“Absolutely,” he replied.
At times like this, whether due to Huntington’s or his approaching demise, or simply to showcase his brilliance, Senex grew talkative. To draw Senex out further, Mora said, “I regret you think I would be less loyal to you than to Lucio Piso.”
“You’ve been loyal, Angelo.” Senex patted him on the arm. “I give you that.”
Senex proceeded to explain at length his relationship to the Outfit. The death of Dino Palomba opened up the possibility of a fruitful business enterprise with Vinnie Palomba, Dino’s son. As luck would have it, Daisy, Senex’s daughter, a criminologist at the University of Chicago’s new criminology program, had met the son when Vinnie was still an aspiring underboss in the Outfit. They both audited a class on campus about Dante Alighieri’s poetry. They shared a passion for poetry and became lovers against her father’s wishes. For Daisy, Vinnie had the jailhouse attraction of a bad boy operating outside of society’s rules. For Vinnie, she represented a world of social acceptance he had never known and now wanted.
While Senex’s daughter was promoted to associate professor of criminology, the mobster son was promoted to be the right hand of his father. Vinnie ran a front organization for the Outfit and in his spare time published his own postmodern verses. These poetic creations bewildered Dino, the father, to no end. The Outfit underlings tagged Vinnie with the underworld moniker of “the Poet.” At first Senex tried to rupture his daughter’s relationship with Vinnie.
All that did was make Daisy determined to remain in the relationship. It struck him that he could turn events to his advantage. The son and father were opposites. The son craved social legitimacy and recognition, whereas the father cared nothing for social approval beyond the narrow limits of the Outfit.
By the advent of what Senex called Dino Palomba’s timely death in Las Vegas, Vinnie and his father had become estranged. Senex manipulated Vinnie’s desire for social approval through his daughter’s relationship with the Outfit’s heir. He persuaded Vinnie to further the under-the-table interests they shared. They worked well together in a way he and Vinnie’s father never could.
“Enough of the walk down memory lane,” Senex said, breaking off the monologue. His face hardened. “I called you to arrange my parabiosis procedure.” He checked his calendar. “I’m open next week.”
“But we need the right donor.”
“My new partner . . . junior partner . . . Vinnie Palomba has taken care of that.” His hand began shaking. “His father refused to provide . . . shall we say . . . more experimental supply shortly before his death. His hatred for me overcame his greed.” Senex held his shaking hand steady with his good one. “But his son and I continued our relationship behind Dino’s back.”
“We need better lab equipment. Your life is at stake.”
“I’ve taken care of that.”
“What about secrecy?”
“The Phoenix Project is our cover story. That trumped-up search for artificial blood is already top secret. We’re just moving it off the Promethean Pharma campus.”
“Where?”
“Shh.” Senex put a finger to his mouth. “It’s a secret.”
Chapter Fifteen
The cave doors slid open under a bluff in the hill country of northwestern Illinois. Lying atop a reclining vinyl cot, Sebastian Senex woke from his drowsing. He fingered the lump of silicone and plastic to make sure it was in place. This medical port implanted into his chest resembled a black-and-blue welt rising from the skin. A central venous catheter circulated his blood into a whirring blood-exchange machine. The innovative device commingled his blood with that of the gangbanger donor on the other side of the curtain.
Dr. Mora had joined the donor to Senex so that their two circulatory systems became one. A moan broke out on the other side of the curtain separating him from the drugged youth. The curtain failed to contain the stench of body odor wafting over like wet dog dung. Though they had never met, Senex imagined the repulsive face of the punk plucked from the streets for his benefit.
Mora hobbled into the white-crystal cave chamber sparkling in the backlight of Promethean Pharma’s generators. Onyx stalactites hung from the ceiling. They pointed to a stone floor leveled smooth by the hand of man. Senex lifted his head from the cot to peer over his feet at a cabinet crammed with lab equipment. Mora was putting on his white lab coat and checking over the equipment. A Hispanic guard slumped in a chair with his hat tilted over his eyes and snored.
A TV mounted on the cabinet wall showed Chicago police and firefighters escorting schoolchildren to protect them from neighborhood gangs. Shots erupted from an abandoned house. The police took cover and fired back at gangbangers holed up in the house. The children scattered up and down the street.
“Shut the damn thing off,” Senex said. “Armed guards for school kids. What’s this city coming to? Things have to change.”
Mora clicked off the TV and came to the operating table. He hovered over Senex.
“When can I leave? Promethean Pharma needs me.”
“Careful, Mr. Senex. You’ll tangle the tubing.” He buttoned up his white lab coat. “We’ll have you out of here today.”
“I can’t stand that street scum. He stinks.” He twisted his head up to face Mora as best he could. “Are you wasting my time?”
“Does this answer your question?” Mora held a mirror next to his patient’s face.
“I don’t believe it.” Senex studied his reflection. The band of white hair along the side of his head now sprouted strands of pepper color. The loose skin folds on his face and around his eyes had tightened. A ruddiness lit up skin pasty colored before parabiosis. “I’m going to live. I’m going to live as long as I want.”
“I need to confirm—”
“I know how I feel.” He now had the power to turn back the bodily ravages of time. He just knew he was on the verge of cheating death. Suffering and death need not be part of the natural order of things. Through his control over Mora, he was now a god that conferred or withheld immortality from the rest of mankind.
“The scientific results are remarkable. I’ve been able to not only replicate the results from my earlier experiment but have bettered them.” Mora looked over the notebook he had taken from the pocket of his white lab coat. “We’ll need more booster procedures for the time being. Can we get more young donors?”
“No problem.” Senex smiled. “My governmental contacts scanned prison records and other information for blood compatibility. We can meet your blood requirements. I gave a list of names to Vinnie Palomba. His crews will snatch the chosen gangbangers off the street.”
“What’s in it for him?”
“The gangbangers are muscling in on the Outfit. Organized crime can’t afford losing market share. They want the gangbangers gone.”
“Palomba will be curious about what we’re doing.”
“He thinks the blood’s for our hush-hush artificial blood project.”
“It’s dangerous to underestimate the Outfit.”
“Stick to your research. I know what I’m doing. I have contacts with the Sinaloa drug cartel. They provide the guards now, and all the Outfit does is dispose of the donors. The right hand won’t know what the left’s doing.”
Moaning and scuffling broke out behind the curtain.
“He’s coming out of it.” Senex pointed his finger at Mora. “Now.”
“First, I must detach your circulatory system from his.”
While Mora disconnected him from the thug’s body, Senex calculated the discovery had more potential than ever imagined. Not even a week had passed, and the results were already astonishing. Parabiosis was more than just his ticket to hyperextended life. It opened the way to untold wealth. Once he consolidated his political power, parabiosis could come out of the shadows. He’d establish a network of blood clinics where the young could sell themsel
ves to rejuvenate society’s seniors.
“You’re disconnected, Mr. Senex.”
“Lemme outta here,” a voice cried from behind the curtain. “Untie me.”
“Take care of him, Mora. He’s coming around.”
Mora nodded and held up a syringe. “I’ll be right back.”
The doctor went around the operating table behind the curtain. Senex could hear the protests of the donor and Mora’s calm assurance. Fastened to the operating table, the donor wasn’t going anywhere. Soon, the protests lowered to a whimpering and then silence.
“He’s done his duty,” Mora said. “He won’t be a problem anymore.”
“What did you give him?”
“A combination of heroin, fentanyl, elephant tranquilizer, a synthetic opioid, and my own secret ingredient.” Mora showed him the syringe. “Instant death.”
“Can it be traced back to us?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Mora said. “Law enforcement will think it’s just another drug overdose from a new combination of street drugs.”
“Good work, Mora.” Mora helped Senex into a wheelchair and rolled him to the locker room, where he dressed.
When Senex emerged, he saw the guard trundling the dead body out of the cave. “I’ll bet the gangbanger kid was an illegal, right?”
“No,” Mora said.
“But he sounded Hispanic.”
“He was. They called him Santiago.”
Chapter Sixteen
“I know you’re in there.” In a sequined cowboy hat, Senator Dallas Taylor pounded on the oak door of Al Tweed, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC. “Let me in, Al, or I’ll blow the whistle on you all.”
The door cracked open. Lowering her glasses down the high bridge of her nose, a secretary peeked through. “You’re creating a disturbance. Please make an appointment.”
“You can kiss my you know what.” Taylor jammed her foot against the door and shoved it open.
“How dare—”
“Not another word.” She strode on past the secretary into Tweed’s private office and plopped into the guest chair next to the desk. The glossy, L-shaped rosewood desk looked like it had never been used for serious work. A framed photo of the chairman’s wife stood on the left side of the desk.
“Good to see ya again, Dallas.” Tweed’s eyes widened. “Still looking hot, I see.”
“Something cooled you off, though.” She pointed to the photo. “Maybe the wife you hid from me until I found out.”
“Things change.” The DNC chairman sighed and plucked a Cohiba cigar from a cherrywood humidor. “I meant to tell ya.”
“Sure,” she said with an ache in her voice. He was slicker than a Texas slop jar. She could rail and rant at him, but she had made the bad choice. It wasn’t the first. Besides, she needed something from him.
He stuck the cigar in his mouth.
“Still have that filthy habit?” She forced herself into lightheartedness. “Don’t smoke me out.”
“Won’t light it . . . promise.” He studied her for a few minutes. He removed the cigar from his mouth. “You’re not here to catch up on old times.” He shook his head as if in disbelief. “Ya want the DNC to stick you into the presidential slot on the ticket.”
“The veep candidate should move up to the presidential slot.”
“That was the old rule. It’s up to the DNC leaders now.”
“And you control them.”
“We just see things the same way.”
“The Democratic Party’s supposed to be democratic.” He wouldn’t budge if she flamed him with her sharp tongue. “Look, Al, I know you can’t call another convention.” She flipped her hair and bit her lower lip. “But can’t you at least have the whole Democratic Committee meet and make a decision? Not just the DNC muckety-mucks.”
He reached for her. She pulled away.
“No can do.” He pulled his hand back as though singed on a stove. “Too late to change the rules.”
“The new rule gives you discretion to call the DNC together.”
“Ya got me there. But we’re talking about two hundred people getting together.” He put the cigar back in the humidor. “Besides, grassroots Dems are calling. They oppose a general meeting. Rumors of a COVID-28 bug blowing out of China got ’em spooked.”
“You know better than to BS me with tall tales.” Diplomacy would get her nowhere. The flimflam man in politics and romance wasn’t going to budge. “I supported you when the Black Caucus wanted me to break off our relationship. It cost me plenty to stick with you until . . .” You dumped me remained her unfinished thought.
“I know, I know, Dallas.” He held up his hands. “If it was up to me . . . but it’s not. The party elders say the quickest way out of this mess is to substitute Roscoe Corker for president. They say you’re too young. Corker came in close second in the primaries. Seems fair to me.” He leaned over the desk toward her. “If ya take the veep slot for the team, that puts ya in line for POTUS next time.”
“Roscoe Corker is Sebastian Senex’s water boy.” She stood up to leave. “He’s an Illinois political hack with a closet full of scandals.”
“Ya got your own issues.” He opened the humidor top and then closed it. “It’s not so much you’re African American or a woman. It’s that you’re unmarried without a significant other. How we goin’ sell that to soccer moms?”
“Corker can’t keep his pants up whenever a woman’s around.”
“Come on. The man’s an all-American war hero awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in the Gulf War.” He scratched his cheek with his finger. “In this business ya don’t often get a war hero to run.”
“He’s got heart trouble. That cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking, whore-chasing Chicago sewer rat looks like death warmed over.”
“So what? He’s the junior senator from Illinois. He looks and talks great on TV.”
“Corker was your drinking buddy.”
“He almost beat Franklin Dexter Walker in the primaries. Joe Sixpack likes him.”
“The party can’t afford another dead candidate.”
“I’ll make sure he watches his health.”
“I worked hard for the party. I want the top slot.”
“Wait your turn.”
“Pie in the sky by and by doesn’t work for me. I get it. Senex has his hooks into you.”
“What did ya mean out there . . . y’all blow the whistle on us?”
“I know what you and your honey, the treasurer, got going.”
“Whaddya talking about?”
“I did some checking.” She surveyed the customized satin drapery and Andy Warhol original on the wall. “You two have been robbing the party till to pay for your hanky-panky trips.”
“Don’t say things you’ll regret.” Again, he grabbed a cigar from the humidor. “Anyway, Sebastian Senex made a generous contribution. Our financial problems are behind us.”
“I know your game.” Her hoop earrings bobbed as she fumed. “You’re repaying Senex by picking Corker.”
“Senex isn’t the devil.”
“Coulda fooled me.” She wagged her forefinger at the chairman. “Senex is no Democrat, and Corker’s one in name only.”
“The party’s a big tent. Ya know that.” He frowned and reached for a lighter. “Ya keep talking that way, Dallas, and I ’spect ya won’t get jack shit from me ever again.” He sucked on the cigar. “And then there’s the incident at the AIPAC conference ya might not want to get out.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Who am I to cast the first stone?” He lit the cigar. “Just don’t throw the first stone, or you’ll find yourself under an avalanche.”
Chapter Seventeen
Detective Jim Murphy approached the damaged Palios Kosmos butcher truck abandoned in a
n empty field just off Stony Island Avenue in Chicago. Parched weeds and prairie grass poked through a light blanket of snow with a white plastic bag blowing in the wind like a baby ghost.
“What are we doing here?” he asked Commander Jack Cronin.
“I’m thinkin’ this might involve the gangbangers gone missin’.”
“It’s outside our jurisdiction. Not our problem.”
“But the missin’ are mostly from our jurisdiction.”
“Why did you want me to come?” He blew into his hands to warm them. “It’s just a drug deal gone bad. The cop on the scene noted the needle marks.”
“You’re new to the Thirteenth District, lad. You’ve lots to learn,” said Cronin. “Oh, before I forget. Senator Dallas Taylor called me to complain about your racial profiling on Lake Shore Drive . . . ‘driving while black,’ she called it.”
“Her beef is bogus. I thought her Jaguar was stolen.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” The commander removed his gold-leaf hat and ran his hand through his hair. “You lack discretion, lad. She’s a United States senator . . . and anyway you were working security for the Millennial, not pulling traffic duty.”
“I can handle it.”
“It’s already been handled. I’m thick with someone who knows someone in the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.” The commander put his hat back on. “The complaint’s been deep-sixed. Win-win for everybody.”
“Not for me. I didn’t ask you to do it the Chicago way.”
“You’re my godson.” He winked. “I have a religious duty to look after you.”
With the commander at his side, Murphy scoured the scene. Tire tracks in the snow indicated the truck had probably lost control on black ice going south and caromed off a utility pole into the field. Crumpled metal ran like a scar across the passenger side of the vehicle. Shielding his eyes from sun glare, he saw beyond the truck a line of cranes and an abandoned cement factory silhouetted along the horizon. First on the scene, the CPD cop in a patrol car had found no witnesses in the desolate landscape. Only a dead body in the back of the truck. Whoever drove it had reason to scram.
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