She moved on to become a rabble-rouser in the House and then the Senate for leftist-liberal causes. Taylor had grown to be the darling of the progressive movement. She knew the secret of politics in twenty-first-century America: Notoriety and fame were equally valid entry tickets to the reality show called national politics. The two words blurred into one another. She had the entertainment skills to survive in that jungle of exhibitionism. She scared Sebastian Senex.
“Here’s the confidential briefing memo,” Senex’s secretary said, entering his office. “Bryan Murphy emailed it this morning from the Justice Department.”
He flipped through the memorandum. Not just anyone could have the deputy attorney general of the Justice Department send them documents not intended for outside eyes. He had done well to keep in contact with the former general counsel of Promethean Pharma, who became the second-in-command at the Justice Department.
Like Mora’s lab mice, Bryan Murphy and all the other suck-ups with political aspirations were conditioned by his backroom power. He dangled the cheese of their career ambitions before them to get what he wanted. Once they had served his goals, they became dispensable. Aside from Brock Brewster, Bryan Murphy was the most promising of the mice. With careful grooming for high office, Murphy could someday replace Brewster. Brewster had muddled a presidential election he should have won hands down. He narrowly won the popular vote but was predicted to lose the election by one vote in the Electoral College.
Senex skipped over the blah-blah sections of the memorandum discussing the history of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the presidency. On page twenty-one of the report, he found what he wanted:
The United States has never before confronted the constitutional puzzle of what happens if a presidential candidate who loses the popular vote but wins a majority of the electoral votes dies before members of the Electoral College meet in their respective states to cast their official ballots.
Must the electors vote for their pledged candidate even if he or she is dead? Or are electors free to vote for anyone they or their state chooses? Or may the party of the deceased candidate substitute another candidate for consideration by the Electoral College?
The assassination of the Democratic presidential candidate has set the United States adrift without guidance from the Constitution.
The political chaos worked to his advantage in sowing dissension among the Democratic enemy. The Democratic National Committee, controlled by entrenched political insiders, wanted to select a new presidential candidate to replace Franklin Dexter Walker. They rejected what they considered to be the unrealistic proposal of rank-and-file Democrats who desired an expedited virtual convention to select a new presidential candidate.
To rebut the charge of the party elders that not enough time remained until the Electoral College met in December, the party’s grass roots wanted Congress to postpone the meeting. Some, called the “crazies,” even suggested that Congress should cancel the election results and schedule a new general election with a new Electoral College and a delayed inauguration date.
The fundamental law of the land had no provision for a do-over. The Constitution invested the Electoral College with the independent and ultimate authority to pick the president of the United States. Pundits reminded the public that the Founding Fathers did not authorize a direct election of the president. The people of the United States through their state governments only elected the Electoral College. The college elected the president in the world’s greatest democracy. Not the people.
Instead of staying on message, Brock Brewster suggested that since he and his running mate had won the popular vote, they should automatically assume office. That would undermine the Electoral College completely and challenge the legitimacy of past presidents who had lost the popular vote but won in the Electoral College. Brewster showed deplorable judgment in overplaying his hand.
If Governor Brewster had any political judgment, he would have known he was the odds-on favorite to be selected by the Electoral College anyway now that his rival was dead. Not many electors would have the audacity to vote against Brewster for president in favor of a last-minute replacement when Brewster had won the popular vote.
He would have to keep an eye on Brock Brewster.
Chapter Twelve
Even before his daily examination of the test subject, Dr. Angelo Mora suspected the parabiosis procedure would exceed expectations. Yesterday’s exam had revealed the older subject’s facial furrows smoothed down by collagen from the younger subject’s blood. The bagginess around the eyes firmed up. The older subject looked younger.
Nodding to the strapping toughs outside, he entered the unoccupied building of a suburban industrial park gone to seed. Sebastian Senex had told him they . . . security assistants he called him . . . would help out with the nonmedical aspects. Mora was not to ask questions about them or whom they worked for. They had delivered the two test subjects to the hidden site in a warehouse with no questions asked: an elderly man and a belligerent youth under sedation with mouth taped shut.
He entered the portion of the warehouse set aside as a postoperative recuperation area. The older test subject sat up as Mora entered the cage that had been set up to contain the older and younger patients. He could see a question forming in the older man’s facial expression.
“What’s happening to me, Doc?”
“How do you feel?”
“Not tired like I was. I feel like a million bucks.” He stretched his arms up and yawned. “He agreed I’d go free if I volunteered. Can I go now?”
The security assistants came into the room within hearing range. Mora hesitated but couldn’t resist asking the subject, “Who said you’d go free?”
“The boss said he’d forget my unpaid juice if I did this.” He gulped. “I kept my promise. Can I leave?”
So that’s how it was. The Chicago underworld had supplied the subjects and the assistants.
Agitated, Mora twisted his knee, bending down to the cot where the subject was sitting. A bolt of pain shot through Mora’s right knee. He rested on a chair near the cot and rubbed his swollen joint. Waiting for the pain to subside, he looked over the results from the liver and kidney function tests. The older man’s organs functioned much more efficiently than before parabiosis.
Feeling better, Mora ordered the subject to stand. He held a stethoscope to the man’s chest and listened. He pushed against different body parts to test resistance. The subject pulled on a hand dynamometer to test strength. Muscle strength had increased. Every day the subject’s metabolic age grew younger at a slow but steady rate.
“I wanna go. I done what I was supposed to. Ask those guys guarding me.”
One of the security assistants yelled at him to shut up.
He, the great Dr. Mora, was to biological science what Enrico Fermi was to physics. The two Italians were scientific pioneers. Fermi had ignited the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, while Mora had now found the fountain of youth in the same city. Someday Chicago would honor him as it honored Fermi. Maybe now Sebastian Senex would treat his concierge physician-scientist with the respect and gratitude he deserved.
He ignored the test subject who complained, “The boss promised we’d be square if I did this. Can I scram now?”
What he, the great Dr. Angelo Mora, would be remembered for was the brilliant use of modern technology and creative insight to revolutionize the parabiosis procedure from its crude beginnings. He’d had help from blood experiments conducted by Sigmund Rascher, a Nazi scientist, at the Dachau concentration camp. Rascher’s descendant had handed over the unpublished records of the experiments for a modest fee. But the world didn’t need to know of that help, so the original research was destroyed. He alone would be the discoverer of the fountain of youth.
“Pay attention, damn it, and answer me.” The subject grabbed Mora by the shoulders. “I’m a hum
an being.”
“If you say so.” He waved away the assistants coming to his aid. “My experiment worked. You became younger with young blood.”
The two Chicago Outfit men blocked the subject’s exit from the cage.
He turned to Mora. “Tell ’em to let me go.”
“That’s not up to me.” He packed up his medical instruments.
“Let me go. I done what you and the boss asked. That was the deal.”
“I’m also done.” He washed his hands at the sink. “The procedure was a success. The rest is between you and whomever.”
“Doc . . . ya gotta help me. Put in a good word for me.”
Mora nodded to the two assistants. “I’m done.”
“Whatever happened to that kid whose blood I received?”
“The guards say they’re taking you to meet him.”
At Mora’s cue the security guards took the captive away to the basement to join the younger test subject. From where he stood on the ground floor, he heard a scream and the loud pop of what sounded like a hammer on metal coming from the warehouse basement. And then a moan and another loud pop of hammer on metal. The sounds didn’t concern him.
He looked out the window. A truck marked Palios Kosmos Greek Butcher Shop pulled up to the loading dock outside. The security guards hauled two sealed barrels up through the cellar door into the rear of the truck and drove away.
About to enter his own car on the way home, Mora felt a hand biting into his shoulder.
Chapter Thirteen
A Chicago Outfit mobster took his hand from Dr. Angelo Mora’s shoulder and spread-eagled him against the car hood before patting him down. He removed the doctor’s tie clasp and examined it. He handed it back. Finished with the inspection, he made a call on his cell. “He’s clean, Boss.”
Moments later, a black Lincoln Continental glided into the parking lot from behind a tree line concealing a gravel side road. The driver in a chauffeur’s cap opened the rear door. A man emerged in rumpled clothes.
Mora estimated the man’s weight at three hundred pounds. The medical disaster in the making wheezed and caught his breath. His unruly salt-and-pepper hair ruffled in the wind. He had an engraved scowl on his round face, accented by black horn-rimmed glasses. He looked like a perpetually ticked-off owl. With a lumbering gait he stopped in front of Mora. “You got business with my son, Vinnie Palomba.”
“Vinnie’s your son?” Mora feigned ignorance out of caution. At Mora’s request, the son had agreed to put out a contract for a hit on Commissario Marco Leone. This man was Dino Palomba, the feared boss of the Chicago Outfit.
“I wanna be sewed up for young blood.” The voice rumbled from years of vocal cords marinating in smoke.
“How did you know?” Mora asked. As soon as he asked, the answer hit him. The boss of the Chicago Outfit must have learned of the successful parabiosis experiment through the two “assistants” he supplied to Sebastian Senex. Their number one loyalty was to Dino Palomba and not to Senex or himself.
“How soon can you do it?” the boss asked.
“Why do you want the procedure?”
“Why dayya think? You’re the genius.” The boss took a deep breath. “Look at me. I’m an aging diabetic playing hide-and-seek with death. My ticker’s about to go. If you do this, I gotta chance to beat the odds.”
“The procedure’s dangerous.” Mora fumbled his tie clasp back on. “The possibility of antigens—”
“Shut the hell up.” The oval face of organized crime in Chicago turned crimson. “You do this, or Vinnie don’t do the hit you want. I’ll hit you instead. Got that, genius?”
“I understand fully, Mr. Palomba.” He ran his hand through his hair. “We’ll need—”
“Not your problem. We’ll find the young guinea pig.”
“When?”
“I got some business in Vegas to take care of this weekend. As soon as I get back. Got that?” Palomba rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “My eyes are shot, my legs swollen and asleep. Sometimes I feel like I’m walking on hot, broken glass.”
“I’ll set things up here for your return.”
“One more thing.” Palomba shuffled his feet. “That Italian dick . . . Commissario Marco Leone . . . the one you put a contract on. He arrived in the city. Still want Vinnie to whack him?”
“I do.” He could not have said the words more solemnly had it been his marriage vow.
“Vinnie will arrange to take care of it. But no backing out.”
“I’ll never back away from my revenge.”
“You do the para . . . the whatsis on me, and Vinnie arranges the hit on Leone. Then we’re even.” Palomba offered a thick, waxy-looking hand. “And I’m not giving you nothing else. Just one hand washing the other. Agreed?”
He shook the stiff fingers of the mobster’s hand. “Agreed.”
“I’m curious.” Palomba came closer. “Whadda Leone ever do to you?”
“He ruined me and his country.” The memory of his narrow escape from Italy after the collapse of the Piso coup agitated him. “He broke Lucio Piso’s political movement. I had a great future with Roma Rinata.”
“Lucio Piso?” Palomba emitted a guffaw. “Thought he was another Duce.” More laughter. “Piso was a goof.”
“Lucio was my brother-in-law as well as my patient.”
“Now that’s different.” Palomba nodded his head. “Avenging family. Reason enough to whack him. You didn’t really believe Piso’s crapola, did you?”
“Not at all.” A lie was the best course. These low-life mobsters had no finesse. They had no social vision. Had he lived and taken over the government, Piso would have strung up mobsters like Dino Palomba. Mora had to sing their song to take revenge on Leone. “I just wanted to use Piso.”
“If I was you, I’d be careful with your boss, that Sebastian Senex.”
“If you permit me,” Mora said, “may I ask why you are helping Senex?”
“Strictly business. He helps me from time to time. I help him. One hand washing the other. But your boss’s head is full of hooey about making over the city and country, clearing the streets of scum . . . crazy talk. He even shouts and whispers sometimes. A wacko like his dead friend, Lucio Piso.”
Senex’s mental disturbances reflected in speech were due to Huntington’s. Mora had nothing to gain by revealing this to Palomba. Flattery would be more productive. “I appreciate your wise advice.”
“Quit the brownnosing.” A hacking cough interrupted the boss. “Just be ready to do that para-thing when I come back.”
Senex had warned Mora to get permission before communicating with business associates of himself or Promethean Pharma. His employer would not take kindly to the assassination of a celebrity law-enforcement official or the unauthorized medical treatment of Dino Palomba by an underling.
“You must keep the hit on Leone confidential. An employee almost ruined Senex early in his career with a side deal. If he finds out, he’ll ruin me.”
“You questioning me about secrecy?” A coughing attack cooled the rising bile in the boss’s voice. When the coughing ended, he said, “My associates and I tell Senex nothing. For what he did to my father, he should kiss the ground he’s still alive.” He walked back toward the Lincoln Continental and turned. “Just be ready to do the para . . . whatever you call it . . . or else.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sebastian Senex closed the drapes in his penthouse den at the Meridian Club. The stray rays of sun sneaking in between the heavy folds added golden highlights to his burgundy smoking jacket rimmed with a black satin collar. Dr. Angelo Mora thought the smoking jacket amiss for a man who shunned tobacco and required the same of his employees.
“Before we set the date for my parabiosis procedure, I have some good news.” Senex tightened the tasseled sash of his jacket with a twitching hand, most l
ikely the result of Huntington’s disease. “Dino Palomba died of organ failure in a Las Vegas hospital. It’ll soon be all over the news.”
Mora grew light-headed at his last-minute reprieve from administering the parabiosis treatment to Dino Palomba.
“Are you OK?” Senex asked.
“Never felt better.” And well he might. If Palomba had died or been injured by the procedure, the Chicago Outfit would have retaliated against him. If Senex had discovered his unauthorized treatment of Palomba, his boss would also have had his head. Fate had saved him from this dual predicament.
He now had only one secret to keep from Senex . . . the Outfit hit he had on Commissario Marco Leone’s head. Did Senex suspect? Is that why he brought up the death?
“Was Dino Palomba a friend?” Mora asked.
“Friend?” Senex snorted. “I detested him and he me. But we found each other useful.”
Senex’s face relaxed into the sly smile of a prankish adolescent. “There was this time,” he said, pausing with a dreamy look. “A long time ago, the mayor appointed me head of the Municipal Crime Committee to investigate and expose organized crime. Dino Palomba’s father and Vinnie’s grandfather . . . the Outfit leader then . . . was gambling high stakes at a card game with cronies in a social club. Young and brash, I instigated and joined a police raid on the place.
“You should have seen the mobsters falling over one another trying to get out. We were feeling our oats shaking up the bad guys, so at my suggestion, the coppers made Dino’s father drop his pants with the pretext of a search and seizure warrant.” Senex’s face resumed its normal intensity of the present day. “Lucky I’m not dead after that youthful foolishness.
“What I’m about to say,” Senex said, “you’d better keep under your hat.”
American Conspiracy Page 5