The Frankenstein Candidate Read online

  There was not a single channel—not even CNN, CBS, NBN, or ABC—that would call the election; there wasn’t even one single media outlet that was prepared to call a single state until late Thursday afternoon, when Fox News announced that Frank Stein had won Colorado. It was a historic moment. No independent had ever won a state in the last one hundred years, they said.

  On Friday morning, the state of California announced its bankruptcy and reversed its stance by afternoon. If you blinked, you missed it, especially on a day like this. Mary Mendoza, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, had quickly put together a rescue package for California, and as a pre-emptive measure, also put together bail-out packages in the hundreds of billions for six other states whose financial status was dire: Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Utah, and Arizona. The aggregate had come to $3 trillion. No one even bothered to ask the Fed where the money came from—even schoolchildren knew that ingenious book entries had made the printing press redundant.

  By late evening on Friday, the election results had a shape to it—Ganon had won all the delegates of Maine, and Logan had won Nebraska. The rest of the states were all on a winner-take-all basis, and as the results rolled in, fears of a tie remained real.

  Counting and recounting went on all night. It was Saturday morning when a picture finally emerged. Astonishingly, Frank Stein had won eight states and all their delegates: Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and California. “Christ Almighty, Stein has 148 delegates,” the headlines bellowed. Unless someone won 270 of the remaining 390 votes, it was going to be the first deadlock in almost two hundred years; one had to go back to 1824 to find another deadlocked presidential election in the United States.

  Neither won even 200. Ganon carried all the usual Democratic states except California and Wisconsin and none of the purple, giving him 192 electoral votes. Logan had all the usual Republican states except Wisconsin; of the purple states, he had won Arkansas and West Virginia, giving him 198 votes.

  In such a situation, the House of Representatives was required to decide the winner. But that was hardly the end of it. The House had a Republican majority, but the lame duck Congress was going to be replaced by new representatives in January 2021, and the incoming majority was Democrat. Both sides had their legal scholars argue their case, but it was clear to the Democrats that the sitting house was in no mood to concede. They had six more electoral votes, and it was all that mattered to them. But the popular vote was awfully close and marginally the other way: Ganon had 34.8 percent, Logan 34.5 percent, while Stein had a healthy 30.7 percent.

  Of course, each side argued that their man had won the popular vote.

  The fighting continued and boiled over into the Christmas break. Meanwhile, another $3 trillion of debt got repaid, and the money quickly circulated within the United States.

  Late on Friday, Olivia found out that Victor Howell’s lawyers had tried to get the truck driver discredited at the trial and succeeded in securing a continuance. Victor’s trial was rescheduled for March 2021.

  The indictment of Victor had already suffocated Sidney Ganon’s chances of a clear victory. Ganon’s camp had been circulating rumors that the Republicans were behind Casey’s death, alternately blaming the Stein camp, in the usual hope that the two would blend in the public’s mind as extremists.

  Blake Heynman was still seething that the white collar Gestapo had killed the prospect of a Stein victory. He wanted the earliest possible date for a pretrial hearing with regard to the Stein case. He got one, but not before the United States decided who the forty-sixth president was going to be.

  54

  The Forty-sixth President

  The year 2021 had dawned, and finally, the suits had done it. William Young was sick, and Quentin Kirby unelectable because he was part of the status quo. Colin Spain had become popular, but at the height of his popularity, he had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, and Katrina Marshella, a.k.a. Ashley Bennett, had enjoyed a well-earned vacation in the Bahamas en route to a cozy lifestyle in British Columbia with millions in her bank account. The most serious danger was Olivia Allen. She came out of nowhere. Yet she spectacularly jumped out of the race of her own volition. The monster was easy to smear; he gave them the words himself. Sidney Ganon was undone by Olivia when she led a very public charge to expose the dirty tactics of their bishops and their knights.

  Yet they had not counted on the sheer size of the economic debacle that propelled the monster into more than just a wedge—he had ripped through the myth that independents always peter away; they had misjudged Stein. He had the one thing the other independents had been so lacking since Ross Perot in 1992: hundreds of millions to pour into a presidential campaign.

  Nevertheless, they were here now, and all that was needed was one decision—they needed to get it done before January 20.

  Strange, the monster was still shouting at the top of his lungs—some people never know when it is over—he was shouting that Imran Sharif represented the best opportunity to put a serious dent in militant Islamism and terrorism. Israel was itching to accept Sharif’s invitation to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities—never before had they been given so lofty an invitation. But at the State Department, no one was listening because they were all too busy bickering with the other party.

  Amidst all the fury and the acrimonious agitation, the House of Representatives met on Friday January 15. They were required to select one of the top three candidates for president if none of the top three had an absolute majority. The Constitution otherwise gave them no guidance. Plurality was the next best thing to a majority, and the Republican majority House passed a resolution to appoint John Logan as the forty-sixth president of the Unites States of America despite objections and dissents from all the Democratic members of the House.

  The fuming Democrats were so bent out of shape that they wasted no time in convening a Senate meeting the following Monday, two days before the president’s inauguration and the swearing in of the new House members. The Senate was required to select a vice president from the top two candidates in cases where no candidate had an absolute majority. In a move that stunned the whole world, they calmly proceeded to appoint Democrat Claire Derouge as the forty-ninth vice president of the Unites States of America.

  If John “get tough on China and immigration” Logan missed a heartbeat, the party that thrust the “nationalize everything” man into the spotlight had their woman ready to take over the presidency.

  Before they knew who would be president, Logan and Ganon had worked on a deal, ideally to be announced before a president was sworn in, but they had missed the deadline. Nevertheless, Logan honored his end of the bargain. It was sure to go flying through Congress. Their deal was to combine their pet projects. Logan had been working on the idea of a national high-speed broadband network. Ganon wanted to build a national high-speed rail network. Then one of their staffers got a very bright idea—why not lay high-speed fiber optic cable in the rail corridor and then run segments of the cable right into every home in America?

  “Imagine,” Sidney Ganon said, reciting Barack Obama’s words, “boarding a train to the center of the city. Imagine no racing to an airport and across the terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. Imagine whizzing through towns at speeds of two hundred miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation and ending a block away from your destination. Imagine what a project that would be, to rebuild America.”

  Some economists called Ganon’s plan the perfect stimulus; they lauded the creation of “unoutsourceable” jobs. The Republicans had always been wary of a wedding with yesterday’s technology. They had been pushing for a national high-speed Internet network, laying expensive high-speed fiber optic cable over thousands of miles, connecting all the major American cities and towns. These construction and maintenance jobs too would be unoutsourceable and would reduce emissions, making life easier for business and reducing cong
estion.

  Logan basked in the glory reserved for politicians announcing their first major project. Congress passed it swiftly—after all, it was going to benefit every constituency; the high-speed cable was even going to reach Alaska somehow. The bigger the bill, the happier they were. The bill was assessed at $1.5 trillion for the combined projects; the cost of importing equipment and high-speed cable had shot up, and every little town and hamlet wanted to be in the network. Even so, the party faithful slapped each other on the back for saving $500 billion in construction, labor, and administration since each party otherwise wanted a trillion dollar project of its own as a stimulus.

  Frank Stein called it financial insanity. Ralph Prescott wrote a scathing article on the Net Web, pointing out the bleeding obvious. “High-speed Internet has made business travel unnecessary by allowing perfect video conferences and super-speed downloads–hardly a great foundation for a high-speed physical travel network. But bipartisanship is the rage in Washington, and with the election having gone this close between the two major parties, compromise was mandatory.”

  On a sultry, windy day a week after her appointment, the new vice-president Claire Derouge came to seek Olivia Allen’s advice in an off-the-record visit. Claire was the only one in her party who did not consider Olivia a traitor, but she kept her opinions quiet on that issue. Olivia had been a mentor to Claire for most of her career.

  “I’m afraid the idea of a president and vice-president belonging to two different political parties is so unprecedented that no one really knows how this will work,” Olivia said.

  “I think the Senate has just forced John Logan to go to great lengths to keep the vice president completely in the dark about everything.”

  “True. But as they say, you are only a heartbeat away.”

  55

  Trial by Jury

  An impressive curvilinear glass-paneled building housed the SEC’s headquarters near Union Station in Washington DC. Olivia Allen was not listed on the visitor register, but she managed to push her way in, a step behind Frank Stein and Blake Heynman.

  The clerk at the Enforcement Division was polite and offered them coffee and chocolate biscuits as they were led into an unusually large conference room that could comfortably sit at least thirty. Conrad Drummer came into the conference room accompanied by Janet, Jean and three other men.

  A minute into the proceedings Conrad cut to the chase. “A fifty million dollar fine, quite modest for a man of your means, Mr. Stein, and disbarment for five years from public office, ten from corporate boards—”

  “No,” Blake said.

  Conrad Drummer squinted—he was not used to being interrupted so often. “Perhaps you may wish to confer with your client, Mr. Heynman, after you give us a full hearing.”

  “You heard him. I don’t do deals with extortionists. Good day, Mr. Drummer.” Frank stood up and walked out of the room so quickly that Blake was still collecting his things by the time Frank was out the door. Olivia watched the two women, mouths agape but a glint of grudging admiration in their eyes. A meeting she had penciled in two hours for, was over in two minutes. She heard Drummer trail off as she walked out with Blake.

  “You are looking at a possible fifteen years for this felony.”

  “Eli. Eli Mayer. He is the bulldog litigator you want,” a breathless Blake caught up with Frank near the elevators.

  “Hire him,” Frank said as the elevator doors opened, “and we want a jury trial no matter what.”

  Olivia arrived early at the District Court of DC. In semi-formal purple slacks, a fashionable woolen scarf and a matching purple jacket, she looked like a regular civilian, even though she was still a senator. She felt like a free soul, unperturbed by the cameras that had flashed at her before she walked in, but the steady drip of nervous energy accumulated as Frank’s trial wore on. Kayla sat next to her for much of the trial.

  When Roscoe Maynard took the stand, Olivia squeezed Kayla’s hand and noted the time.

  “Was this the evening of November 18, 2017?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Yes. It was a Saturday. More late afternoon than evening though,” Roscoe said.

  “How is it that you are so sure of the date?”

  “We had a conference of investment managers in Houston that year. It’s an annual event over the weekend before Thanksgiving. I don’t always go. But Frank called. He wanted to talk about banks, bank shares in particular.”

  Roscoe’s face displayed no emotion. Olivia’s gaze shifted to Frank, who was leaning into his attorney, Eli Mayer. Frank appeared distraught. Roscoe must be lying. She felt her hands—they were clammy. They have a done a deal with Roscoe, the bastards—it’s a trap.

  When Olivia looked at the wall clock again, Roscoe was about to finish. His testimony had been over an hour long, but time had stood still for Olivia. Frank’s words were ringing in her ears—“We are taking on a colossal monstrosity, a Frankenstein that has long since escaped its creators’ design.”

  By the time it was Frank’s turn, seven witnesses had laid the foundation for the most likely theory that could fit the evidence—Frank had orchestrated a concerted attack on big banks, with the express purpose of bringing them down into the abyss of insolvency.

  Seven against one, the one being a billionaire in times where people were struggling to eat. Eli Mayer, she knew, would talk about Frank’s philanthropic practice—it was an unusual one. Sometimes he would roam the streets himself; there were times his hired help would bring him candidates. He would interview them. Twelve to eighteen year-olds who had dropped out of a regimented school system, some of them orphans, wandering the streets. He would house them in groups in the better part of town, pay for school and college, and take them under his wing for a month at a time. Without exception, these boys and girls were gifted in some way—high intelligence, or musical ability, or a creative bent. He had instilled in them a relentless pursuit of excellence. There had been twenty-seven kids in all. If the investigative sleuth in Ralph Prescott had not uncovered this little secret, the world would have never known—even Kayla didn’t know. Olivia’s admiration for this didactic, uncompromising, emotionally reserved billionaire had continued to grow—now she knew why Kayla fell in love with him.

  Still, it didn’t look good. Olivia had noticed the worried look on Eli Mayer’s face when Frank wouldn’t let the kids testify for him—“We have to win on the merits of our case, not by apologetic appeasement,” he had said to Kayla and Olivia, as if the judgment day was not for Frank Stein, but for America. Who was on trial here?

  Olivia couldn’t bear to sit there any more. She left, vaguely aware that Kayla had already left the warmth of the court, if you could call it that, for the wet weather outside. Her hands involuntarily sunk into the pockets of her jackets as the harsh DC wind bit into her face, Frank’s words still in her head “You could get unjustly defamed, go to prison, or lose a loved one.”

  Frank Stein did not know who Jenny Gibbs was, but she was about to determine his future.

  Jenny Gibbs was a good Catholic girl from a lower middle class family that stayed out of trouble. She went to public school and married her school sweetheart. All she ever wanted was to lead a simple life.

  Jenny was surprised to get a jury service notice. It was the first time in her life that she got one.

  “Mostly they relate to cases of rape and domestic battery. Mostly they get settled, so you shouldn’t have to waste time. If you say you are unavailable, they will send you another notice in a few months time,” her husband said; he had twice served as a juror in Minnesota.

  But Jenny was rather excited. She didn’t try to get out of it. She didn’t want to. On Wednesday February 3, 2021, she too, had arrived early at the District Court for the District of Columbia, at a few minutes before eight-thirty, and she wasn’t even needed till nine. Only after she went in did it dawn on her that the case involved charges against Frank Stein. She sat there with ninety-seven other people, most of whom were reject
ed. She became one of the chosen twelve.

  Two and a half weeks later, Jenny was exhausted. The trial had run its course over ten days, and the jury had been huddled up in their deliberations for three consecutive days.

  It was, as one might expect, a motley crew. A middle-aged farmer formerly from Iowa, a retired and cynical doctor, a pretty receptionist who had told Jenny that she made ends meet working as a prostitute, and a self-described beach bum who wanted to be a professional surfer, were among the most vociferous. None were required to say who they had voted for in the election, but tensions ran high.

  “Let’s take a vote now,” the farmer said. Seven thought Frank was guilty, and four had not made up their minds. Jenny was the only voice of dissent. Simple Jenny had a feeling like she had never before experienced in her life. She had power, power which she never imagined she would have. She thanked the Lord and swore to not misuse it.

  “She just wants to be a hero afterward,” the surfer said. America still allowed its jurors to talk after the trial was over. It was not uncommon for jurors to give interviews and spell out the jury deliberations after it was all over, sometimes for money.

  “All we have is their word against his,” Jenny said.

  “Seven against one,” the cynical doctor said, “and I don’t mean the ratio here. Would you rather believe seven people or one?”

  “Seven people who were baited with plea bargains and soft sentences,” Jenny added, remembering Eli’s grand closing argument. “And we have to let a thousand people go free rather than send one innocent man to prison.”