The Frankenstein Candidate (24 page)

Frank Stein was forever on the move. His campaign offices looked like some folks had just moved in and were still living out of boxes. It had taken months, but Quentin Kirby’s call was finally answered. He wasted no time in visiting Stein’s makeshift offices with Kevin Heller, his campaign manager.

“Finally, we meet,” Quentin Kirby said, extending his hand, anticipating a handshake. Instead, Frank hugged him. Kevin Heller was startled.

Frank offered them coffee, and wooden boxes to sit on. Quentin reminisced about their times together in high school, at the Cypress Academy. Kevin Heller had briefed him before, “
best if you remind him of your good times together at first
” he had said and Quentin had agreed.

“You and I, we are close,” Quentin said.

“We were close.”

“I mean philosophically.”

“So do I,” Frank said.

“We both understand the problem. You are closer to us than you are to them.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Look, I know you want to bust Wall Street. And bring the army home, crucify regulation to free up business, ensure equal rights for gays. But Rome was not built in a day.”

“Where is this going?”

“If you go all the way to November, I may not win. You divert more of my votes than Spain’s. But you are unelectable, even you know that. I can adjust my game plan—gay marriage, regulate the Street, exit Syria…that sort of thing.”

“So you want my money?”

“No. Even if you simply withdraw, you could be earmarked for the Treasury Secretary post. Or whatever else on your want pile that—”

“Drop it.”

“Isn’t that why we are meeting? To see if we can come to an arrangement?”

“No. It’s because I remembered I owed you one,” Frank said.

Quentin looked at Frank quizzically.

“We were sixteen or thereabouts. A thug slapped me hard—”

“So I still had an IOU all these years?”

“You just cashed it in, Quentin. I agreed to meet you. But no deal, the two-party hegemony has to go if America is to survive.”

Quentin Kirby looked at Frank with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

“You haven’t changed one bit since high school,” Quentin said, as Kevin and him dusted the sawdust off their expensive business suits. Quentin opened the door himself, and Frank saw a Secret Service limousine and entourage awaiting the vice president.

“America must now learn respect,” Stein said on his now-weekly appearance on the Net Station. “Americans must learn to respect science and the scientific method, industrial progress, and modern methods of production. Big businesses were once small businesses. Yet politicians of all creeds romanticize small business and demonize big business.

“Bureaucrats, politicians, and civil servants never actually produce anything that is of primary value to mankind. They either directly hinder the producers or grab and transfer their produce to whoever they deem needy.

“So we need to ask ourselves why bigness in business, but not in government, has become so abhorrent. They say that with bigness comes power. This is true.

“Big businesses can fund political campaigns, and they do. They use lobbyists. Many of them do get favors, so they and the politicians they support love crony capitalism.

“Cronies influence their bureaucrat friends to drive policy to benefit themselves, and then the right sound bites come from both parties that make them sound altruistic.

“There, I said it. Now you can go and hate Wall Street for being the government’s crony and still be a real champion of free enterprise.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, politicians had ceased to admire any corporation openly; it had proven to be the kiss of death. Outside of the young Kayla Mizzi, not a single media organization picked up on the essential difference between the deserving powerful and those who were powerful because they were connected. The orgy of criticism that followed drowned out the Super Tuesday final results until an even more chilling incident transpired.

Colin Spain won all the delegates of New York under the winner-take-all system. He had won. Watching the results flow in late into the night, surrounded by his team in New York, he should have been thrilled.

However, so convinced of his own success he had always been that he was in fact mightily relieved to have finally beaten Casey Rogers in an unusually close race.

He was front and center on the news. Of the four champagne glasses on the table, one was not taken—Katrina had excused herself.

He was happy to receive congratulatory calls well into the night.

Then he got a call from Victor Howell.

“Thank you, Victor, thank you,” he said.

“I haven’t called to congratulate you. Is Larry there?”

“Yes.”

“Put me on speaker,” Victor said.

Colin, Olivia and Larry gathered around the phone.

“Shut down all communications with the press right now. Bunker down—”

“What?” Even Larry had no idea what Victor was talking about.

“Check this video out. I have just sent you the links…”

“What’s in it?” Colin asked.

“Katrina has gone public with your affair. There’s even intimate footage of—”

Olivia and Larry were stunned to see Colin’s face turn ashen.

“Is this a joke? Let’s try Katrina.” Larry reached for his phone.

Colin was not speaking.

“Please call me when you have all this figured out. I am off to visit Casey in the hospital,” Victor said.

“I thought he got better,” Olivia said.

“He did at first. Now we don’t know. Seems like the diner bacteria was a decoy. He may have been poisoned with a thallium sulfate derivative days before that. The symptoms can be subdued for days afterward. It’s likely to be fatal.”

“What?” In his fifty years of campaigning, Larry had seen nothing like it.

“They have arrested a guy named Randy Skeritt. He belongs to a white supremacist group. That’s all we know at this stage. That will be out in the press soon.”

“Katrina? How could it be? I had her checked.” It was as though the news about Casey was secondary for Larry.

“It’s not a hoax. Katrina is not her real name. She was Ashley Bennett before she changed her name. A con artist. She was set up by Quentin’s mob, we think.”

Colin had his head buried in his hands; the Metcafe video was running on his laptop, confirming his worst fears.

“Jesus, we have been had,” Larry said, half watching the video while trying Katrina’s phone. He got her answering machine.

“Bitch, we will get you!” was the uncharacteristic message he left.

The television was running. A Wall Street expert came on the news, blasting Frank Stein for his unpatriotic and un-American stance. A man representing the neo-green movement called Stein the scourge of corporate dirt-bags. Finally, there was one thing that Wall Street and Green Street agreed upon: Frank Stein was the biggest evil there was.

Olivia switched the TV off to take a call from Gary.
It is going to be one hell of a vilifying, dirty, and dangerous campaign from which no one will escape unscathed
, she thought to herself.

“Hi honey…I guess you heard?” she said.

“Yeah, yeah…your guy won. Congratulations.”

“So you didn’t hear the bad news?”

“Listen, I almost got killed on the road the other day.”

“What? How? Where were you going?”

“I can’t say more now…”

“Gary! Were you hurt? Were the girls with you in the car?”

“No and no. You need to get back here. We need to talk.”

“Oh, Gary, I’m so sorry. I am so glad you are okay. I…we have a major crisis here…”

“What about here at home? It’s over, isn’t it?”

“What…what is over? What are you talking about?”

“Us, Olivia. Us…we…it’s over.”

“No no no…not now, not now, Gary.”

Olivia was shaking, choking off the tears as she realized Gary had already hung up. Larry was watching her, dumbfounded. An enraged Colin left the room.

Olivia went straight to LaGuardia and caught the next flight to DC.

Everything was a blur. All she could think of was Gary. Her airhostess on the business class recognized her, as did many of the passengers. Some came by to offer her condolences; they had obviously heard of Colin’s political implosion—she did look shell-shocked, but that was due to Gary’s bombshell.

Her phone rang while the plane was still at the terminal.

“You can take that,” the airhostess said.

Olivia saw the name come up. It was Victor Howell. She switched her phone off.

She leaned back as far as the upright chair would let her, put on a large pair of sunglasses, and closed her eyes.

The sunglasses hid her tears. Olivia was in a different world—a world of peace and excitement that existed fifteen years ago—only now it seemed like a prior life.

She was climbing what seemed like innumerable steps up a mountain so high that the higher you climbed, the farther the top seemed to be. There was a drizzle. She had no rain jacket. She didn’t mind. She was at peace with the world. She was tiring, but that didn’t bother her. The climb was steep and dangerous. She didn’t mind that either. Everything was as it should be.

She slipped. For one sudden moment, it looked like her young life would end right there. The next moment, she was being held, one foot precipitously on a rock, the other dangling in the air two thousand feet above the ground. She felt safe. Gary had his arms around her. He smiled. He had never been more than two feet behind her.

Then suddenly, she was in Aspen, Colorado. She was enjoying it. The cross-country traverse was vast and largely sparse. She took a detour. She didn’t know why. It just seemed so exciting. She sped past a large conifer at twenty miles an hour. The snow cover was thicker and softer than it had ever been. She felt safe, even at this speed. She carved a large G as the slope evened. She went down again. The bumps didn’t bother her; she was good at this. She was on a mogul. She did a blue line and then a trough line. She had never done a zipper line outside a mogul class. It was on the edge of crazy but joyous. The cool air sped past her freezing face, but the moment had stopped in time.
How good it must be to be frozen in pure joy
. She must have been going forty miles an hour, knees bouncing up to her ears, when her left knee twisted, the ski went with it, and she landed hard on her backside, legs in the air. Her head slammed toward the snow line. She slid down at frightening speed, unable to stop. She screamed in terror, wrenching to her side as she saw a large conifer twenty feet from her. The blur next to her was a lean figure that zipped past and did a turn right in front of the tree, pushing her gently away, his momentum pulling her off course. No tree—she had run into Gary instead.