Royal Digs (5 page)

Nothing! There was nothing fucking there!

“Well now, what’s the matter, Fishy? It looks
like you’ve just seen a ghost! You really need more blush
darling.”

And with that, Clito pirouetted out of the
room, leaving me to the madness of an impending nightmare.

“I
still can’t get
over that Clito’s Cabaret will figure prominently into this year’s
Democratic National Convention,” I said, tapping and then
increasing the size of the Huffington Post article I’d pulled up on
my iPad.

The piece explained how the party of
tolerance was flexing and expanding its acceptance of alternative
lifestyles in a new way.

“Wait till the Daily Show gets a hold of
this,” Bunny added, also busy studying her iPad.

“Oh, and how ‘bout Meet the Press? They won’t
know what to do with it, will they?” I said, for the first time
looking forward to one of my new family’s plans. “Talk about
Carville and Matalin needing a cocktail party...”

That got a good laugh from Bunny. Evidently,
she’d also seen the famous pundits’ ads for Maker’s Mark
whiskey.

“Though the mainstream coverage will indeed
be interesting, wait till you see what we’ve got planned for all of
the social media outlets.”

“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.

T
here’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.

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.

T
he 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.