American Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

“Thermostat’s busted.” The sergeant jerked his thumb at a police cadet eyeing a pizza slice. “Make yourself useful. Go find the maintenance guy.”

  The clamp-jawed DC cops hanging around the table after roll call studied the alien cop from the Windy City with fish eyes reserved for suspects. They looked resentful, as though his appearance were an unspoken criticism of their work. He’d feel the same if his superior called in a stranger cop from across the country to help solve a case. Can we trust this guy, he’d say. Is this gung ho hot dog going to take credit for my work?

  The sergeant washed down the pizza with a cup of industrial-strength coffee. “Our lead dick on the case will be here any minute.”

  “No problem,” Murphy answered. He used the downtime to figure out how things had gone haywire between him and his brother. Bryan started it by reneging on his agreement to return Patrick Murphy to Chicago after the visitation ended. Bryan wanted proof his Chicago brother had a reliable caretaker for their father after Bryan found out from Katie that their father had escaped more times than Jim had told him. Bryan didn’t understand that Jim was doing the best he could and was looking for a reliable caretaker. Instead of continuing the family negotiation, Bryan had sued him in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to take sole custody of their father.

  The morning’s testimony in superior court had left him exhausted, hearing the accusation of his incompetency and meager resources compared to his big-shot Justice Department brother. What gnawed at him most was hearing Patrick Murphy testify that Bryan was his only son and that the unfamiliar man over there kidnapped him and kept him locked in a room.

  The door at the Capitol police station flung open, and a baby-faced detective in T-shirt and jeans hustled in. He took off his raid jacket and crashed in the chair opposite Murphy. “Drug bust” was all he said before taking off the jacket.

  Murphy interpreted the words as an explanation for his delay.

  “Before we start, let’s get straight,” the DC detective said. “This is our case, period. Any problem with that?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you here?” he asked Murphy.

  “I don’t want to be here. Our chief of detectives said your brass wanted help with the assassination investigation of the House Speaker.” The heat in the room was getting to him. Baby Face added to the heat under the collar. Murphy fanned himself with a takeout menu from the pizza box to cool off before he and Baby Face got into it. “Any problem with that?”

  “We don’t need no help,” said the Capitol police sergeant.

  “The chief says I handle this.” Baby Face pointed to the door. “The show’s over. Everyone out now, except me and Detective Murphy.”

  Baby Face watched the last officer slam the door shut.

  “I don’t mean to bust your balls, Detective Murphy,” Baby Face said. “DC has over two dozen law-enforcement agencies with overlapping jurisdiction. We can get a little paranoid about others hogging the limelight.” He read an index card he removed from this pocket. “I see your case against Sebastian Senex for the murder of some vic called Dr. Angelo Mora got thrown out of court.” He scratched his unshaven chin. “Sure you can help us?”

  “Why are you bringing that up?” He stood up. “Just to needle me?”

  “No offense, pal. We need your help.” Baby Face waved Murphy back down. “Senex is big news in DC.” He yawned. “Pulling every string to get the House to elect Brewster president.”

  “That’s old news in Chicago.”

  “This isn’t.” The DC detective handed Murphy a grainy black-and-white photograph. “We got this off a security camera. Recognize the guy on the right?”

  He held the photo up to the ceiling light. Two men stood side by side on the dimly lit underground walkway between the Capitol Building and the Cannon House Office Building. He studied the man on the right. About six feet tall. The eyes of a predator. Aquiline nose. Elongated head. A pronounced jaw line like a barracuda. “I know him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Sebastian Senex.”

  “That’s what we thought . . . but Senex is in his seventies. This guy looks too young.”

  “This is where you owe me.” He explained in detail Senex’s search for the fountain of youth through blood transfusions and the reversal of his aging noticed by those who knew him. He ended his monologue with a question. “Do you think Senex had the Speaker murdered?”

  Before he received an answer, Murphy’s phone buzzed. It was his DC lawyer with the decision of the superior court judge. “Excuse me. I’ve got to take this call.”

  Baby Face shrugged. “Take it in the hallway. We’re through anyway.”

  The lawyer reported the superior court decided DC had enough connections with the custody case to decide the matter. His brother was a resident of the District and Patrick Murphy, his ward, was physically present in DC. Therefore, the court heard the case.

  “I lost, right? The judge was biased in favor a DC resident, right?”

  “No and no,” the lawyer said. “Because Illinois is the home state for your father, and you as current custodian live there, the judge held that an Illinois court was better positioned to make a final decision.”

  “What now?”

  “Your brother has thirty days to file suit in Illinois for sole custody of your father at which point the DC superior court will relinquish jurisdiction.”

  “Who gets custody in the meantime?”

  “Your brother.”

  “I do what I can.” Murphy rubbed his face with his hand. “I drive by when I’m on duty. My sister helps when she can. The last time he got away I was right on it . . . and friends on the force found him right away. Bryan doesn’t have a police department to search when he runs away like I do. I—”

  “I feel your pain, but it’s not my call. Gotta go.”

  At least the next round would be in his home court.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  In the study just off the Oval Office, the president of the United States psyched herself up by tap-dancing in rusty rhythm to Trombone Shorty’s “Here Come the Girls” on a square plywood board with quarters taped to her shoes. This was how she practiced as a dancing wonder child in a Dallas shack called home with warped wood floors. She revered the tradition of struggling tap dancers who brought along their own boards when working gigs in clubs with uneven flooring.

  She was up for a struggle tonight with Sebastian Senex.

  Despite the double whammy of racism and sexism, this come-from-behind kid had defied the odds. She had danced her way up the ladder of social success all the way to the White House. If only her mama and papa were around to see how their iron discipline had paid off. They saw how iron discipline worked for Michael Jackson and his dancing. They made it work for Dallas Taylor the dancer and now president.

  Her stratospheric rise meant many had to be left behind, her mama and her papa wondering what alien they had created when she went out into the world and came back an enigma. And all the men who passed through her life. They didn’t have what it took to keep up. They felt intimidated and fell away. Better one day alone with an ache of emptiness than a thousand with men who couldn’t cut it.

  She stumbled. Feeling dizzy, she stopped dancing to suck air. She gulped from a water bottle. Her left arm and leg felt sore. Her granny would say she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore. At least the endorphin rush eased the headache plaguing her all afternoon. No two ways about it. She had put off medical checkups for too long.

  She had been too busy to maintain a physician-patient relationship. The rare emergency doctor took the place of a personal physician. The White House physician she inherited from the outgoing administration had resigned for greener pastures. Emily James, her chief of staff and best friend since college, nagged her to find a new one.

  Two staff members and Emily had selected Dr. Bert Gai
nes, a decorated navy commander, and two others as top-notch candidates for White House physician. The final choice was hers. Only Emily knew that Dr. Gaines and the president had been college sweethearts. Though she broke the relationship off as a hindrance to career ambitions, she wondered if he carried a torch for her, or at least, a candle.

  Her chief of staff protested, perhaps too much, that the selection of Dr. Gaines for consideration had nothing to do with her college romance. Staff who didn’t know Dr. Gaines also recommended him because of his outstanding record as a navy physician.

  Her finger running down the background report had stopped at marital status: divorced. She had convinced herself he had the best qualifications. She looked forward to meeting him again. He was always a straight talker. Living in her presidential bubble of suck-ups, she convinced herself it would be sensible to have him around. She had made an objective choice. That’s all there was to it.

  “Show time.” Emily was at the door. “Don’t forget to put away the toys. Won’t do to have the press get wind of a Dancing Queen in the White House.” Emily always knew how to put a smile on her boss’s face.

  Taylor primped herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. She squared her shoulders and strode to the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. She sat down in front of the flag of the United States and the presidential flag, which flanked three elongated windows.

  Taylor closed her eyes before the TV cameras went on and took a deep breath. She was Judge Dallas and they loved her even when she didn’t occupy the Oval Office. Energy coursed through her chest. She joked with the gaggle of reporters and technicians tinkering with TV equipment.

  Her chief of staff stood in the doorway of the secretary’s office and connected her thumb and forefinger in an A-OK to her boss. The little girl from the wrong side of the tracks was on top now. She knew it. And they knew it. With hands folded on the Resolute desk she was poised to take on Sebastian Senex and all he stood for. The red camera light blinked.

  “Good evening, my fellow Americans,” she said. “As you know, I invoked the provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act to require that Promethean Pharma grant licenses to other pharmaceutical companies willing to manufacture and distribute the Anoflix vaccine. The vaccine is the only hope to prevent any outbreak of the mutated coronavirus from inflicting immense injury to our citizens and our economy. In the past week more instances of what is called COVID-28 have surfaced in China.

  “Despite its best efforts, my administration has been unable to license the production of Anoflix to another pharmaceutical company able or willing to produce this lifesaving vaccine in a timely manner. Because Promethean Pharma has stopped producing the Anoflix vaccine to evade its legal duty to negotiate the selling price, I am forced to take further action in the national interest. I declare a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act and invoke the Defense Production Act to implement the following measures.

  “Subject to the requirement of just compensation, the United States will temporarily take over the Anoflix patent and the management of Promethean Pharma to continue the uninterrupted production of Anoflix at a price determined unilaterally by the Department of Health and Human Services. This will continue until such time as Promethean agrees to resume production of Anoflix for sale in the United States at a negotiated price as required by law.

  “I regret this interference in the business affairs of Promethean Pharma. But the refusal of Sebastian Senex, the CEO and board chairman of Promethean Pharma, to put the good of the country ahead of his financial interests left no other choice. Good night, and God bless y’all.”

  She rose from her chair but immediately crumpled back into the seat with a hand to her forehead. She braced herself and straightened up.

  “Cut the cameras,” her chief of staff said, rushing up to her.

  She fell into the arms of Emily James. “Get me Dr. Gaines right away.”

  The next day Sebastian Senex turned the temperature of the Meridian Club sauna up to 185 degrees clad only in a Turkish towel wrapped around his loins. He sat down beside General Horatio A. Harrison, the secretary of defense, on a red-cedar bench. Both were stripped down to their essentials. He liked it that way. Mendacity and evasion and pretense all melted away like the toxins steamed from the skin. He never embarked on any serious undertaking without gut testing a potential associate in the sauna.

  And for this, the most serious of all his ventures, transparency and trust were essential. The two were like Roman senators in the baths plotting political changes more to their liking. As they looked at the glowing sauna rocks, Harrison said, “What do you think of her performance last night?”

  “Looked bad for me at first.” He splashed water over the rocks with a wooden ladle. A spurt of steam sizzled into the air. He tightened his towel and sat down. “But her collapse at the end turned it around. The media chatter this morning was about her health and not me.” He looked at the beet-red Harrison drinking bottled water. “Time to strike while the iron’s hot.”

  “We shouldn’t rush.” Harrison rose to stand over the heated sauna rocks and warmed his hands. He returned to his seat. “Maybe something’s wrong with her health. Could be something serious. Then she’d be removed for inability to perform her presidential duties.”

  “Confound it.” He tugged at his Turkish towel. “‘Maybe’ . . . ‘could be’ . . . won’t cut it. Her problem last night might just be low blood sugar.” He rubbed his left arm with a bristle brush to improve circulation. “Even if a cabinet majority wanted to remove her, the vice president would have to agree under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.”

  “Wait a minute.” Harrison scratched his chin. “We don’t have a vice president. She shot up to president . . . I mean acting president . . . or whatever the lawyers call her . . . until the House elects the president.”

  “See the problem?” he asked.

  “Ha!” Harrison shook his head. “The law of unintended consequences. We can’t remove her because there’s no vice president to concur with the cabinet.”

  “What about impeachment?” Harrison wiped the sweat off his face with a face towel.

  “Out of the question.” He beat his bare back with a whisk of eucalyptus leaves and twigs. “The House is totally absorbed in just picking the next president. The House censured two members for coming to blows over the election.” He applied the whisk to his chest and stomach. “Anyway, the Senate’s never removed any president from the Oval Office after House impeachment.”

  What’s Harrison’s problem? How did Mr. Hard-Ass turn into Mr. Softie?

  “Level with me.” Senex stood over the seated general. “Are you worried about losing your position as secretary of defense if we go ahead?”

  “I’m on thin ice with her.” The secretary of defense straightened out his legs and wiggled his toes. “I’m better for the plan inside the tent than outside.”

  He sipped from his water bottle and poured the remainder over his head, letting it run down his torso in cooling rivulets. “Do you really think she’d risk a political firestorm by firing you?”

  “She might.”

  “Come on, Harrison.” He threw the empty bottle on the floor. “Buck up. You’re supposed to be secretary of defense.”

  “Precisely.” Harrison headed for the sauna door followed by Senex. “I want to stay secretary of defense.”

  After showering, they changed clothes in the locker room. Harrison’s cell buzzed.

  “Is that right?” Harrison pressed the cell against his ear. “No mistake? OK. Let me know of any developments.” He disconnected the call. “Let’s move on the plan . . . now.”

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “She wants from me a signed and undated letter of resignation.” He shook Senex’s outstretched hand to seal the deal. “My days are numbered. We have to strike first.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The b
lack limousine pulled up outside the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Department Building. Sebastian Senex looked out the tinted windows from the back seat. The person he needed to set straight hadn’t arrived. Sebastian Senex resented waiting. Through the intercom he ordered the chauffeur to keep the motor running and leave after ten minutes if he didn’t show up. While waiting, he reread the Washington Times headline: CORKER DIES IN AIRPLANE BATHROOM. In disbelief he reread the account of the tragic farce.

  On a fact-finding boondoggle to Ukraine, the substitute Democratic presidential candidate suffered a fatal heart attack while having sex with a twenty-eight-year-old female aide trapped behind a malfunctioning bathroom door on a Lufthansa aircraft. In Kiev, firefighters pried open the door and released both corpse and aide. Corker always wanted to be a member of the mile-high club, the aide said.

  Senex’s Plan B had gone up in smoke along with Corker. Brock Brewster was his only plan now. He had to make sure Brewster kept his head screwed on straight in the race for the Oval Office.

  As the limousine pulled away, Bryan Murphy yanked on the door handle.

  He looked to his left and his right before hopping into the rear seat next to Senex.

  The CEO of Promethean Pharma ordered the chauffeur to keep driving around the block.

  “You’re late,” he said. “It shows a lack of respect.”

  “Sorry, but Justice lawyers are in a tizzy about Corker’s death. The Twelfth Amendment restricts the House choice to the top three contenders in the Electoral College. With Corker dead, Dallas Taylor moves into third place behind Brock Brewster and Frank Hammer for consideration as president.”

  “Get serious, man. Taylor only received five votes for president in the Electoral College. She doesn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell. And Hammer only got seventy-six votes.”

  “Sure looks that way.”

  “Great news for my boy, Brewster. He’s a shoo-in for president with a hundred and ninety-two electoral votes.”