The Frankenstein Candidate Read online

  Predictably, the regulators made their press release—since March 2018, the SEC had enjoyed legal immunity from being sued for damages if their allegations were not just untrue but completely unfounded or even malicious. This allowed them to sully reputations with absolute impunity.

  The moral outrage and condemnation that followed was highly predictable. The Mizzis and the Prescotts of this world were still heavily outnumbered by those who followed the herd, were ignorant, or had their snouts in the trough. But Olivia fought on, doing interview after interview on radio, television, and even the Internet. Blake Heynman went ballistic at all the legal forums and called in every favor he had coming his way, every credit he had saved in his entire career. Blake reiterated that witnesses with testimony bought by carrots and threats should be disbarred from testifying. But his pleas fell on deaf ears; the government of the day was hardly likely to repeal a law that made government bullying perfectly legal.

  Sidney Ganon loved the fact that Victor Howell was no longer the most scandalous news there was. John Logan reasserted his Christian faith and appealed to the Christian right.

  Frank Stein kept on campaigning, repeating the ten commandments of governance.

  Some held Frank Stein to be guilty by sheer virtue of his wealth since extraordinary wealth itself was the standard by which guilt could be ascertained. Then there were those who understood that the world of industry and business had its genuine stars, where the combination of hard work, ingenuity, perseverance, and talent produced fortunes, at times aided a bit by pure luck.

  Despite the extraordinary timing, The Net Station, operating as Net TV, raised a large amount of new money from the market to expand its operations under the new chief executive, Kayla Mizzi. Net TV had recruited dozens of established journalists and reporters like Ralph Prescott, and many others were writing clandestinely on Net TV’s newspaper pages; many were writing for free. In many ways, the moniker was wrong; Net TV was at once a newspaper, a magazine, a radio station, and an entertainment cum news television broadcasting service, some of it free-to-air and some of it like pay TV, ending forever the battle of the old paradigms.

  The people were out in droves now. The apathy and the cynicism were gone. It was either this America or that America. Either the same old two-party system where public servants served themselves, their party, and then their particular constituency, in that order, so the only thing left to do in this world of thievery was to make sure you got the benefit of at least some of the thefts since some of your earning was bound to be stolen—or a new America where enterprises were free to compete with the best in the world and capital was to be released from boondoggle projects that met the so-called public interest.

  So the United States of America went to the polling booths on November 3, 2020, with a historic, stunning turnout that approximated 88 percent; even some seventeen-year-olds and Mexican green card holders turned up at the poll booths insisting that they be granted the right to vote and were rightfully indignant when they were turned away.

  51

  Hopeless, Clueless, Nerveless, and Powerless

  Dr. Rohan Joshy lit his pipe. He hadn’t done so since that meeting with Olivia. It was Monday, November 2. He had another celebrity client in his offices, talking the same talk about whether he ever deserved it all—all that success that had come to him.

  This time, Dr. Joshy’s preliminary diagnosis was completely different, however. He believed he was seeing a straightforward nervous breakdown. “Nervous breakdown” was in fact an undefined term in psychiatric literature. Psychologists, however, relied on the same standard used by Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart when he tried to define porn: “I know it when I see it.” Dr. Joshy, though, had an objective test for a nervous breakdown: “The total breakdown of self-confidence that shakes one’s belief in everything that one ever believed in because one begins to severely doubt the efficacy of one’s own mind.”

  Surprisingly, the man in front of him was a large, well-built, highly intelligent, and successful man in his early fifties, hardly a typical candidate for a nervous breakdown. Dr. Joshy knew he had to pinpoint the event that had led him to lose all sense of self-belief. The man must take up the challenge to reinterpret the event with a different paradigm, one that was not contradictory to the nature of the thing that one was trying to make sense of. It is great to know and to know that you know, but the greatest fool was the one who didn’t know and didn’t know that he didn’t know. That realization, that you were the latter, especially in your fifties, was an immense shock to the system. From that viewpoint, though, an intelligent mind could get to the enlightened position, provided it desperately hung on to the belief that it was not all of a sudden ineffectual and incapable. Self-confidence could be restored if self-esteem had not vanished.

  “I resigned today,” a stone-faced Bob Zimmerman said.

  “I know…it’s all over the news.”

  “I am nothing…nothing at all,” Bob said.

  “Why do you say that?” Dr. Joshy asked, knowing full well that the answer was still buried much too deep in the labyrinth of Bob’s mind.

  “I’m a hopeless, clueless, messed up, powerless, nerveless, bewildered, screwed-up dope. Yup, that’s me…”

  “Nice set of adjectives, spontaneously articulated. Interesting, isn’t it, how fast your mind still works?”

  Bob sank further in his comfy chair; he sat staring at the floor, past his knees, which were awkwardly pointing toward the walls as the chair was much too low for his six-foot-four frame. The chair had a height adjustment lever, but Bob was much too zonked out to notice or care.

  Four minutes later, Bob had still not responded to the question. He sat zombie-like, without even a tear in his eye.

  It was going to take a long time, thought Dr. Joshy. He closed the door to his room, which Bob had left open. He pulled out his pad. Still seated, Bob Zimmerman continued to stare at the floor.

  Finally, Bob said something—something about telling a friend. The one person Bob had spoken to before resigning was his childhood friend, Quentin Kirby. Quentin had listened to him carefully. Quentin had a mini-crisis of his own, but he remained in control of his faculties. Quentin, though, could hardly solve Bob’s problems—he had enough of his own.

  Yes, thought Dr. Joshy again, it was going to take a long time. He took a deep breath and gazed outside the window, sighting the overnight snowfall, the first of the season, signaling the start of the harsh DC winter.

  Thousands of miles away, a little six-year-old girl was having her first ski lesson at Cypress Mountain near Vancouver. The snow was soft, thick, and bountiful. No poles, said the instructor, as her proud mother watched. Dressed in expensive ski clothes with her reddish orange hair, rosy cheeks, and a new tan, she looked cute as a button. Her body had instinctively grasped the art of balancing when sliding, effortlessly lowering her already low center of gravity. Every now and then, she turned to stop and beamed at her mother, who smiled back. Then the little girl went up the little hill and did that over again—she was a wind-up toy that was only going to stop its cycle of joy when the spring unwound. Her mother, feeling the chill of the icy wind sing in her unprotected ears, went to order her second cup of hot chocolate just as the little girl was ready to beam yet again.

  The girl snowplowed into the flat. It wasn’t just that the girl didn’t see her mother. She noticed another woman watching her. Now that she was face to face with the stranger and showing off her skills to the stranger instead, she noticed that the woman was sobbing. The girl couldn’t turn away. The woman began to sob uncontrollably. Embarrassed by her uncontrolled outburst, the woman hastily gathered her few belongings in an effort to get away when the girl asked, “Why are you crying?”

  “Oh, I am not crying,” she replied.

  The girl’s mother was back with her steaming hot chocolate.

  “Are you all right?” the mother asked, concerned and noticing the teary stranger.

  The woman s
truggled for words as she wiped her tears.

  “C’mon, have a seat.” The mother motioned toward a bench. “This is Alisha, my baby. I am Maureen.”

  “I’m not a baby, Mom.”

  “No, of course not. Sorry, dear. And you are?”

  “Bianca,” the woman said.

  The woman didn’t know why she continued to sit there. She needed to talk to someone—anyone—but what she had done could not be spoken about. Words would come out of her, but not real words—not the words that described what she had done—and without that, the words that described how she felt were mere words…words without meaning, words without the entire truth and nothing but the truth, words only for the present, and not words for the past or the future.

  Of course, she wasn’t all right—she had wrecked a marriage, an entire political campaign, and deceived a man who had done little wrong to anyone, least of all to her. She remembered she had even begun to like Colin Spain. She had $11 million in her bank account, a Canadian passport with a new fake name, an apartment in Vancouver, and all her previous identities had been erased: Ashley Bennett, Sandra Rogan, Katerina Marshella, Mia Stoner. Now she was Bianca Broughton, thirty-three, and only the age was real. Bianca Broughton, just another name, another identity: no friends to keep, no children to call her own, no man to call her own, no life to lead that she could call her own.

  Multiple identities, Ashley had learned, meant no identity. The price for stealing identities was high—ten million or more in the market—but the real cost, she knew, was that you lost yours, perhaps forever. No, Ashley Bennett—Ashley, the only real name she ever had, the name her parents gave her—could no longer forgive herself or bear to be anywhere near where close-knit families were having a good time, especially children having a fun time. The spectacle of unadulterated joy made her grieve, made it difficult in her deadened mind to discern private space from public space; the unrestrained expression of happiness brought deep sorrow to her. Would she feel at peace and experience calm, let alone jubilation, ever again? She felt Maureen’s hand rest on her shoulder.

  At the very next moment, Ashley Bennett a.k.a. Katrina Marshella, the woman they thought was Bianca, was lost in the bosom of a complete stranger, blubbering uncontrollably, and praying deep inside herself for the pain to stop.

  In a fairy tale town filled with glee, this very attractive young woman was safe and rich, but yearning desperately to be alive and true.

  52

  Courage Is Contagious

  On the morning of Tuesday, November 3, Quentin Kirby woke up with a knot in his stomach. He remembered the September 9 incident of that year, and it had only involved two people. How could he forget it?

  Paul Constantinos had been Quentin’s aide for over ten years. Quentin had by then lost his party’s nomination for the presidency and was still distraught over how they had forced him to endorse John Logan. They had even wanted him to hit the campaign trail again after the nomination, but he had been able to stay away from that, using President Young’s illness as an excuse.

  Paul’s words had spun around in his head for weeks afterward. “I heard they have hired a Mexican to get rid of Frankenstein,” he had said. Then Paul joked that he didn’t mean any specific “they.” Frank Stein’s star had been rising fast in September.

  His friend Bob’s breakdown was also heavily weighing him down. It didn’t help that the economy was an absolute shambles. Power was a terrible thing to have when everything had broken down.

  Quentin got ready for a series of meetings that he had that day. He had made the choice President Young had asked of him. Mary Mendoza was known as Moderate Mary. She was the governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. There was an expectation that the governor of the New York Fed would succeed Bob Zimmerman. But Mary was—well, a choice that could appeal to voters, they said. Mary was moderate and unlikely to tip the boat. Quentin wondered whether Mary could stop the economic storm that was already tipping the boat.

  First on his afternoon schedule was to be in the crowds again and vote for his party. His driver went to the polling booth listed on the Secret Service manifest.

  Quentin waved to the crowds outside; the crowds were not hostile to him. A camera or two followed him into the identification room.

  “Good afternoon.” The old lady smiled as she handed him his voting paper.

  Quentin took some time staring at the form in front of him. He stared at the section that said “President and Vice President.” The names “LOGAN” and “HARDING” were followed by “GANON” and “DEROUGE” and then by “STEIN” and “ALLEN.” This election, there were no name groupings that were irrelevant; the fringe parties were behind Frank Stein.

  Quentin was inside the poll booth for a full fifteen minutes. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and held it to his ear, moving his lips, pretending to have a conversation while he searched his conscience. Anyone worried that he was uncertain of his vote or concerned for his health would have immediately assumed he was on an urgent call. An armed Secret Service agent stood guard just outside.

  Finally, Quentin filled in the oval next to “STEIN” and “ALLEN.” He ignored all the other candidates for various races, including Senate, House of Representatives, and local elections. He then carefully folded the paper and inserted it in a blue box as he came out.

  “Thank you, Mr. Vice President,” he heard the old lady say.

  The bulk of the country was still to vote; voting booths on the West Coast had only just opened. Yet the message he saw on his iPad suggested that Frank Stein was about to deliver a victory speech at the Coors Field in Denver where he had finished his campaign—it didn’t make any sense.

  Quentin made a quick decision; he cancelled the rest of his meetings to get back home to watch the event live. He told his staff he wasn’t feeling too well and needed to be alone. Back at the Admiral’s House, he poured himself a gin and tonic and turned on the television.

  It was stormy and cold in Denver that afternoon. That hadn’t stopped the stadium from being filled to capacity. Olivia Allen and Kayla Mizzi were there, as well as Frank’s entourage of private and Secret Service personnel; Frank must have planned it in advance.

  “It’s been a tough eleven months,” Frank said, “and we have won the first and the most important battle. We have almost implemented the first commandment. I now believe that the fight will continue even if I were to die, if I were to be assassinated. So I no longer need this.”

  Frank removed his jacket, revealing a bulletproof vest. He carefully removed the vest and threw it to Mike Rodrigo, who caught it in midair.

  “I wouldn’t say the result of the election is immaterial; it is material. If we win, I will put the ten commandments into effect immediately. If we lose, it doesn’t matter whether the Republicans win or the Democrats do, for this fight is about authenticity versus game shows, and both the major parties are about game shows.

  “Authenticity has now made its indelible mark on our political landscape. This time, the major parties were faced with an opponent who could, and did, have an honest discourse with American voters because he was not beholden to big business, unions, Wall Street, easy street, or green street. Some people have listened, some have taken notice, and as expected, some have indulged in subterfuge and misrepresentation.

  “Finally, the fourth estate has shown that some of its players, albeit still a minority, have realized their true calling. That helps. But at the end of the day, it is between the people and the elected officials. It is about the fundamental question—are the elected officials put into office to protect every individual’s liberty, or are over five hundred of them in Congress merely to fight on behalf of their own constituencies or groups, cheating other constituencies or groups like in a tribal war? The tribal war that is fought in Congress by warriors dressed in business suits, warriors who are too scared of forthright discourse.

  “This is not a hard struggle if the dialogue is honest and open. Your enemies
can win only by deception. You must continue to deny them that privilege.

  “So help yourself to rise above this mess. Thank you.”

  Frank Stein finished to a round of applause.

  Quentin Kirby had not moved an inch during Frank’s speech. A part of him grasped why Frank had termed it a victory speech. Now filled with revulsion, he made his way to the bathroom to disgorge the contents of his multiple gin and tonics.

  But his loathing was not directed at Frank or, for that matter, at the process and art of emotional manipulation. It was directed at himself. He knew the answer; he had known it all along since September when he first heard Paul Constantinos’ remark.

  He called Phil Enright, the attorney general, and asked to see him.

  “When?” Phil asked. “I’m assuming today or tomorrow is not convenient given we have an election on.”

  “As soon as possible. Tonight is fine,” Quentin said.

  Unbeknownst to Quentin Kirby, Mike Rodrigo had been researching the leads he had from San Francisco since September 11, and he too was headed for the attorney general’s office.

  If Phil Enright had been a guessing man, he would have conjectured that the two were connected somehow. He would have been right.

  53

  Deadlock

  Wednesday, November 4, was an incredible day for America. Results had been pouring in all day, and there was hardly a state in which there was one clear winner. It wasn’t even a two-way contest. In virtually every state, the contest was a three-way struggle, and the fear of mail-in ballots deciding the president played on electoral officials.