The Tenth Justice - Brad Meltzer [75]
“You got it,” Ben said. “Grinnell just got the golden ticket, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s going to reap all the profits of a mall complex that he’s never going to have to build. That should teach the city to interfere with a private citizen.”
“How can you think that’s fair? This was so obviously planned by Grinnell. He bought that property with a constitutional lawyer at his side. He knew the city would freak if he said he was going to raze a church to open a mall. And the bigger he said his plans were, the more he knew he’d collect if the Court went his way.”
“C’mon,” Ben said. “This case took three years to reach us. You don’t really believe the whole transaction was legal speculation?”
“I don’t think it was all speculation, but I do think Howard Grinnell is a piece of shit. You read the record—he’s an uptight greedy developer who was born with a silver stick up his ass.”
“That was in the record?” Ben asked. “I never saw that.”
“You know what I mean. I just can’t believe Veidt was such a coward,” Lisa said, flipping her legal pad to a clean page. “We have to write a scathing dissent for this. I want to limit this decision as much as possible.”
“Don’t worry. Veidt’s lack of enthusiasm limits their opinion to this set of facts. By the time we’re done with it, this decision will look like it came out of a traffic court.”
Lisa put her pencil down and took a deep breath. While a halfhearted vote by a justice ensured victory in the case at hand, it usually also led to a halfhearted decision. And if history was any indicator, halfhearted decisions rarely made strong legal precedents.
“Besides,” Ben said, “this decision will be overruled in a year. When Blake steps down, you know we’re going to get a liberal justice.”
“I know,” Lisa admitted. “It’ll just annoy me to see Grinnell take home all that cash.” Looking up from her desk, she added, “Have you thought about how Rick fits into all this?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet, but my guess is that if he knew the decision, he’d try to buy a piece of Grinnell’s action.”
“Have you decided whether you’re going to tell him? Or is there a new plan to catch him on tape?”
“I’m not sure,” Ben said. “I just have to survive Thanksgiving with my family.”
“Where the hell is Ober?” Ben asked Nathan as the two friends stood in their living room, suitcases by their sides.
“He probably got lost on his way home,” Nathan said. “The simpleminded are easily confused.”
“I say we leave his ass,” Lisa said, returning from the kitchen with a can of soda in her hand. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll miss the flight.”
“Trust me, we don’t want that,” Ben warned. “If he misses the plane, his mother will be on our backs all weekend.” Ben screeched in imitation of Ober’s mom: “You’ve forgotten my baby! Where’s my baby?”
“He’s an only child,” Nathan explained to Lisa. “His mom’s a bit possessed.”
“You mean possessive,” Ben corrected.
“Oh, yes, I mean possessive. Silly me,” Nathan said, repeating the friends’ old high school joke.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!” Ober announced, flinging open the front door.
“Where the hell were you?” Ben asked.
“There was an emergency at the office,” Nathan said sarcastically. “There was an outburst of rowdy orange-juice-subsidy letter writers who needed swift attention.”
Ober pointed at Lisa. “I didn’t know you were flying with us.”
“And she’s not even paying for it,” Ben said. “My parents are picking up the tab.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ober asked. “If I knew free airfare was involved, I’d have told your mom that I was sleeping with you.”
“I appreciate that,” Ben said. “Now can we get out of here?”
Ober grabbed his suitcase from his room and returned to the living room. “Where’s Eric?” he asked.
“ERIC!” Nathan called out. “WE’RE LEAVING!”
Eric walked down the stairs with a navy duffel bag and joined the group without saying a word to anyone. They all packed into Nathan’s Volvo and headed for National Airport.
“They’re going to lose our luggage,” Lisa said, after the skycap loaded their bags onto a dolly and rolled them toward