The Tenth Justice (8 page)

Even without the flowers, Ben’s desk was still covered with paper. Amid the piles of cert petitions were drafts of forthcoming decisions. Each set of documents was enclosed in a brown folder marked “Confidential—Justice Hollis’s Chambers Only.” Although there was nothing to prevent anyone from opening a folder, Hollis was convinced that the moral consequences would deter potential peekers. Each folder was also labeled with a yellow Post-it, which Ben and Lisa used to identify the status of a document. Not a single opinion went to Hollis until both were satisfied with its content. Quickly scanning the Post-its, Ben was surprised to see one marked “First Draft—
Kramer
decision.”

Lisa entered the office. “Morning, sick boy. How’re you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” Holding the Kramer folder in his hand, he said, “You didn’t have to do this. I was assigned the first draft.”

“I know, but you were sick, and I had some free time on my hands, so I figured—”

“You didn’t have to write a full extra opinion, though. You have enough to do.”

“Forget about it,” Lisa said. “I wanted to help you. I did it. It’s done. Be grateful.”

Waiting until Lisa sat at her desk, Ben smiled. “Thank you.”

At noon, Lisa and Ben walked down to Union Station for lunch. After years of languishing in ruin, the station was once again a tourist haven. Under the linked barrel-vaulted ceilings, between the statues and columns and sculptures and archways, more than a hundred upscale shops had popped up, along with a multiplex movie theater and, of course, a food court. Every time he walked through, it made Ben sick.

Lisa and Ben skirted the massive groups of tourists and grabbed a table in the corner of the food court. “Are you okay?” Lisa asked, watching Ben pick at his french fries.

“I’m fine. There’s just something I have to tell you.”

“Wait a minute. If you’re about to tell me you’re in love with me, I may vomit.”

“It’s not that,” Ben said. “You wish it was that.” Wiping his hands with a napkin, he asked, “Remember Rick? Hollis’s old clerk?” Lisa nodded. “About three weeks ago I casually told Rick the outcome of the
CMI
case. A few days later, you know what happened—Maxwell risked all his money on a legal victory. When I tried to find Rick, he’d disappeared.” Lisa’s mouth dropped open. “Rick Fagen was never a clerk for the Supreme Court. The number he gave me is disconnected; he’s moved out of his apartment building; he’s gone.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lisa said, her sandwich still in her hand. “Why the hell did you tell him the decision?”

“We were just bullshitting about it one day,” Ben said defensively. “He said he was curious about it and I told him. Every time we needed advice he helped us. I couldn’t say no.”

“But you’re never supposed to let out a decision,” Lisa said, raising her voice.

“Listen, I screwed up. I know it,” Ben said. “But he totally suckered me in. Believe me, you would’ve done the same thing. It was a perfect setup.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Lisa, calm down. I told you this because I trust you. You won’t say anything, will you?”

Lisa put down her sandwich and looked at her co-clerk. “This is serious stuff, Ben. We can’t just sit on this.”

“I know. But until I can prove it was Rick, I want to keep this low profile. Nathan is having the State Department run a search on him, and Eric is asking his newspaper contacts for info about the apartment building where Rick lived.”

“We should tell Hollis.”

“I’m not telling Hollis,” Ben insisted. He leaned toward Lisa. “Believe me, I was up all night about this. If I go to Hollis, I’m fired. Even if I meant no harm, I violated the ethics code. If I’m fired, my whole life is over.”

After a long pause, Lisa asked, “Why did you tell me this?”

“Because I didn’t want to see you get hurt, too. I don’t know if Rick’s targeting every clerk or if I’m his one and only Sucker of the Year. I don’t expect you to lie for me, and I never want to get you into trouble. I wanted you to know because you’re my friend.”

Lisa was silent for a minute. “So those flowers you got yesterday—they weren’t from your mom, were they?”

“They were from Rick. I wanted to tell you yesterday, but I just…”

“Did you check the basket for bugs?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know—bugs, listening devices.”

“You don’t think—”

“Let’s get out of here,” Lisa said, pushing her chair away from the table and grabbing her bag.

The two clerks ran up the escalator and dashed out of Union Station. Watching them from the opposite corner of the food court, Rick leaned back in his chair. “Where are they going?” he asked.

“I couldn’t hear,” Rick’s associate said as he approached the table. “But did you see the panic on their faces? They don’t know where to run.”

Rick smiled. “The funny thing is, it’s only going to get worse.”

Racing down First Street, Ben and Lisa didn’t say a word until they returned to the Court. “Hey, guys,” Nancy said as they marched past her desk. “How was lunch?”

“Good,” Ben said.

“Fine,” Lisa said.

They darted into their office and slammed the door behind them. They headed straight for the file cabinet, where Ben grabbed the large wicker basket. When he put it on the sofa, they rolled up their sleeves and methodically ripped the enormous bouquet apart. Flower by flower, they crushed every corolla and scrutinized every stem. Twenty-two roses, fourteen irises, eleven lilies, and four stems of freesias later, the sofa, as well as half of the office floor, was covered with the picked-apart remains of a previously well-organized floral arrangement. They found nothing. “It has to be in here,” Lisa said. “There’s no other reason to send flowers.”

“Maybe he just wanted me to worry,” Ben suggested. “Or maybe he’s playing with my mind.”

As Lisa wiped off the sofa, Ben reexamined the pile of flowers. For fifteen minutes, they repeated their inspection of each individual bloom. Then they ripped apart the basket itself. Again, nothing.

“Damn,” Ben said, pushing the pulpy mess from the sofa. “It’s impossible.”

“I don’t think we missed anything.”

Ben leaned back on the sofa. “Of course we didn’t miss anything. We just wasted our time.”

“It’s okay. You know we had to do this. I mean, what if we really did find something?”

“But we didn’t,” Ben said, nervously picking at the sofa’s worn fabric. “We can’t find anything.”

Lisa lightly put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to be scared about this.”

“It’s just that my life—”

“I know what’s at stake,” Lisa said. “And this is more than you should have to deal with. But we’ll get you through it.”

“I don’t want you to get involved. I only told you to warn you.”

“Too late, baby,” Lisa chided, her hand still on Ben’s shoulder. “Now, are we going to sit here all day or are we going to try to find this guy?”

Looking at his co-clerk, Ben forced a smile. “You’re a good friend, Lisa Marie. If I go to jail, I’m taking you with me.”

Later in the week, Ben, Lisa, and Ober waited for Nathan to return from work. In the living room of Ben’s house, Ben and Ober sat on the large blue couch, while Lisa sat alone on the love seat, her feet up on the cushions. “I don’t understand it,” Lisa said. “It’s almost nine o’clock. Where the hell is he?”

“He said the search request would be finished by around seven or eight,” Ben said, looking at his watch. “Maybe it’s just running a little late.”

“Maybe he was captured by Rick and his band of rogue clerks,” Ober suggested as he clipped his toenails. “Now we’ll have to go rescue them using makeshift weapons made from common kitchen appliances.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Ben asked, looking at his roommate.

“It’s just a thought,” Ober said.

Lisa tried to change the subject. “I still don’t understand how you all managed to wind up in Washington. All of my friends are scattered around the country.”

“It’s actually pretty simple,” Ben explained. “Nathan, Eric, and I are all interested in politics, so Washington seemed like the right choice. Ober came because he didn’t want to be left out.”

“That’s not true,” Ober said, looking up from his feet. “I came here because I believe in Senator Stevens.”

“That can’t possibly be true,” Lisa said. “You don’t know squat about Stevens.”

“I know plenty about Stevens.”

“Name one thing you know about him,” Lisa challenged. “Pick any platform and explain it.”

After a long pause, Ober laughed. “He’s against crime and he’s prochildren.”

“That’s a revolutionary thought,” Lisa said. “And here I thought Stevens ran on the always popular pro-crime, anti-children platform.”

“Leave him alone,” Ben added. “Ober is a man of unusual knowledge. He knows more than he lets on.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Lisa said.

“Believe it,” Ober said. “For example, I know how to tell if a set of dice is balanced correctly.”

“Dice?”

“Yeah, dice. Like the dice you use in a board game.”

“Over the past few years, Ober has been the most—shall we say—entrepreneurial of the four of us,” Ben explained. “Right after college, he and his father invented a board game that they thought would sweep the nation. Hence, the dice knowledge.”

“
You
invented a board game?” Lisa asked.

“Actually, my dad came up with idea. It was called—”

“Speculation—The Game of Cunning and Guile,” Ben and Ober said simultaneously.

“That was it,” Ober said. “It was this super-intense strategy game. It had everything: pawns, bluffing, power moves, everything a good game should have.”

“And what happened?”

“Everyone hated it,” Ober said. “They said it was too boring. After a year and a half, we were out of business, and I went through an illustrious sampling of the lower-tier job market. In three years, I was everything from a house painter to a marketing aide to a public relations assistant.”

“If you’re such a failure, how’d you get the job in the Senate?”

“That was all Ben,” Ober said. “When he heard there was an opening in Senator Stevens’s office, he wrote me a cover letter, put together my résumé so it sounded super-political, and prepped me for the interview. A week later, I got the job. And the rest is congressional history.”

“So how do you tell if dice are fixed?” Lisa asked.

“I’m not telling you,” Ober said. “Start your own game company.”

Rolling her eyes, Lisa turned back to Ben. “So you went to law school, Eric went to grad school, and bizarro here played with his dice. What’d Nathan do before he joined the public sector?”

“He was a Fulbright scholar, so after college, he spent two years at Tokyo University studying international trade. After that, he worked for a Japanese high-tech company in their foreign markets department. Then he came back to the States and started working his way up the State Department ladder. My guess is he’ll—” Ben broke off as Nathan came in.

“Speak of the devil,” Lisa said. “It’s Nathan-san himself.”

“Well?” Ben asked anxiously as soon as Nathan walked in the door.

“Nothing,” Nathan said, throwing a thick file folder to Ben. “They found four hundred fifty-seven Richard Fagens. Only twelve matched the age and physical description, and only two had criminal records. Neither of them had any type of legal background, and both were still incarcerated. I called the research center, and they said that Rick was probably using an alias. Until we find his real name, we’ll never find him.”

“Shit,” Ben said, flipping through the useless documents.

“By the way,” Nathan said to Ober, “they ran a check on Senator Stevens’s signature, and it cleared as genuine. I thought you used the signature machine.”

“I did,” Ober said proudly. “I just bumped my butt against it while it was signing. It’s the best way to make the signature look real.”

“Good show,” Nathan said, impressed.

“I have my moments,” Ober said, looking back at his feet.

Watching Ben nervously look through the documents, Lisa turned to him. “Don’t get yourself crazy. That doesn’t mean we’re done.”

“We still haven’t heard from Eric,” Nathan added. “Hopefully, he’ll have some information on the building.”

At a quarter after ten, Eric returned home. Ben, Lisa, Nathan, and Ober were all watching television, trying to pass the time. “What took you so long?” Ben asked, pointing the remote and shutting off the TV.

“I’m only fifteen minutes late. I had to finish editing a story,” Eric explained. “Do we have anything to eat?”

“Did you find anything on the building?” Nathan asked as Eric headed toward the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah,” Eric said, turning back toward the living room. “I almost forgot. Seventeen eighty Rhode Island is not a good place. I asked some of the beat guys what the story was, and they said it’s pretty sleazy.”

“It smelled pretty sleazy,” Nathan said.

“It’s owned by a guy named Mickey Strauss,” Eric explained. “Mickey is slime. Two years ago, they found two guys shot dead in there. Last year, there was this huge drug ring operating out of the place, but Mickey said he never knew anything about it. The guys at the office said that if a Mack truck came barreling through his office and straight across his desk, Mickey would swear he never saw it. Rick’s smart as shit for picking that place—he obviously knows Mickey won’t rat on him.”

“We have to get in there,” Ben said, standing up. “Maybe the leases have Rick’s real name on them.”

“Why would they?” Lisa asked. “If this place is so high security, why would there even be leases?”

All four roommates stared at Lisa. “She’s got a point,” Nathan finally said.

“That doesn’t mean the leases don’t exist,” Ben said, walking to the door. “And that’s all we have to go on at this point.”

“Where are you going?” Eric asked as he turned toward the kitchen. “They’re not going to let you waltz right in.”

“It shouldn’t be too hard,” Ben said, his hand on the doorknob. “All they have is some stupid doorman guarding the place.”

“And one security camera,” Nathan added.

Ben turned back toward the living room. “There was a camera?”