Jess Walter: The Ponz

so you don't miss any of them. Here is the Chronicles of Now. Secual counsel Robert Mueller. The FBI has executed search warrants at the office of Michael Cohen, the President's personal lawyer. In a world gone haywire. Sometimes our is the only thing that can make sense of it all. He was the President's fixer, the man who once said he'd take a bullet for Donald Trump. I will do anything to protect mister Trump. This is the Chronicles of

Now short fiction, torn from today's headlines. I'm Ashley Ford. I regret the day I said yes to mister Trump. This week a story about that guy there, Michael Cohen by this guy here, novelist Jess Walter, We all for a moment stopped and rooted for the most ridiculous character to finally tell the truth and finally be listened to. I regret all the help and support I gave him along the way. President's longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen

heading off the prison for three years. This is him leaving his New York Michael Cohen is going to head up so now seventy five miles northwest of New York City to Otisville, New York, where the prison is Donald Trump's a former lawyer, Michael Cohen, will be released early from prison because of the coronavirus pandemic. When I saw that he was being released from prison, I did like a Google search and just saw that according to rumors, he's writing a book, oh and that he wants to

come out before the election. Cohen will serve the rest of his time in home confinement. Yeah, it just felt like the makings of a great, really short story. Here in Notisville, everyone betters himself. Gris LSATs Micelli is studying for his real estate license, and me, I've lost thirty pounds and started writing. I was popular the minute I arrived. Most guys wanted to know if mister Trump was as terrible as he seemed. Yes, especially the Black and Spanish guys.

They hate him. They'd ask, is it true he wears adult diapers? No comment? Did he do that thing with the Russian hookers? No comment? But duh. Some guys wanted legal advice. I had to confess my areas of expertise were more taxicab, medallions and foreign policy. My wife was worried that prison would be like law and order, but I told her everyone here is nice, well almost everyone. The fat Man has his fans here too, fox fox and psychopaths. Mostly the fox Fox admire him because he

tells smart people to pound sand. The psychos like him because he gets away with everything. Otisville is medium security, like a middle school with razor wire. There are tennis courts and kosher food. And I was the biggest star here. Once Mike the situation from Jersey Shore got released. That's when I knew it was going to be okay, that life inside wasn't so different from life outside the day I saw the situation outside the Rabbi's office, Michael Cohen,

He said, Sitch, I said, back, we pro hugged. Celebrity is the great equalizer. Now that I write that, I guess it's the opposite of an equalizer, because it makes you unequalm. This is going to be harder than I thought writing a book. My lawyer says they'll hire a ghost writer, but I kind of want to do it myself, more betterment. But the words equalizer, situation, stormy, fixer, rat, it really makes you think I have only one enemy in here, this gray haired guy doing eight years for fraud.

It's his second stint to notice Phil. He's like the yard ball. He calls me rat, fixer Snitch. Everyone calls him the Ponds because he specialized in Ponzi schemes, and because of the Ponds from Happy Days. Once we were in the activity room watching the news and Giuliani was tripping on his own dick, and the Pond said he looked like one of those balls he squeezed for stress where the eyes pop out. Even you were a better lawyer than that, guy, said the Ponds. Thanks, I said,

but it wasn't a compliment that even words. Then the Pond said, you miss it, don't you? Rat I ignored the rat part, not at all. I said, I've lost thirty pounds, my conscience is free. Come on, he said, you miss it. You fucked up by talking. You could have gotten a pardon instead. You know what snitches get right. That's when I got scared. There aren't actual gangs here, no Larassa or Aryan brotherhood. But it doesn't mean you

don't have to watch your back. For instance, the Ponds is in a book club, the wc OG white collar original gangsters. To get in, you have to be doing at least a nickel for tax evasion, fraud or insider trading. They meet in the quad to talk about CEO autobiographies. Sometimes they mix in a Michael Lewis or Malcolm Gladwell book, but only to trash it. I didn't sleep well after the Pond said that was he right? Did I miss it?

I mean on my phone he was just tea. I can't tell you how that felt, the President calling me and now would I ever be more than a joke to the MSNBC lame streamers but traitorous racked to the Fox Fox. I felt so alone. For a while. There was a rumor that Martin Screlly was getting transferred to Odisville. I imagined roaming the halls with another celeb, showing the farmer row around. There's the weight room, and here's the basketball courts, and there's the pharmacy. We'd laugh the pharmacy.

Then the Ponds would see us and I'd say, hey, Ponds, you stole millions. This dude stole billions. Suck on that. They ended up sending Strelly to a different prison, and I was truly alone, the only celebrity on my block. One day, I was in the activity room and a guy tripped on my laptop chord and unplugged it. I looked up. It was one of them, a WCOG book clubber. He apologized, but I got the message. I wasn't safe anywhere. If this was a TV jail, I'd carve a spoon

into a knife or fill a pillowcase with soap. But here at Otisville, there was nothing to do but tell my counselor, and he was a gestalt therapist who tried to frame the whole thing as a patterned reaction. I have the feelings of rejection. It was my lowest point, but that's when the virus arrived and everything changed. No more activities, no more book club, and without his boys, the Ponds was just another old fraud. Then came even better news. They were sending some of us home early,

and I was one of the lucky ones. Honestly, I hadn't wanted to admit how much I missed my family, even to my therapist. It hurt too much to think about. But this virus, it put everything in perspective life, death. What did the Ponds matter now? The virus didn't see you, lame streamers and Fox Fox. To the virus, We're all just meat. The virus. That is the great equalizer. So on the last day of my two week quarantine, before I went home, I wrote a note to the Ponds.

I paid a trustee to deliver it to him, tucked inside his National Review, Hey Pons, I wrote, you want to know what else snitches get book deals? Motherfucker fixer? That was The Ponds by Jess Walter. That is the first time I've read anything about Michael Cohen that made me laugh a little. Why are you thinking about Michael Cohen? Why is he a worthy protagonist for you? Right now?

I can honestly say I'm usually not thinking about Michael Cohen, but there are so many of these Trump characters that I wish I'd never heard of. But there's something weird and poignant and needy about him, this sort of broken, needy guy who, if he hadn't slithered up to Trump's ship and attached himself like a barnacle, would still be

pulling taxicab scams somewhere. And Yeah, when the idea of writing stories based on the news popped up, I thought, Oh, the only one of these characters that I could possibly imagine in fiction is poor, sappy, said, corrupt, awful Michael Cohen. And Cohen is famous or infamous like Mike the situation, like Martin Schcrelly. What is your story telling us about

fame in America right now? I mean, we are so far down that road from the nineteen sixty presidential debate, when you know Nixon lost points for sweating on television and now we have an actual horrible reality TV star in the White House. Fame is so ingrained in what's wrong with America that I don't even really know where to start except to let it speak for itself. Let you know, Michael Cohen, bro hug the sitch in prison and feel alone because he's the only famous person on

his block. I don't know how else to say it, that these marginal characters are famous and are the people we talk about and somehow we've decided should run the country during the most devastating, you know, moment in the last fifty years of our history? Is Michael Cohen a better person for having confessed or for taking his chances with the courts? Like can the people trust he's actually been bettered, as he puts in your story, because he

dogs about being bettered, and I'm wondering about that. I can't say that my fictional Cohen is bettered, and that might just be the cynic in me. I mean, the vessels of redemption aren't chosen for their seaworthiness, you know, you just happen to stumble upon them. And he does have an opportunity. You know, we'll see when he when he and Rosie O'Donnell finish this book he's working on, and we'll see just how redeemed he is. But it's the kind of thing I find myself drawn to in fiction.

Do we get a second chance? Who deserves it? Where it does everyday kind of heroism rise up. And I think it's at best ambiguous at the end of the story whether or not Michael Cohen is a changed man. But I hope for our sake that if he's not changed, he's at least as vindictive as hell. Jess Walter, speaking to me from his home in Spokane. Jess Walter is the author of six novels, including Beautiful Ruins, which was

an international bestseller. His new novel, The Cold Millions, about the labor activists Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, will be published in October. I can't wait to wait. Thanks. Yeah, I just sold one. That's like a dollar twenty for me already. Look how this day's worked out. You can hear my full interview with Jess Walter on our website Chronicles dot Fm, where you can also read The Ponds and other short fiction torn from today's headlines. Our reader was Oliver Wyman. Our

sound designer and composer is Bart Warshaw. Our producer is Curtis box Tyler. Cabott is the executive producer and founder of Chronicles of Now for Pushkin Industries. Special thanks to Leetel Milaud and Jacob Weisberg. For the Chronicles of Now podcast. I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening. It's Jacob Weisberg again. That was a preview of the Chronicles of Now from

Pushkin Industries. New episodes of the podcast will be coming out weekly, beginning on Wednesday, June twenty fourth, so please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and let us know what you thought of the show on social media, or you can write a review in Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Pushkin Pods.