“Fortresses, my ass,” he yelled at the TV. “They’re concentration camps.”
Techies working for the PAC pretended to offer charitable assistance to resident seniors coping with technological challenges in the internet age. While those residents enjoyed a recreational escape in the la-la land of virtual reality simulators, the techies hacked computer passwords and “tuned up” computers with malware in a scheme to bilk unsuspecting seniors of their life savings.
The stolen funds had gone to the political campaign of Franklin Dexter Walker and Dallas Taylor. Key states might not have voted for them had the news broken before the election. The news story not only skyrocketed his blood pressure but confirmed his historic decision to make sure the election turned out the right way.
Don’t trust anyone under fifty, his twist on the Age of Aquarius mantra, applied in spades to the Democrat ticket. Franklin Dexter Walker was a demagogue who had fired up feckless youths into a wave that would carry him into the White House. Many of the young had resented the social restrictions required by the COVID-19 pandemic to protect senior citizens with social distancing and the use of masks. Never again, the more radical of them chanted at rallies.
Stand-up comedians from Generation Y and even Generation Z joked openly that any new outbreak of COVID would be an ideal “boomer remover.” Some academics suggested that infectious diseases should be given leeway among seniors so that nature could run its course more quickly. Unless the elderly hurried up and died, the economy would stagnate, they said. Baby boomers were clinging on to their jobs and refusing to retire. These young radicals now treated the Greatest Generation and their children like trash.
This was madness and the way to national destruction. Every society needed the wisdom of elders like him. Without the dominance of this demographic class, the country would be reduced to government by photogenic adolescents. Youthful scammers adept in the dark arts of modern technology would fleece the Greatest Generation and their progeny of its wealth and reduce it to senile irrelevance.
The vigorous image of the youthful Democratic candidate plaguing Senex’s mind stirred a venomous envy. George Bernard Shaw was right: Youth was wasted on the young. Even though the resources of Promethean Pharma had not been enough to stop this young socialist rabble-rouser in the political arena, he had known what would. The TV anchor stopped his marking-time prattle.
A spokesperson for Northwestern Memorial Hospital took the podium for an announcement: Franklin Dexter Walker had died on the operating table.
The news brought Senex to his feet and set his hands clapping. Breaking out a bottle of Dom Pérignon, he did a short jig in his bunny slippers and drank himself into a stupor of self-satisfaction. The enfeebled criminal organization called the Chicago Outfit was not up to the task, but one up-and-coming organization was. He and people like him had once made the city work like a machine where every cog stayed in place and the center held. They were on their way to making things work once again for the entire country.
Before going to bed, he texted: Congratulations Signor M. P. . . . Mission accomplished.
Chapter Three
With Detective Jim Murphy long overdue to meet him at O’Hare International Airport, Commissario Marco Leone of Rome’s Polizia di Stato called Murphy’s cell. Franklin Dexter Walker’s assassination must have thrown the Chicago Police Department into turmoil. No wonder the Chicago detective hadn’t met him. Leone left a voice mail saying he didn’t want to cause problems and would take the metro to his Loop hotel. After he had a good night’s sleep, he could contact Murphy to sort out the details of the Rome-Chicago police exchange program.
Dragging his roller suitcase in one hand and the roller dog carrier with Mondocane in the other, he rattled his way toward the Blue Line to begin his American adventure.
He paused to practice English by reading a dedication plaque honoring Butch O’Hare, the World War II hometown hero, after whom the airport was named. The hero’s father had been the lawyer for Al Capone. Leone knew nothing of the hero, but Capone had made Chicago world famous. The city offered, he imagined, premonitions of light and dark, saint and sinner, a synergy of contradictions that made him feel right at home.
Before boarding the Blue Line he bought a newspaper. On the L, as they called it, he sat near the window and plopped the carrier cage with the orange-and-white dog on the seat next to him. He cramped his suitcase against his legs. Mondocane barked. He fed him a tidbit. The dog barked again, probably knowing he had the upper hand in extorting treats. He fed him another tidbit. Mondocane fell asleep.
As the train pulled away, he fought through his jet lag and the foreign English words to decipher the lead articles in the local newspaper. In addition to the assassination of a presidential candidate, a financial crisis had overtaken Chicago. A credit-rating agency had reduced city bonds to junk status. As best he could make out, the state of Illinois had appointed an oversight committee to handle Chicago’s finances in a last-ditch effort to avoid municipal bankruptcy proceedings. The news made him feel even more at home. Rome and Chicago had more in common than even the great fires that nearly destroyed both. Try as he might, the jet lag got the better of him. He drowsed until he heard a voice asking him to move the carrier cage.
A bearded man in a torn T-shirt and knit cap swayed before him in patched trousers and mismatched sneakers. “I wanna sit down.” He shivered, holding a partially zipped duffel bag.
Leone removed Mondocane’s carrier. The man sat down, trying to stave off sleep. “’Scuse me,” he said with a tooth-missing grin as he bumped into Leone. “The CTA’s my living room.”
“Where ya from?” the man asked.
“Italy.”
“Do you need help with anything?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Great, lovely city, but you gotta be careful.”
As the train sped in a rocking motion toward downtown, the man fell asleep. Leone slipped a few dollars unnoticed into the duffel bag. The man woke with a start at the next stop and jumped out the car door onto the weathered wooden platform just before the door slammed shut.
Wooden frame houses with rickety back stairs needing paint jobs whizzed by as the train picked up speed. Space . . . that struck him. Open to the world, the city sprawled out with breathing space between buildings and wide, grid-patterned streets. How unlike Rome.
Like a consumptive not long for life, the train rattled and clacked down under the earth to become a subway train with the screech of metal on metal in the narrow confines of a dark tunnel linking one stop to another. This was not the Line C subway, built new and gleaming and noiseless in Rome. Surely, this pioneering subway system was a marvel in its time. But that was over a hundred years ago. Weren’t things supposed to be new in the New World?
A voice from behind hawked white sox for sale. He turned. The sock peddler stepped over a body lying in the empty rear of the car.
“Sox for a dollar a pair.” Next to a sign that prohibited soliciting on CTA trains, the peddler stood in the aisle, opening a box filled with pairs of white athletic sox for Leone’s inspection.
Leone had heard of the Chicago White Sox. Was wearing white sox before a game a fan tradition? He had to learn more about baseball if he was to fit in. Before he could decide whether to buy, a conductor shooed the peddler off the train at the Washington stop.
“Pardon me,” Leone said to the conductor. “There is a man lying on the floor.”
“He’s drunk,” the conductor said. “Security’ll take him off at the Monroe stop coming up.”
“That is where I descend for my hotel.”
At the Monroe stop, three security guards boarded the train car and waved passengers away while they contemplated the body. “I seen him before,” said the squat woman in charge. “He’s a regular drunk.”
“I’m a detective from Italy. May I help?”
“I’ll be
.” The security woman put her hands on her hammy hips. “Mighty nice of you, sweetie, but we can handle this.”
“Better not touch him.” The bearded security assistant shook his head. “He might sue.”
The other security assistant poked the body with the tip of his boot. The body twitched and slurred an obscenity. “He’s drunk all right.” He looked at Leone. “Let the foreigner take him off. He wants to help.”
“Get out of my face.” She pushed the male assistants aside and grabbed the body by the back of its torn jacket. Leone and the two security men tagged behind as she dragged the supine body onto the underground platform like a beached fish. She jerked the derelict into a sitting position while explaining to the detective how he could find his hotel. “Welcome to Chicago,” she said, with a warm smile across her face.
Chapter Four
Jim Murphy sat with his big sister, Katie, at the rectangular bar of Dugan’s Irish pub on Halsted with his pint of Guinness. Tiny bubbles crept up inside the glass and merged into the top layer of creamy white froth. He thanked her for leaving work early at the Good Samaritan Blood Bank to cheer him up, even though it wasn’t necessary. The mirthful chatter on a Friday afternoon around the crowded bar of “the only Irish pub in Greektown” sounded walled off from him and distant.
“Haven’t you had enough, Jimmy?” She rotated her glass of shandy beer on the bar with both hands.
Only she could call him Jimmy. It didn’t sound dismissive when she said it.
“Enough? This is only my second beer.”
“That’s not what I mean. Stop beating yourself up.” She took a sip. “It’ll blow over.”
“No, it won’t. Because I’m involved in the assassination, they’re keeping me exiled in the International Relations section of the Chicago Police Department.” Assignment to the department should have gone to a cop with a beer belly to mark time until retirement. “There goes my detective career.”
“You’re not just your career, Jimmy. You’ve done a great job with Santiago while taking care of Dad with his Alzheimer’s. How many cops could carry on as well as you after their wives died?”
Why wasn’t Santiago at home when he called earlier? Was his son mixed up with the gangs again?
A gulp of the jet-black, smoky beer slipped down his throat with a taste of bittersweet chocolate and coffee. The Guinness warmed his body like a woolen comforter easing the blustery weather outside and the bad memories inside. “Aren’t you tired of still looking after the screwup?”
“What’s an older sister for?” She turned stern. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“He’s still dead. I was out of position.”
“Remember our little sister? You thought you caused her flopping limbs because you played too rough.” She gave a love tap with her fist on his shoulder. “Ninny that you were. It finally sank in she died of spinal muscular atrophy.”
“She reminded me of our little sister . . . the girl in the wheelchair.”
“Let it go, Jimmy.” She put her hand over his on the bar counter. “Heard from our brother?”
“Mr. Big Shot phoned to announce he’s flying into town tomorrow from DC. Won’t say why.”
“Like you, he only wants what’s best for Dad.” She took a deep breath and pursed her lips. “Did you get into a donnybrook with him again?”
“How’s the job at the blood bank?”
“They promoted me to director of quality assurance. We’re making plans to stockpile blood in case there’s another COVID outbreak.” She sipped her shandy beer. “Guess even a spinster ex-nurse like me can have a second act.”
“Good for you.” He took a long, hard gulp of the Guinness. “Nice to hear you and Mr. Big Shot are doing well at least.”
“Gotta go, Jimmy. You should have given up the guilt when you gave up being an altar boy.” She slid off the barstool. “What does Big Sis always say?”
“Big Sis always says . . . you can’t move forward looking backward.”
“Now you got it.” She kissed him on the forehead.
Upon his sister’s departure, Jim Murphy telephoned and left a voice mail.
Where was he?
“Wanna nother Guinness?” asked the bartender.
“I’ll pass on the black stuff.”
“Still Two-Drink Murph. What kinda Irishman are ya?”
“A sober one.”
Depressed and confused, he sank back into himself just wanting to brood over his memories. His wife had left him after delivering their only child, stillborn. At least they had another three years after reconciling before she died of breast cancer. Santiago was part of those wonderful years. Now that she was gone, he couldn’t reach Santiago the way she had with her gentle touch.
Murphy and his partner had responded to a 911 call. They first found the fourteen-year-old Santiago in a housing project defending his mother against her boyfriend’s punches. When the kid with cigarette-burn marks on his arm said he wanted to become a cop just like him, Murphy promised to keep in touch with the teen. He kept that promise by checking in on him when passing through, with money and candy bars.
Things went south from there. A shoot-out between rival Pilsen gangs took the life of the kid’s mother. He had no other family. Murphy and his reconciled wife took on Santiago as a foster child, and then they adopted him. They saved him, and he in turn saved their renewed relationship through its ups and downs.
Murphy’s cell rang. “Santiago? Where were you?”
“I just got home. Your dad’s OK. Everything’s cool.”
“Kids teasing you again about my screwup?”
“No . . . not much.”
“Where were you?”
“Just hanging out.”
“Not with those hopheads I warned you about?”
“No.” A sigh of exasperation over the phone. “I don’t do dope no more.”
“I’m coming home.”
“You OK . . . Dad? With all those lies about the shooting.”
“Sure, sure. See you soon, buddy.”
Chapter Five
On the way home from Dugan’s on Halsted, Detective Jim Murphy pulled up his coat collar as he took a shortcut through an alley. Snow whirled in the night air, brisk and clean like a quality aftershave. Down the dark alley, a garbage can fell over and a female screamed. Through the veil of falling snow he made out two figures struggling on the ground. He ran toward them. A muscled male in baggy pants and a hooded pullover crouched over the sobbing girl. He had his left hand on her throat and the other up her dress.
“Stop it. I’m a cop.” Murphy flashed his ID with outstretched hand. “Hands up.”
The piss-amber light flickering down from the sodium-vapor alley lamp highlighted a five-pointed crown on the male’s left bicep. The gang tattoo meant trouble. An uncomprehending face, probably dazed by dope, turned up to Murphy. The wimpy chin hair contradicted the thick jawbone.
The hands did not go up. The attacker poked the middle finger of his right hand against his own chest. He swiped the bottom of his chin with the finger and pointed it straight at Murphy.
The detective pulled out his 9 mm semiautomatic pistol.
“Hands up.”
The attacker’s right hand returned to the girl.
Murphy assumed the firing stance and took aim.
“Hands up, right now . . . Las manos arriba ahora mismo . . . or I shoot . . . O disparo.”
He let go of the girl and balanced up on his knees without a word.
“Go, go,” Murphy ordered the girl. She crawled to the side of the alley. “Get away from my gun.” She stumbled her way behind her protector.
The attacker reached with his right hand toward a pocket bulge.
The gun blast echoed throughout the alley.
Chapter Six
“The Millennial gets himself assa
ssinated on your watch, and now this hooligan bawling police brutality in the hospital.” Commander Jack Cronin of the Thirteenth District swiveled back in his office chair. “A fine mess you’re in, my lad.” He folded his hands behind his head. “Murphy’s Law strikes again.”
“I don’t appreciate the dig,” Jim Murphy said, “from the commander of what’s called the unlucky Thirteenth because of its checkered past.”
“Ancient history. Everything’s now hunky-dory under my command.”
“Why did you want to see me?”
“You’re my godson, for God’s sake. You should’ve come to me for help.” He shook his head as if in disbelief. “I could’ve arranged somethin’ for you instead of that shithole in International Relations while you studied for the detective test. To settle this shooting thing right away, I could’ve called in chips from department guys who owe me . . .” He sighed. “Water under the bridge.”
An Irish bachelor in the tight-knit Bridgeport neighborhood, this patron with a Santa Claus complexion like his own had taken Murphy under his wing and guided him through the twists and turns of his fledgling career. Whenever Murphy had gained some advantage, his fellow officers would say: “Commander Cronin’s your clout, right?” More often than not he did it on his own, but no one believed him. Everyone in the Windy City knew, or at least believed, that few got to the promised land without a bigger and better political sponsor to pull strings in the puppet show called Chicago politics. He wanted to do things his own way without the crutch of clout. He had. And now he paid for it.
“I’m resigning.”
“What for, Jimmy?” Cronin’s lower jaw dropped. His caterpillar eyebrows jumped.
American Conspiracy Page 2
