The Tenth Justice - Brad Meltzer [25]
“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,