This was already insane. The paper was glossing over hard numbers in favor of polite obfuscation. Wasn’t a small slice of an obscene fortune still a lot? Mitchell was no financial wiz, but last he checked twenty million dollars was a pretty substantial amount to inherit out of college, or really anytime. Mitchell chewed a grass ball furiously. He enjoyed working himself up.

Though it wasn’t covered in the article, Mitchell knew that Baldwin Shergar came from a prominent line of racing, military, and political horses. His great-great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Thaddeus Blazer, one of the world’s richest animals in his era. The robber baron Blazer had made his fortune with his company U.S. Horsepower, which dealt in alfalfa and steel. The ancestor Shergar trampled any animal, be they politician, rival, or undernourished laborer, who dared get in his way. He was for a time the long face of gilded exploitation. In his later years, though, he had become obsessed with legacy. He bought a newspaper and made his writers pepper it with tales of his charitable deeds. He paid for libraries and public watering holes for the great unwashed. For pleasure, he amassed a trove of looted treasures from South America and then donated it to the Met. His name was carved on the walls of this and other major city institutions.

Mitchell continued skimming. No mention of Mayor Shergar’s ancestors. Perhaps the journalist considered it common knowledge.

What the article did outline in admiring detail was Mayor Shergar’s first career in hedge funds, the realm in which he’d built his “minuscule” inheritance into his own obscene bundle of cash. It was only after jumping from Bear Capital to Leopard Ventures to MidOcean Partners, and tripling or quadrupling his net worth, that Shergar had turned his attention to politics.

All that mercenary work was glossed over. Mitchell searched for the story under the story. A rich horse wanted to run the city like a business. As if that were a virtue. What did that mean? Wage suppression? Layoffs? Hostile takeovers? Offshore accounts? Squeezing those who owe you while putting off those you owe? What values were to be gleaned from business? Mitchell wondered. But also—one didn’t want to get distracted—a city is not a business. This isn’t democracy.

While Shergar has distanced himself from the boards and charities he once actively participated in, his wife, Brooke Saint Mars, has become more active. Some say she is the soft-power side in their partnership. The wife has taken to giving generously to shelters, food banks, and after-school programs.