Vince: A Short Story

Vince: A Short Story

Dedicated to the Family of Vince Foster: May you someday have justice!

I. The Pressure Cooker (Tuesday, July 19, 1993 – 3:30 PM)

The weight of Washington was not a metaphor; it was a physical presence. It sat upon Vincent Foster’s shoulders like a yoke, pressing down on his spine, making the walk from the West Wing to the First Lady’s offices feel like crossing a battlefield. He was used to the gentle, predictable rhythm of law in Little Rock—the quiet confidence of a man who knew the rules and excelled within them. Here, the rules were fluid, the stakes infinite, and the air itself seemed charged with a low-humming, paranoid energy.

He had come to D.C. to help his friend, Bill, navigate the transition from state governorship to the Presidency of the United States. He was White House Deputy Counsel, a title that sounded grand but felt like standing ankle-deep in a constant, rising tide of ethical quicksand.

Today, the tide was cresting.

He entered Hillary Clinton's office, bypassing the secretary with a curt nod that discouraged conversation. Hillary, seated at her desk, did not look up immediately from the sheaf of documents spread before her. The light from the window caught the hard, uncompromising line of her profile. She was formidable, brilliant, and terrifyingly pragmatic—traits Vince had always admired, until those traits began to manifest as a reckless disregard for the lines he, the small-town lawyer, held sacred.

Vince didn’t waste time with a preamble. He dropped a thick binder onto her desk with a heavy thud that finally drew her attention.

“Hillary,” he said, his voice low, measured, and dangerously calm. “We can’t do this. I’ve run the numbers a dozen ways, and the optics alone will sink us. But the legality… It’s a minefield.”

Hillary pushed her glasses up her nose, her expression instantly hardening into the cool, practiced skepticism she reserved for unwelcome advisors. “It’s my money, Vince. Earned, invested, and managed through discrete accounts precisely to avoid the kind of public pillaging the media engages in. It’s not illegal.”

“The funds themselves aren’t the issue,” Vince countered, leaning both hands on the desk, his gaze locked fiercely onto hers. “The lack of disclosure is. The complexity of the vehicles used—these shell corporations, the offshore connections—it doesn’t just look suspicious; it looks like a concerted effort to hide influence and wealth far beyond what was declared in the campaign filings. If this gets out, it destroys the narrative. It destroys trust.”

He lowered his voice further, the intensity burning behind his eyes. “Bill ran on Main Street values. This isn’t Main Street, Hillary. This is Wall Street and worse. I warned you about these accounts two months ago. You promised me you would simplify, divest, and disclose. Instead, you deepened the obfuscation. Why?”

She rose slowly, pushing her chair back. Her hands rested flat on the desk, mirroring his stance, but radiating power where he radiated anxiety.

“Because, Vince,” she hissed, the softness of her voice making the threat sharper than a shout, “there are things you simply don’t need to know. Some interests need to be protected, and if we divest now, we risk collapsing a dozen critical relationships that keep this administration afloat. You worry about ethics; I worry about governing. And governing requires certain… assurances. You stick to the White House counsel’s job, and I’ll manage the finances. This is my responsibility, and it is not open for discussion.”

Vince stared at her, the blood draining from his face. The casual dismissal, the implied threat, the cold-blooded certainty that she knew better—it sickened him. He had known her for decades, and yet, the person standing before him was a stranger, armored in D.C. ambition.

“I won’t sign off on this, Hillary,” he said, pulling back from the desk. “If these documents ever surface, I will state publicly that I warned you. I will not compromise my integrity or risk my family’s name for a secret you refuse to surrender.”

Hillary laughed—a short, sharp, entirely humorless sound. “You’re being overdramatic, Vince. You always were.

Now, go home. You look exhausted. We’ll talk about this when you’ve had a chance to calm down and remember where your loyalties lie.”

He didn't reply. He only gave her one last look—a blend of deep disappointment and profound weariness—before turning on his heel and walking out, leaving the binder on her desk as a challenge.

In the outer office, Linda Tripp, a staffer with a keen eye and a posture of perpetual disapproval, was bent over a file cabinet. Vince barely noticed her, but she watched him—the way he stormed past, his usually meticulous suit jacket rumpled, his face a mask of pale fury. She saw the storm in his eyes and filed it away, another piece of evidence in the growing dossier of dysfunction she was compiling in her mind.

He was the last decent man in the building, Linda thought, and the machine was chewing him up.

II. The Lure (Tuesday, July 19, 1993 – 9:45 PM)

Vince was at home in his modest Northern Virginia house, a sanctuary he seldom saw in the light. He was in the kitchen, nursing a glass of iced tea and trying to help one of his children with a geometry problem. The normalcy felt forced, a thin, brittle veneer over the chaos of his afternoon. His beloved wife, Lisa, noticed his distracted silence, the tension coiled in his shoulders.

“Vince, what is it?” she asked gently, resting a hand on his arm. “Is it the job? You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

He forced a small, tired smile. “Just D.C. being D.C., honey. It’s hard to remember what’s real sometimes. Too many shadows.”

Before he could elaborate, the telephone rang—not the dedicated White House line, but the private, unlisted residential number. Vince answered it in the den, closing the door behind him.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end was distorted, synthesized—a flat, chilling monotone that stripped away all human identity. It was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.

“Mr. Foster. We know who you are. We know what you know. And we know what you left on the First Lady’s desk today.”

Vince felt a sudden, ice-cold rush of adrenaline. He pressed the receiver hard to his ear. “Who is this? You’ve got the wrong number.”

“We assure you, we do not. The accounts you find so troubling—the ones that, as you rightly pointed out, could ‘destroy the narrative’—they are much more important than you can imagine. They are the scaffolding upon which this entire administration, and the future of several major policy decisions, is balanced.”

The synthetic voice paused for effect.

“You threatened to go public, Mr. Foster. You threatened to ‘state publicly’ your warnings.”

Vince’s mouth was dry. He glanced at the closed door, the faint sounds of his family’s evening routine a world away. “I protect the Presidency.”

“No. You threaten it. You have exactly thirty minutes to be at Fort Marcy Park. The overlook parking area, past the old stone wall.”

Vince frowned. Fort Marcy? A desolate, historical site off the George Washington Parkway. “Why? I’m not meeting anyone. If you want to talk, arrange it through my office.”

“We need only one audience, Mr. Foster. You. Suppose you do not arrive at 10:30 PM sharp. In that case, the full details of the funds, along with your binder and a pre-prepared statement detailing your deep concerns about the legality, will be released to The Washington Post and The New York Times simultaneously. Your name will be irrevocably linked to the scandal, not as the hero who warned them, but as the lawyer who enabled the corruption. The accounts are complicated enough to make you look like a co-conspirator, Vince. Think about your children. Think about Lisa.”

The voice dropped a degree, becoming even colder. “Come, and we'll talk about discretion. Fail to appear, and you sign the death warrant for your reputation, your career, and the Clinton Presidency. The choice is yours.”

The line clicked dead.

Vince stood frozen, the phone heavy in his hand. He didn’t believe in threats; he believed in the law. But this… this wasn't a threat of ruin; it was a threat of the immediate, public incineration of everything he had worked for, framed in such a way that his ethical stand would be twisted into complicity. The enemy was not a political rival; it was an invisible, malicious force operating within the very heart of the power structure he served.

He knew he couldn't call the FBI. He couldn't trust anyone. He had to go. He had to talk, to negotiate, to buy time to dismantle the network from the inside.

He walked quickly to the coat rack, grabbing his heavy, dark overcoat.

“Lisa!” he called, pulling the door open. “I have to run out—an emergency at the office. I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t wait up.”

“Vince, it’s late!” she called back, her voice tinged with worry.

“I know. Be quick. Love you.”

The door closed with a firm click, separating him from the warmth and light of his family forever.

III. Fort Marcy (Tuesday, July 19, 1993 – 10:35 PM)

The drive along the George Washington Memorial Parkway was a blur of highway lights and thick, humid July air.

Vince parked his car slightly up the hill from the overlook. The night was moonless, dark, and still. The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth and pine.

He walked the final few yards to the isolated dirt parking lot. The famous view of the Potomac River was a blanket of black velvet punctuated by the distant, glittering lights of Washington—a city he had come to hate.

The lot was empty, save for a single, dark-colored sedan parked far back near the edge of the woods.

Vince pulled his collar up against a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. “I’m here!” he called out, his voice swallowed instantly by the surrounding trees. “I’m here. Let’s talk.”

Silence.

He took two steps toward the sedan when a man emerged suddenly from the shadows near a large, crumbling stone wall. The man was impeccably dressed in dark civilian clothes that barely hid his powerful, military physique. He moved with the precise, economical grace of someone trained for lethal confrontation.

Vince stopped dead, his heart hammering against his ribs. The brim of a cap shadowed the man’s face, but the posture was unmistakable, the demeanor radiating an authority Vince recognized with a paralyzing shock.

“You…” Vince gasped, stumbling back a step. “You’re… you’re General A______.”

He had seen the man many times in high-level security briefings, a four-star officer, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—a pillar of the American defense establishment.

The General did not speak. His face, when he tilted it up slightly, was utterly devoid of emotion, a professional mask of terrifying finality. He held something in his right hand. Not a gun, not yet—a short, dense length of metal, like a heavy flashlight or specialized baton.

Vince understood instantly. This wasn't about negotiation. This was a silencing, executed with military efficiency, sanctioned by a power that eclipsed the White House Counsel's office.

“Bill doesn’t know,” Vince pleaded, the words tumbling out in a rush of desperate understanding. “Tell Bill! He wouldn’t—”

The General took a quick, smooth step forward. Before Vince could finish the thought or even raise his hands in defense, the heavy metal object swung down in a swift, devastating arc. It connected with the side of Vince’s skull—a dull, horrifying thud that echoed only in his own brain.

Vince crumpled instantly, his legs failing. He felt a searing, blinding pain, a sudden, vast darkness descending. As his body hit the cool dirt, a powerful noise erupted nearby—the sharp, unmistakable crack of a pistol firing.

The world dissolved into a rush of pain, confusion, and the smell of gunpowder.

IV. The Ascent (10:36 PM)

He was standing.

Vince looked down. A figure lay sprawled on the ground, coat askew, eyes wide and unseeing, a dark stain blossoming on the temple. It was his body. His clothes. His suit. But it was not him.

He felt… light. Weightless. The pain, the tension, the soul-crushing anxiety of the past six months—all gone. He was pure consciousness, detached, floating just above the dreadful scene.

He watched, horrified, as the General, moving with clinical speed, dropped the metal baton and retrieved the pistol he had fired into the air, or perhaps into the dirt. The officer knelt, placing the gun precisely into the right hand of the collapsed body. He then meticulously wiped the grip and trigger with a cloth, positioning the dead fingers around it.

The staging was swift and brutal: the body angled to lean against the stone wall; the gun loosely held, suggesting a final, desperate act; the appearance of a man overwhelmed by the pressures of his office, choosing a lonely, desolate grave. The General removed the binder Vince had left on Hillary's desk from his own jacket pocket, tossed it onto the backseat of Vince's car, and quickly shut the door, ensuring the evidence would be "found" and classified.

The assassin then straightened, checked his watch, and, without a second glance at the figure on the ground, moved quickly into the deeper shadows of the trees and disappeared, leaving the sedan behind.

Vince floated higher, a breath on the night wind, watching the little, terrible scene below shrink. His focus narrowed, concentrating on the last vestiges of his earthly love and loyalty.

My poor children. The thought was a piercing lament, a sorrow that transcended the pain of death. I’ll never see them graduate. Never teach them to drive.

My poor wife. The vision of Lisa’s gentle, worried eyes seared his conscience. She’ll think I quit because I abandoned them, that I chose this coward’s end.

He looked toward the distant, cold lights of the capital. Bill—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop them. The corruption is more profound than you know. The secrets are bigger than the Presidency.

He felt a tremendous, irresistible pull upward, away from the Potomac, away from the darkness, away from the earth and its schemes. The lights of the city vanished beneath him, replaced by the indifferent, swirling canopy of the stars—the image of the dark, lifeless body staged below cut to black.

V. Cut to Black (11:00 PM)

The scene shifts abruptly. A small, well-appointed office in a building blocks from the White House, far from the desolate shadows of Fort Marcy. The air is warm and dry, with a faint smell of expensive leather.

Hillary Clinton stands, composed and dressed in a severe black suit, by a large, ornate window overlooking the city.

Her face, usually so expressive of determination, is smooth, blank, and utterly without remorse.

She is holding a dark, leather briefcase—the kind designed to keep legal documents and, tonight, the financial ledger containing the details of the secret accounts that had just cost her Deputy Counsel his life.

She crosses the Persian rug and hands the briefcase to a man standing with his back to the window, obscured by the sheer weight of the darkness and the heavy fabric of his tailored coat.

“It’s done,” she stated, her voice flat, official. “The documents are contained. The situation is resolved. The cover story is air-tight.”

The man took the briefcase, his fingers briefly brushing hers. He was tall, with a bearing that suggested lifelong access to privilege and power. He placed the case on a nearby table, not bothering to open it, as if the transaction itself was merely a formality.

He turned slowly, pivoting away from the darkness and toward the faint, residual light filtering in from the streetlamps below, his face emerging from the shadows to confront the reader.

It was General Anthony Mackenzie Sterling, the famously ruthless, former head of the secretive think tank, The Sovereign Group, who had served as an unofficial, all-access political operative to the Clintons for decades, a man whose hands were never on the tiller but whose whisper guided every ship in the fleet. His eyes, cold and penetrating, held a satisfied finality.

“The Presidency,” Sterling said, his voice a gravelly, self-satisfied murmur, “is saved, Mrs. Clinton. And the price, as always, has been paid.”

VI. The Final Word (Wednesday, July 20, 1993 – 6:05 AM)

Five minutes later, in the same silent office, a large television screen that had been previously muted suddenly snapped to life with the familiar, brightly colored graphics of ABC’s Good Morning America. The usual morning banter is abruptly interrupted by a hard, urgent news bulletin flashing across the bottom of the screen: BREAKING NEWS.

The anchor, grave and professional, cuts in. "We interrupt this broadcast for a developing story out of Northern Virginia. Sources close to the White House have confirmed that a car belonging to Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster was found abandoned overnight at Fort Marcy Park, just off the George Washington Parkway..."

The camera cuts to a grainy, distant shot of the police perimeter tape and faintly flashing emergency lights through the trees.

"...Law enforcement officials have yet to issue an official statement, but early reports indicate that Mr. Foster was found deceased from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This highly unusual and tragic incident comes after what White House sources describe as weeks of acute stress and strain for the Arkansas native, who was reportedly struggling to adjust to the intensity of his Washington position. We will bring you more details as they emerge..."

The screen freezes on the chilling, anonymous image of the police lights blinking in the dawn woods, the official lie now broadcast across the nation....