by Scott, D. D.
“You mean, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest?” I asked, marveling at Bunny’s Internet skills for a gal in her late sixties.
“Uh huh. And what’s that one with movies?”
“YouTube?”
“Yeah. That’s the one. We’ll be setting all-time records on there. Actually, we’ll probably set new highs on all the platforms.”
“The pundits are saying the convention will be the most open and accessible in history.”
“You have no idea,” Bunny said then laughed in a carefree way I seldom saw coming from her.
She was loving orchestrating all of this.
“Are you saying that we’ll be in every living room in America?”
“Not just living rooms, darling. We’ll be on every handheld screen the world over. And that reminds me, we’ve got a meeting with Google regarding their YouTube live stream this afternoon.”
“We do?”
“Indeed. This is one prime-time event people will be watching on every device they can get their hands on.”
I reached for the schedule that Bunny had printed up for me. Sure enough, there was our Google meeting for later this afternoon, to be followed by an Apps and Drinks event with Facebook developers.
“We’re having an App developed with our convention message?” I asked, knowing that had to be exactly what this meeting was about.
All Bunny did was show me her nothing-close-to-innocent smile.
Yep. Sounds like we’ve got an App in the works too, I thought. Damn, this woman doesn’t miss a beat.
Back on my tablet, I perused Facebook’s goals for the convention: “Giving delegates and convention attendees easy ways to share what they’re doing, seeing, and hearing with family, friends, and others on Facebook.”
I had a feeling the Bellesconis were about to take Facebook’s goal achievement to levels they’d never imagined.
And then there was Twitter. Tomorrow morning, Bunny also had us down to meet with their strategic partnerships in Washington. Who knew they had their own Washington team?
Bunny Winston should have been a Public Relations Specialist. Hell, I guess, for our family, she was.
At the bottom of her schedule I saw a note to make sure X was present.
“Who’s X?” I asked, figuring it was our contact from the SEC’s whistle-blower program.
“X is the Chief of our Digital Staff,” Bunny said, her nothing-close-to-innocent smile becoming an I’m-a-genius smirk.
“We have a Digital Staff?”
“We do now.”
The only person I knew of who was an ace at computers, or rather an ace at hacking computers was...
“Oh dear Lord, you didn’t?!”
“I did. Who else could do that kind of job like Grams?”
Bunny took a sip from her morning Mojito. And then a second sip. “Look, Zoey. Don’t look so distressed. Conventions of this magnitude are very structured. People will be really caught up in what’s happening and paying close attention. We’ve got to make good use of that.”
“And you think Grams is the key to good structure? Have you lost your mind?! That woman is nuts!”
“It’s gonna take the big nuts she has to make this happen without a hitch.”
“Oh, there’ll be a hitch all right. When Grams is involved, nothing goes according to plan...let alone when she’s in charge.”
“I have a feeling Grams will single-handedly be responsible for a huge surge in smartphone and tablet sales.”
Hmmmph. Or their demise, I thought. Grams, as a digital strategist? Now, I’d heard it all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There’s power in being the incumbent. But there’s also a huge burden, especially when the previous administration really fucked things up. And that was the burden that President Ruvama carried. A burden that, somehow, we Bellesconis and Berninis, had to take command of.
Thanks to eight long years of a Texas tycoon’s presidency, Wall Street’s Corruption hit a new high. And because of where his campaigns and party got their funding, with the help of evil maestros like Karl Cunningrove, Governor Crumley and my Uncle Giotto, we had dangerous connections and warped relationships with many of the world’s premier criminals and killers.
This election was about much more than higher taxes on the wealthy and creating jobs.
The irony is that this year’s Republicans want Americans to believe in a Ruvama they made out to be a lame duck. When reality and truth show that the only reason he’s lame is because of the horrid deals made during the previous administration. Deals that, despite legislation Ruvama passed to undo them, will never have the enforcement that would make them null and void, thanks to House Republicans, who are the banks’ BFFs.
The status quo fattens the old guard’s foreign bank accounts as well as the accounts of the thugs they partner with. Nothing short of a massive grassroots effort will change that.
Those were the thoughts flooding my mind while Roman and I took a deep breath together, before seeing if the key I’d taken from Star Fish fit the lock of Box 438.
Seeing the contents of the box, we looked at each other, nodded our heads and began removing all the papers, knowing our lives, and those of all Americans, if not the world too, would never be the same.
• • •
I stopped to rub my eyes for a moment and then took out my eye drops. As the saline soothed the stress caused by digesting reams and reams of paper, I wished just a drop or two of some magic formula could heal the mess Roman and I had uncovered.
If the Republicans thought their convention speakers last week in Tampa were effective, speakers who’d been employed by businesses that Governor Crumley’s capital company had supposedly helped, wait till Americans heard from the other side. The millions of people whose companies closed or were forced to move overseas once Crumley was their predominant shareholder. And unfortunately, the number really was in the millions.
But, here’s the real juggernaut. We’re talking millions who don’t even know how bad they’ve been screwed and who they’ve been screwed by. Not until they go to withdraw their retirement funds will they find there’s nothing there or, at best, pennies on the dollars they put in.
If Wall Street’s money flow stays the same, there won’t be anything left for retirees or for Americans who need to pay for their kids’ education. And forget having a nest egg in the event you no longer have a job. There’s a bunch of Crumley criminals guarding those nests.
To stomach the new information we had at our fingertips, I needed something much stronger than my eye drops.
“You know, Clito, I heard one of the pundits the other day mention something to the effect that under Ruvama’s leadership, the automakers are still here, but Osama bin Laden isn’t.”
“I heard that one too, Roman, but we’ve got a lot more than Osama bin Laden to nail. I think we’ve got our own financial terrorists who are just as lethal as bin Laden style terrorists. And we can start with all the names and transactions in this box,” I said, feeling a cold shiver descend my spine.
“I’ll call Ross and let him know what we’ve found.”
“Be careful. That might be considered coordination,” I teased, not feeling like much of anything humorous but knowing Roman knew me well enough to know I was half serious in my admonition.
“Fuck coordination.”
That made me laugh, and boy, did I need to laugh.
“The Governor might think he can buy this election, but we might be able to outspend him with the truth,” I said and promised myself I’d make sure that twisted truth became our nation’s new reality.
Anything short of that, the world will suffer a greater financial collapse than it’s ever seen and one greater than it could ever hope to survive.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I finished my conversation with Roman then hung up the secured phone in my office. Between what I’d learned from the FBI’s report, and also from my brother and Uncle Clito, I knew what I had to do.
Post-Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling regarding the rules of engagement for and the funding of the super PACS, there’d been no pattern of enforcement by the FEC. The only rule, although it’s so narrow that no great wall of protection was ever forged, is that super PACs and other fundraising groups can’t share nonpublic information with campaigns or party operatives.
So be it. All that means is that making information “public” is a very viable, as well as legal, alternative.
And nothing means going public in today’s world like a record-breaking Twitter Stream, Facebook Likes off the charts, and a YouTube clip that could become one of the most-watched in the history of the internet.
Pretty soon, the entire world would know what Governor Crumley was hiding in Box 438 and what it meant to every American’s financial livelihood. And for that matter, to every person on the planet.
And no, this wouldn’t be a silver screen superstar conversing with some bizarre empty chair.
Every chair in the world would be filled with an average person in total shock by what they were watching, reading and hearing on their smartphones, PCs, tablets and television screens.
From my days at Harvard and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I knew that successful campaigns normally have to fit voters’ wishes. In other words, you must feed them what they want to hear.
But not this time.
To be successful in this presidential election, we had to feed them what they had to hear, whether they wanted to hear it or not.
I took out a legal pad and pen and began creating a list of sample Tweets and post updates for Grams to use at the convention. My list included:
A Survey of 500 US senior financial services executives showed 24% believed they had to engage in illegal and unethical conduct to succeed.
26% said they’d observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing.
16% said they would engage in insider trading if they could get away with it.
Goldman Sachs’ fine of $22 million for insider trading was collected in just 7 hours of trading.
Goldman’s record $550 million penalty for securities fraud in 2010 amounted to less than 2% of that year’s revenues.
Two-thirds of the regulations called for in Ruvama’s financial reform bill that passed 2 years ago are still not in place due to the financial industry blocking their progress.
Governor Crumley has pledged to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, if elected President.
I put down my pen and rubbed my head, trying to work out the tension headache that was starting to throb.
Feeding voters what they wanted to hear, instead of the truth, is what had brought us to the brink of financial ruin. The American people, and the world, for that matter, had no idea just how close we were to the edge, let alone who was pushing us toward that edge.
I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out the file I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to use. So much for wishful thinking. People had to know the truth...no matter how ugly that truth was.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Secret Service keeps what they call crank files. These files are full of the regularly received death threats that are – in both call and letter format – made against the President, as well as those close to him.
Many of the names in these files have been traced by FBI and Secret Service analysts, but they kept coming up with nothing but dead ends.
Roman and I flipped through the list of names from the file that Ross had delivered to us.
“Almost every damn name on these lists match up with my father’s Box 438 documentation,” I said, helping Roman create a database full of matches and comparisons that we’d later feed to our SEC contacts.
From what the crank file indicated, the threats were made using unique twists on many of the names used by the various cartels, be they coffee, cocoa, casinos, or cocaine and other drugs. If the magnates in charge didn’t feel they were getting enough support from the current administration, they would try to up the ante, so to speak.
“Does that surprise you?” Roman asked me.
“No, of course not. Although, I’d given The Governor more credit than that. I can remember my mother saying how careful my father and his associates always were when they were outside of their Naples’ control zone. They handled their business in ways it could not be easily tracked.”
“We tracked it down,” Roman said, in a tone indicative of a hate-to-break-it-to-you, good-natured taunt.
“But it sure as hell wasn’t easy. And it’s something no average person with limited resources could do, right?”
“You got me there, my friend.”
Even as I scanned in the information, with match after match staring back at me from the screen of my laptop, I knew we were still missing something big. None of these guys were dumb enough to keep everything in one place.
What was I missing?
I took a break from building our case against Crumley and my father and sat down next to the fire Roman had built in our hotel suite.
All at once, a dark shimmer of recognition began to squeeze my heart. No. It couldn’t be. But yet it had to be. There was no other explanation. All these years, that’s the only piece I’d never figured out.
We finally had the key that my mom had used to bargain with the embassy to get us out of Naples and then to America. And we knew that key belonged to Box 438.
But that wasn’t all she had in her possession the night my understanding of the world changed forever.
What about the note she’d thrown into the fire? The note the street urchin had delivered to her. What was it that my father had revealed to her that night, besides the fact that he knew I’d been born?
There was only one way to find out. And for that, I needed my sister and brother’s help. They were the ones who’d gone through mom’s house after she and Alonzo were killed.
“I’ve got to go talk to Bunny and Clito,” I said to Roman. “You stay here. Finish matching up all these names and get them scanned in, okay?”
“Sure thing. But why don’t I go with you?”
“No. I’ve got to do this alone. Well, with just Bunny and Clito.”
“No problem,” Roman said, then stopped typing and reached for my arm. “Be careful, R. I’m not liking this at all.”
I nodded my head and hardened my resolve to finish this once and for all.
I didn’t tell Roman, but I liked it even less than he did, if that were even possible.
• • •
“Thank you, Ross, for arranging this meeting spot,” I said, thankful for his support.
The entire Bellesconi family had always been there for me. Here I was, their primary protector, but now, they’d become mine. I’m not sure how I could ever repay them.
“I’ll be right outside the door. If you need anything, you know what to do to get my attention.”
I smiled and nodded. Since I was wired, and Roman had the receiver I’d designed out of an American flag pin, all I had to do was push my pin and his would vibrate, signaling his assistance was needed.
“Take your time. This room isn’t scheduled to be used until later this evening.”
“Thank you. Thank you again so much.”
If everything worked as I hoped it would, we’d be gone long before then.
While I waited on both Bunny and Clito to arrive, I practiced in my mind how I would tell them, after all these years, what I’d finally figured out. How do you tell your own brother and sister the depth of your father’s evil?
If my suspicions proved accurate, our father made Bernie Madoff look like the tiniest of evil maestros. And I certainly never thought that was possible.
I wasn’t going to sugar coat anything. That had never been my style. They needed the cold hard truth, as did the American people and the world markets.
Before I could get the information fine-tuned in my head, the story ready to be told and the primary question phrased, Bunny entered the small,
walk-in-closet-sized room Ross had arranged for us to use for our secret meeting.
“Oh, Raulf. This can’t be about anything good, can it?” My sweet, but tougher-than-nails sister asked.
I didn’t say anything, just shook my head and then kissed each side of her face. The older she got, the more she looked like our mother. A fact that saddened me, while at the same time, made me happy that through her, mom was still here with us.
I pulled up two additional metal folding chairs, and she took the one on my right, leaving the other for Clito.
Thankfully, I was spared from telling the story twice as Clito joined us before Bunny had even settled in next to me.
“I love you both, you know that, but I don’t think I’m going to be glad we got together today, am I?” He asked in his smoked-for-years, gravel-laden drawl.
“Not at all, dear brother. Although, the longer we wait to have this meeting, the worse off we and our beloved United States will be.”
At that, Clito reached for both mine and Bunny’s hands, forming a very small circle of trust.
“I don’t understand what could be so bad, now that we’ve finally got back that damn key,” Bunny said, breaking our circle long enough to ruffle up Clito’s curly locks in a congratulatory gesture.
“The key was indeed a vital piece of the puzzle, and Clito was masterful in getting it back. But, there was one other concern in all of this, remember?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Clito said, looking as if he was frustrated to not yet be on the same track I was.
“I’m afraid I do remember,” Bunny said, squeezing each of our hands inside hers. “This is about the street urchin’s note, isn’t it?”