The Frankenstein Candidate Read online

  When it was all done, the gravity of the situation began to dawn on the people who had been watching. The most trusted official in government had just done a mea culpa confessional with Internet television as his priest. He had also incriminated hundreds of bureaucrats, scientists, elected officials, bankers, lawyers, economists, and even the president himself. It would have been easy to dismiss it as the rants of a depressed lunatic, which is precisely what happened the next day in much of the mainstream media.

  There was not a single newspaper in the land that did not carry this riveting fusillade as its headline article the next day. There was not one talk radio program that did not run this scandal that evening and for many days afterward. There were the usual Web hits, YouTube videos, and talking in the student corridors at high schools. Colleges and universities saw groups of people ranting and raving on either side of the debate: suddenly, either you were a die-hard environmentalist who assumed Dr. Tedman had been bought by Stein and the oil barons or you were a stunned onlooker who had lost all faith in government scientists, and elected officials. After that day, there were no neutrals. America, for all practical purposes, was from then on in the midst of a nonviolent metaphorical civil war. You were either a carbon alarmist or you were committed to science, honesty, and integrity.

  A metaphorical civil war can only be a transient phase—either the war ends or the metaphor melts down. It was in Chicago a few weeks later that the summer fires truly ignited. The date was June 27, a Saturday. Three carbon lobby groups were orchestrating a four-mile rally down Western Avenue, starting at the CTA Pink Line Station. Halfway down the path stood a large number of unemployed youth. They were trying to organize a hip-hop concert the following week in aid of the jobless. Chicago’s youth unemployment rate had already hit 50 percent.

  The unemployed youth, mostly but not solely African American, gathered around. They blocked the progress of the rally, seemingly inadvertently, as they strolled the width of Western Avenue. Then one of them noticed the placards.

  “Go Green,” said one banner.

  “Govt Scientist bought by Big Oil,” said another signboard.

  “Stop burning the planet.”

  It was the third one that infuriated one of the youths, a hulking man called Jake. Out of a job for three years straight, Jake had just watched the Mardi Tedman nervous breakdown on national television. Jake was Caucasian and a Catholic with a wife and five children. But for his employment status, the wife and children might have stayed with him. He wanted to find work, but more than anything else, he was searching for answers to questions America was asking. The Mardi Tedman confessional was far from the final and only answer to the why of it all, but it was a start. Jake now had one enemy in his sights: the carbon racketeers.

  From under his sweatshirt, Jake pulled out a revolver and fired two shots at the burning planet placard, stopping the front of the rally dead in its tracks.

  “Next time, I will put a hole in your brain,” Jake said to the trembling man, who let his placard fall. Jake meant only to scare him; he was not a killer.

  The rally was three thousand strong. The crowd at the back didn’t hear the shots. They marched on, creating a stampede as the front line tried to retreat. The swell increased from the back. The line fell forward. Against their will, the front line inadvertently smashed into Jake and his friends. A melee broke out. Jake and his friends were heavily outnumbered, but they shoved and pushed on regardless, chanting, “Down with the carbon monsters.” One of the Chicago youths was slapped across the face.

  It was then that Big Jake lost it. He fired into the crowd. His friends pulled out their guns and began to fire as well. The screams pierced the middle of the rally, which crumbled. Surprisingly, two of the neo-greenies had come armed as well and they drew their weapons. Both were shot dead in an instant.

  By the time Chicago’s youth were done, there were sixteen dead, nine more dying, and another nineteen injured, some critically. The shooters were gone before the cops and the ambulances arrived.

  Frank Stein went on the Net Station immediately to deliver a national address, urging calm and civil debate against the carbonistas and strongly condemning the violence in Chicago. But the tainting in the media had already begun.

  “Extreme right winger kindles hate-filled riots,” bellowed the Chicago Herald.

  Radio Illinois 101 ran a three-hour show, only letting in people who believed that the big corporations were out to destroy “their beautiful planet.”

  Sidney Ganon seized the moment to garner the green vote, announcing that he would introduce a bill to increase carbon taxes by $24 per metric ton on top of the existing $20 per ton; forty-four, he said, was a “lucky number.” John Logan promised a $300 billion allocation toward renewable energy.

  Frank Stein released his eighth and ninth commandments the next day: the commandment of justice and the commandment of dignity. A preoccupied Olivia was on a mission, her study relentless; she followed his every word.

  The Commandment of Dignity required the end of government control in all adult contractual relationships, from marijuana to porn, from prostitution to risky investing. It necessarily meant that euthanasia and suicide needed to be decriminalized. That sat well with Olivia.

  Frank illustrated the Commandment of Justice with a historical account. During the attempted assassination of President Reagan, Frank said, at least three other lives were permanently ruined—White House press secretary James Brady, paralyzed on one side, a Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy shot in the abdomen, and a DC police officer Tom Delahanty left with permanent nerve damage. The assassin, John Hinckley Junior, was able to go on parole. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, American law had allowed him to spend a third of his life as a free man because it was determined that the person was subsequently sane and not a danger to himself or others. The insanity plea became a game to be played.

  Frank Stein was happy to overturn the insanity defense for good, making retribution a necessary first outcome of a criminal act, thereby assuming that a minimal level of sanity always prevailed within the criminal. That didn’t sit well with Olivia.

  As the media mayhem on Frank took the focus off her, Olivia went back to DC. On her first day back, she got a surprise visit from Claire Derouge.

  “I came as soon as I heard you were back at the Hill,” Claire said. “Sorry I didn’t call before…I just had to see you.”

  Back at her Senate office, Olivia let her in and closed the door.

  Claire was astonished at how calm Olivia looked. There was no perceptible sign of having lost it—a matter that Claire had come to completely believe from reading about it in the media.

  “You could have been president,” was all she could say.

  “Yes, I know,” Olivia said.

  “Olivia, I have always looked up to you…you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “So please…please put me out of my misery, tell me…why did you throw it away?”

  “I was ready to run…but the platform had to change. When everything you think is true turns out to be not—”

  “All this because you think the carbon alarm was exaggerated?”

  “No, much more than that. It was the deliberate falsification that alienated me. There are people who will even kill for power. I just can’t work alongside them. Our cherished ideals of state regulation and intervention may also be wrong, Claire. Maybe the Federal Reserve really doesn’t know better than the market. Perhaps Stein is right—forced compassion does not work. We have been compassionate with other people’s production, Claire, and then some. We have thrown money at projects that could not be funded so we borrowed…and then borrowed some more…and when that was too high to pay interest on, we borrowed yet again. For twelve years straight, the economy never got kick-started. How long can we keep ignoring the evidence?”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I will campaign for the truth.”

  “Can I ask you something
?”

  “Sure,” Olivia said.

  “Sid Ganon has asked me to be his deputy.”

  “That’s exciting for you.”

  “Should I take it?”

  “What do you really believe?”

  “I wonder about that sometimes…what do we all really believe?”

  “I know where I stand, Claire. At least now I do. The question is, do you?”

  “It is better to work from the inside than the outside…that used to be your advice.”

  “True. And if you do make strange findings, then?”

  “Then we will talk again, Olivia, won’t we?”

  Olivia appeared to say yes with a nod. When Claire Derouge left, Olivia was not amazed that she had been chosen. She was inexperienced but poised. She appealed to the young, and she had a fresh, untainted media profile. They needed their version of Jackie Harding, whom Logan had picked as his VP.

  Olivia knew she had to get herself a new cell phone SIM card. Colin Spain had left a fourth voice mail message for her, this one angrier than the rest.

  “Answer me, Olivia, answer me. I did everything for you. It was all there. You could have waited ten years and still been shuffling papers on the Hill. I brought you into the inner sanctum. And you…you had the gall to throw it all away. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Thankfully, her voice mail ran out of memory. She pressed three to delete and moved on to the next one.

  “And to finish that point—” it was Colin again. She pressed three and moved on to the next one. Neither Victor nor Larry had dared contact her, but she wasn’t finished with Victor, far from it.

  Message seven was the one from Phil Enright. This is the one she badly wanted to hear.

  “We have spoken to the detective,” he said. “It will take time to determine what exactly transpired. I have some of my best men on it. That’s all I can tell you. It’s our case now—we will tell you when we are ready.”

  Olivia smiled. She was feeling better every day since her momentous decision.

  There were several voicemails from journalists, radio hosts, magazine editors, and television networks, some offering up to $600,000 for a single, one-hour interview. Her future plans were still fuzzy. The money would be handy for whatever she finally decided. But she had promised her friend Kayla that Olivia Allen’s face-to-face with the public would come first on the Kayla Mizzi hour, and it would come for free. Whether it was Ambition or Compassion or Clarity or Rage that was driving her at the moment, Olivia was one who always kept her promises.

  “Did she have boys with her?” Olivia asked. She was back at home for a weekend and a bit, relaxing with her daughters, watching Gary do household chores.

  Since she nailed Victor Howell, there had not been one decent conversation between them.

  “What? Who are we talking about?”

  Olivia responded with a stern gaze.

  “Yes, she used to drop off her nephews at school…why?” Gary seemed relieved that at least the silent treatment seemed to be over.

  “Georgia probably noticed how fond of them you were…the boys.”

  “I am truly sorry. Anyway, it’s over now.”

  “What was her name?”

  “It’s over, Olivia, it really is.”

  “What…was her name?”

  “Francesca. Francesca Oliviera.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “Why are we going back into this? It’s over.”

  He dropped the garden rake he had been holding. He sat next to her, held her hand.

  “I love you, Olivia. And I love Georgia and Natasha. And I never want to leave.”

  She felt him squeeze her hands. Her rage had subsided but nothing had taken its place. She felt empty. She wanted to trust him again but her mind was not a machine at her command. She got up, and switched on the television instead.

  A young boy was on camera, recounting a sexual abuse story. Then there was another. And one more. Pedophiles were going to get freed by the dozens, the narrator said. She recognized it as an advertisement placed by the Republican Party. “Folks, this…is what you would get with Stein’s commandment of dignity,” the narrator said.

  “Just a total misrepresentation of his position,” Gary said.

  “I know. The dirtiest campaign in history is about to enter its climax,” she exclaimed as she switched off the idiot box.

  43

  The Grey Pinstripe Suits

  It was Sunday night, August 30. Raul Fernandez, a trucker, was by himself in a dive bar in Temple City, Los Angeles County. It was nearly midnight, and the bar was required to close at one a.m. The two men in dark grey pinstripe suits who came in through the front door looked badly out of place, like financial or lawyer types whose car had broken down on the way to somewhere and they had stayed the night. The bartender noticed the contrast but kept going about his business—he had lost a waitress that day, he had tables to clean, cash to count, and books to balance. People came, people went, and as long as they behaved, it was none of his business.

  The men ordered a beer each—Golden Eagle, the stuff that was coming out of India these days, but with that name, everyone assumed it was quintessentially American. It sold well. Breweries in America were broke. His malt whisky came from Puerto Rico, the scotch from Cuba, and the beer from India. People would not drink it if it came from China, otherwise they did not care—the cheaper the better.

  The suits were with Raul for over an hour. The bartender let them stay beyond one a.m.—hell, business wasn’t good, and not all the tables were taken anyway. The suits left when the bartender started packing. Not Raul, though. He looked happy. Raul used to work at odd jobs to clear his gambling debts. Some people looked the other way when he didn’t produce immigration papers. But Raul had forged papers as well—papers that made him look like he was a legal immigrant from Cuba, but he didn’t like to use some identity that he didn’t know. “The guy could’ve been badder than me,” Raul used to say in his fumbling English.

  Finally, Raul got up, a smile on his face. “I am gonna be rich one day,” he said just as he was leaving. The bartender didn’t want to know. It was none of his business. A week later he heard that Raul had found a new job in San Francisco.

  Over twenty-six hundred miles away, just a few hours later, it was Monday morning in Virginia, and Francesca Oliviera couldn’t believe what the two men in dark grey pinstripe suits were telling her. In the time that she hadn’t seen Gary, she had lost interest in her design course, gone back to waitressing, and hadn’t even been to an audition for an acting role, let alone landed a job. Money was getting to be a problem. Landing men was easy, like a hobby. Landing money was another matter. Little did she know that her hobby could fetch her so much money. No, she was not being asked to become an escort or do porn films. She had considered both those options many times, but there was always the issue of people finding out and ruining her chance of a glorious acting career. What they were asking was easy. All she had to do, the men in the suits said, was confess to having an affair with her teacher at the architectural school to this magazine. She didn’t know that her tutor was a celebrity, but she did know that his wife was. She had pictures of him on her cell phone, a record of the calls he made—all that sort of thing. Still, he could lose his job, she thought, it didn’t seem fair. But they were offering her three hundred thousand, and she could hardly scoff at it. It was strange, at first she was threatened, perhaps to keep her away from Gary, and now the suits were eager to make her affair with him public. But then again, it was not so strange—she had seen his wife explode out of her political party. Francesca wasn’t dumb—she could join the dots. It made sense.

  “Could you make it half a million?” she said—that way she could ease her guilt by sending Gary two hundred thousand if he lost his job. She still loved him. That sounded even better for the two suits. They smiled synchronously, as if they were one and the same, dictated by the same commands—theirs was a life of doing the biddin
g, like all the other suits. The suits left her with an advance of fifty thousand in cash and warned her to do exactly as advised.

  Not far from Francesca and her meeting, an overwrought Bob Zimmerman was seated with seven other men in pinstripe suits around a large mahogany oval table in a dimly lit conference room. These suits looked older and more powerful than the two men who had visited Raul or the ones who were meeting with Francesca. They were the presidents of the ten largest financial institutions in the United States excluding IFG, Sixth National, and East Coast Atlantic.

  The atmosphere was grim. Two younger men came in through the door, one with a bundle of documents that he handed over to Bob and the other with a pen and pad—it looked like he was the suit who would take notes.

  “When did that happen?” one of the older suits asked.

  “Started this morning,” piped in another.

  “All orders of crude oil, natural gas, and international commodities are to be denominated in the exchange basket beginning today. The U.S. dollar is 20 percent of the basket, in line with the size of the U.S. economy compared to the world economy,” one of the young assistants said.

  “Vice President Kirby needs an urgent report on the repercussions. Our figures indicate that the third quarter could also be negative…that’s four in a row,” Bob said.

  “Kirby needs a report? What about President Young?” a banker exclaimed.

  “He is very sick…they are holding it back from the media, could create a panic.”

  “Any more than we already have?”

  “Gentlemen, with the exception of Sixth, IFG, and East Coast…and we all know why they are not here, what is our collective capacity to shore up the greenback?” It wasn’t clear to the men why Bob Zimmerman was asking this of the banks—the Fed had to do this, they all thought.