The Killing Vote Read online

  The small station wagon struck the guardrail, spun back across the road, and rolled into the ditch separating the exit road from the freeway.

  Della’s head spun, mingling the real and the unreal. Her world became a confused blur of white and red lights. She was catapulted into space, flowers tumbling over and around her in a kaleidoscope of color. She was lifted, carried through a soft, ethereal spectrum. Everything went black.

  * * *

  Della tried to turn her head to one side, then the other.

  Nothing.

  What happened? Was she awake or dreaming?

  She willed her eyes to open. The lids remained clamped shut.

  A dream?

  No, there were voices. Real voices. Loud voices.

  She strained to hear, caught only a jumble of meaningless sounds.

  She tried to move again, tried to force her lids open.

  But she was trapped, wrapped in an opaque cocoon.

  She needed some kind of physical response. Anything!

  Not a sound escaped her lips.

  Icy panic crushed her.

  Scream! She had to scream.

  Nothing.

  She wanted to reach for her constricted throat. But some powerful force held her wrists, arms, legs.

  A coffin! They were carrying her to the cemetery.

  The vision was clear—an open grave. Grim men with shovels would lower her into a deep hole; toss heavy, black dirt on top of her; smother her.

  Stop! My God! Stop!

  Her mind exploded into a wild confusion of reds and oranges that stabbed her brain and pushed her through a universe of exploding stars racing to engulf her.

  Silent screams grew louder and louder.

  I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!

  * * *

  An image of Nathan Sorkin flashed through Ted Yost’s head as he drove toward San Francisco. Sorkin was a knockoff of Albert Einstein: white hair flying in all directions, sad eyes that had seen too much despair.

  Ted tilted the rearview mirror to look at his own hair.

  What happened to that carrot mop I never paid attention to? Turned fifty-five and it started coming out in clumps. Shit! Now it’s starting to fade to gray—like an old cat.

  He pushed at the mirror, shoved so hard he thought it might crack the windshield.

  Turning fifty hadn’t bothered him, but when he hit sixty he started expecting to find pieces of his body—a toe here, an earlobe there—left behind in the bed when he got up of a morning. The sands in the hourglass were in free-fall.

  He glanced down and stared hard at the official Press Pass still clipped to the car’s sun visor.

  Used, torn, old.

  He shifted in his seat and changed the radio station. Clifford Alden’s jazz rendition of Angel Eyes filled the car; for a moment the music made the five-mile-per-hour, bumper-to-bumper traffic almost tolerable.

  What an idiot. Didn’t even try to change Nathan’s mind about an early morning meeting.

  “Sure,” he muttered.

  As if I could get that man to do anything he didn’t want to do.

  Some fool in a Porsche forced his way into Ted’s lane, almost shearing off the front fender of his new Prius.

  “Happy now that you’ve moved up one whole car length?” he yelled inside the closed car.

  Off to the left, on the other side of the median, red and blue lights were blinking, slowing traffic even more. Ted could see emergency vehicles on the berm of the Mill Valley exit, along with an overturned red Volvo station wagon.

  A guy rubbernecking in a car to Ted’s left turned to look at him, shrugged, and continued on. The car behind honked and Ted picked up his speed.

  Forcing himself to settle down, he changed the radio station to NPR. But after a couple of minutes he found he couldn’t concentrate or even comprehend a panel of experts discussing the dissolution of the U.S. infrastructure. He changed the station again, this time to classical music. Mendelssohn was much easier on the psyche.

  When did our world become so unmanageable?

  He used to follow in-depth newscasts like a bloodhound, aware of every nuance, hip to all the catch-phrases. Now, after forty years as an active journalist, he’d begun to believe that chasing the answers was not as damn important as he’d once thought.

  He was distracted for a moment by a young woman singing and pounding on her steering wheel, head bobbing up and down like a banshee, oblivious to everything around her. He inched forward, hit the brakes, and resisted the temptation to tap the back bumper of the Porsche, now trying to wedge back over into the lane it had come from.

  Ted looked at the press pass again.

  Yeah, overused, old.

  Breaking news: An explosion and devastating fire have hit the offices of the Coalition of Older and Retired Persons in San Francisco. Authorities are already questioning whether it was an accident or arson. The organization, often called the talking corpse by its enemies, is an outspoken critic of the administration’s management of healthcare and the Medicare financial crisis.

  Ted fumbled with the radio’s volume, turned it up.

  The fire department’s arson unit has released a statement that a bomb is the likely cause. We have also just learned a seventy-eight-year-old employee of the organization was in the building at the time and is in critical condition.

  Chapter 3

  When Ted Yost approached CORPS headquarters a sudden chill left him shaking.

  He circled a yellow-caution-tape police perimeter before finally parking three blocks away from the CORPS offices. He took off on foot, excused and pardoned his way through the clots of spectators along Franklin.

  Gusts of acrid air stung his nostrils and mouth. When he reached the storefront entrance, he stopped—about all that was left of the building were the charred remains of the outer walls and window frames edged with fangs of glass.

  The firemen were finishing up—snake-like hoses were gathered and rolled, axes stowed; one fire truck was already leaving the scene. A cop, using a bullhorn, tried to scatter the crowd while a pair of yellow-slickered firemen poked in the ruins.

  As Ted debated whether or not to try entering the burnt-out building, a hand came down, rested lightly on his shoulder. He turned, looked into the sad eyes of Nathan Sorkin, and wrapped an arm across the director’s shoulders.

  “I was on my way when I heard the news report on the radio,” he said.

  “Glad you’re here, Ted.”

  They stood, both silent, watching the last of the fire trucks drive away.

  “We’ve had lowlifes threaten us over the years,” Nathan finally said, “but this is the first time they actually did anything.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. Nathan blew his nose into a large paisley handkerchief. “I should have listened. This whole thing was set up to get me.”

  “Any idea who it is?”

  “Just a voice. Another telephone schmuck whispering that they were going to kill me if I didn’t stop taking potshots at the Administration’s Medicare policies.”

  “And you just let it go?”

  “What’s to do? It could have been the skinhead I had the police throw out last week. Or it might have been a loose cannon from a Tea Bagger group. Maybe it was one of our sister organizations.” Nathan immediately shook his head. “No, they wouldn’t have the chutzpah to pull off something like this. That’s why we started this group in the first place. Got tired of watching big organizations made up of old farts sitting on their tuchis doing nothing.”

  “When you raise a ruckus, you create enemies,” Ted said. “Some more powerful and vindictive than others.”

  Nathan nodded, took a deep breath, pulled a hand down across his face. “Suppose it could have been one of the pharmaceutical companies.”

  “Pharmaceutical?”

  “Yeah, they’re the money behind a trio of advocacy groups for seniors. It’s nothing more than a way to funnel funds into the campaigns of friendly politicians.”

 
“It’s worth looking into.”

  “For God’s sakes, don’t you get it? There’s no one person or group. We’ve pissed off a lot of people. They would all breathe a lot easier if we were out of the way.”

  “When was the last threatening call?”

  “That first day we met, when you came down here to talk about your Medicare blog item.” Nathan bowed his head. “What really hurts … they got Myra instead of me.” His voice caught and he could barely get the words out. “I watched the paramedics take her…they said she was critical.” He clutched Ted’s arm. “She was so pale.”

  Ted’s insides were raw; he balled his hands into tight knots. “Myra’s a real fighter, Nathan.

  “Yeah,” Nathan said in a quavering voice. “

  “Didn’t think she’d let me in that first time I came to see you. But she’s a woman who grows on you.”

  “Myra runs the gantse megillah. And it wasn’t love at first sight when it came to you.”

  “You weren’t all that friendly yourself,” Ted said. “Man, was that only a few weeks ago? I feel like I’ve known you for years.”

  A cop tried to shoo away a bunch of spectators. When they didn’t budge, he yelled, “Move on! Move on! There’s nothin’ here for you to see!”

  “You didn’t seem like much of a mensch at the time.”

  “Hiring me is not a like dangling a carrot in front of the mule. People don’t get to tell me what to write.”

  When Nathan was silent, Ted said, “And you really pissed me off when you stopped talking about Medicare and started ranting about Galen Hospital and Hygea Corporation.”

  “I’ve been after that bunch ever since Hygea became the big deal on the healthcare scene.”

  “And you dragged me into it.”

  “I needed your help. They’re a clever bunch of nudniks.”

  “Not nearly as clever as you.”

  Nathan lowered his head for a fight. “If you’re so smart, Mr. Big Shot Newsman, tell me why tiny Marin County is now the national corporate headquarters for Hygea? We both know those guys like to shout their name from the rooftops. Why a fancy-schmancy bedroom community instead of San Francisco?”

  They stood at the edge of the building, Nathan stared absently at the cluster of people milling around the yellow police tape. The cop was still ragging on the crowd, but the bystanders still ignored him, kept staring at the totaled building as though they expected it to reconstruct itself.

  “They’re the ones behind this dreck,” Nathan said. “I know it!”

  “Who?”

  “Hygea!” Nathan said, driving a fist into his palm. “We both know corporations will do anything to get what they want.”

  Ted stared at the charred mess where the CORPS offices once stood. “Then I’ll need everything you’ve got on Hygea,” he said. “And I want to know who’s been feeding you your background info … and the sooner the better.”

  “A Congressional source,” Nathan said. “And that’s all you’re getting.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Oy, you’re like a blind man,” Nathan said. “Hygea’s using a Galen Hospital ethics committee to introduce and push a national agenda to under-fund Medicare. Maybe get rid of it all together.”

  “And all you’re offering up to me is an ethics committee? Hell, they’ve been on the scene for years.”

  “Not this one. Galen’s added a new one, a different kind, six months ago. This one’s supposedly about economics. And the only person that isn’t new in the bunch is the administrator, Robert Holt.”

  “And CORPS’ interest?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Ted pulled out a small notebook and scribbled in it. When he finished, he turned back to Nathan: “If a national healthcare company like Hygea is really trying to bring down Medicare, then there must be a Washington connection.” He tapped Nathan lightly on the chest. “Don’t hold back on me. I’ll need that Washington source of information.”

  “I can’t give it to you.”

  “You mean you won’t,” Ted said. “What else do you want to happen before you change your mind?”

  Nathan’s shoulders sank lower as he stared hard at the destroyed entrance, then stepped forward. A policeman stopped them, checked their IDs, and logged in their names before allowing them to pass.

  Broken glass crunched under their feet as they walked through the doorway. “Can you believe this?” Nathan said. “Look what the bastards have done!”

  “Maybe it would be best if we didn’t go in,” Ted said.

  “No, I’ve got to see for myself.” As they stepped through what was left of the doorway, he stopped and put a hand on Ted’s arm. “Tell me at least you were bringing me some good news this morning.”

  “If you want to call it that. I wiggled my way into an appointment with Hygea’s CEO.”

  A fresh stream of tears flooded down Sorkin’s cheeks. “You know what I hate most about getting old?”

  Ted pulled at an earlobe, shook his head.

  “I spritz at the drop of a hat.” The director took a large paisley handkerchief from his back pocket and scrubbed the tears from his cheeks.

  “Bet you were always a crybaby.”

  It was a few seconds before Nathan spoke. He’d turned into a small man, his face drawn into despair.

  “Maybe Myra didn’t like you in the beginning, but I always knew you were a mensch.”

  Ted clapped a hand on Nathan’s shoulder and laughed. “That’s not what you said a few minutes ago.”

  They moved on through the rooms of the devastated offices. Nathan stopped near the former volunteers’ workroom, kicked at the rubble with the toe of his shoe, and bent to pick up a singed poster that miraculously had survived the blast and fire.

  He held it up for Ted to see the large photo of a group of people standing in front of a huge CORPS banner. Everyone was smiling and hailing the photographer with a digital salute.

  Nathan turned his sad, wistful eyes to Ted. “We begin again.”

  Chapter 4

  Ted stepped through the automated doors of Hygea’s Galen Hospital. He couldn’t believe his eyes. What he remembered was a small local medical facility surrounded by lush lawns and massive flowerbeds. It had all been swallowed up and reincarnated into a corporate campus of steel and concrete.

  The vast complex spread out like a huge wagon wheel—a hub with spokes that led to every possible service related to healthcare: Emergency, Trauma, ICU, Surgery, Medical Specialties, Ancillary Services; even a Nursing and Medical school. If it weren’t for the detailed array of color-coded directional signs, he would have gone nuts circling through the maze of satellites.

  He leaned on the chrome railing of the airport-style walkway. As it carried him toward Administration, he studied a list he’d printed off the internet of Galen’s new Bioethical Review Committee members. Only one was familiar: Rev. John F. Bradberry.

  The walkway nearly up-ended Ted as he reached his destination. He cursed his inattention when he noticed someone staring at him outside of the brushed metal entry doors to the administration offices.

  “John Bradberry?”

  The man tilted his head and nodded.

  “Ted. Ted Yost.” He stepped forward, hand extended. “I thought it was you.”

  “Good to see you,” Bradberry said.

  “How have you been?”

  Bradberry was silent.

  “Well, you look prosperous. I hope everything’s good for you.”

  Bradberry nodded.

  “Anyway, what luck running into you. I was just on my way to see Garrett Rudge.”

  “I doubt he’ll see you now. There’s a meeting scheduled at ten o’clock.”

  “The Bioethical Review Committee?”

  Bradberry’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right.”

  “Seemed logical since you’re a member,” Ted held up the list he’d been studying. “If you have a moment, maybe you could fill me in on what you guys have been doin
g the past six months.”

  Bradberry went through an exaggerated routine of looking at his watch. “I’m almost late now.” He half turned to enter the satellite. “Perhaps another time.”

  Ted touched the minister’s shoulder. “I’d appreciate that, John.”

  He watched Bradberry enter the reception area where he was buzzed through to the inner offices.

  Ted stopped at the desk. “I have an appointment to see Garrett Rudge.”

  The receptionist gave him a questioning look, tapped a few keys on her computer keyboard, studied the monitor, and said, “You’re not due until late this afternoon, Mr. Yost.”

  “I know, but it’s very important that I see him as soon as possible.”

  The woman was dressed in a no-nonsense plain brown suit; two pink spots of blush highlighted her cheeks. Ted wanted to reach out and smooth them away. He jammed his hands into his pants pocket.

  “He’s truly unavailable until after lunch.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  He plopped in a chair and tried to focus on a New Yorker he found in a stack of outdated magazines on a side table, but his thoughts drifted. He slumped down and thought about his first encounter with Rev. John Bradberry.

  * * *

  The minute Ted stepped off the plane in Saigon, the humid air became a hot blanket that smothered his skin and made it difficult for him to breathe.

  What am I doing in this hellhole?

  But rookie reporters do as they’re told. That’s what. He needed the experience and at least it was a real assignment: Why did the U.S. continue to be in the middle of a war that was destroying our nation’s young?

  It was that or the obits page.

  He spent fourteen exhausting months with a Marine detachment composed mostly of nineteen-year-olds. They climbed in and out of helicopters, ran through heavy jungle undergrowth filled with deadly snakes and roamed through burned-out villages where the people’s eyes glowed with hatred.

  The decay of the sharp, proud unit into a group of drug-wasted zombies gave him all the ugly answers. The U.S. had turned its “boys” into bitter men who would never quite fit into the American mainstream again.