Bored again, he wandered the cells he kept like a suite of rooms: one for the wine, another for his art. Everyone knew he was rich, of course. Years ago, he’d been in the news all the time: the jets and mansions, the models and call girls and socialite girlfriends. Of course, the stories changed after his arrest: profiles on the family fortune, the long list of famous friends and political connections. An inmate had asked once how much money X really had, intending to leverage that information with violence of his own. He’d have considered it an easy thing: a rich man, new to prison. But X was unlike other rich men, so he’d given that inmate a long smile and a silent count, three full seconds before he’d torn the esophagus from his throat, and flushed it down a prison toilet. Since then, there’d been so few questions.

“Ah, well…”

He had his privacy and his comforts. For the privilege, he gave the warden an unholy amount of money each and every year, plus a solemn, cross-his-heart vow that the warden’s wife would not be gang-raped ever again.

Not on a Sunday morning.

Not with the kids watching.

It was late that same night that something broke the steady routine of X’s life. “Excuse me. Um … sir?” The guard was a large man, and apologetic.

“What is it?”

“Someone has been asking to see you. Francis Willamette. A prisoner. We didn’t want to bother you, but he’s been asking for a few days now, very insistent. We … um … we took a vote. The guards, I mean.”

X lit a cigarette, and leaned back. Six guards served on his regular detail, but he had other guards in other pockets. “What does Mr. Willamette want?”

“He says it’s about Jason French. It’s … um … it’s why we voted yes.”

“Then I suppose you should bring Mr. Willamette down.”

The guard backed from the cell, and hurried away. When footsteps sounded in the stairwell, the same guard said, “Third cell. You can go on down.”

“Are you certain? He’s not … you know?”

“He’s expecting you. You’ll be fine.”

When Willamette appeared, the same doubts seemed to fill every line in his face. X had met the old man once before. He’d claimed to be a chess player, but managed to embarrass himself in three moves. He’d lost weight in the years since they’d played that single game, and the skin was loose on his bones. One hand clutched at the cell door, and he held on to the bar as if he’d fall without it. X took in the sunken eyes, the brown teeth. “You claim to have seen Jason French?”

“Three days ago, yes, sir. On the road, um, I was on the prison bus.”

“Why should I believe you?”