform, reform. If there was a plan to overhaul an agency, create more oversight for the police or outsource a government service, he was for it. He constantly held press conferences, championing this lost cause or that social service program cut out of the budget. If there was a good cause that needed attention, White was your point man. He held press conferences so frequently and on so many obscure issues that reporters grumbled that they should set up a one-person pool to cover him, and the reporter with the shortest straw would be forced to listen to his regular briefings.

White began running for Mayor the day he was sworn in as Public Advocate, but his horizons were much bigger than City Hall. He believed a reform mayoralty could lead to much bigger things—Albany, Washington, who knows? The hallowed City Hall jinx—that no recent New York City mayor had ever become anything more than a New York City mayor—would not affect him, he believed. He would be different. He would break the New York City Hall curse.

But with Mayor Tucker’s death, Jeff White acceded to the mayoralty in a far different way than he had planned. Not on the celebratory wave of a triumphant election victory, but upon the somber tones of a funeral dirge. His first days and weeks in office would be an homage to a man he did not like, a man he considered shallow and insignificant.

Despite his private feelings, White knew his immediate political future would be judged by how he led his city in mourning. And he played his role well. From his initial citywide television address (short and referential) to the eulogy at St. Patrick’s to his quiet graveside hug of the late Mayor’s widow, White was appropriately somber and proper.

But while the public Mayor White officiated over a city’s long goodbye to his beloved predecessor, the private Mayor White was already plotting his campaign to win a full four-year term. Tucker’s death presented him with an incredible opportunity: twelve months before the election, he would have a year’s head start to create a record, set an agenda, mold an image and raise the money (his family wasn’t THAT wealthy) needed to warn off serious challengers and win the mayoralty in his own right.

White’s advisers were already in place; he had been building his team for years. Policy papers were being researched and written, fund-raisers had been building a war chest and the ad men were busy crafting a message, slogan and ads. But Jeff White’s main vulnerability in this campaign