A BATTERED KEN BUCKLEY lay in the hospital bed, still unconscious. A monitor showing his precarious vital signs was set on a rolling stand next to the bed. The surgeon had addressed as many of the injuries as he could in the short time period, but there was more to be done, and Ken was not out of the woods yet. The fact that he was still not conscious was most problematic.
The man sitting in the chair next to him was Peter Buckley, Ken’s older brother. He was in his forties, six one, fit and lean. He wore a tailored dark suit with a colorful pocket square, an immaculate white dress shirt, and no tie. His nails were well-groomed, his skin healthy and unmarked. The shoes on his feet were made of supple leather and cost a thousand bucks, the sleek suit over twice that. His hair was dark and wavy and neatly trimmed. His face was hairless, and his features were sharply defined. His pale blue eyes sometimes appeared dead white in a certain light. He had a quiet intensity and confidence about him that drew one’s attention, something he didn’t necessarily like. He crossed one leg over the other, revealing patterned burgundy socks, and stared at his little brother. Ken was the youngest, Peter the oldest, with several brothers and two sisters in between.
Two of the brothers were dead; the third was a guest of a state prison in the south. The sisters had long since disappeared, happy enough to get away from the Buckley clan. Their father, Peter Sr., had been severely wounded decades before in a chaotic shootout with federal agents at the family compound in a remote part of the country. Their mother had been injured in the same melee and then arrested along with her husband. But she had turned on her spouse, and her testimony had sent him to prison for several lifetimes, while she was put in witness protection with her children. Buckley’s father hadn’t made it through his first year in prison, because another inmate had sliced his throat from ear to ear. After that, Buckley’s mother had abandoned her children, and Buckley had never seen her again.
Buckley’s father had led a large group of followers who believed in segregation based on race and ethnicity, independence from outside laws and social mores, and adherence to a code of conduct that extended to all members, except the senior Buckley. He was free to do what he wanted, and to whom he wanted, because he was the leader, the chosen one, the man with a vision.
And they had also trafficked in stolen property, and sold drugs and guns, because the money was necessary to fund their preferred way of life.
However, the federal government had come calling one night after some bodies were found. The dead were people who had once followed, but now disagreed vehemently with, Buckley Sr. And he had responded not with words but with guns, knives, and ropes. And shallow graves for prematurely and violently ended lives.
And the feds had destroyed his father for it, for merely standing up for what he believed in. Not nice, thought Peter Buckley. But then there were many not nice people in the world.
After his father’s death and his mother’s abandoning them, he, as the oldest sibling but still a child himself, had taken over the leadership role with respect to his remaining family. When he reached adulthood he had spent all his time expanding on his father’s ambitions in a far more sophisticated way, choosing to learn from his father’s mistakes rather than repeating them.
Over the years, he had created a far greater empire, and hidden the criminal elements of it behind a complex web of entities. At the same time, he had inserted himself into the fabric of mainstream society behind a consortium of perfectly normal businesses, while also building a reputation as a philanthropist. He supported myriad candidates for political office and had many friends who held both high and more mundane offices. He had found that only the latter could actually accomplish the things he needed done. Power at the national level was hopelessly gridlocked. But if you needed a residential development approved, or wanted the contract for garbage pickup, or required rezoning for a commercial project, the locals were far more powerful than even the president of the United States.
Several years before, he had bought back the land on which his family’s compound had been situated, and he had rebuilt some of the facilities. He had put in a private airstrip and would fly in there from time to time, and stay there all alone for a few days. He would walk the site, sleep in the facsimile of the house in which he had been raised, and imagine how life could have been had the law not destroyed the Buckleys. That was his therapy, his respite from a world that he had learned to dominate on his terms but also would never truly belong to.
He had tried in vain to teach his brothers that real change meant playing the game until you got to the point where you controlled the game. Outsiders did not make real change. You had to become an insider, and you did so through a series of steps: ingratiate, annex, dominate, and then consolidate. Let the changes be so incremental that they would never see what really was coming until it was far too late.
However, his ill-educated brothers had not listened to their older sibling’s advice. Since his teens Ken had been in prison. He had only been recently released from his last stint for another stupid and meaningless crime. Ken was particularly unteachable, his skin tatted with crap he probably didn’t even understand. He was a loser and not really worth worrying about.
His sisters, like their mother, had abandoned the family when they reached adulthood. Buckley had never forgiven them. He had also never married or had a serious relationship with a woman, because he knew them to be totally untrustworthy. When he required sex, he paid for it. The night passed and the lady was not there in the morning. And that suited him just fine.
But Ken was still family, so Buckley did worry about him. When he got the call about what had happened from a police officer who had found his phone number among Ken’s personal belongings, he had flown in on his jet two hours later. He had sat through Ken’s first surgery. And he had gone to the motel to find out what had happened, and had also spoken to the local police.
A woman, of course, had done this to his brother. A tall, strong woman who had given no name and paid for her room in cash. She had told the woman at the motel that she was an undercover cop. Yet the police had no knowledge of her; Buckley, in his friendly, nonthreatening way, had asked for details about this, and the police had been very accommodating because Buckley was Ken’s brother and looked and acted eminently respectable. So the woman had lied. And she had nearly killed Ken. Buckley had also confirmed that the woman had done all this to Ken with her bare hands. A formidable woman, physically, because Ken was no lightweight when it came to a brawl.
The surgeon had said that they would have to run more tests and do more imaging to make certain there would be no lasting damage to his body or his brain.