The Tenth Justice - Brad Meltzer [128]
“Unless we get something on Rick.”
“It doesn’t matter if we get something on Rick. Rick doesn’t care if we tell the police he’s the mastermind. They can’t find him. But they can always find you. And as long as Rick’s out there, you’ll always have that hanging over your head.”
“But what if we catch Rick ourselves?”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Lisa said, impatiently. “Even if we caught Rick on our own, we’d have to turn him over to the police at some point. It’s not like we can lock him in our basement forever. And the moment we turn Rick over, you can be sure he’s going to blame everything on you.”
“Then I’m screwed no matter what.”
“That’s my point,” Lisa said. “So you might as well go to the police and preempt whatever Rick can do to you.”
“Maybe they’ll go easier on me because I’m the one approaching them.”
“Possibly,” Lisa said. “And if we give them a solid enough plan, they might let you walk away so they can catch Rick in the act.”
Pausing as he processed the information, Ben eventually said, “If I go in, I can kiss my job good-bye.”
“Not necessarily,” Lisa said. “For all we know, you may get a medal for your bravery.”
“You know what? Let’s just stop, okay?” Ben said, turning his chair away from her.
“What’s wrong? What’d I say?”
“Nothing,” Ben said, refusing to turn around.
“Are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself. I should’ve ended this weeks ago.”
“That’s easy to say now. Things were different weeks ago.”
“Sure they were,” Ben said sarcastically.
Lisa walked back to her desk. “So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” Ben said. “Let me think.”
At a quarter to eight that evening, Ben left the Court and made his way to Union Station. He took the escalator down into the dimly lit, underheated, advertisement-decorated hall and was surrounded by fellow overachieving, business-clad Washingtonians. Ben started counting blue pin-striped suits, brown leather briefcases, and black wing tips in his immediate vicinity. The majority of those with all three were losing their hair, and only one had actually loosened his tie since leaving work. Ben suddenly felt claustrophobic and walked to the far end of the platform. What the hell am I doing to myself? he wondered, staring at his peers. When the silver train hissed into the platform, Ben got on board and found an empty seat. Two minutes into the ride, the train came to an abrupt halt.
“We regret the inconvenience, but we have another train in the station ahead of us,” a grainy voice announced through the public address system. “We’ll be moving again in a few minutes.”
The crowd let out a simultaneous groan, and Ben settled back in his seat.
“Every day,” sighed the passenger sitting next to Ben. “I mean, can’t they ever time it right? It’s not like there’s never been a rush hour before.”
“Yeah,” Ben muttered, glancing an acknowledgment at the young man. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, even though he was wearing a suit and tie.
“Why is it the same story every night?” the boy asked. “Why can’t they fix it?”
“I have no idea,” Ben said. “And I’m too tired to think about it.”
“Don’t talk to me about tired,” the boy said in a slight Massachusetts accent. “Run from the Senate buildings to the House buildings twenty times a day and then talk to me.”
“So you’re an intern?”
The boy proudly pulled open his coat and showed off the laminated Senate I.D. card that hung around his neck. “I prefer to be called a page. And just so you’re aware, if you need to know the coffee preferences of any senator, I know them all by heart.”
“The pee-ons of the People, huh?”
“That’s what they say. But I won’t be for long.”
“And why’s that?” Ben smiled.
“Because I’m good at what I do. I solve problems.” The boy motioned to the front end of the train. “That’s what’s wrong with the people who set the train schedules. None of them are problem solvers. They’re boring, staid, reactive. That’s why we’re sitting here right now. No one goes after the problem proactively.”
“So what’s your solution?”
“It’s not so much a solution