Brad Meltzer - The Zero Game

As Viv placed the water next to the Senator’s lectern, the Senator, as usual, ignored her. Smiling to herself, she still leaned in close — just long enough to make it look real — as if she were getting directions. Spinning around with newfound purpose, Viv marched back to the cloakroom and headed straight for the head of the page program’s desk.

“Reed just asked me to run an errand,” she announced to Blutter, who was, as usual, dealing with another call. Flipping through the locator sheet on the desk, Viv signed herself out. Under Destination , she wrote Rayburn — the farthest building in the Capitol complex where Senate page deliveries were still allowed. That alone bought her at least an hour. And an hour was all it would take.

Within five minutes, Viv pushed open the burled-walnut door of the House cloakroom. “Here for a pickup,” she had told the security guard. He buzzed her right in. As she stepped into the cloakroom, she was smacked in the face with the steamy smell of hot dogs. Further up on her left, she followed the smell to the small crush of Members and staff crowded in front of a tiny lunch counter, the source of the hot dog smell. Forget cigars and other backroom clichés — on the House side of the Capitol, this was the real cloakroom whiff. And in that one sniff, Viv saw the subtle but inescapable difference: Senators got catered ice preferences; House Members fought for their own hot dogs. The Millionaire Club versus the House of the People. One nation, under God.

“Can I help you?” a female voice asked as she made her way out to the House Floor.

Turning around, she saw a petite young woman with frizzy blond hair sitting behind a dark wood desk.

“I’m looking for the page supervisor,” Viv explained.

“I prefer the term sovereign ,” the woman quipped just seriously enough to leave Viv wondering if it was a joke. Before she could comment, the phone on the woman’s desk rang, and she pounced for the receiver. “Cloakroom,” she announced. “Yep… room number?… I’ll send one right now…” Waving a single finger in the air, she signaled the pages who sat on the mahogany benches near her desk. A second later, a seventeen-year-old Hispanic boy in gray slacks and a navy sport coat hopped out of his seat.

“Ready to run, A.J.?” the woman asked as the boy gave Viv the once-over. Seeing her suit, he added an almost unnoticeable sneer. Suit instead of sport coat. Even at the page level, it was House versus Senate. “Pickup in Rayburn B-351-C,” the woman added.

“Again?” the page moaned. “Haven’t these people ever heard of E-mail?”

Ignoring the complaint, the woman turned back to Viv. “Now what can I help you with?” she asked.

“I work over in the Senate-”

“Clearly,” the woman said.

“Yeah, well… we… uh… we were wondering if you guys keep track of your page deliveries. We have a Senator who got a package last week and swears he gave the page another envelope on the way out — but naturally, since he’s a Senator, he has no idea if the page was House or Senate. We all look alike, y’know.”

The woman smiled at the joke, and Viv breathed a sigh of relief. She was finally in.

“All we keep is the current stuff,” the woman said, motioning to the sign-out sheet. “Everything else goes in the trash.”

“So you don’t have anything before…”

“Today. That’s it. I trash it every night. To be honest, it’s only there to keep track of you guys. If one of you disappears — well, you know what happens when you let seventeen-year-olds run around with a room-full of Congressmen…” Tilting her head back, the woman snorted loudly through her nose.

Viv was dead silent.

“Relax, honey — just some page humor.”

“Yeah,” Viv said, forcing a strained grin. “Listen, uh… can I make some copies of these? At least that way we show him something.”

“Help yourself,” the woman with the frizzy hair said. “Whatever makes your life easy…”

Stuck in the storage room and waiting for Viv, I hold the receiver to my ear as I dial the number.

“Congressman Grayson’s office,” a young man with a flat South Dakota accent eventually answers. Gotta give Grayson points for that. Whenever a constituent calls, the receptionist is the first voice they hear. For that reason alone, smart Congressmen make sure their front office people always have the right accent.

Looking past the stack of chairs in the storage room, I grip the receiver and give the receptionist just enough of a pause to make him think I’m busy. “Hi, I’m looking for your Appropriations person,” I finally say. “Somehow, I think I misplaced his info.”

“And who should I say is calling?”

I’m tempted to use Matthew’s name, but the news probably already traveled. Still, I stick to the fear factor. “I’m calling from Interior Approps. I need to-”

Cutting me off, he puts me on hold. A few seconds later, he’s back.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “His assistant says he just stepped out for a moment.”

It’s an obvious lie. At this level, House staffers don’t have assistants. Regardless, I shouldn’t be surprised. If I’m calling through the main line, it’s not a call worth taking.

“Tell him I’m from the Chairman’s office and that this is about Congressman Grayson’s request…”

Again I’m on hold. Again he’s back in seconds.

“Hold on one moment, sir. I’m transferring you to Perry…”

First rule of politics: Everyone’s afraid.

“This is Perry,” a scratchy but gruff voice answers.

“Hey, Perry, I’m calling from Interior Approps — filling in on Matthew’s issues after what-”

“Yeah, no… I heard. Really sorry about that. Matthew was a sweetheart.”

He says the word was , and I close my eyes. It still hits like a sock full of quarters.

“So what can I do for you?” Perry asks.

I think back to the original bet. Whatever Matthew saw that day… the reason he and Pasternak were killed… it started with this. A gold mine sale in South Dakota that needed to be slipped into the bill. Grayson’s office made the initial request. I don’t have much information beyond that. This guy can give me more. “Actually, we’re just reexamining all the different requests,” I explain. “When Matthew — with Matthew gone, we want to make sure we know everyone’s priorities.”

“Of course, of course… happy to help.” He’s a staffer for a low-level Member and thinks I can throw him a few projects. Right there, the gruffness in his voice evaporates.

“Okay,” I begin, staring down at my blank sheet of paper. “I’m looking at your original request list, and obviously, I know you’re not shocked to hear you can’t have everything on it…”

“Of course, of course…” he says for the second time, chuckling. I can practically hear him slapping his knee. I don’t know how Matthew dealt with it.

“So which projects are your must-gets?” I ask.

“The sewer system,” he shoots back, barely taking a breath. “If you can do that… if we improve drainage… that’s the one that wins us the district.”

He’s smarter than I thought. He knows how low his Congressman is on the ladder. If he asks for every toy on the Christmas list, he’ll be lucky if he gets a single one. Better just to focus on the Barbie Dream House.

“Those sewers… It really will change the election,” he adds, already pleading.

“So everything else on this list…”

“Is all second-tier.”

“What about this gold mine thing?” I ask, teeing up my bluff. “I thought Grayson was really hot for it.”

“Hot for it? He’s never even heard of it. We threw that out for a donor as a pure try-our-best.”