TYRANNICIDE is the story of the century with a tale of dead politicians, mysterious strangers, international intrigue, armed insurrectionists, midnight flights to Cairo, and widespread corruption.
CHAPTER ONE
Sen. Hiram Biggers (R-GA), a porcine man with slits for eyes and the greedy nature of the pig, actually owned several pig farms and regularly sought more pork of a different kind to increase the value of his own. His colleagues even referred to him as Hiram the Ham Guy and generously voted for his pork in exchange for his votes for theirs. Biggers managed to accumulate a significant fortune over the years and a good deal of power in Congress by arranging deals that would make Machiavelli green with envy.
In short, Hiram Biggers was a conniving fraud plunked down in a sea of frauds so crooked they could hide behind corkscrews. He never had a thought for his fellow man, cared nothing for the poor; in fact, he opposed every bill that in any way benefited them and for every bill that caused them harm. All of his conniving, fraudulent colleagues did the same.
And so it happened one warm day in late spring that Sen. Hiram Biggers spoke on behalf of his bill to eliminate the inheritance tax and thereby add billions to the coffers of the rich who had paid the senator in kind for his services.
“…really benefits everybody,” he intoned in his gravelly, down home style, “because it all trickles down, don’t you see? People need money to invest in new factories and buildings and research and that means more jobs for everybody.
That’s how these folks would use the extra money to improve the economy and
help in the war on terrorism and make America a safer place, too.
“It boils down to patriotism, don’t you see? I tell you it’s un-American for the government to have confiscatory taxes. Why, if they can seize more from the rich today, what’s to stop ‘em from seizing more from you tomorrow? It’s all about American values, my friends, and it’s time we all stood up for American values.”
No one in the chamber paid attention to the senator’s speech, as the matter under discussion had already been decided in clandestine meetings with key players. The votes necessary for the eventual passage of still another law intended to profit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class were safely in and accounted for before Biggers took the stage.
Biggers stepped away from the rostrum and was met by a clutch of fellow conspirators who shook his hand and patted his back and said good things about his performance and their collective success. It was a scene reminiscent of one that occurred when Brutus exchanged high fives over Caesar’s corpse in the well of the Roman senate.
Flushed with still another victory the senator went back to his office to pick up the envelope stuffed with cash that he knew would be waiting for him and headed for home. At 3:14 exactly he pulled into a downtown-parking garage, climbed out, and started for the exit. At 3:26 he was found between parked cars with a neat, round hole in his forehead and quite dead.
Of course, the media were delighted. Always starved for meaningful fare, or even fare not so meaningful, every TV channel blared the news in a seemingly endless rush of so-called breaking stories that continued to break for days without ever shedding any new light on the matter.
The facts were actually few and simple. Minutes after the paramedics arrived
the F.B.I. was on the scene along with some C.I.A. types and a host of local cops
to control bystanders. Yellow tape closed off the entire parking structure and crowds returning to their cars quickly formed up and added to the confusion.
Teams of F.B.I. agents scoured the structure for evidence and all they found was a single ejected .22-caliber shell casing on the floor a few feet from the body. At first glance it appeared to be a robbery but the senator still had the cash-filled envelope in his coat pocket and an $8,000 Rolex on his wrist.
In fact, there were no real clues to be found. No fingerprints or cigarette butts, no blood or saliva or hair for possible DNA samples. Biggers’ clean fingernails, unstained clothing, and neatly combed hair all indicated there’d been no struggle, that the attack had been very fast and unexpected. The killer must have intended to kill Biggers from the start in what had all the markings of a professional hit by the mob, but that theory raised the question of why since there was no record of any mob dealings with the senator.
The authorities released no details of the crime in an attempt to conceal how
little evidence they had, but they floated the story that it was a robbery gone wrong, that the killer was probably interrupted and fled before he could rob his victim.
This story was not chosen randomly but only after much careful thought.
Any other version might reflect badly on the senator or on the Senate itself since everyone knew Biggers was a cheap crook and linked to his fellow crooks by an intricate network that could put the lot of them in the big house for decades.
Many were even glad that Biggers didn’t have a chance to utter any sort of
deathbed confession that might redound to their harm. It often happens that
dying scoundrels will blow the whistle on their accomplices in an effort to avoid a lengthy sojourn in the slammer and no one doubted that Hiram would have
sung like a drunk in a karaoke bar.
On the following Monday Bob Ingersoll crossed the city room of the Sentinel with a fresh cup of coffee and half a cruller and sat down at his desk. A lanky 6’2” and slim, Bob disliked making hard choices early in the day so he simplified things by wearing what amounted to a uniform. He wore custom jeans with $90 button-down oxford dress shirts, Allen Edmond loafers, and a sport coat from Hickey Freeman. He liked to dress for comfort but not at the expense of style and class.
The day’s mail had arrived, a total of two letters, and he turned to it with a will. Where the mail once involved a dozen or more letters, real paper and envelopes and stamps, it had morphed into e-mail, a good or bad development depending on one’s point of view. In former times one had to assemble writing paper, envelopes, stamps, bottles of Wite Out, pens/pencils/crayons, and possess basic writing skills before writing the first word.
With e-mail any half-wit can bang out some ungrammatical crap on a keyboard in seconds and send it worldwide without a trip to the post office. As a result, almost nobody can write literate English nowadays. E-mail and text messages have no need for grammar, coherence, spelling, punctuation, careful thought. It is a great loss, greater than we know.
Still, the occasional old-fashioned letter showed up and Bob always regarded each one as something special, a link to other times. Most were not special and came from people without computers, of course, but at least they were real paper and felt good in one’s hands.
Bob sipped the coffee, took a bite of the cruller, and opened the first one. A single page of stationery contained the words: “It wasn’t robbery.” It was signed with the letter K. He turned the letter over and peeked in the envelope and even shook it to no avail. It was postmarked from Atlanta with a return address in Las Vegas. He looked up, brow furrowed in thought. Synapses snapped, axons fizzed, dendrites lit up neurons in a wild electrical shower of sparks and in seconds Bob analyzed the data and reached a sound conclusion.
“A crank,” he thought, “some asshole playing detective.” He tossed letter
and envelope into the wastebasket and reached for the second one. Forty-five minutes later he sighed mightily, closed drawers, turned off the computer, and spotted the letter in the wastebasket. He hesitated, shrugged, retrieved letter and envelope and tossed them onto his desk as he left.
As Bob drove to his condo across the Potomac the investigations continued at all levels from the Senate chambers to lowly police precincts and none turned up a single new clue or even a new slant that was based on anything more than rumor or speculation. However, an observer might have noticed that most members of Congress looked over their shoulders with more frequency than usual.
Several senators met that evening in the conference room of Majority Leader Tom Hoskins to discuss Biggers’ death and reassure themselves as to its likely consequences. Max Abbott (R-MI) and Ted Pastor (R-TX) were co-sponsors of Biggers’ inheritance tax bill and also recipients of cash-filled envelopes. As Friday was payoff day they knew that Biggers had one in his pocket when killed and they feared a possible link to them. Hoskins didn’t know about the envelopes of cash but he would not have been surprised to learn of them, as he was himself a crook.
After all, who among them wasn’t similarly encumbered much of the time?
Any unannounced search of a congressman’s briefcase or inside coat pocket or even his home freezer would reveal like caches of greenbacks that couldn’t be accounted for by Mandrake the Magician. It seems it isn’t a bad thing to have such tainted monies; it’s just not a good idea to get caught with them.
“…it was a robbery,” Pastor said.
“That’s what everybody’s saying,” Hoskins agreed.
“Sure, some two-bit hood with a gun,” Abbott said. “Probably a drug addict.”
Pastor agreed. “This town’s full of ‘em. You’re not safe anywhere nowadays.
D.C. has more armed people than Baghdad, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah, why is that?” Hoskins said. “This town is a gun-free zone. Nobody can buy a gun here or even own one, it seems. How come everybody in town is a goddamn walking arsenal?”
“Maybe somebody told ‘em about the Second Amendment,” Abbott said.
“Well, look, it’s too bad about Hiram but it’s just one of those unfortunate things that happen to people,” Hoskins said. “It could have been any of us. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, is all. It was a random thing. We’ve got to move on here.”
“The funeral’s tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Noon at the National Cathedral.”
“Wasn’t Hiram a Catholic?”
“Hell, no. He was a goddamn heathen. You could bury him in a landfill and it
wouldn’t make any difference to him.”
“What the hell, it was good enough for Mozart,” Pastor said.
The others nodded agreement and so did the rest of Congress. Everyone supported the robbery theory, as it was the most palatable one that could be digested with fewest side effects. The authorities aided and abetted the theorists by withholding information and encouraging the media to run with it. Since that was the only story propounded, it was adopted by almost everyone and generally accepted as what happened to the luckless senator. In point of fact, based on the evidence given, no other conclusion was likely.
Biggers’ funeral was held the next day at the National Cathedral and since
Bob had two tickets to cover the proceedings he took fashion page editor Colleen Quinn with him. She was tall and svelte and looked like a fashion editor with clothes that seemed to come from the pages of Elle or Vogue. Even better, she had a razor-sharp mind and a sense of independence that would have pleased Ayn Rand.
Some might call their outing a date but it actually wasn’t. They’d known each other for a decade and had an early fling that continued sporadically even into the present. Everything considered it was an ideal relationship that worked on many levels, as they’d become sound friends and confidants.
On the way into the Cathedral distraught ticket seekers offered Bob $500 for his ducats but he stayed true to the journalist’s pledge and resolutely refused to compromise his integrity. Besides, it would mean filing a phony story on an assignment he’d not covered and that really would be an affront to his code of
ethics.
The funeral was a marvelous display of pomp and circumstance that was not unlike a graduation ceremony with a dirge replacing Elgar’s famous march. Everyone of note showed up to mourn or gloat depending on his past relationship with the departed. The gloaters far exceeded the mourners, as is usually the case with the funerals of political figures.
The president spoke glowingly of Biggers’ fine character, wisdom, and compassion, and obvious snickers were heard in the great room. When the president declared that Biggers was a “… righteous man, a man of honor…” a voice in the gallery sang out, “Oh, my God!” and the speaker threw an arm up in a defensive posture to ward off the lightning bolts he knew had to be en route.
Bach resounded in the vast room, a large choir rendered several numbers in
Latin, and no less a figure than the Cardinal himself sprayed the audience with
holy water as he led a procession down the main aisle. Some said the holy water
spat and sizzled like water hitting a hot skillet when it landed on politicians in the audience, but those stories may be apocryphal.
All in all, it was a grand affair that received good reviews in the press and talk of an Emmy for the TV coverage. Many were heard to wish that another senator would be gunned down so they could have as much fun again. Hiram
the Ham Guy would have been impressed with the show.
Bob and Colleen remained in their seats to avoid the jammed aisles and watched mourners and gloaters file out of the cavernous church in a slowly moving river of humanity. Most talked amiably to friends, laughing, arranging lunch dates or trysts with thoughts of poor Hiram vanished from their minds even before they’d left the premises.
Commenting on their gay mood, Colleen said, “You’d think it was just
another social affair.”
“It was. They come to be seen. Nobody gives a rap about the Ham Guy.”
“They could at least pretend, couldn’t they?”
“Why? To deceive each other?”
“Why not? Maybe they could trick themselves into thinking they’re
compassionate, caring people. That might raise their level of consciousness.”
“They’re all rich; they don’t need to be conscious.”
“Fuck ‘em. Let’s get some lunch.”
“Now you’ve raised my level of consciousness.”
They stood and slipped into the thinning crowd and mini-stepped their way out into the bright midday sunlight and gave themselves over to deciding on where to eat. They settled on a small Italian restaurant famous for its pasta and conveniently nearby. Ten minutes later they chose vegetarian lasagna from the
menu, thick slices of pumpernickel bread, and a carafe of Cabernet to round out a meal that would be fit for a king if one happened by.
Wine in hand, they settled back to wait for lunch. “So, what’s the real story on Biggers’ death?”
“A robbery. A street crime.”
“Says who?”
“Everybody. The feds, cops, witnesses…”
“What witnesses?”
“Not witnesses, reporters. Welsh for one. He was there and saw the crime
scene up close.”
“I didn’t hear any evidence that supported a robbery. How would they know
that?” She paused and looked steadily him. “You know something, don’t you?”
“Me? No. What? I only know what everybody else knows.”
“It wasn’t a robbery, was it?”
“No comment.”
“Then it wasn’t.”
Bob sighed heavily. “Okay, it probably wasn’t a robbery. They didn’t report
anything missing. If it was robbery the guy would at least get that watch. They have no idea what actually happened.”
“So what’s next?”
“More investigations. You can’t shoot a U.S. Senator and just forget about it, not unless you don’t mind a lot of pissed-off politicians on your ass.”
“In other words, it’s more of the same, then.”
“It’s depressing, isn’t it?”
Colleen leaned in for her wine glass and her gaping blouse revealed cleavage that would get her employment as a Victoria’s Secret model. “Maybe I could cheer you up a bit,” she said
Bob eyed her perky, braless breasts and grinned. “You already have,” he said.
“You’re easy.”
“And you’re glad.”
She smiled a soft woman’s smile and put her hand on his. “We’re both glad.”
The waiter appeared then and they turned their attention to the piping hot
lasagna and fell silent because their mouths were stopped with pasta and bread awash in red wine. Colleen had to get back to work and so did Bob, but an
assignation was arranged for that evening in order to finish what they’d started at lunch.