The Frankenstein Candidate (50 page)

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.”

“I just don’t trust any of those powerful Wall Street types.” It was a housewife and a mother of three who had kept quiet so far.

“The legal issue here,” the farmer said, “is to check for—”

“The jury here is on a fact-finding mission,” she said.

“Okay, but the facts are as follows. East Coast almost went under in 2017 and did actually get undone in 2020. Boston Bank and Kansas Bank were two small banks that went bankrupt in 2017. Roscoe Maynard met Frank Stein three weeks prior to all that at a conference. Neither denies that. Frank then told Roscoe his views on banks and vice versa. Neither denies that. Frank then asked Roscoe to participate in a scam, or shall we call it collusion, to bring the banks to their knees. Here they depart. Roscoe says so, and Frank denies this.”

“So far so good,” Jenny said.

“Then FFA, Roscoe’s company, executed their trades. Many other big traders were in on it. They sold the banks’ shares before they owned them. Five of them confirmed this. Stein’s company also sold the same company’s shares, also before they owned them. But Stein denies this.”

“No, Stein only denies that it was a collusive action. He says their views merely happened to coincide,” Jenny said.

“And thousands of jobs were lost,” the disgruntled doctor added.

“He even said they should be allowed to do this sort of thing,” the receptionist said.

“Yes, exactly…euthanasia he called it, the scoundrel,” the surfer pleaded. “People like him should not be allowed to put the banks to sleep just because they were about to die. It’s not for him to decide. Remember back in 2008 and then again in 2015, how many banks were rescued?”

“Some were not, though,” the housewife intervened. “The government decided which were to die, which were to live.”

“Stein’s views are not relevant,” a quiet man who only introduced himself as Barry jumped in. Barry was among the undecided. “His actions are relevant. Did he or did he not ask his trader to sell the banks’ shares, that is the question, isn’t it?”

“No, did he or did he not do so as a result of the discussion he had with Roscoe Maynard, that is the question,” Jenny said. “What if he had already decided what he was going to do?”

“It does not alter the fact that the banks were ruined and the livelihoods destroyed as a result of their actions,” the farmer said.

“Maybe they would have been lost anyway,” Barry said. “Jenny is right. It’s not what happened, the issue is whether it happened because of the collusion.”

“Whether there was in fact collusion,” Jenny corrected him.

“How the hell do we decide?” the farmer said. “We are not legal people.”

It kept going into the night and after breakfast the next day, with only a four-hour break for sleep. Finally, Jenny had two more of the undecided on her side: Samantha, a university student of English literature, and Carlos, a taxi driver.

Exhausted, the farmer asked, “Do we just say the jury is unable to reach a verdict?”

“Let’s have a show of hands again,” the doctor said.

Eight hands continued to holler a guilty verdict. The remaining four were Jenny, Barry, Samantha, and Carlos. None of them were abstaining—each said innocent.

The “not guilty” verdict was read out to the hundreds packed into the courtroom and the hundreds of millions who watched the spectacle on television, in the United States and abroad. Back in the courtroom for the verdict, Olivia Allen jumped for joy, and hugged Kayla. She felt Kayla’s body tremble from sobs of relief.

The major papers, hurrying to their editorials online, denounced it—they called it the victory of the moneyed over the oppressed, of the connected over the common people, of the powerful over the powerless.

Eli Mayer called it a triumph of American liberty and made an impassioned plea to strike down Murphy’s bill, a bill introduced by anti-industrial politicians egged on by overzealous regulators to have white-collar criminal cases decided solely by judges.

“Jury trials as a matter of right for those accused of a felony have all but disappeared from legal systems everywhere except America,” Eli said. “It is our last vestige of freedom…once we leave our freedom entirely in judges appointed by the government of the day, America as we know it will disappear.”

Blake Heynman appealed again for collusion to be removed from the list of securities felonies, calling for an end to criminalization of cooperative behavior among consenting individuals. His pleas fell on deaf ears.

Olivia Allen took a day off to visit her ailing father in Philadelphia on the anniversary of her mother’s death. Following her incredible campaign, her father had become Greenview Retirement’s most popular resident. Greenview was located on a beautiful, thirty-acre site in Andorra, Pennsylvania. Nestled on a site overlooking a valley and facing a hillside of luscious green grass were one hundred sky-blue two-bedroom residential villas. Greenview had it all: independent living, assisted living, memory care, health care, and acute care.

The nurses at Greenview did not wear uniforms. The residents knew them all, and the village provided them with a street wardrobe that made them look like they were visitors. The villas faced the hills as if the residents had left the valley behind, but they knew that they had come down the hill, and after this picturesque stop, the valley was what lay ahead. Almost all of the residents were over eighty years old and infirm.

As she walked toward the familiar villa number fifty-five, which she had visited countless times, Olivia was struck by a new sensation of the sheer serenity of the place: the sweeping panorama, the orchids, the imported willows, the little sky blue villas, the well-patterned brown cobblestones that led to the little office—until she suddenly realized that the serenity resided in her. It was a beautifully calm place, the inside of her mind. Not even the mental equivalent of a thunderstorm could upset the equanimity of that sacred abode now.

Father and daughter then agreed to visit mother’s resting place. Olivia was with Compassion, visiting Ambition, who was resting, and neither was inside her head.

They soon reached the Woodlands Cemetery. Making their way through the cemetery’s eighteenth century buildings, the tall stone cathedral, the green contours, and the majestic trees, Olivia held her father’s hand, her gait steady, knowing, and purposeful, determined to close a most difficult chapter of her life.

Aging, wispy haired, and weakened by Parkinson’s, octogenarian Thomas Beal was nevertheless still possessed of an extremely alert mind. A former Congressman himself, he had watched Olivia’s every move, read every word written about her, and heard every radio show that focused on her campaign. He understood her reversal better than anyone else—it was her father she had called in the days before her momentous reversal.

Laying her mother’s favorite orange day lilies in an open formation by the gravestone, Olivia felt her mother’s presence in the air.

“I will never be what you wanted me to be, Mom,” Olivia said, “but I have become what I wanted to be. Perhaps you may have even liked the way it has turned out. But it’s my life, Mom. I have to lead it my way. Thank you for everything you did for me. I love you. Always will.”

She felt the headstone say, “I love you too, honey, always will. And I pray for you.”

Momentarily, Thomas Beal’s hands stopped shaking. “She prays for you,” he said to Olivia—above the gentle breeze and the rustling leaves, he must have heard it in his head too.

He smiled at Olivia, and then father and daughter hugged tight for what seemed like an eternity; tears flowed freely, fingers clutched over each other’s winter coats, muscles tightened and then relaxed, the sobbing ebbed, and the smiles reappeared.

For the first time in her life, Olivia felt completely free—free of anxiety, free of tension, and free of the burden of having to please her mother.

That evening, when Olivia Allen descended the steps of her plane at a new private airport in Washington DC, Frank Stein was there to greet her with Kayla by his side; they were holding hands. A surge of pure elation pulsed through her to see them together like this. They seemed so at peace with themselves and the world.

“We did it,” he said. “We moved the needle…by quite a lot.”

“You did it, Frank,” Olivia said, “and you, Kayla. I was the one moved.”

“The compass doesn’t point north yet. But at least some people know where north is now,” Kayla said.

The three began to walk back to the terminal, their winter jackets billowed by the wind, their gait purposeful and slow. Even the rain seemed to come in a slower drizzle. Olivia knew that their minds were calmer—the world always seemed to catch up to the pace of the thoughts in your mind. She saw Frank’s hands still interlocked in Kayla’s, and wondered what the future held for their relationship.

“So what’s next?” Olivia found herself saying, hoping to hear of their plans.