“You’re innocent, Grace. We know that. But the rest of the world doesn’t. The m…m…media wants you hung drawn and quartered. Frank Hammond’s the only guy who can turn that around. He’s a genius.”
No one could understand why Big Frank had allowed Grace Brookstein to show up to court every day in such inflammatory outfits. Her clothes seemed designed to enrage the press still further, not to mention the jury. Surely a titanic mistake?
But Frank Hammond did not make mistakes. Angelo Michele knew that better than anyone.
There’s method in his madness. There has to be. I just wish I knew what it was.
Still, it didn’t really matter. Today was the last day of the trial and Angelo Michele was convinced he had built a water tight case. Grace Brookstein was going down. First to jail. And then to hell.
Grace Brookstein had woken up that morning in the Merrivale’s guest bedroom suffused with a deep sense of peace. She’d had a dream about Lenny. They were at their estate in Nantucket, always Grace’s favorite of their many multi-million-dollar homes. They were walking in the rose garden. Lenny was holding her hand. Grace could feel the warmth of his skin, the familiar roughness of his palms.
“It will be OK, my darling. Have faith Gracie. It will all be OK.”
Walking into court this morning, arm in arm with her attorney, Grace Brookstein had felt the crowd’s hatred, hundreds of pairs of eyes burning a hole in her back. She had heard the catcalls. Bitch. Liar. Thief. But she held on to her inner peace, to Lenny’s voice inside her head.
It will all be OK.
Have faith.
John Merrivale had said the same thing on the phone last night. Thank God for John! Without him Grace would have been completely lost. Everyone else had deserted her in her hour of need, her friends, even her own sisters. Rats on a sinking ship. It was John Merrivale who had forced Grace to hire Frank Hammond. And now Frank Hammond was going to save her.
Grace watched him summing up now, this fiery little man, strutting back and forth in front of the jury like a farmyard Rooster. She only understood a fragment of what Hammond was saying. The legal arguments were way over her head. But she knew with certainty that her attorney would get her an acquittal. Then, and only then, would her real work begin.
Walking free from court is just the start. I still have to clear my name. And Lenny’s. God, I miss him. I miss him so much. Why did God have to take him away from me? Why did any of this have to happen?
Frank Hammond finished speaking. Now it was Angelo Michele’s turn.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury. Over the last five days you have heard a lot of complex legal arguments, some of them from me, and some of them from Mr Hammond. Unfortunately it had to be that way. The scale of the fraud at Quorum: seventy five billion dollars…”
Angelo Michele paused to let the impact of the number sink in. Even after so many months of repetition, the sheer size of the Brookstein’s theft never failed to shock.
“…means that, by its very nature, this case is complicated. The fact that the bulk of that money is still missing makes it even more complicated. Lenny Brookstein was a wicked man. But he was not a stupid man. Nor is his wife, Grace Brookstein, a stupid woman. The paper trail they left behind them at Quorum is so complicated, so impenetrable, that the truth is we may never recover that money. Or what’s left of it.”
Angelo Michele looked at Grace with naked loathing. At least two female jurors did the same.
“But let me tell you what’s not complicated about this case. Greed.”
Another pause.
“Arrogance.”
And another.
“Lenny and Grace Brookstein believed they were above the law. Like so many of their kind, the rich bankers on Wall Street who have raped and pillaged this great country of ours; who have taken tax payers’ money, your money, and squandered it with such shameless abandon; the Brooksteins don’t believe that the rules of the Little People apply to them. Take a good look at Mrs Brookstein, Ladies and Gentlemen. Do you see a woman who understands what ordinary people in this country are suffering? Do you see a woman who cares? Because I don’t. I see a woman born into wealth, a woman married into wealth, a woman who considers wealth – obscene wealth – to be her God Given right.”