Looks Like Surrender for Fugitive Frankel

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Is Martin Frankel coming home already? The fugitive financier, who on May 5 allegedly absconded with more than $300 million of his clients money, may have consulted the wrong astrological chart this time. According to the Hartford Courant, Frankel is believed to be in Europe, with Interpol hot on his trail, and ready to talk surrender. The paper says a criminal defense lawyer has contacted federal prosecutors on Frankel's behalf to discuss terms - although no ones saying how close the hunters and the hunted are to a deal.

For those who took Frankels spectacular alleged swindle - certainly a Great Train Robbery for the bull-crazy '90s - to heart as a stirringly outsize, outlaw pursuit-of-happiness story, this news must be viewed as a disappointment. To them, Frankel is no supervillain, just a failed stockbroker and all-around schlub who had clawed and cheated his way into the American Dream: a cavernous maximum-security mansion in tony Greenwich, Conn., complete with a fully functional securities trading floor; limos pulling up at all hours, dropping off leggy "receptionists" Frankel had met on the Internet. His stuffy neighbors - many of them in the same business he was in - were baffled and maybe a little envious. Now, Frankel is going to give up, and let the rest of us schlubs down? Was something wrong with Venezuela?