The Fourth K

So now Francis Ke

It was a nation in shock.

At Oddblood Gray's suggestion, they traveled to New York together. They walked down Fifth Avenue to lead a memorial parade to the great crater made by the atom bomb explosion. They did this to show the nation that there was no longer any danger of radiation, that there was no danger of another hidden bomb. Ke

Oddblood Gray was overcome by a sense of repulsive irony when he heard the deafening cheers of the crowd. Could such a terrible act of destruction be so lucky for one man?

In the smaller cities and rural areas, after the shock and horror had worn off, there was a grim satisfaction. New York had gotten what it deserved.

It was too bad that the bomb had not been bigger and blown up the whole city with its hedonistic rich, its co

There was, after all, a just God in heaven. He had picked the right place for this great punishment. But through the country there was also fear-that their fate, their lives, their very world and their posterity were in hostage to fellowmen who were aberrant. All this Ke

Every Friday night Francis Ke

He used certain catchphrases and little speeches that went straight to the heart.

"We will declare war on the everyday tragedies of human existence," he said. "Not on other nations."

He repeated the famous question used in his first campaign: "How is it that following the end of every great war, when trillions of dollars have been spent and thrown away on death, there is prosperity in the world? What if those trillions had been spent for the betterment of mankind?"

He joked that for the cost of one nuclear submarine the government could finance a thousand homes for the poor. For the cost of a fleet of Stealth bombers it could finance a million homes. "We'll just make believe they got lost on maneuvers," he said. "Hell, it's happened before, and with valuable lives lost besides. We'll just make believe it happened." And when critics pointed out that the defense of the United States would suffer, he said that statistical reports from the Defense Department were classified and that nobody would know about the decrease in defense spending.

He a

For the Congress and members of the Socrates Club, the President of the United States had declared war upon them.

The Socrates Club decided to hold a seminar in California on how to defeat Ke

Constitutional protection was too strong. Except of course that a prick like Klee might get the postal charges raised.

But Salentine really worried about his TV empire. The airwaves, after all, belonged to the government and were doled out by them. The TV stations were only licensed. And it had always been a source of bewilderment to Salentine that the government allowed private enterprise to make so much money out of these airwaves without levying the proper tax. He shuddered at the thought of a strong federal communication commissioner under Ke

Louis Inch, ever the patriot, harbored a somewhat disloyal admiration for President Ke

Everybody knew that Inch got things done much better than any government agency. Of course he knew he would still make a great deal of money through his subsidiary companies in construction, pla

Inch was one of the richest men in America. His father had been the usual hard-nosed big-city landlord, failing to maintain heat in apartment buildings, skimping on services, forcing out tenants in order to build more expensive apartments. Bribery of building inspectors was a skill

Louis Inch learned at his father's knee. Later, armed with a university degree in business management and law, he bribed city councilmen, borough presidents and their staffs, even mayors.

It was Louis Inch who fought the rent control laws in New York, it was

Louis Inch who put together the real estate deals that built skyscrapers alongside Central Park. A park that now had an awning of monstrous steel edifices to house Wall Street brokers, professors at powerhouse universities, famous writers, chic artists, the chefs of expensive restaurants.

Community activists charged that Inch was responsible for the horrible slums on the Upper West Side and in the Bronx, in Harlem and in Coney

Island simply by the amount of reasonable housing he had destroyed in his rebuilding of New York. Also that he was blocking the rehabilitation of the Times Square district, while secretly buying up buildings and blocks.

To this Inch retorted that these troublemakers were people who, if you had a bagful of shit, would demand half of it.

Another Inch strategy was his support of city laws that required landlords to rent housing space to anyone regardless of race, color or creed. He had given speeches supporting those laws because they helped to drive the small landlord out of the market. A landlord who had only the upstairs and/or the basement of his house to rent had to take in drunks, schizophrenics, drug hustlers, rapists, stickup artists.

Eventually these small landlords would become discouraged, sell their houses and move to the suburbs.

But Inch was beyond all that now-he was stepping up in class.

Millionaires were a dime a dozen; Louis Inch was one of the hundred or so billionaires in America. He owned bus systems, he owned hotels and he owned an airline. He owned one of the great hotel casinos in Atlantic City and he owned apartment buildings in Santa Monica, California. It was the Santa Monica properties that gave him the most trouble.

Louis Inch had joined the Socrates Club because he believed that its powerful members could help solve his Santa Monica real estate problems.