The Chicago Outfit must be destroyed once and for all.
He ended his presentation and sat down to thunderous applause.
Itching to confront the new president of the Windy City Reform Council, Jim Murphy bided his time on the perimeter of admirers congratulating Senex on his presentation. Angelo Mora was the key to taking down Senex. If necessary, he could flip Mora against Senex by threatening not only to have him extradited to Italy but also to stand trial in the United States for the contract on Marco’s life. While admirers shook Senex’s hand after descending the podium, Murphy elbowed his way to the front. Senex eyed him with suspicion.
The mayor’s administrative aide pushed his way through the crowd to Senex. The aide told him His Honor was on board with the crusade against the Outfit. Murphy knew that in the next election, Chicago’s chief executive wanted to be the first passenger on the Senex Express in its anti-Outfit campaign so he could ride it back into office.
When the crowd dwindled away, he cornered Senex.
“Why are you here?” Senex shoved papers into his briefcase. “I won the traffic case.”
“I’m investigating the deaths of young men abducted from the streets.”
“You mean the dope-dealing gangbangers?” Senex tucked his briefcase under his arm.
“The three we found didn’t have organs missing,” Murphy said. “Like you said in your speech.”
“Maybe if you guys found all the others still missing, you’d find organs missing. So who’s to say I’m wrong?” A smirk formed at the corners of his lips. “Besides, I said the Outfit was planning to sell human organs, not that they’re doing it now.”
“You’ve got something to do with the missing and dead gangbangers, don’t you?”
“Where’s your proof, Detective?”
“Dr. Angelo Mora for one.” He positioned himself to block Senex’s exit. “Does that name ring a bell?”
“He’s an employee wanted by the Italian authorities for treason.” Senex tut-tutted disapproval. “Had I only known his secret past, I would never have arranged his arrival in Chicago.” He shook his head with a sheepish grin. “That’s what I get for being too trusting.”
“We know he’s your right-hand man in secret blood research.”
“It’s not a crime to do scientific research or protect corporate trade secrets.”
“It is if you kidnap and kill people to do it.”
“You have no proof.”
“When I turn on the tap, Dr. Mora will leak like a faulty faucet.”
“You’re bluffing. Why would he talk to you?”
“Mora will beg for a plea bargain. The Outfit shooter we arrested tagged Mora for the contract on the life of Commissario Marco Leone.”
“The shooter’s uncommunicative and in critical condition.”
“Was. We got a statement yesterday after he revived.”
“Behind my back.” Senex blurted out to no one in particular.
He was either genuinely surprised or a remarkable actor.
“If Mora did try to arrange for your partner’s assassination, he did it behind my back. I knew nothing about his plans.” He straightened up. “My word against that of a neofascist traitor. Take your pick.”
“Mora is only the beginning of the end for you.”
“Get out of my way.” Senex brushed past him. “You’re confusing me with the Mafia. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
“God help you if you’re involved in killing my son.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“No need to ambush me down here. Make an appointment,” said Clyde Pomeroy, Speaker of the House of Representatives. He panted his way along the underground walkway to the Capitol Building from the Cannon House Office Building. “I’m in a hurry. I have to organize another vote for president.”
“Stop your play-acting. I saw the report, just out, from the Base Closure and Realignment Commission.” Sebastian Senex grabbed Pomeroy’s arm to stop him. “You lied to me.”
“Let go.” The Speaker pulled away. “I was duped. They changed their minds without telling me.”
“A lie. My inside sources say the commission never intended to put those bases on the chopping block.”
A Metropolitan police officer walked toward them. Senex let go of Pomeroy until the officer walked by.
“I’m trying to get a majority vote, but House members aren’t showing up for a quorum,” the Speaker said. “The Capitol physician is having temperatures checked before they enter the House. He’s scaring them away. They’re afraid infected Chinese got through the travel ban and are in DC.”
“Why did you lie?”
“You knew Brewster was a long shot.” The Speaker resumed walking toward the Capitol Building with Senex alongside. “Why be worried? Roscoe Corker is your Plan B.”
“I didn’t get you elected, Clyde, for Plan Bs.”
“I have to rest. My COPD’s getting worse.” The Speaker stopped to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Thank God I’m moving to the Rayburn House Office Building tomorrow. Then I can ride the underground subway to the Capitol instead of walking.”
“You lied to me.”
The Speaker backed against the walkway guardrail and hung on with hands outstretched on either side of his body. His chest heaved in and out for air.
“You stabbed me in the back.” Senex squeezed Pomeroy’s shoulders. “Your plan was a sham from the get-go.”
“No, it wasn’t. I swear.”
Senex glanced at the high school artwork on the wall behind the Speaker’s head. The winning picture of a national competition showed a line of smiling men stabbing one another in the back with the caption: The Congressional Backslap.
He removed his hands from Pomeroy’s shoulders. “You little conniver.”
“Don’t worry, Sebastian.” Easy breathing returning, the Speaker moved away from the guardrail. He drew the palms of both hands down his face. “I’ll think of something.”
“You already have.”
“What do you mean?”
“You purposely used the COVID-28 confusion as a pretext to further delay the House selection of a president before Inauguration Day on January twentieth. Your sham deal on military bases plus your parliamentary maneuvers as Speaker were all designed to postpone the election of a president.”
“Why would I ever do that?”
Senex waited until a congressman hustled past, jabbering nonstop with legislative assistants in tow.
“Your plan all along was to snatch the presidency for yourself.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“In talking to my lawyers and confirming it with Bryan Murphy at Justice, I learned that if the House doesn’t elect a president by Inauguration Day, you become president under the Presidential Succession Act.”
“You’ve got it all wrong.” Pomeroy wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “If it’s not Brewster, it’s going to be Corker.”
“No it won’t.” He took off his hat and clenched it with both hands. “You’re playing out the clock so neither of them gets it.”
“You got it all wrong, Sebastian.”
“You lying weasel.” Senex pushed the Speaker back against the railing. “You had no more intention of getting Brewster or Corker elected than I have to fly to the moon. You double-crossed me to get it for yourself.”
“That’s not true.” Pomeroy licked his lips. “But even if it happened . . . but mind you, I’m not saying I would want it to happen . . . but let’s say it just happens neither gets in and I do after Inauguration Day.” He touched Senex’s arm. “You know I’d do more for you, more than Brewster, and even more than Corker.”
“You pathetic con artist.” Senex started walking back to the Cannon House Office Building. He turned. “If you let Inauguration Day go by without the House picking a president
, that’ll be the last time you two-time me.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
On a counter stool at 1:12 a.m., Detective Jim Murphy put down his pepper-and-egg sandwich in the White Palace Grill at the corner of Canal and Roosevelt. He peered out the plate-glass window into the winter night for the laggard insistent on meeting him but nowhere to be seen. Two drunks bathed in fluorescent street lighting on an icy sidewalk gave up their swing-and-miss brawl. Wet gobs of falling snow clung to their hair. They staggered away on Canal in opposite directions.
He returned to his stool to hear the only other customer down the counter slurping soup into a wild-whiskered face. In the lull of the night, a middle-aged waitress sucked ice cubes from a glass and fanned herself with a menu. The angry-bee buzz of his cell skittering along the slick countertop drowned out the gurgle of soup.
“Katie? What gives at this hour?”
“Bryan called. He’s been drinking.”
“What’s new?”
“He’s had enough, he says. He wants Dad in a DC nursing home.”
“Without talking to me?” The die had been cast. “Over my dead body.”
“Don’t overreact, Jimmy. Bryan knows Dad got out again. He knows the home nurse quit. And I can’t take more time from my job to look after Dad.”
“I’ll find someone. Dad’s not going to any institution. Period.”
“Bryan’s ready to go to court.”
“Let him.”
“Think what’s best for Dad.”
Through the venetian blinds of the plate-glass window, he saw the familiar figure make his way on the slick street toward the seasonal canvas vestibule protecting the front door from a snowstorm blasting into town.
“Gotta go,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”
Commander Jack Cronin entered. He brushed snow off his overcoat and dropped down on a stool next to Murphy.
The whiskered derelict to the left of the commander raised the dish to his lips and guzzled the remaining soup. He wiped his mouth and dropped a pile of coins on the counter before scuttling past them with coat collar upturned. The commander glared at him. The derelict pulled his scarf around his face and stumbled out the door into the dark. A piece of vestibule canvas came loose and flapped like a trapped bird in the gathering wind of an approaching blizzard.
“Know him?” he asked the commander.
“I pinched him years ago for robbery.” Cronin rubbed his hands and face, still chilled from the outside weather. “That’s a pinch he’ll never forget.” He blew into his hands before pretending to beat one hand with an invisible billy club held in the other. “Ah, for those days with different rules.”
“You wanted to see me. I’m off duty and I want to go home.” His suspicions about Jack Cronin overcame any inclination toward civility. “Let’s get this over with.”
“No wonder. The weather’s brutal tonight.”
“Stop wasting my time.”
Red-eyed, the commander yawned. “Hard time sleeping lately.”
“Why did you turn on me? And no BS.”
“That’s why I’m here.” The commander looked out onto the street. “To try to explain.”
“Start talking.” Murphy rose from his stool. “Or I’m gone.”
“I’m sorry, lad. Truly I am.” Cronin turned his eyes back to him. “The Outfit called in some chips. I had to keep them happy. They wanted me to do worse to you until I sweet-talked them out of it. It’s not somethin’ I’m proud of.” He traced a finger on the counter. “That’s it in a nutshell.”
The waitress went through the motions of cleaning an already clean counter around them until she was in eavesdropping distance. “Do ya want anything?” she asked the commander.
“Get me a Pancho Villa omelet.”
“And deliver it in the back,” Murphy added. “We need privacy . . . if you know what I mean.”
“I can take a hint, honey,” she said. “Just like being around you guys at night. The gangs come in about now and try to stiff me.”
In the room at the back of the White Palace Grill, Murphy sat facing the commander with the Chicago mural on the wall over the commander’s shoulders. In the center, Harry Caray, Michael Jordan, Jane Byrne, and Mayor Richard J. Daley played cards against a downtown Chicago skyline while Mayor Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley kibitzed above. To the left, his eyes ran over the poster honoring the Blues Brothers, Muddy Waters, and other cultural icons. Outside the perimeter of Chicago’s icons, Al Capone smirked, martini in hand, like he knew the game was rigged.
“It was either go along or wind up in a car trunk.” The commander wrapped his hands around a hot coffee mug. “I did what I had to do.”
“Either Marco or you had to die, is that it?” He wondered how the muralist had captured the almost invisible wink in Capone’s eye. “Don’t serve me that crapolini. You took the first bribe, then the second, and on and on. You chose your fate one payoff at a time, one bribe at a time, until you locked yourself in. And I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“Still the goody-goody, like your old man.”
Murphy stood up halfway in his chair. “Keep my father out of this. He wasn’t a dirty cop like—”
“Me?” The commander pointed to his chest and forced a hollow laugh. “The odd couple, we were. I always assumed he’d tell you I was . . . different.”
“Corrupt, I’d call it.”
“I’ll tell you somethin’ I’d tell my son.” He folded his hands on the table. “There’s good in the worst of us and bad in the best.”
“And most of us know the difference.”
“I can’t undo it, Jim, but I gotta be honest.” He lifted his head to look him in the eye. “I’d have to do it all over again. I didn’t choose to be born in this city, grow up with the folks I did. I had to play the cards I was dealt.” Cronin spread his fingers across the table and hunched over. “Ain’t life grand?”
“Life is what you make it.”
“Says the man who dropped out of the priesthood, dropped out of law school, and dropped out of position so a presidential candidate gets himself shot.”
“I grew up in the same neighborhood you did. I kept trying to find my way, trial and error maybe, but I kept trying.” He sighed, realizing maybe the commander was right. Maybe his godfather couldn’t change now. Maybe that was hell. Living in wet concrete until it hardened with time and you couldn’t get out. “Do right and wrong mean anything to you anymore?”
“If you weren’t such a Holy Joe, you’d give me credit for improving morale, modernizing the Thirteenth District, cracking down on crime where I could . . . and, yes, not letting graft and departmental politics get out of hand.”
“Oh, I give you credit alright,” he said. “You really cracked down on crime. They didn’t call you Mr. Billy Club for nothing when you walked the beat. You’d crack any petty crook to an inch of his life . . . when you weren’t kissing Mob ass.”
The commander’s face reddened. “I ought to . . . What’s the use?” His eyes watered. “You’re right. And it hurts to hear you, of all people, say it.”
“I don’t want to work with you.” He looked away. “I’m applying for a transfer.”
“No need, my boy.” The commander folded his arms. “I’m resignin’ from the force. The FBI’s hot on my trail. Maybe resignin’ will satisfy them.”
“Dream on, Commander.” He waved the waitress away. “They’ll want you to flip against the Outfit.”
“I’m no snitch.”
“The golden rule of corruption. Rats don’t rat on other rats.”
“They’d kill me.”
“What about the Witness Protection Program?”
“They’re bigger than the Witness Protection Program.”
“Is that why the cartel is taking them down, piece by piece? Because they’re so powerf
ul?”
“I’m not a stool pigeon.”
“Of course not.” He tossed some bills on the table before leaving. “You’re a rat.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sebastian Senex and Brock Brewster had set down their food trays in the hospital cafeteria when Brewster’s ringtone sounded. Brewster tapped his smartphone. He gasped as he read the email message. His jaw grew slack. His eyes widened.
“Put that thing away,” Senex said. “We’re eating.”
“The Senate just selected Dallas Taylor as the vice president of the United States.” Brewster shook his head. “I don’t like it. The House hasn’t selected a president yet. We’re coming down to the wire of Inauguration Day on January twentieth, and she’s already vice president. I don’t like it one bit.”
Of course he wouldn’t. No president wants to be upstaged by a stand-in. But Brewster couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The Senate had done them a favor by sticking Taylor into the dead-end office. The first vice president, John Adams, had called it the most insignificant office that mankind ever invented. Harry Truman put it more memorably: The office of vice president was like the fifth teat on a cow.
“Aren’t you surprised, Sebastian?”
“No.” He held up his two hands as though he had something in each. “The Constitution limits the Senate’s choice to the two candidates with the most electoral votes. In the right hand, we have the Democrat senator from Texas being considered by fellow senators in a Senate dominated by Democrats. In the left hand, we have Luisa Garcia, your Republican veep running mate, who’s not a senator and is a political lightweight, except for her Hispanic appeal.” He raised his right hand higher than left. “No surprise to me at all.”
American Conspiracy Page 13
