**********
That Saturday was vivid and sunshiny, the type of day that persists in memory for years. A further seven days into Spring had warmed the air and the temperature was in the mid-seventies. A little unusual, but welcome. JB had been as good as his word and Sandra, as promised, had agreed to a dinner date. She didn’t want to admit it, but it was kind of exciting to be on the inside of the shadow world of which JB was a part. Who knew where they might go? Besides that, he seemed like an honorable man, and he was working for the good guys.
She was dressed comfortably in jeans, flip flops, and a Brown University sweatshirt, her hair pulled back. She had the steaks and baked potatoes on the grill and was inside making the salad when she heard a car pull up. JB was here.
At his knock on the open door, she called for him to come in. When she turned around, he stood there in the kitchen doorway, a bottle of wine grasped by the neck in each hand. He was smiling, and with good reason.
The $100,000 life insurance policy he had taken out on Jack Benny Hicks had been paid before his body was cold. JB had set it up under a false name in a shell corporation he had wizarded up a week before. The insurance company had paid the claim with zero quibbling and less investigation. When the beneficiary’s work address (fake though it was) included an office in the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center in Bluffton, Utah, it was wisest not to inquire too deeply. It wasn’t like it was real money, anyway. The insurance company was owned by a large, New York bank. It could borrow electronically created money from the Fed discount window for practically zero interest, loan it out to subprime borrowers at ten to one under the fractional reserve banking laws on credit cards charging twenty-eight percent interest, and make one hundred times their outlay.
Under RICO statutes and laws of civil asset forfeiture, Jack Benny Hicks’ farm was now the property of the Federal government. It would take only a couple of favors for congressman Savage to buy the land free and clear. Savage now owed JB. Even though the publicly traceable filaments in the web of deceit and death JB had woven had vanished, each keystroke and instruction -for this misdeed and others like it- still existed on his flash drive. It was JB’s insurance policy against a three-shots-to-the-head “suicide”, a drunken fall from the top of a tall building, or a mysterious case of lethal botulism. Those who owed JB would honor their obligations because JB knew where the bodies were buried. JB was the smoking gun. Powerful people, even if turned out by the next Fall’s elections, always had connections and could be counted on for favors, especially if their personal freedom or fortunes were threatened.
The Canadian development company could now build their strip mall, providing hundreds of jobs and millions more in tax revenue to the government. Local residents would now have a place to spend the newly created fiat money, trading ever more of their finite time and labor to the usurers who issued the magic plastic, and keeping a Potemkin economy afloat for a few more quarters. Everybody was a winner. What, compared to all that, was the life of one apple farmer?
And finally, JB thought, looking at the very well-appointed Sandra, he was having dinner with a beautiful woman. It had been, he summed up, a good week.
Coda
It had been an historic election two months previous and the newly elected senators had been sworn in a week ago, on January 3rd. The writing had been on the wall early on as it became clear the opposition party was about to post massive gains and make an almost clean sweep of the current ruling party, all the way from President to Justice of the Peace. Running on a platform of monumental change, house cleaning, and no more business as usual, the new leadership was frothing at the mouth to muck out a US Senate that had become as filthy and corrupt as the Augeian stables.
Many of those in appointed positions around JB fretted over their jobs. In typical fashion, the ousted party’s crestfallen apparatchiks had spray painted offices with obscene graffiti, vandalized buildings, stolen computer equipment and memorabilia, and generally stomped and pouted like petulant rich kids who’d had their sports car taken away by the glaring stupidity of the American serfs who didn’t know what was best for them. JB had seen it all before.
He checked his calendar. His first appointment was with the chief of staff of the newly elected senate majority leader. He had his secretary buzz him in.
“Good morning,” JB said, standing up and offering his hand. “What can I do for you?”
JB and the chief of staff shook hands.
“I have,” the chief of staff said, “a problem...”
Kingpin
By
Victor Allen
Copyright © 2014
All Rights Reserved
“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits,and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again.
However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”
Sir Josiah Stamp