{"id":226,"date":"2026-07-09T21:30:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thomasshess.com\/?p=226"},"modified":"2026-07-10T14:08:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:08:39","slug":"the-man-who-had-to-live-until-he-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasshess.com\/?p=226","title":{"rendered":"THE MAN WHO HAD TO LIVE\u00a0UNTIL HE DIDN\u2019T"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Second installment in an original alternative history series<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fiction by Thomas Shess<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

***<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday, August 9, 2019, 11 a.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A white U.S. Customs paddy wagon pulled out of Teterboro Airport. The sky was partly cloudy, the temperature climbing toward the low eighties. As the Ford Transit cleared the airport perimeter, Manhattan appeared beyond the warehouses\u2014a pale, jagged skyline twelve miles to the east, sharp in the hard late-morning light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chained in the back row of fake-leather seats, Jules Jewelson pursed his lips. His stomach hit bottom when he asked where the feds were taking him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMetropolitan Correctional Center. Manhattan\u2019s only free hotel,\u201d said the uniformed driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given what the government had on him, the odds were eighty-twenty that Jules would never again see the world through windows without bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wild-eyed hedge-fund genius turned pimp knew he was toast. Forty-eight hours earlier, drunk at his own party, he had kicked one of his cadre of popular young hookers in the ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trinket, a two-year veteran of the main line, took offense. The party, after all, was celebrating her eighteenth birthday, and half the high rollers Jules had introduced her to were watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMan, you don\u2019t do something like that with all her friends there,\u201d Dimitri Yugoslav told him over the telephone after Jules landed in custody. \u201cBesides, why are you calling me? I don\u2019t work for your side, and I told you never to call me here at the embassy again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know why I\u2019m calling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause she\u2019s Pennsylvania Avenue\u2019s sweetheart, but you\u2019re the teddy bear who introduced her around. Not me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules panicked. \u201cTell her to back off. Tell the feds I never touched her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone saw you kick her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWere you there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou forget P—- had it on Zoom. He told me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFuck me,\u201d Jules said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow everyone thinks you\u2019ll make a deal to get out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou included?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI still have the shower tapes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo get me out or I\u2019ll spill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo. They\u2019re in a Kremlin vault. I\u2019m not your guy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFind me a lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t hear you. Something\u2019s wrong with the line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t hang up, Dim. You\u2019re my last call.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That evening at 8:37, MCC guards came for Jewelson\u2019s temporary cellmate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There had been no warning. One moment Victor Kutov was on the upper bunk, using a thumbnail to score the days into the cardboard back of a legal pad. The next, keys rattled outside and an officer ordered him to roll his bedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere am I going?\u201d Kutov asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re free. Charges dropped on one condition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat condition?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a plane in Jersey waiting to take you back to Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can beat the beef.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat wasn\u2019t my question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The officer stared through the narrow window. \u201cIt was the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kutov climbed down. He had the thick neck and watchful stillness of a man who survived by noticing what other men ignored. Before prison he had worn a badge in Odesa. After prison he had become a bargaining chip. That meant he understood procedure well enough to recognize when procedure had disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules stood beside the lower bunk in orange prison garb, one hand on the mattress. He looked smaller than he had in the newspapers. Jail had removed the tailoring, the aircraft, the island near Haiti and the people who laughed before he finished speaking. What remained was a forty-eight-year-old man with soft hands and a face beginning to collapse inward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kutov rolled his blanket tightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFind friends fast, Jules. Everybody knows you have the dough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey. You\u2019re not leaving me alone,\u201d Jules shouted toward the door. \u201cI want another bunkie. ASAP.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kutov looked at him for what both men suspected would be the last time. All afternoon they had spoken in fragments, never trusting the walls. Jules talked in circles and confessed nothing. The Ukrainian had asked for nothing. They discussed only survival: which guard slept, which one gambled, which doors stuck, which lights flickered before the breaker tripped. Men in confinement became students of small failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kutov lifted his bedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStick to the plan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules stared at his feet. If he looked up he would see the firing squad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kutov stepped into the corridor. The steel door shut between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, through its small window, Kutov saw a grown man cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules stood still for several seconds, then turned toward the urinal. He washed his hands and dried them by running his fingers through his dyed blond hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tier settled into its night noises: plumbing, muttered curses, a cough traveling from cell to cell. Somewhere a television carried the faint fake applause of a game show. The sound made the place seem less like a tomb and therefore more dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He worked quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defense Kutov had devised was crude and desperate, assembled from things that should never have been in the same cell. Kutov had insisted it was not designed to kill. A dead intruder could be blamed on the prisoner. A living one might have a name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules loosened the mattress from the lower bunk and positioned it so he could pull it upright with one motion. He dampened a sheet in the sink and folded it near the foot of the bed. Hidden inside the torn mattress seam was the shank Kutov had left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Jules sat down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 10:30 a guard passed the door and looked in without stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 11:16 the television went silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 11:41 Jules heard laughter from the officers\u2019 station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 11:58 the lights dimmed, brightened and dimmed again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 12:07 the lock on his cell clicked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No announcement followed. No officer called his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The door opened four inches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules remained on the bunk, breathing through his mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first man entered sideways. He wore prison orange, but his shoes were black work shoes without laces. The second man was broader and carried something close to his thigh. Neither looked toward the camera at the end of the tier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They had been told it was dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first man eased the door shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGet off the bed,\u201d he whispered to the prisoner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules did not move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The broad man stepped forward. Moonlight from the narrow window touched the object in his hand. It was short, heavy and wrapped in cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules pulled the mattress upright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first blow struck Jules with a flat, ugly sound. The force drove Jules backward, but the mattress absorbed enough to keep him standing. He shoved forward. The first man stumbled into the second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules followed the plan until fear tore the plan apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He slashed the broad man\u2019s hand, then drove the shank into the other man\u2019s eye. The scream that followed seemed too large for a human throat. The broad man swung blindly. Jules caught the blow on his shoulder, went down, came up beneath him and stabbed until the heavy object hit the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first man was still alive. He crawled toward the door, one hand pressed to his ruined face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules could have let him go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead he remembered Trinket, the island, the tapes, the politicians who had shaken his hand and the men who would never permit him to testify. He jumped on the crawling man\u2019s back and pulled the wet sheet tight across his throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the alarm brought half the tier running, both intruders were dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules dropped the sheet. He stepped away from the bodies, climbed onto the upper bunk and placed his hands behind his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The door flew open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six officers aimed pepper guns and batons at him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDown! Face down!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules looked at the blood spreading beneath the lower bunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot in that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They dragged him through it anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By two in the morning, Jules was alone in an observation cell wearing a paper smock. A camera watched him from the ceiling. Light burned without mercy. Every fifteen minutes an officer stopped at the glass and wrote something on a clipboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dead men had no prison identification. Their orange uniforms had been stolen from laundry. One carried a braided cord; the other carried a sand-filled length of fire hose. Their fingerprints belonged to men who, according to federal databases, were not in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One had entered the United States through a diplomatic channel three days earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other had been officially dead since 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At dawn the warden arrived with two FBI agents and an assistant United States attorney named Miriam Raines. Raines was forty, exhausted and too intelligent to pretend the night made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou killed two men,\u201d Raines said through the slot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey came to kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou strangled one of them after disabling him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was leaving to bring friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou hid the weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI preserved it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn another man\u2019s rectum?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules smiled for the first time since Teterboro. \u201cSafe from contamination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines did not smile back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho warned you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour cellmate was released hours before the attack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLucky Victor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe has disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLuckier Victor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines leaned closer to the opening. \u201cTwo men entered a locked federal cell on a secured tier during a camera failure. Someone gave them uniforms. Someone opened the door. Someone expected you to die. That makes you either the most important witness in America or the most dangerous liar in federal custody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan\u2019t I be both?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The warden ordered the slot closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines stopped him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you want, Mr. Jewelson?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lawyer. And I don\u2019t want to die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll get a room where we can watch you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuicide prevention protocol.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd milk with every meal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines studied him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMilk?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes. A small carton every meal. Bananas, too, if the government can afford them. Calcium and potassium deficiencies run in my family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government buried the killings under the phrase attempted inmate assault. No names were released. The dead men became John Doe One and John Doe Two, and the tier remained locked down while correctional officers searched cells, lockers, laundry carts and one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules was transferred to a secure medical unit at another federal facility under a false name. Only six officials knew where he was. Three of them wanted him prosecuted for murder. Two wanted him alive long enough to testify to Congress. The sixth reported to someone whose had top Secret Service security clearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines returned with Leonard Bell, a defense lawyer whose suits cost more than most people\u2019s cars. Bell had represented oil ministers; casino families and one televangelist whose private jet contained a bedroom without windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bell sat behind the glass and picked up the telephone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour retainer cleared,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course it did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are facing two murder counts in addition to the trafficking case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were assassins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne was crawling away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToward the door.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe government will call it execution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe government let them in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bell looked at Raines, who stood against the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat,\u201d he said, \u201cis the only reason you are still breathing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules put his palm against the glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have another insurance policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know about the tapes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know about some tapes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat else?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNames.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow many?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEnough to change governments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines stepped forward. \u201cGive them to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd wake up dead?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are already in federal protection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules laughed. \u201cMiriam, two corpses entered my locked cell in matching pajamas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bell lowered his voice. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUntil just now I would  have taken seven years on the original charges. No murder indictment. A federal camp. Credit for time served. Now I want total freedom. Protective identity starting immediately. Fake my death and set me free where the sun shines all the time and no one speaks English.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines said, \u201cImpossible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules turned to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen every two weeks somebody\u2019s name becomes famous because they play kissy face with naked 13-year-olds with braces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo. I call the shots.” Raines said, “You\u2019ll stay shut down until you give me bonafide high ranking Johns. Cooperate. You got no choice. You don\u2019t exist. No one knows where you are. Nothing leaves to the outside. You have no way to communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules looked down at the milk carton on his side of the glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines followed his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It meant nothing to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first name appeared in The Guardian<\/em> eleven days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The London newspaper received a telephone call from a man using a disposable phone. He gave the name of a royal\u2019s brother, the date of three visits to Jewelson\u2019s beachfront property near Haiti and the first four digits of a private aircraft\u2019s tail number. The paper confirmed the flights and published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain detonated before breakfast scones left the ovens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The palace denied everything. The royal resigned from six charities by lunch. Television crews surrounded his country house. Parliament demanded records. Jules watched the coverage on a wall-mounted television with no sound and drank his milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks later an heir to a Dallas oilman was named.They had kept the family name and corporate logo out of the press since the Warren Commission was published.  Now old ghost were screaming.  Lawyers were checking trust fund fine print to see if moral turpitude mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An anonymous caller with a New Jersey accept supplied the Waco Sentinel with an exclusive supplying the suite number of a Caribbean hotel, the nickname of a girl then fifteen, and a wire transfer routed through an art foundation. Federal agents sealed the foundation\u2019s offices before noon. The heir, Jr. boarded a plane for Argentina and discovered, while taxiing, that his passport had been canceled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third name belonged to Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not the White House, but close enough to turn every corridor in the capital cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

News organizations began calendars counting down to the next big name release. Cable anchors called it Jewelson Friday Freebie. Markets dipped on rumors. Ambassadors canceled travel. Men who had spent their lives demanding law and order hired criminal lawyers and bought burner telephones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, Raines returned to Jules\u2019s unit with three FBI agents and a warrant to tear apart everything he touched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They searched his legal mail, his food trays, his toilet, his mattress and even the seams of his paper slippers. They found nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the black book names kept showing up in the media. Defense lawyers were jamming White House private lines. Access to the Oval Office was selling at near record levels.  Press office installed a take-a-number to fend off the frenzy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines found nothing in Jules\u2019s cell. \u201cHow\u2019s he getting names out?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomeone on the outside,\u201d one agent said blithely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s Jules on the inside giving the orders. How?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someday history\u2014not the media\u2014would show how Jules did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The method was embarrassingly small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At each meal Jules received a half-pint milk carton printed with a block of nutrition text. Using the tine of a plastic fork, he punched one tiny hole beneath one letter. Sometimes the letter came from \u201cpasteurized.\u201d Sometimes from \u201cvitamin.\u201d Sometimes from the dairy\u2019s address. He returned the carton with the tray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the dish room, a trustee named Ellis Mott separated Jules\u2019s cartons from the trash. Mott had been paid through his sister\u2019s mortgage, his mother\u2019s dental work and a college account opened for a daughter he had not seen in four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One carton provided one letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Mott had assembled a full name, he memorized it, destroyed the cartons and waited until his next outside medical detail. A dishwasher in a prison kitchen was invisible. A prisoner taking out garbage was less than invisible. At a gas-station restroom, Mott called Jules pre-arranged media contacts from a different burner phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporter verified enough spoon fed detail to make the allegation publishable. Someone then paid the Sentinel’s printing bill that was six months in arrears and all without revealing the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No paper changed hands. No recording existed. No single milk carton contained a whole message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government searched for a sophisticated communications network and missed the garbage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the fifth name revealed and caused the collapse of the 245-year-old Bank of the American Revolution,  Miriam Raines came to see Jules alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She placed no files on the table. She did not bring Leonard Bell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho is next?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules Jewelson smiled. \u201cYou know I can\u2019t spoil the program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA White House name?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCould be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCurrent?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCould be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour allegations could destroy innocent people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey could.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t care?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI care about living. I live they skate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines stared at him eyes to eyes. She had spent twenty years believing facts were hard objects. Jewelson had turned them into the rockets red glare. Some of his names would be guilty. Some might only have attended a dinner, boarded an airplane or shaken his hand. By the time ten more names were dumped, families and governments would already be burning.  Not since 1814 had Washington been this hot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a blackmailer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo. We\u2019re negotiating. You have me in jail; I have names that will destroy the government as we know it. You want the names. I want unrestricted freedom and compensation for a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines said, \u201cAnything that touches the West Wing will kill you\u2014plain and simple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was a threat. See what I mean? Scared, no?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines remained seated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules leaned toward the glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you kill me, the entire black book goes public. Every celebrity client. Every politician. Every girl. Names, dates, photographs, flight records. Everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot if we find the book first.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to try.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have exactly as much time as it takes your people to kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines looked almost tired enough to smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is where you\u2019re wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said, \u201cWe have as much time as it takes our people to create another black book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His smile faded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA copy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA new one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know you. We know Haiti, the aircraft, the hotels, the foundations and the people who wanted to be seen with you. Your real records give us the framework. We supply the missing pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFake names.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFake victims.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFake evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClean evidence. Hotel bills, wire transfers, photographs, aircraft manifests. Nothing too perfect. Perfect evidence makes people suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules sat back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one would believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey will as soon as we finish the job. Fake news has nothing on fake evidence. No one will stop long enough to decide whether it\u2019s real. Reporters will climb over one another to blow the roof off a big-name Democrat who\u2019ll take the heat off the White House. Every television network will have its own black book. Every woman who ever met you will be offered money to tell her story. Women who never met you will tell better ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe girls will talk. They\u2019ll say it\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re counting on it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey know what happened,\u201d Jules said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach one knows what happened to her. Then come the lawyers, the reporters, the publishers, the documentaries and the women who remember being somewhere they never were. There will be so many versions that the public will gag on your name.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know what I know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe make the truth impossible to identify. Politicians of every persuasion will have starring roles in golden showers. No one will figure out the fakes from the real tapes. We just need a bit more time,\u201d Raines said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen why are you here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSee you squirm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got other tapes,” he insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo do we.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot with the 12-year-old with your husband.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines stood. “Last straw, scumbag.” She reached into her purse and removed a small pearl-handled .25-caliber Colt pistol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jules looked toward the dark one-way window behind her. He knew people were watching from the other side. He wanted them watching. Witnesses meant leverage. Witnesses meant the play was still alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course, I have a right to see any new evidence and videos,\u201d he snarled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines did not answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour husband is a federal judge,\u201d Jules said. \u201cIn good enough standing to be named to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time, Jules began to see that he had misread her silence. It was not fear. It was measurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou should see your face,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines lifted the pistol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo more deals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiled because smiling had saved him before. It had opened doors, softened rooms, made frightened people wait one second too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time it did nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first shot struck him above the left eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprise held his face together for an instant, as if his body had not yet accepted what had happened. Then his knees loosened and he folded toward the cement floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines stepped closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She fired twice more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not because she had to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because she could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cell door opened before the echoes were gone. Two men entered wearing federal windbreakers and latex gloves. Neither looked at the body longer than necessary. One took the pistol from Raines. The other placed a folded paper garment over Jewelson\u2019s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raines removed her gloves carefully, finger by finger, and tossed them into the open plastic bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was never married,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By morning, the first story had already been written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow\u2019s headlines began with Manhattan\u2019s Metro Post:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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