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The gathering gloom may not be apparent to the expected 17.5 million visitors to New York this year. The city's jangling geometry is still energizing, the shops tantalizing, the street life mesmerizing. But New York is like the wedding cake in a bakery window: an exquisite excess of spun sugar covering a cardboard core. Beneath Manhattan's sheen is the New York of endemic corruption, failing schools, and racial tensions, a polarized city of 7.3 million where the megarich in stretch limousines look away from the 1.8 million living in poverty, more than 50,000 of them homeless. The city that prides itself on being the cutting edge of the future watches as corporations, promising artists and middle-class families flee its staggering costs and the country's highest taxes, while developers stack ever taller luxury condominiums in already overcrowded neighborhoods.
Koch has been accused of basking in the spotlight while ignoring what goes on in the city's darker corners. He has been wounded most of all by unending investigations and indictments of members of his administration for bribery, perjury, extortion, skimming and conspiracy. City workers from top leaders down to parking-meter attendants and sewer inspectors, along with judges, Congressmen and state legislators, have been found guilty. U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, the Republicans' white knight, claims more than 150 convictions by his office alone. Some targets were Koch's closest friends -- notably Donald Manes, president of the borough of Queens, who killed himself last year as the net tightened around him, and Cultural Affairs Commissioner Bess Myerson, Koch's ever present companion during his first race for mayor in 1977. The former Miss America faces trial for bribing a judge to reduce the divorce settlement of her lover Carl Capasso, a rich sewer contractor now serving four years in prison for income tax evasion.
Koch has declared himself "chagrined and mortified that this kind of corruption could exist and I did not know of it." His ignorance may have been willful: during his first campaign for mayor, Koch, running as a reformer, secretly solicited the support of Meade Esposito, Brooklyn's powerful Democratic boss. Then, as mayor, Koch appointed Esposito's pal Anthony Ameruso as transportation commissioner, even though an advisory board had declared Ameruso unqualified. The transportation department went on to become the source of major scandals. Ameruso has been convicted of perjury, Esposito of corruption in a separate case. The mayor, says a critical politician, "can no longer claim that he didn't know what was going on. Ed Koch cannot run again."