Hx's profile

It was a rare occasion, and an exciting one, that the bespectacled accountants of the Financial Crimes Unit could host a briefing for the burly operators of the Hostage Rescue Team. The two groups had little in common, so the breaking-of-the-ice was a worry. Financial Crimes opted to go with a cheery intro screen to their PowerPoint presentation, which was already projected onto the briefing-room wall as Hostage Rescue mumbled their hellos and good-mornings, and filed in: Financial Crimes We...

Act 1, Scene 1 (inside Tracey’s apartment) DONNIE (entering) Hello? Trace? You home? TRACEY (from offstage) Hi! I’m in here. Be just a sec. (enters) Hey babe! How’d it go? DONNIE It’s good, it looks good. So far so far. Have you seen one yet? TRACEY No, I haven’t had the TV on. Julie did, though. She says hi. DONNIE Well then did you ask her? Did you ask her the stuff I – TRACEY (overlapping, with laugh) Yes, yes…she says yes, it looked just like something from a university research thing, j...

It started with a lie. It was a white lie, a necessary lie. That’s what Jamison called it, and as its author he should know. He had the best of intentions, no one could deny that. He certainly couldn’t have foreseen what was to happen. But as I lay here, looking for someone to blame – other than the mob, other than myself – I can’t help thinking about Jamison, and his lie, and his goddamned good intentions. It was a TV commercial, written and paid for by Jamison. The voice-over was his. The ...

The reporter was frisked and scanned, then admitted into an oaken library the size of a soccer stadium. This was at the end of a ten minute walk through the foyer and the drawing room and God knows how many other rooms. That, after a twenty minute drive up something too grand to be called a driveway, and that after a ninety minute drive through some of the most secluded Connecticut countryside that money could buy. A servant, who somehow looked incongruous because he wasn't in livery, conduc...

Lucien Justulus Trajar, captain of the Praetorian Guard, trotted his horse at a slow, deliberative gait – one that implied purpose, if not hurry. He was on the Via Appia, a half-day’s ride out of Rome, and at this pace he was still another day from his destination of Asculum, along the eastern Latin seacoast. He was grateful for the travel time, as it afforded him opportunity to ponder this task his emperor had assigned him. The previous night, he’d been summoned to the emperor’s private apa...