American Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

  “How do I know you didn’t order his death?”

  “Do I look like a key figure in the Mafia or in the South American cartels?” He picked up his cane and gripped it tight. “How would I, a respected research scientist, ever have such power in a million years?”

  “Why don’t you answer my question?”

  “No. Again no. I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “Who murdered him?”

  “It’s all over the media. The Aztec Warriors.”

  “Puh-lease.” She held up the palm of her hand to him. “I’m the expert criminologist. I know all about gangs.” She stood up. “Those savages enforce orders, not give them.”

  He put his hat back on. “Since you know it all, perhaps I should leave.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you.” She patted the space on the bench next to her. “Just tell me who’s behind Vince’s murder.”

  “I do not know.”

  “Why did he have to die that horrible death?” She twisted her handkerchief. “The brutality of it.”

  He shrugged.

  “I must leave.” She left him sitting on the bench and walked a few feet away. She turned. “I hope I’ve reassured you about my father’s regard for you.”

  “I wish you had.” Crestfallen, he ran a hand up and down his cane. “I wish you had.”

  Inside Garrett Popcorn Shops at Navy Pier, Detective Jim Murphy gawked at the fastidiously dressed Dr. Angelo Mora licking his thumb stained orangish-yellow with oil from his giant combo bag of caramel-cheese popcorn. He caught a whiff of the cheddar butter enticing him to order his own bag.

  “We’d better get started,” Murphy said. “But first . . . could you put down the popcorn?”

  “Of course.” Mora swallowed a final handful. “Sorry.” He wiped his hands with several mini-napkins. He took a few more from the napkin holder and wiped his mouth, missing an orange-yellow spot under his lower lip. “This is my comfort food.”

  “Why do you need comfort food? Your conscience bothering you?”

  “Not my conscience. My knee replacement.”

  “Why did you want to meet here?” Murphy asked.

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Agreeing to meet you here instead of headquarters was a favor. It will shield you from the media . . . for now.” Murphy put his elbows on the table. “Now you do me one. Confess what we already know from the Outfit shooter. You put a contract out on the life of a visiting police officer named Commissario Marco Leone.”

  “If you already know, why are we meeting?” Mora smirked. “You want something from me. What?”

  “I figure Sebastian Senex has something to do with the disappearance of gangbangers.” He rubbed his chin. “Tell me about that.”

  “How can I?” Mora drew his thumb and forefinger across his lips. “Senex has a doctor-patient privilege against my testimony.”

  “Never practice law in this state, Dr. Mora.” Murphy shook his head. “The privilege doesn’t apply to homicide cases.” With a finger Murphy crushed a stray piece of popcorn on the table. “Start talking if you want a break.”

  Mora looked around and checked the entrance door. “Senex must not know I’m talking to you.” Mora shivered as though a chilly wind had blown past him. “He has eyes and ears even in your police headquarters.”

  “We’ll protect you if you play ball.”

  “What about the state’s attorney?”

  “Willing to recommend leniency . . . depending on the worth of your information.”

  “The extradition problem? I don’t want to end up in an Italian prison.”

  “Our federal government controls extradition issues. Not Illinois.”

  “Either you protect me from extradition or I don’t talk.”

  “I wish we could but we can’t.”

  “Then no deal for what I may know about Senex.” Mora stood up. “And I won’t confess to solicitation for murder. Prove it in court.”

  “Wait a minute before you go.”

  Murphy bristled at the thought but he could see no other way. “I’ll talk to my brother. He’s a big shot in the Justice Department.”

  Bryan wouldn’t let him forget the favor and would want something in return . . . like agreeing to warehouse their father in a nursing home. “Maybe he can find a way to keep you in the States.”

  “He’d better.” Mora picked up his nearly empty bag of popcorn. “Or you’ll get nothing from me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The warble of the rusting steam whistle signaled the afternoon shift at the Kinzie Steel mill. In a ramshackle office, Sebastian Senex fretted his next appointment would turn into a no-show. He had a loose end to take care of now that the Speaker had paid for his betrayal with his life. The Sinaloa cartel had settled accounts for him on that occasion. They were ready to help him again.

  The appointment was the only reason he left the architectural elegance of Promethean Pharma’s suburban campus for this smelly armpit of real estate in the extreme southern part of Cook County. Senex brushed off his desk the fine dust spewed out by a malfunctioning ventilation system.

  He’d had to buy Kinzie Steel with the pretext of a tax write-off for reasons more important than the maximization of profits. It was a credible cover. The mill bled losses that reduced record profits over at Promethean Pharma. The dump of a plant had begun a death spiral where it would end up a scrap heap not even capable of producing losses. He liked the tax saving but he didn’t have to like the industrial death and defeat that had haunted domestic mills for over thirty years. The United States needed a complete change from top to bottom. He and his kind would provide that change one way or the other. It was looking more like it would be the other.

  Sharp knocks on the unlocked office door rousted Senex’s reflections on the state of the nation.

  With protective goggles raised to his forehead, the Slovak supervisor barged into his private office.

  “You?” Senex arched his eyebrows. “I expected someone else.”

  “This not wait.”

  “What now?”

  “More customer complaints about finished steel.” He put his hands on his hips. “Not good.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” He only needed to hang on one more month until he could dump the mill at a loss and take the tax credit to offset Promethean Pharma’s skyrocketing profits. His greatest fear was that the mill would start earning a profit with pushy eager beavers like the Slovak around. No one was going to deprive him of his financial losses.

  “You better have time and listen good.”

  “Get out. Or I’ll call security.” Senex brought the receiver of the landline to his ear with one hand and prepared to dial with the other. “You’re fired.” The Slovak lowered his fist. “I go to union about you,” he said, slamming the office door on the way out.

  Unlike other steelworkers, the supervisor did not treat him as the white knight they thought he was. They fantasized he had come to save their jobs instead of using them to drive the steel mill further into the ground. The Slovak was one of those union agitators who had brought Kinzie Steel to its knees with their bloodsucking demands. Years ago they should have had a boss who told them to work harder and be grateful they even had a job. He was just putting the mill out of its misery with a mercy killing.

  An almost inaudible rap on the office door. Dr. Angelo Mora peeked in.

  “Come in, Angelo,” Senex said. “I was expecting you.”

  Mora hesitated.

  “I won’t bite.”

  “Is everything OK?” Mora entered with hat in hand.

  “Absolutely.” He offered his hand. “Good to see you again, Angelo.”

  “Why did you want to see me, Mr. Senex?” Mora shook the outstretched hand.

  “To discuss my medical condition, of course,
and thank you personally for returning my youth.” He took a bottle of prosecco from the minifridge and two tumblers out of the cabinet. He poured the straw-colored prosecco in both glasses and gave one to Mora. “A toast to you, my friend. You have turned back the hands of time.” They clinked glasses with rising columns of bubbles.

  A smile relaxed Mora’s face.

  “Will I need further transfusions of the Ponce de León protein?”

  “Most likely not.” Mora rubbed his goatee. “Even if you did, that would be no problem.”

  “And you’re certain that the Polish assistant with the scar . . . What’s that name you gave him?”

  “Due.”

  “You’re sure this Due knows the procedure as well as you.”

  “Absolutely. We think alike.”

  “Splendid.” Senex refilled the tumblers with prosecco. “I’m feeling fine now, but what about those symptoms I told you about?”

  “Just your body adjusting to biological change.” Mora put down his glass. “Your metabolism will reset. I predict the symptoms will fade away.”

  “That’s wonderful news.”

  He wanted to ask about his Huntington’s but was afraid of the answer.

  “I want to show you around my mill.”

  They went to the platform landing outside his office. Senex gripped the protective railing and pointed to the floor below. “I call that Dante’s Inferno.” Welding torches spewed sparks into the air. The red glow of flames billowed up through the mill’s blast furnace. The yellow lava of molten iron mottled with red blotches spilled from steel ladles. His eyes and skin felt toasty.

  On the floor, a dump truck unloaded scrap iron into a well-used vat looking like a gigantic rust bucket into which workers poured a heap of lime. A crane pushed the bucket into an obsolete blast furnace barely able to meet the minimum heat necessary for smelting. Soon after he sold the white elephant of a steel mill, the blast furnace would likely break down.

  “Come on.” He waved Mora onward. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “I’m quite hot.” Mora fanned himself with his hand. “Maybe another time?”

  “Nonsense. I plan to sell this wreck.” He guided Mora forward by the shoulders. “There may not be another time.” He looked down at the cause of Mora’s slow pace. “Still problems with the knee?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  They descended a winding metal staircase into the bowels of Dante’s Inferno.

  A foreman handed them each a yellow hard hat, a pair of tinted goggles, and a blue cooling vest for protection against environmental dangers. The steelworker advised the blast furnace needed repair. It was losing heat and unable to smelt the metal completely. Senex brushed away the advice and moved on with Mora. He had more important things to think about.

  He stopped Mora and raised his voice above the increased decibels of clanging and banging. “I owe you a great deal, Dr. Mora, and I intend to repay you.”

  “You have been generous enough.”

  “I can prevent your extradition.”

  “Really?” Mora clasped his hand. “I’d be so grateful.”

  “One more thing.” He held Mora by the shoulders. “I don’t want to be a nervous Nellie, but how confident are you that I’ll remain young without further treatment?”

  “I’d stake my reputation on it.” Mora’s voice rang clear and confident above the cacophony. “I jump-started your metabolism. It is now rejuvenating on its own.”

  “What about my Huntington’s?”

  “I know it’s in remission.” Mora stroked his goatee. “It is unlikely the symptoms you experienced signal its return.”

  “How can you be so confident?” He looked away from Mora to mask his anxiety.

  “Take heart, Mr. Senex.” Mora paused. “At the university I was good at cards. I had a gift for calculating probabilities.” He held the lapels of his suit coat and smiled. “I calculate you will overcome Huntington’s because what I did is like fixing a computer. Your body has rejuvenated itself by going back to a point in time before the software malfunction called Huntington’s disease took root.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt. “I believe I have cured this disease by tricking the software of your DNA.”

  “If anyone could deceive Huntington’s, it would be you, Dr. Mora.”

  “You are too kind, Mr. Senex.”

  The foreman had carried out his orders. The area personnel had been temporarily assigned to a make-work project elsewhere.

  Senex led Mora under bare light bulbs flickering overhead. They moved past piled-up lumber and broken dump cars into the heart of Dante’s Inferno. They walked onto a catwalk overlooking a thirty-five-foot pit belching up the sparking red liquid of molten metal. Bits and scraps of undigested metal bobbed like stew pieces in the witches’ brew below. The heat was too low to smelt completely but that was of no consequence.

  Before Mora could utter a word, two men sent by Miguel Perez rushed onto the catwalk disguised as workers. They twisted the doctor’s arms behind his back and covered his mouth with duct tape. The men dragged him scraping his heels on the catwalk toward the pit. They looked to Senex. He gave the signal. The two pushed the traitor into the pit.

  A man’s silhouette rippled on the surface of the molten steel for a moment before fading away like the smile of the Cheshire cat.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Jim Murphy’s eyes opened. Somebody’s arm prevented him from sliding off the barstool at Dugan’s Irish pub. It was Marco’s.

  “You need sleep,” his partner said.

  He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “We all do.”

  Mondocane awoke from snoozing at the foot of Marco’s stool and yapped at a patron down the bar having one too many. The commissario dropped a pretzel to divert Mondocane. The pointer snapped it down and returned to drowsing.

  They had responded to an all-hands-on-deck order from the superintendent of police to quell the homicidal mayhem playing out on Chicago streets. Going home when a shift ended was not an option. No one knew how long the lull in the crime wars would last. If innocents hadn’t been caught in the cross fire, he might have been tempted to imitate fellow officers who thought it shrewder to let the bad guys blow one another’s brains out. It troubled him that every house mouse in the CPD endorsed this excuse.

  Jim held his hand over the coffee cup as the bartender readied a nip of Jameson Irish whiskey. “Keep the Irish out of my coffee, or I’ll never stay awake.” The bartender focused on Marco. “Want a cup?”

  “No, no.” The Italian detective waved the thought away with his hand. “One does not order coffee at an American bar and expect the taste of coffee at an Italian bar.” Marco yawned. “Pardon me . . . but I’d rather fall asleep than drink this caffeinated castor oil.”

  The flitting images and vocal noise on the overhead TV switched to a breaking-news report that grabbed their attention: A shooting massacre had occurred at the Convention against Ageism in Clearwater, Florida.

  Accompanying the breathy staccato of the cable anchor, images of the shooter raced across the screen. An emaciated thirtysomething lay dead on the convention floor with tattooed arms outstretched and a Mohawk-style crest of green hair. The anchor reported that Florida police had found a political screed of over two hundred pages at the shooter’s home.

  The manifesto threatened revenge on the geriatric generation for throttling the future of the country’s youth. The document cited chapter and verse of the ways the generation of senior citizens had messed up the twentieth century and threatened future generations. The extended longevity of what the writer called “The Longest Generation” and its refusal to give up the controlling levers of national power were cited as major social problems. The most promising solution, the manifesto concluded, was for a “happy hour” life termination in cases of excessive longevity, the details of which were to be worked out
in a subsequent document. The anchor segued to talking heads debating whether ageism was the new racism.

  “Glad that’s not our problem,” Jim said to the TV. The bartender switched channels to a soap opera. Jim turned to Marco. “Missing Persons is unable to locate Dr. Mora. What do you think happened?”

  “He is frightened and hiding somewhere.”

  “Interpol has reported nothing.” Jim choked down frustration and weariness with a handful of bar popcorn and coffee. “My hunch is he’s still in the States.”

  “Does Senex know his location?”

  “He claims shock about Mora’s disappearance.” An intestinal growl made him regret his choice of popcorn and coffee. “He’s lying through his teeth but I can’t prove it.”

  “I intended to inform you.” Marco handed him a slip. “The Kinzie Steel supervisor . . . someone . . . with an accent worse than mine . . . called again. He demands you interview him about Senex.”

  “Demands?”

  “I think he means . . . requests. Like me, he has a problem with English.”

  “What for? He refused to talk to me.”

  “He says he will talk now but only in person.”

  “He just has a beef with Senex over working conditions. A waste of my time.”

  “Manzo? . . . Beef?”

  Jim chuckled at another linguistic pothole in transatlantic relations. It was the only fleeting moment of amusement he’d had in days. “American slang, my friend. It just means a complaint, a quarrel with someone.”

  “I think you should see him . . . beef . . . or not. Anything negative we learn about Senex we can, as you say, use for . . . leverage . . . against him.”

  “OK. But you pay the bar tab this time.”

  As Murphy and Leone were leaving Dugan’s Irish pub with Mondocane on a leash, two CPD officers were entering, one in plain clothes working undercover and the other in uniform.

  They blocked the way out.

  The plainclothes cop Leone regretted knowing from police academy days. This loudmouthed acquaintance swayed forward, saying with a slur, “They claim you ratted out Commander Jack Cronin to the feds. Say it’s ain’t true, Murph.”