American Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

  Seized by delirium, he harangued the uncomprehending maid for stealing his pink bunny slippers. With a toothless grin, she wiped his forehead drenched in sweat with a wet rag. Three Cubans from the Intelligence Directorate and a medical doctor played dominoes at the kitchen table through the open door of the bedroom.

  Burning with fever he reached for a glass of water, knocking it over, sores marching up his ulcerated arm like black widow spiders. The white-haired maid mopped up the mess. “Give me my slippers. I need to go the bathroom . . . el baño.”

  The doctor came to Senex and reached under the bed. “Here are your slippers. Where you left them.”

  The maid helped him up to a sitting position on the side of the bed. She went to place a slipper on his foot. He grabbed it away and snuggled his foot into it. The other dropped from his hands. The maid put on the remaining slipper without further objection.

  She helped him to his feet and stuck a cigar in her mouth. Senex fussed about the health dangers of tobacco. She went outside to smoke. An angry-hornet pain gnawed at his stomach.

  “Am I going to die?” he asked the doctor.

  “We all are.”

  “You know what I mean.” He grabbed the physician’s arm. “How could the American doctors have been so wrong?”

  “Your condition is extraordinary. Multiple cancers present simultaneously in your body. Every major organ is affected.” The doctor put his arm around Senex and guided him to the bathroom. “Our specialists theorize your blood procedures caused your cells to multiply wildly. Your elixir of life brought you both youth and ravenous cancer.”

  “Will I die from this?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “How could this happen?” He put his hand to his feverish forehead. “The United States has the best medical system in the world.”

  “For people like you, no doubt.”

  The doctor held him up when he staggered.

  “But your wealth and social position,” the doctor said, “mean nothing to these cancers.”

  “Any hope at all?”

  “The determination of research physicians, like ours, freed of capitalistic—”

  “Spare me the communist catechism.” He squeezed the doctor’s arm. “Are there any long-shot options?”

  “We have advanced cancer treatments in Cuba.” The doctor opened the bathroom door for him. “But for you,” he said, shrugging, “nothing works.”

  The doctor had that right. Nothing worked in Cuba when he needed it. The electric lighting didn’t work in the bathroom. The toilet bowl lacked a seat. Mold ran along the baseboards. Taking a rusty straight razor from the medicine chest, he held it to his throat. He studied the razor and put it back. Not even the razors looked like they worked.

  When Daisy brought the money, he could pay the Cubans. They were holding back treatment until they got paid. That had to be it.

  Where is Daisy? Has she abandoned me after all?

  The cracked mirror over the sink showed tears streaming down his cheeks. He put hand to mouth so they couldn’t hear his weeping. Never had he cried so hard since his mother died. He washed away the tears and pulled himself together before leaving the bathroom.

  The doctor gave him a pill. He fell into a deep sleep.

  The drilling sensation in his bones startled him awake. The Cuban guards and the doctor were eating dinner in the kitchen. The dimness of the room and the meager light from the exposed bulb now lit in the bedroom announced evening.

  He shivered and pulled the blanket to his chin. Fatigue chained him to the bed. The long sleep and return of the fever had clouded his vision and mind. He heard the entrance door to the apartment open. English. Her voice.

  Daisy has arrived.

  In the open doorway of the bedroom stood Daisy like a shimmering specter with a carry-on bag. A rodent scurried across the floor and under the dresser. He rubbed his eyes to make sure it was his daughter. “My angel has arrived.”

  “I’m not the angel you’re expecting.”

  The Cuban agent with a bandolier strapped across his chest took her pink suitcase back into the kitchen.

  “Did you bring the US dollars in large denominations like I asked?”

  “Don’t I always follow orders?”

  The doctor entered. He took Senex’s pulse and watched him from the foot of the bed.

  “I can pay . . . whatever you want,” he said to the doctor. He forced himself into a sitting position. “She brought the money . . . mucho dinero. I can pay for the cure.”

  “We have none.”

  His coughing erupted. Mucus slid up into his mouth. He asked his daughter for a box of facial tissues lying on the dresser. She didn’t respond. The doctor brought the box to his bed. He coughed into the tissues and threw them into the wastebasket.

  Something within was pinning him down, down until he collapsed flat on his back. He imagined a hand pulling him through the mattress, through the floor, through the earth, and heaping dirt on him. He screamed. “There must be something to save me.”

  “There was,” Daisy said.

  “What do you mean . . . there was?” He raised himself onto his elbows. He fell back to the bed. “I need to know.”

  “Well.” She put a forefinger to her lips. “If you really want to know.”

  “I do, I do.”

  “Dr. Mora told me the day before he died that he had foreseen the possibility of cells turning cancerous. He had a solution.”

  “What?”

  “He never told me. We were supposed to meet later.” She leaned over to him. “But you had him killed before he could tell me.”

  “He said my symptoms were just the body adjusting. He told me not to worry.” His eyes questioned her. “Why would he say that?”

  “Exactly, Daddy.” She hovered over him. “He didn’t want to worry you about possible cancer. He just said he had the remedy in case you needed it.”

  “Where?” He raised his hands toward her. His body shook in a spasm of coughing. “Go back and find it in his apartment, his lab, his—” He slid out of the bed onto the floor. “I order you.”

  Daisy coaxed him back into bed. The doctor gave him another pill. He closed his eyes and drifted off. They went back to the kitchen and waited. “It won’t be long now,” the doctor said.

  Within the hour, Daisy and the doctor returned to the bedroom. The doctor examined the body and pronounced Senex dead. “What a pity . . . Dr. Mora died before revealing his remedy.”

  “That would have been impossible.” A tight smirk stretched across her lips. “I made the story up.”

  “Why do such a thing to your father?”

  “To see his expression.”

  “He was your flesh and blood. How could you?”

  “Because I was his angel . . . the angel of death.” She handed the doctor a bottle of white powder. “I won’t need this after all to take care of my father. You might want it for your rat problem.”

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  After her wedding on the beach on San José Island, Dallas Taylor sauntered barefoot in a midlength bridal gown of chiffon lace and tulle along the surf with President David Chang. The Gulf of Mexico swirled over her feet. She squished seaweed under her toes, like the feel of strawberry jam squeezed between her fingers as a child. She was grounded to life then. Her stroke had set off a wake-up call before she sleepwalked through the rest of life.

  The president’s cell phone buzzed. After confirming David’s use of a secure smartphone, the Secret Service agent dropped back again behind them so Chang could answer the call. Her former professor looked like he was sucking lemon while cutting short the call.

  “The DNC chairman called.”

  “What’s that man want?”

  “To hustle me for a cabinet posi
tion.”

  “Careful. He’s a sidewinder.”

  “Excuse me for a minute. I must talk to the agent.”

  Whatever doubts she had about David vanished after his negotiations with the Chinese. Because she banned the export of Anoflix to China in her battle with Sebastian Senex, the Chinese developed their own COVID-28 vaccine in record time. They snuffed out eruptions of COVID-28 before it became another world scourge. The suspicion, which the Chinese publicly denied, was that they had developed their vaccine by infringing on the Anoflix patent controlled by the United States. The Chinese countered that the export ban represented hostility toward China.

  As national pride and profit hurtled both countries toward confrontation over patent rights, David allowed the Chinese to save face. He had proposed and China agreed that both nations would relinquish COVID-28 vaccine patent claims against each other and pool their COVID-28 vaccine patents for the benefit of all nations under an open licensing arrangement. License fees would be graduated according to the wealth of the country or other entity seeking a license. The agreement transformed the United States from villain into hero.

  Looking like her father long ago, a man walked along the beach with a toddler girl full of glee riding high around his neck with legs dangling.

  The president came up alongside her after talking to the agent.

  “I wish my parents were alive for the wedding,” Taylor said.

  The orange sun of a lazy afternoon filtered through sparse clouds floating like coral islands in the blue sky. A stray gull darted down at her wedding headband of roses and seashells and veered back upward.

  “They’d be proud of you,” he said, brushing away a bug. “What about my offer?”

  Down the beach the sound of a harp broke through the chatter of guests in the wedding tent from which they had come. She loved her freshly minted husband for keeping her aunties and uncles occupied, so she and the president could take care of business.

  “I’ve considered your offer,” she said. A young woman gathered seashells ahead. “I think a cabinet position would be risky, given my stroke.”

  “Not even attorney general? You could go after the bad actors in big pharma.”

  “Bryan Murphy deserves it. Give him the position.”

  “I suspected you’d say that.” Chang smiled.

  It was so typical of the man. He offered her a position, even though she came from a different political party and considered his ideas impractical in the blood sport of American politics.

  He had already brought back a tone of civility to politics, almost forgotten, like pay phones and carbon paper. With him in office, the National Independent Party expanded its membership across the country. From its newly established think tank of innovative Gen-Xers and millennials, the NIP proposed amending the Constitution to model gun control on the Twenty-First Amendment, which had overturned the amendment establishing Prohibition.

  The premise of the proposal was that in twenty-first-century America, the cultural values of each state differed radically on the role of guns. Each state should, therefore, decide for itself how to regulate or not regulate guns. Any transport of guns into another state in violation of its laws would be prohibited, just like the transport of intoxicating liquor was under the Twenty-First Amendment. She didn’t think it had a chance of getting passed. Most folks considered the Constitution like the Bible and you didn’t amend the Bible.

  That said, the country was seeking compromise instead of conflict as the default position. People were thinking outside the box instead of fighting like trapped scorpions inside. The country was big and diverse. It didn’t have to march in lockstep. That’s the way the country was set up. The secular bible of the Constitution provided for change by amendment.

  “You know,” she said. “I doubt I’d have resigned, despite my health and Bert, if I didn’t have you to succeed me.”

  “I’m grateful, Dallas.” He tossed a stone, skipping the surface of the water. “But I need you nearby to avoid political booby traps.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a vision of the possible but you know the art of the possible.”

  “My life comes first now.” They stopped walking. “It took me a while. But I think the purpose of life is life. And I don’t want to lose what I found.”

  A woman and young girl walked in the distance. The woman pointed to the mansion hidden from the beach. Someday you, too, can be president, like Dallas Taylor, and be a guest there, she imagined the woman saying. Tell her the price of the presidency, lady . . . first tell her the price to be paid . . . she wanted to warn the pair.

  “What if I had a position that wouldn’t stress your health?”

  “I don’t know, David.” They resumed walking. “I’ve lost my taste for the bickering, the posturing, the conniving, the plain cussedness of politics.”

  “How’d you like to be head of my proposed National Youth Corps?” He stepped around a sandcastle crumbling into the surf. “All the forces in this wonderful, diverse nation have lately been focused on the individual . . . me, me and not the community.

  “I want a counterforce that will take the rich kid from the suburb, the rural kid from the farm, and the poor kid from the inner city, youths from every part of the country and from every religious, racial, and ethnic background. I want them to live and work together and to see how others live . . . or barely live . . . in this country.

  “Among the young, I want to create a sense of common purpose with peace instead of conflict. I want them to be for something and not just against something.” He stopped her with his arm and locked her eyes with his. “I want to heal the deep divisions based more on mutual ignorance than malice.”

  “Amen, Professor.” She looked out to sea. “But be prepared to battle those who will call you a fascist, an Uncle Tong, an authoritarian, a Maoist hell-bent on cultural revolution. They’ll use every racist innuendo in the book against you, like they did me. You threaten those whose importance depends on stirring up division. I wouldn’t go to bat for half the things you want. I respect the limits of things as they are.” She smiled. “But you have an advantage.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re what JFK said he was . . . an idealist without illusions.”

  The Secret Service agent caught up. “Mr. President, we need to get you back to the White House.”

  “What do you say, Dallas?”

  “One condition.” She folded her arms and smiled. “Only if I can include tap dancing as part of the program.”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  They fist-bumped and headed back to the merriment of the marriage tent.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  “Delivery for Jim Murphy and Marco Le . . . Lion.” A gum-chewing delivery boy in a Cubs baseball cap laid the cake box from Ferrara Bakery on the table in the back of Dugan’s on Halsted. He almost tripped over Leone’s suitcase on the way back out. Mondocane fretted on a leash at Marco’s feet before flopping on the floor in a heap.

  A banner ran across the wall beside the table: Congratulations Commander Jim Murphy and Questore Marco Leone! . . . Dugan’s Bartenders and Barflies.

  “What’s this?” Jim said to Nicole.

  “Something Katie and I ordered to celebrate your promotion to commander and Marco’s to questore.”

  “Marco gets the first slice,” Katie said. “He’s leaving when the cab comes.”

  Marco opened the box. What goes wrong can go right . . . Murphy’s Law Amended appeared in colored frosting on Ferrara’s classic cake of fresh strawberries, custard, and cannoli cream.

  “What is this strange con-coc-tion?” Marco said.

  Nicole gave a slice to Marco. “For the skeptic.”

  Mondocane whined in vain for cake. He dozed off at Marco’s feet with his muzzle resting on Bruno Magli shoes.

  Marco t
asted a sample of the cake. “Perfetto!” He formed a ring in the air with thumb and index finger.

  “Hey,” Jim said, “look at that handsome mug up there.”

  On the TV screen overhead, Commander Jim Murphy of the Chicago PD announced from the lectern of the Dirksen Building conference room the successful conclusion of Operation Big Shoulders at both the federal and state levels. He thanked the new CEO of Promethean Pharma for full cooperation with governmental authorities. Because of a plea deal, including admissions of guilt, all legal actions against Promethean Pharma ended. Bryan Murphy, the nominee for attorney general, stood in the background up against a line of governmental flags with other strike-force participants.

  “I agree. Not a bad-looking mug,” Nicole said kissing Jim on the cheek. “You told me your brother always upstaged you. I’m not seeing it.”

  “Not like him,” Jim said. “Beats me why he’s changed.”

  “Did you not also agree to let Bryan place your fath—” Marco caught himself. “Forgive me. I know you do not wish to call him father.”

  “It’s OK, Marco.” Jim rubbed his cheek warmed by memories of the man. “Being a father is more than blood. It’s about a man’s commitment to protect a new life. And he did that for me. He was my father.”

  “Bryan’s changed attitude beats you?” Nicole’s eyebrows shot up. “Katie said you let Bryan place your father in the Taj Mahal of senior assisted care in Arlington, Virginia.” She took his hand. “I think you both changed.”

  “Could be,” Jim said. He pointed to the inscription on the cake. “We agreed to close the book on the past.”

  “Regarding books,” Marco said, “will you allow Nicole’s publisher to examine your child’s . . . children’s book?”

  “Sure thing.” He snapped on his peaked commander’s cap with its navy-and-gold checkerboard pattern. “With this hat, what copper’s going to needle me about a children’s book?”

  While Nicole discussed with Marco his return to Italy from O’Hare Airport, Jim watched the TV news program switch from the Dirksen Building to a reporter standing outside the new headquarters of the National Independent Party.