Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness. Tilly Bagshawe
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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 okay.
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 Brooksteins’ 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.’
Up in the gallery, John Merrivale whispered to his wife.
‘This isn’t a l-legal argument. It’s a witch hunt.’
The district attorney went on.
‘Grace Brookstein was a partner in Quorum. An equal equity partner. She was not only legally responsible for the fund’s actions. She was morally responsible for them. Make no mistake. Grace Brookstein knew what her husband was doing. And she supported and encouraged him every step of the way.
‘Don’t let the complexity of this case fool you, ladies and gentlemen. Underneath all the jargon and paperwork, all the offshore bank accounts and derivative transactions, what happened here is really very simple. Grace Brookstein stole. She stole because she was greedy. She stole because she thought she could get away with it.’
He looked at Grace one last time.
‘She still thinks she can get away with it. It’s up to you to prove her wrong.’
Grace Brookstein watched District Attorney Angelo Michele sit down. He’d given a bravura performance, far more eloquent than Frank Hammond’s. The jury looked as if they wanted to burst into spontaneous applause.
If he weren’t trying to destroy me, I’d feel sorry for him. Poor man, he’s tried so hard. And such passion! Perhaps, if we’d met in other circumstances, we’d have been friends?
The general consensus in the media was that the jury would take at least a day to deliberate. The mountain of evidence in the case was so enormous that it was hard to see how they could review it any quicker. In fact, they came back to Court 14 in less than an hour. Just like Frank Hammond said they would.
The judge spoke solemnly. ‘Have you reached your verdict?’
The foreman, a black man in his fifties, nodded. ‘We have, Your Honor.’
‘And how do you find the defendant? Guilty, or not guilty?’
The foreman looked directly at Grace Brookstein.
And smiled.
New York, Six Months Earlier
‘What do you think, Gracie? The black or the blue?’
Lenny Brookstein held up two bespoke suits. It was the night before the Quorum Charity Ball, New York’s most glamorous annual fund-raiser, and he and Grace were getting ready for bed.
‘Black,’ said Grace, not looking up. ‘It’s more classic.’
She was sitting at her priceless Louis XVI walnut dressing table, brushing her long blond hair. The champagne silk La Perla negligee Lenny bought her last week clung to her perfect gymnast’s body, accentuating every curve. Lenny Brookstein thought, I’m a lucky man. Then he laughed aloud. Talk about an understatement.
Lenny Brookstein was the undisputed king of Wall Street. But he hadn’t been born into royalty. Today, everyone in America recognized the heavyset fifty-eight-year-old: the wiry gray hair, the broken nose from a childhood brawl that he’d never gotten fixed (why should he? He won), the sparkling, intelligent amber eyes. All these features made up a face as familiar to ordinary Americans as Uncle Sam or Ronald McDonald. In many ways, Lenny Brookstein was America. Ambitious. Hardworking. Generous. Warmhearted. Nowhere was he more loved than here, in his native New York.
It hadn’t always been so.
Born Leonard Alvin Brookstein, the fifth child and second son of Jacob and Rachel Brookstein, Lenny had a horrific childhood. In later life, one of the few things that could rouse Lenny Brookstein’s rarely seen temper were books and movies that seemed to romanticize poverty. Misery Memoirs, that’s what they called them. Where did those guys get off? Lenny Brookstein grew up in poverty – crushing, soul-destroying poverty – and there was nothing romantic or noble about it. It wasn’t romantic when his father came home drunk and beat his mother unconscious in front of him and his siblings. Or when his beloved elder sister Rosa threw herself under a subway train after three boys from the Brooksteins’ filthy housing project gang-raped her on her way home from school one night. It wasn’t noble when Lenny and his brothers got attacked at school for eating ‘stinky’ Jewish food. Or when Lenny’s mother died of cervical cancer at the age of thirty-four because she couldn’t take the time off work to see a doctor for her stomach cramps. Poverty did not bring Lenny Brookstein’s family closer together. It pulled them apart. Then, one by one, it pulled them to pieces. All except Lenny.
Lenny dropped out of high school at sixteen and left home the same year. He