Jim looked at the wall clock. The hearing should have started at eleven. It was already 11:10 a.m. with no sign of the mystery witness. The chairman appeared eager to move on but agreed to wait five more minutes.
Despite Bryan’s upbeat chatter, Jim doubted his testimony or the efforts of President Dallas Taylor would be enough to take down Sebastian Senex. Ever since President Harry Truman had tried to take over the steel mills, the Supreme Court took a dim view of emergency powers as justification for appropriating private property. He also had no assurance the Illinois grand jury would indict Senex for the murder of Dr. Angelo Mora. If necessary, Senex wouldn’t hesitate to tamper with the grand jury.
Above all else, the in-the-bag selection of Brock Brewster as the next president of the United States would bring the full power of the office of president to Senex’s side. Brewster would certainly pressure the Justice Department to withdraw environmental lawsuits and the RICO criminal prosecution against Sebastian Senex. He feared the taunt of “Murphy’s Law” dogging him around if Senex once again escaped justice.
The wall clock read 11:15 a.m. Just as the chairman asked Jim to return to the witness table, the doors of the committee room swung open. A US Secret Service detail preceded the entry of Brock Brewster with his personal retinue.
A line of reporters and camera operators sat on the floor with their backs against the raised platform on which the committee sat. Some knelt on one knee with cameras aimed and clicking. They jockeyed for the best position to snap a picture of Brewster.
Baggy-eyed, Brewster shuffled past Jim down the center aisle with a deadpan look to take his seat at the witness table.
In the hours of monotonic testimony that followed, Brewster wound a verbal noose of unethical behavior and criminality around the neck of Sebastian Senex. To Jim’s astonishment, Brewster revealed the complex web of Senex’s violations of campaign laws and pharmaceutical regulations. The riveting nature of the testimony silenced the shifting of feet, the muffled whispers among spectators, and the rustle of papers.
“How could you possibly know of these violations, Governor Brewster?” The chairman shed his deferential tone.
“Because he told me about them.”
“Hearsay,” the chairman said. “Mr. Senex is not here to defend himself.”
“I had personal knowledge. Some involved my campaign.”
A committee member intervened. “Governor Brewster, I admonish you to consider your right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment.”
“I am perfectly aware of my right against self-incrimination. But I am past the point of covering up for Sebastian Senex . . . or myself.”
He watched the reporters dash up the side aisles and out the door to report the damning testimony of the leading presidential candidate for the Oval Office.
Brewster moved on to the long conversations Senex had with him about the need to save the United States from itself. He had told Brewster often about the need to eliminate gangbangers from the streets of Chicago.
“What did Senex mean by the word . . . eliminate?” asked a junior member of the committee.
“When I asked him, he did this.” Brewster drew his forefinger across his throat. “That’s what he meant.”
“That’s what you say it meant,” the chairman said. “It could just as easily be interpreted as exaggerated hyperbole to show displeasure.”
“Not the way I interpreted it.”
Brewster testified that for Senex the rush of illegal immigrants across the border and the rise of a dangerous and criminal underclass within the United States required a strongman to save and rejuvenate the country, just as he was saving and rejuvenating himself with the parabiosis protocol. He expected Brewster to be that strongman and do things the Chicago way, as he called it.
The chairman pounded his gavel to stop Brewster’s testimony. “Putting aside this wild and inflammatory language, Governor Brewster, do you have any direct knowledge that Sebastian Senex planned to take any illegal actions to accomplish his alleged goals to save the republic from itself?”
“No. But I know he applauded the assassination of Franklin Dexter Walker.”
More reporters rushed out of the room.
“That will do, Governor Brewster.” The chairman pounded the gavel. “We are getting way off topic. The concern of this committee is the pharmaceutical industry, not the suppression of free speech by a distinguished and philanthropic citizen. Unless you have relevant information concerning Sebastian Senex, I will dismiss you as a witness.”
“I do indeed have such information.” Brewster described his suspicions that Senex was using Promethean Pharma as a front to engage in secret procedures to find the fountain of youth without the knowledge of the Food and Drug Administration. When he confronted Senex over lunch at Bullfeathers restaurant in DC, Senex admitted using what he called the fountain-of-youth protocol without FDA approval. He promised to provide the protocol to cure Brewster’s wife but reneged on the promise.
“Why would he do that?” the chairman asked.
“He said I had failed to obey his orders and couldn’t keep a secret. But I found out the real reason.”
“And what is that?” a committee member asked.
“Before she died . . .” Brewster choked up. “Before she died . . . my wife confessed the real reason. Unknown to me, she and Sebastian Senex had a relationship years ago. My wife terminated it. He threatened to take his revenge against her. She believed that he withheld the fountain-of-youth protocol out of revenge. This testimony is now my revenge.”
“I suggest you watch your words, Mr. Brewster.” The chairman banged his gavel as more reporters left the hearing room. “This vindictiveness does not befit a candidate for the office of United States president.”
“That won’t be a problem.” He stood up at the witness table. “I hereby announce the withdrawal of my name from consideration by the House of Representatives for the office of president of the United States.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Sebastian Senex glared through the outside glass door into the foyer of Senex Community Hospital on Chicago’s North Side. The enclosed atrium glittered with festive lighting decked out for the annual fund-raiser dinner. Under the sparkle of the steel-and-glass dome, donors in the distance chatted over champagne glasses and filet mignon at linen-clothed tables supporting vases of white roses nestled in ivy and fern. As board chairman of the hospital, he had the brilliant idea of hiring ten top chefs to personally offer donors their culinary creations at ten candlelit cooking stations within the hospital to show off its facilities.
A security guard opened the door halfway.
“You can’t come in.”
“Do you know who I am, junior?”
“Sebastian Senex.”
“The board chairman and hospital CEO.”
“Not anymore.” He came outside and stood between Senex and the door. “You’re the former chairman and CEO. I’m under orders to keep you out.”
“Call the dragon lady.” He backed away from the door. “You’ll regret this.”
The guard fingered numbers on his cell. “It’s me. I stopped Sebastian Senex at the front door. He says I made a mistake.” He listened to the response, nodded, and hung up. “No mistake. She says you have to leave. You’re an embarrassment.” He cleared his throat. “Her words, not mine.”
“Embarrassment?” Senex stamped his foot. “I cultivated those fat cats in there for the hospital. It bears my name. Without me it’s nothing.”
“I do what I’m told.” The guard shrugged and ran a hand over his spiked hair. “You can’t enter.”
Senex fumbled for his cell in his tuxedo trousers under a velvet-collared black chesterfield coat and left a voice mail for his lawyer. “Call me at once.”
He never liked the Ivy League shrew born and bred in Minnesota. No one who count
ed in Chicago knew anything about her. He had made a fatal mistake by agreeing to put her on the board for the sake of gender diversity. The board needed a woman, they said. They said she was demure and congenial.
Once on the board, she rallied board members to her side and forced him to abandon what she called a conflict of interest in selling Promethean Pharma drugs to the hospital. He should have gotten rid of her then. Instead she wrested control of the board away from him. This collection of backstabbing wusses ousted him first as CEO and board chair and then as a board member. To stick the knife in further, they made her CEO and board chair out of spite.
She was just a prissy schoolmarm trapped in a CEO’s body. No wonder the private dick he hired couldn’t find any dirt on her. He couldn’t let a pushy woman like her get the best of him. He strode forward and opened the foyer door.
“The board acted illegally in dismissing me.” Senex moved through the open door. “Get out of the way.”
The guard stood scowling at the door and balled his fists.
“I’m not leaving until I talk to her.” Senex moved back outside. “Tell her that.”
The guard closed the glass door in his face and made a cell call.
In a black cocktail dress she strode over to the door with her trademark Wonder Woman logo earrings and a gem-studded clutch purse. She exchanged words with the security guard and went outside.
“You’re not coming in.”
“You can’t stop me. It’s my hospital.”
“No it’s not. You’re not a board member or a CEO.”
“I’ve called my lawyer.”
“Good.” She stepped toward him. “Tell him an internal investigation shows you and the hospital administrator finagled the organ transplant list to jump your favored patients to the front.”
The administrator must have cracked. He listened to her rant about the illegal and unethical nature of what he had done. She understood nothing about friendship or the way the world worked.
“We did it for the good of the hospital.” He pointed to the upper floors of the building. “Without the donations of those well-heeled patients, this palace of glass and shimmering steel wouldn’t exist.”
“Meanwhile, some poor SOB dies because someone else jumps the line.”
“You wouldn’t understand. You’re not from here.” He tightened his white silk scarf around his neck. “We help our own.”
“Your own means anyone with big bucks.”
“Some patients never gave a dime.”
“You’re right about that.” She looked him in the eye. “They were political hacks and businessmen you needed to keep obligated to you.”
“One hand washes the other. It’s the Chicago way.”
“It’s crooked and unethical.”
She knew nothing. The Chicago way made things work. One favor for another. Tit for tat. What inhumane times did he now live in if you couldn’t wrap your arms around your friends? It wasn’t illegal unless you got caught. And it wasn’t unethical because the Chicago way had a higher ethic. The Chicago way was the grease that made the machinery of government work and get things done. She wasn’t from Chicago. She’d never understand.
“Let’s work this out,” he said. “Man to—person to person.”
The security guard advised her the award ceremony was about to begin.
“Nothing to work out.” She looked at her wristwatch. “Go, Sebastian, to avoid further embarrassment to yourself.”
“Don’t play dragon lady with me.”
“Leave at once or I’ll call the police.” She walked back to the entrance.
She opened the door but turned before going in. “Oh, at the next board meeting I’m having the hospital renamed.”
She entered and spoke something to the guard with her finger pointed at him. He watched her walk back like a queen to the festivities. Rage and fear roiled through and left him out of control and defenseless. Daisy avoided him. Angelo Mora had betrayed him. Bryan Murphy had abandoned him. Brock Brewster had blown his plans into smithereens by backstabbing him and withdrawing from the presidential race.
Numb, Senex looked up at the stars. He found no answer there except for Plan B. The buzz of his cell startled him. His lawyer would know what to do.
“What’s going on, Sebastian?”
“She wouldn’t let me in.”
“We had this conversation before. I advised you to stay away.”
“She’s making a fuss about organ transplants.”
“You have bigger problems.”
“What do you mean?”
“The grand jury indicted you today for the murder of Dr. Angelo Mora.”
“You know the Plan B hypothetical I put to you?”
“I advised against it.”
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
“You won’t.”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
“You did it, girl.” Her chief of staff gave Dallas Taylor a high five in the Oval Office for officially becoming president of the United States by vote of the House of Representatives. “I have a few minutes free, so I brought these.” Emily James put down two champagne flutes and a champagne split. The longtime friends embraced. She clinked her flute with Taylor’s. “You have it all now. The leader of the free world and Dr. Bert Gaines. I’m so happy you two are back together.”
Emily had stood by her from the first step Taylor took into the political arena. The president’s chief of staff gave up her other clients and worked exclusively for Taylor all the way up to the Oval Office. Taylor had confided in Emily about Taylor’s affair with Al Tweed, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. She’d never forget her friend’s understanding and consolation. The bad times were past. Emily was right. She finally found her man and reached the pinnacle of her political career.
The new Speaker had called earlier to relay the results of the vote in the House of Representatives. It was all the more delicious because of the resentment in the Speaker’s voice. They might both be women in a man’s world, but they sure didn’t belong to the same political sorority. Taylor and the new Speaker had a stormy relationship ever since they represented different Texas congressional districts. They came from the same state but worlds apart. Republican versus Democrat. White versus Black. Wealthy versus impoverished. Rancher’s daughter versus janitor’s daughter.
She leaned back in her chair with a smile across her face. The scrawny dancer girl from Dallas was now the most powerful woman in the world. A surge of pride welled up in her for reaching the top of the political ladder, even if it was through a squeaker election in the House. It didn’t matter how you got to the dance as long as you arrived.
After her chief of staff left the room, she imagined Abraham Lincoln must have felt the same way after his underdog election as she did now. No matter how she examined it, the weird way she became president felt like the finger of God touching her.
How could she have predicted the political suicide of Brock Brewster in taking down Sebastian Senex with him before the Senate committee? Brewster’s testimony recalled the preacher’s Bible story of Samson pulling down the temple pillars of the Philistines in an enraged act of mutual self-destruction. His withdrawal from the campaign for the presidency in the House shattered any organized Republican opposition to her candidacy.
No more than she could have predicted Roscoe Corker dying in a sky-high scandal on the way to Ukraine. And who could have predicted the assassination of Franklin Dexter Walker and the election in the House of Representatives? A perfect constitutional storm swept her into the highest office.
For House members opposed to her, only an unpalatable choice had remained—Frank Hammer, the National Independent Party candidate. The Senate had already elected her as vice president. She had experience in government. Frank Hammer
had none. His arrogance and marital problems alienated representatives when they had to choose between the only two candidates left standing.
And then there was the nagging question: If they elected Hammer, did she go back to being vice president or did Hammer have the right as president to nominate his own choice for vice president?
The country had only two House elections for president in its history, and both caused unrest and bitterness in the defeated candidates. No matter which way she looked at it, Congress had to elect her to avoid putting the country through more constitutional uncertainty. For House members opposed to her, she became the lesser evil.
Taylor emerged from the chaos as the default leader of the United States through some mysterious destiny. The experience called to mind the aphorism sometimes attributed to Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of nineteenth-century Germany, so often quoted by her beloved professor of political science, David Chang: There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.
With hindsight one could see the cause and effect of how her pitifully small five votes in the Electoral College cast by maverick electors had grown incrementally but steadily with each vote in the House. With foresight at the time, however, no one could have predicted those five votes by so-called faithless electors would have mushroomed into a majority of votes. It was like the multiplication of loaves and fishes.
Her heart called it a miracle, though her mind refused. Whether by coincidence in an indifferent universe or the grace of the Lord, one clear fact remained: she had clawed and scratched her way into the Oval Office. She knew what to do with that power. She would make the federal government work for the benefit of all citizens. She would begin with a complete overhaul of the—
The telephone rang. It was Al Tweed.
“Why are you calling again?”
“David Chang’s not a Democrat. The party won’t accept it.”
American Conspiracy Page 28