Empire

By Ken Vrana

“Empire” is the story of a woman and her husband whose combined greed and past successes amassing a huge fortune lead them to create a non-profit organization, which in short order becomes one of the most powerful cancer charities in the world.
The more money the foundation makes, however, the greedier the couple becomes, especially when they discover how through redirection, money laundering and outright theft, they can funnel greater and greater portions of the money they take in, directly into their own pockets. It is also the story of how, through their own avarice and national political connections they are brought to their knees.
“Empire” is an insider’s view of many of the practices actually practiced in the industry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329533417

Book preview

Empire

EMPIRE

COPYRIGHT

Copyright ©2014 by Ken Vrana

All rights reserved.

This book or portions thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN #: 978-1-329-53341-7 (E-Book Edition)

First Edition: 2015

Ken Vrana Publishing

www.kenvrana.com

For More Information or Inquiries: mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Empire

This novel is a work of fiction, Any references to real events, businesses, organizations, and locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

About the Author

Ken Vrana

Ken Charleston small

Ken Vrana is an internationally recognized fine artist and writer whose career has been as varied as his talents. From working for the White House, directly out of school, to owning his own advertising agency and from a successful career in Hollywood as a writer and producer to attending law school at the age of 55, he was also the President and CEO of a cancer charity he founded after working with Paul McCartney’s cancer foundation, the Garland Appeal.

His first book was Free Falling – Living on the Edge of Insanity

Other Books by Ken Vrana

Free Falling – Living on the Edge of Insanity

Imperial

The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment's hesitation to crush beauty and life. - Rabindranath Tagore

ONE

January 1992

West Palm Beach, Florida

Hospitals have a smell that is nearly impossible to replicate.

Artificially scrubbed air, synthetically enriched oxygen, and a broad spectrum of antiseptic odors all mix to provide what the administration hopes will create both a sterile environment for its employees and a psychologically comforting setting for patients and visitors. Even the faint smell of the cotton and polyester gowns worn by the doctors and nurses seem subtly engineered.

Instead, especially in a room occupied by a person who is barely conscious of the number of hours they have left to live, even the bitter stench of bleach that has infused the very tile on the walls, washed too many times by too many anonymous hands, seems to suck away every breath.

The fact of the matter is, even in a high-priced hospital like Granada, you can’t mask the smell of death.

* * *

Elizabeth Powell-Weisman sat quietly, watching her brother David, lying in a tangle of tubes, in his private room. There was the full compliment of bells and whistles, lights and gauges built into a custom wall-panel near his head, and a second heart monitor she’d decided to pay extra for, stood on a stainless steel pole nearby.  She could well afford it and in her mind, it helped convince her that at least some remote part of her cared.

There was one bouquet of flowers on a table near the window, which looked out, some five blocks away, at the cerulean-blue Atlantic. Its pristine white beach appearing like white upholstery fringe, tinged with silver. It was that view, at least in part, that the high-end patients who selected the hospital, appreciated, especially if their stay was brief and they were not near death like David Powell. All this, of course, came with a price and as a privately-held facility, the hospital could charge whatever it wanted with seldom a complaint.  Even the designer coffee in the lush cafeteria was seven dollars a cup; amendments, of course, cost extra.

Elizabeth and David had never been close but then she’d never made the effort. In fact until he got sick; she hadn’t seen him for nearly 3 years. The last time had been at their father’s funeral, where David managed to get thoroughly drunk and disorderly. Some issue surrounding Elizabeth’s always having been her father’s favorite, the recipient of all his love and largess, but then of course, that had been all too true.  She would never argue that she preferred it any other way and in her mind, David was simply making too much of something ridiculous and petty.

She’d also long ago decided, that it was probably inevitable that every family had to have one black sheep and David had definitely staked out his meadow, early on. If there were ways to fuck up, David had tried them all, so she made the conscious decision to simply write him out of her life. That way he could not embarrass her and embarrassment was one thing Elizabeth Weisman couldn’t tolerate.

She had, as they say, married well; David on the other hand, had been well-married – three times in fact and each time to a bigger disaster, at least as far as Elizabeth was concerned. How anyone who was reasonably intelligent - and say what you want, David was far from stupid - could consistently select such losers was almost beyond her comprehension.

Some of them drank or took drugs and one ran around behind his back, in the end taking off with one of her brother’s few friends, an ex-navy Seal with more tattoos than brain cells. But whether taken individually or collectively they all amounted to one hot mess.

Elizabeth’s Powell Weisman’s life was not about messes it was about successes.

Initially she had received some pretty strict resistance from her father, Franklin Powell II, internationally recognized architect, when she announced she was marrying a Jew, but eventually Franklin Two, as he like to be called, analyzed the situation and gave the pairing his blessing. After all, his father, Franklin I had founded the hugely successful Powell Development Company, who many said, singlehandedly helped build half of Boca Baton, much of Orlando and at least a tidy portion of the ‘The Magic Kingdom.’

As he loved to tell the story many years later, seeing scores of his earth movers uprooting grove after grove of citrus and pawing away at the sandy Florida soil, at what would soon be the happiest place on earth, proved that money could buy happiness.

It was, an almost genetic intuitiveness that eventually convinced Franklin II that his daughter’s plan to marry Saul Weisman actually seemed like a pretty damn good idea. After all, Saul had founded DIY, one of the largest chains of home improvement stores in the deep south, and with ten to fifteen new stores scheduled to be added each year, hell, someone had to build them right?

Yeah, Franklin II loved his daughter but he saw no reason why he couldn’t have his cake and eat it too. By marrying The Jew, as he continued to call Saul Weisman until the day Powell II decorporealised and shuffled to his Episcopalian corner of heaven, she would become someone else’s problem and an instant asset, all at the same time.

Elizabeth had begun to doze when her brother, David’s doctor walked in.

Mrs. Weismann? he said, softly, as he hesitated and pulled the clipboard from the end of David’s bed.

Dr. Zeiler, Elizabeth said with a start.

I didn’t mean to startle you, he said, looking at her deferentially.

No, you didn’t, she responded, Just resting my eyes.

The doctor seemed young, given his position as Head of Oncology at Granada, but he’d come three years ago from John’s Hopkins and according to Saul, you didn’t get any better than that. He’d also done a year of independent work with the Afghan Kurds through Doctor’s Without Boarders around the same time noted cancer researcher, Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, contracted and then died of brain cancer. Handsome and very smooth, Markus Welby had nothing on this guy, she thought and besides, Saul said he liked the doctor’s surname. Ziler, a derivation that meant hermit’s house in Ashkenazic and Saul’s mother had been from Russia and Ashkenazic. Besides, he certainly didn’t want anyone he was associated with, even a loser like David, being treated by an Indian doctor or worse, a Palestinian.

After all, a person in his position had standards.

How’s our boy? Dr. Ziler asked with a slight smile.

I really can’t tell. He just sleeps all the time.

Well a lot of that is induced, you know. We keep him on a variety of different pain medications, depending on the time of day, need and depth of discomfort. See that tube in his left forearm, the one with the yellow band?

She nodded.

"That’s hydromorphone. It’s an opiate analgesic to suppress David’s perception of pain and calm him, by reducing the number of pain signals sent by the nervous system to his brain."

Elizabeth had no idea what the doctor was telling her but also little interest other than how it might impact her.

Is he in a lot of pain? she asked, feigning concern.

At Stage 4, without the medication, the pain could induce a heart attack or worse.

Elizabeth nodded vacantly,

"As I said the other day, there is no better when you’re Stage 4, but fortunately with today’s advances in medicine and a wide array of sophisticated medications, we can keep him comfortable and pain free."

For how long?

Almost indefinitely, or at least until the cancer leads to critical organ failure. Of course that’s all really up to you.

And my husband.

"Of course, but as I understand it, you are his only living family."

That’s true, she said, momentarily looking pensive, But I never make important decisions without Saul?

And what does he say? the doctor asked, quietly closing his clipboard.

Elizabeth stood and shook her right wrist, straightening her diamond tennis bracelet.

He doesn’t, she said. He doesn’t like to deal with things like this,

I understand, the doctor said, straining a little to sound non-judgmental. Perhaps you’d like to bring him by the next time you come in? I’ll be happy to sit down with the two of you and explain all the options.

I’ll ask him but I doubt it will happen. He hates hospitals and he stays very busy. He owns fifty-seven DYI home improvement stores, nationwide.

I’d had heard that, Ziler said, smiling weakly.

I’ll talk to him.

Great.

No promises, she added.

This must be very difficult on you. Just the drive from Boca Raton to West Palm to visit day after day, can wear a person down. It’s what, 30 miles?

Thirty four point six, she answered with an edge.

That’s taxing, Ziler offered, trying to mask his disapproval. Clearly she agonized over every mile she’d had to drive.

You do for family, right?

Right.

I’m sure David would do the same thing for me, if the situation were reversed, she said, looking at Dr. Ziler as if she was trying to convince them both.

I’m sure he would, Ziler responded reaching out to shake her hand.

She’d gotten used to lying to herself years ago.

TWO

As Elizabeth pulled into her driveway a few hours later, her mind was as blank as it had been when she’d left the hospital. The sound of her tires as they dug shallow furrows into the pea gravel, always struck her as pleasant. True the pea stone was almost 3 times more expensive than standard blue stone but she didn’t like the feel of blue stone under-foot and Florida crushed coral tended to scar the heels of her expensive shoe collection. Besides, her father’s house in Upper Nyack, had pea gravel and as Franklin II used to say, ‘If you have the money why not spend it?’

She’d not only learned that lesson early on but she’d taken it to heart with all the enthusiasm of a starving man at a pasta bar. After looking for almost six months, she and her husband had managed to locate their house for a cool fourteen million; a Mediterranean Revival meets, Mission, meets Spanish Colonial meets Siegfried and Roy, twenty-one thousand square-foot monster, that the realtor happily described, as dramatic. It sat on 1.5 acres and boasted a 125-foot stretch of canal frontage and a 45-foot high architecturally-stunning porte cochre.

Despite the fact that there was just the two of them and that they seldom entertained overnight guests, the seven bedrooms and eleven baths never seemed, at least to Elizabeth, excessive.  Her kitchen – the one she never cooked in – was a masterstroke of culinary excess and the high-end appliances were so over the top, it had taken her cook nearly two weeks to learn how to operate all of them.

As she rounded the corner of the long circular drive, and approached the paved forecourt fronting their 8-car garage, she saw her husband leaning against a huge cathedral palm, dressed in a white polo shirt and crisply creased, dove-grey linen slacks. He was nursing a Tom Collins, and watching their chauffeur wipe down Saul’s Caddy convertible with a damp shammy.

‘I love to feel the wind blowing through my hair,’ he’d say, a joke that never failed to make his wife smile, since he had very little of it to begin with and insisted on having it dyed a shade of what looked like light apricot, a color God had never intended.

Elizabeth had a Cadillac as well, a huge gleaming beauty with pearl-colored upholstery. The baby blue DeVille, was far less aggressive looking and far more ‘lady like.’

Their two Caddy’s were only part of Saul’s collection of 8 vehicles, and the only two that weren’t vintage, save for his much dinged Land Rover. At this time of day, always fearing the damage that the scalding Florida sun could have on paint and expensive leather, the rest of his stable, as he liked to call it, was well-covered in the huge climate-controlled garage.

As she pulled up to him and parked carefully, Elizabeth Weisman couldn’t help but smile broadly.

We have been married for three years Saul, and in all that time I’ve never known you to miss watching your baby being washed.

What can I say? he smiled back, It relaxes me.

"Watching other people work, relaxes you. On the other hand maybe it’s the gin," she said, giving him a half hug and hitting him in the face with the brim of her huge straw hat, causing him to flinch.

I guess it’s like your damn hats. You didn’t have it on when you pulled up cause it won’t fit under the roof and in two minutes you’ll be inside the house, and it will be off again…

"But I like it and it protects my delicate paint job," she grinned.

And it’s a paint job well worth protecting, he added as they turned and headed for the house.

The off-pink mansion occupied some of the most expensive real estate south of the Hamptons and it certainly rivaled almost anything in West Palm Beach. It lacked nothing. Even the pool in the back, was over the top and it boarded the beautiful canal that emptied directly into the nearby Atlantic.

The Boca Rivera, unlike nearby Boca Bay Colony featured more physical property around each home and many of them were still original, not torn down around 1977 and rebuilt as had happened in the Colony. As a result, many residents like the Weisman’s believed their neighborhood retained its classic charm while still featuring newly redecorated interiors. The locals liked to say that if your kitchen didn’t have a pair Sub Zero refrigerators you might as well live in a double wide.

Saul even had a good-sized putting green that he justified, along with his tennis courts, by saying they were for entertaining potential clients, but the green hadn’t seen a visitor since they’d moved in. Instead the local seagulls loved to shit on its artificial Plastigrass, driving Saul up the wall.

Elizabeth threw her hat on a nearby table and flopped into a huge overstuffed sofa, suddenly looking completely exhausted. Saul had seen this many times before and was already handing her a gin.

Long drive? he asked, sitting himself and trying to sound sympathetic.

"Thirty four . . .

Point 4 miles, he added.

Point six, she signed.

And?

And not much. He lies there with his eyes closed and doesn’t say a word. I sit there and stare at him and usually end up catching up on a few magazines, all at least six months out of date

Well, it’s important to keep current on your reading, Saul quipped slyly.

Actually it just serves to aggravate me. I was reading just today, in the Reef Walker that Pam Price is having another pool party.

And how many of those dismal affairs have we been too?

But this one’s in Bermuda. At Bernie Hammet’s estate. Everyone’s meeting at BCT and flying over.

We can go. We’ll just hitch a ride with Robin or Charlie Banks.

"I know but I hate that. I always feel like we’re slumming. We need our own plane so we can do these things without looking like a couple of down-and-out hitchhikers.

You’re probably right.

I just feel like we’re losing touch with everyone.

What does doctor Ziler say?

Elizabeth downed her drink with an audible gulp and handed Saul the glass for a refill and he walked to the bar.

Not much but that David’s gonna die, Saul, they just don’t know when. At this point they keep him medicated but that can’t go on forever.

So?

So, doctor Ziler wants us to both come in so we can figure out what we want to do.

Saul handed her, her refill. Me go to the hospital? That’s not gonna happen.

That’s what I told him.

"He’s your brother, honey and you need to decide what you want to do."

There’s not much to decide. I just wanted your input.

Well now you have it. All I know is that every day we keep pouring money into that hospital it’s costing us a fortune and it’s like throwing it down a rat hole and it’s money that will never be recouped.

I know that Saul, but he’s still my brother, she said, almost surprised as the words left her mouth."

"Some people are destined to do well in this life and some