The Zero Game

4

At exactly 9:35 the following morning, I’m sitting alone at my desk, wondering why my delivery’s late. On C-SPAN, a rabbi from Aventura, Florida, says a short prayer as everyone on the Speaker’s rostrum bows his head. When he’s done, the gavel bangs and the camera pulls out. On the stenographers’ table, the two water glasses are back. Anyone on the Floor could’ve moved them. They’re out there all day long. On my phone, I’ve got seven messages from lobbyists, fourteen from staff, and two from Members — all dying to know if we’ve funded their project. Everything’s back to normal — or as normal as a day like this gets.

I pick up the phone and dial the five-digit extension for our receptionist out front. “Roxanne, if there’re any packages that come in-”

“I heard you the first thirty-four times,” she moans. “I’ll send ’em right back. What’re you waiting for anyway, pregnancy results?”

I don’t bother to answer. “Just make sure-”

“Thirty-five! That’s officially thirty-five times,” she interrupts. “Don’t worry, sweetie — I won’t let you down.”

Ten minutes later, she’s good to her word. The door from reception opens, and a young female page sticks her head in. “I’m looking for-”

“That’s me,” I blurt.

Stepping into the room with her blue blazer and gray slacks, she hands me the sealed manila envelope — and checks out the office.

“That’s not real, is it?” she asks, pointing to the stuffed ferret on a nearby bookcase.

“Thank the NRA lobbyists,” I tell her. “Isn’t it far more practical than sending flowers like everyone else?”

With a laugh, she heads for the door. I look down at the envelope. Yesterday was spent dealing the cards. Today it’s time to ante up.

Ripping open the flap, I turn the envelope upside down and shake. Two dozen squares of paper rain down on my desk. Taxi Receipt, it reads in thick black letters across the top of each one. I shuffle the pile into a neat stack and make sure every one of them is blank. So far, so good.

Grabbing a pen, I eye the section marked Cab Number and quickly scribble the number 727 into the blank. Cab 727. That’s my ID. After that, I put a single check mark in the top right-hand corner of the receipt. There’s the ante: twenty-five dollars if you want to play. I don’t just want to play, though. I want to win, which is why I start with a serious bet. In the blank marked Fare, I write $10.00. To the untrained eye, it’s not much. But to those of us playing, well… that’s why we add a zero. One dollar is ten dollars; five dollars is actually fifty. That’s why they call it the Zero Game. In this case, ten bucks is a solid Benjamin Franklin — the opening bid in the auction.

Reaching into my top drawer, I pull out a fresh manila envelope, open the flap, and sweep the taxicab receipts inside. Time for some interoffice mail. On the front of the envelope, I write Harris Sandler — 427 Russell Bldg. Next to the address, I add the word Private, just to be safe. Of course, even if Harris’s assistant opens it — even if the Speaker of the House opens it — I’m not dropping a bead of sweat. I see a hundred-dollar bet. Anyone else sees a ten-dollar taxi receipt — nothing to look twice at.

Stepping into our reception area, I toss the envelope into the rusty metal basket we use as an Out box. Roxanne does most of our interoffice stuff herself. “Roxanne, can you make sure to take this out in the next batch?”

She nods as I turn back to my desk. Just another day.

“Is it there yet?” I ask twenty minutes later.

“Already gone,” Harris answers. From the crackle in his voice, he’s got me on speakerphone. I swear, he’s not afraid of anything.

“You left it blank, right?” I ask.

“No, I ignored everything we discussed. Good-bye, Matthew. Call me when you have news.”

As he’s about to hang up, I hear a click in the background. Harris’s door opening. “Courier’s here,” his assistant calls out.

With a slam, Harris is gone. And so are the taxi receipts. From me to my mentor, from Harris to his. Leaning back in my black vinyl rolling chair, I can’t help but wonder who it is. Harris has been on the Hill since the day he graduated. If he’s an expert at anything, it’s making friends and connections. That narrows the list to a tidy few thousand. But if he’s using a courier, he’s going off campus. I stare out the window at a perfect view of the Capitol dome. The playing field expands before my eyes. Former staffers are everywhere in this town. Law firms… PR boutiques… and most of all…

My phone rings, and I check the digital screen for caller ID.

… lobbying shops.

“Hi, Barry,” I say as I pick up the receiver.

“You’re still standing?” he asks. “I heard you guys were negotiating till ten last night.”

“It’s that time of year,” I tell him, wondering where he got the info. No one saw us leave last night. But that’s Barry. No sight, but somehow he sees it all. “So what can I help you with?”

“Tickets, tickets, and more tickets. This Sunday — Redskins home opener. Wanna see ’em get trounced from insanely overpriced seats? I got the recording industry’s private box. Me, you, Harris — we’ll have ourselves a little reunion.”

Barry hates football, and he can’t see a single play, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like the private catering and the butler that come with those seats. Plus, it gives Barry the temporary upper hand in his ongoing race with Harris. Neither will admit it, but it’s the unspoken game they’ve always played. And while Barry may get us the skybox, come game day, Harris will somehow find the best seat in it. It’s classic Capitol Hill — too many student government presidents in one place.

“Actually, that sounds great. Did you tell Harris?”

“Already done.” The answer doesn’t surprise me. Barry’s closer to Harris — he always calls him first. But that doesn’t mean the reverse is true. In fact, when Harris needs a lobbyist, he sidesteps Barry and goes directly to the man on top.

“So how’s Pasternak treating you?” I ask, referring to Barry’s boss.

“How do you think I got the tickets?” Barry teases. It’s not much of a joke. Especially to Barry. As the firm’s hungriest associate, he’s been trying to leap out from the pack for years, which is why he’s always asking Harris to throw him a Milk-Bone. Last year, when Harris’s boss changed his stance on telecom deregulation, Barry even asked if he could be the one to bring the news to the telecom companies. “Nothing personal,” Harris had said, “but Pasternak gets it first.” In politics, like the mob, the best presents have to start up top.

“God bless him, though,” Barry adds about his boss. “The guy’s an old master.” There’s no arguing with that. As the founding partner of Pasternak & Associates, Bud Pasternak is respected, connected, and truly one of the kindest guys on Capitol Hill. He’s also Harris’s first boss — back from the days when Harris was running the pen-signing machine — and the person who gave Harris his first big break: an early draft of a speech for the Senator’s reelection bid. From there, Harris never touched the auto-pen again.

I study the arched windows on the side of the Capitol. Pasternak invited Harris; Harris invited me. It’s gotta be, right?

I chat with Barry for another fifteen minutes to see if I hear a courier arrive in the background. His office is only a few blocks away. The courier never comes.

An hour and a half later, there’s another knock on my door. The instant I see the blue blazer and gray slacks, I’m out of my seat.

“I take it you’re Matthew,” a page with black hair and an awkward underbite says.

“You got it,” I say as he hands me the envelope.

As I rip it open, I take a quick survey of my three office mates, who are sitting at their respective desks. Roy and Connor are on my left. Dinah’s on my right. All three of them are over forty years old — both men have professorship beards; Dinah’s got an unapologetic fanny pack with the Smithsonian logo on it — professional staffers hired for their budget expertise.

Congressmen come and go. So do Democrats and Republicans. But these three stay forever. It’s the same on all the Appropriations subcommittees. With all the different power shifts, no matter which party’s in charge, someone has to know how to run the government. It’s one of the few examples of nonpartisan trust in the entire Capitol. Naturally, my boss hates it. So when he took over the subcommittee, he put me in this position to look out for his best interests and keep an eye on them. But as I open my unmarked envelope, they’re the ones who should be watching me.

Dumping the contents on my desk, I spot the expected pile of taxi receipts. This time, though, while most of the receipts are still blank, one’s filled in. The handwriting’s clearly male: tiny chicken scratch that doesn’t lean left or right. The fare’s listed at fifty bucks. Unreal. One round and we’re already up to five hundred dollars. Fine by me.

Harris calls it the Congressional Pissing Contest. I call it Name That Tune. All across the Capitol, House and Senate pages deliver blank taxicab receipts to people around the Hill. We all put in our bids and pass them up to whoever invited us into the game, who then passes them to their sponsor, and so on. We’ve never figured out how far it goes, but we do know it’s not a single straight line — that’d take too long. Instead, it’s broken up into branches. I start our branch and pass it to Harris. Somewhere else, another player starts his branch. There could be four branches; there could be forty. But at some point, the various bets make their way back to the dungeon-masters, who collect, coalesce, and start the process again.

Last round, I bid one hundred dollars. Right now, the top bid is five hundred. I’m about to increase it. In the end, whoever bids the most “buys” the right to make the issue their own. Highest bidder has to make the proposition happen, whether it’s getting 110 votes on the baseball bill or inserting a tiny land project into Interior Approps. Everyone else who antes in tries to make sure it doesn’t happen. If you pull it off, you get the entire pot, including every dollar that’s been put in (minus a small percentage to the dungeon-masters, of course). If you fail, the money gets split among everyone who was working against you.

I study the cab number on the five-hundred-dollar receipt: 326. Doesn’t tell me squat. But whoever 326 is, they clearly think they’ve got the inside track. They’re wrong.

Staring down at a blank receipt, I’ve got my pen poised. Next to Cab Number, I write the number 727. Next to Fare, I put $60.00. Six hundred now, plus the $125.00 I put in before. If the bet gets too high, I can always drop out by leaving the dollar amount blank. But this isn’t the time to fold. It’s time to win. Stuffing all the receipts into a new envelope, I seal it up, address it to Harris, and walk it out front. Interoffice mail won’t take long.

It’s not until one-thirty that the next envelope hits my desk. The receipt I’m looking for has the same chicken scratch as before. Cab number 326. The fare is $100.00. One thousand even. That’s what happens when the entire bet is centered on an issue that can be decided with a single well-placed phone call. Everyone in this place thinks they’ve got the jags to get it done. And they may. But for once, we’ve got more.

I close my eyes and work the math in my head. If I go too fast, I’ll scare 326 off. Better to go slow and drag him along. With a flourish, I fill in a fare of $150.00. Fifteen hundred. And still counting.

By a quarter after three, my stomach’s rumbling and I’m starting to get cranky — but I still don’t go to lunch. Instead, I gnaw through the last handfuls of Grape-Nuts that Roy keeps hidden in his desk. The cereal doesn’t last long. I still don’t move. We’re too close to gift-wrapping this up. According to Harris, no bet’s ever gone for more than nineteen hundred bucks — and that was only because they got to mess with Teddy Kennedy.

“Matthew Mercer?” a page with cropped blond hair asks from the door. I wave the kid inside.

“You’re popular today,” Dinah says as she hangs up her phone.

“Blame the Senate,” I tell her. “We’re battling over language, and Trish not only doesn’t trust faxes, but she won’t put it on E-mail because she’s worried it’s too easy to forward to the lobbyists.”

“She’s right,” Dinah says. “Smart girl.”

Turning my chair just enough so Dinah can’t see, I open the envelope and peer inside. I swear, I feel my testicles tighten. I don’t believe it. It’s not the amount, which is now up to three thousand dollars. It’s the brand-new cab number: 189. The handwriting is squat and blocky. There’s another player in the game. And he’s clearly not afraid to spend some cash.

My phone screams, and I practically leap from my chair. Caller ID says it’s Harris.

“How we doing?” he asks as soon as I pick up.

“Not bad, though the language still isn’t there yet.”

“You got someone in the room?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” I say, keeping my back to Dinah. “And a new section I’ve never seen before.”

“Another player? What’s the number?”

“One-eighty-nine.”

“That’s the guy who won yesterday — with the baseball bill.”

“You sure?”

It’s a dumb question. Harris lives and breathes this stuff. He doesn’t get it wrong.

“Think we should worry?” I ask.

“Not if you can deliver.”

“Oh, I’ll deliver,” I insist.

“Then don’t stress. If anything, I’m happy,” Harris adds. “With two bidders out there, the pot’s that much bigger. And if he won yesterday, he’s cocky and careless. That’s the perfect time to swipe his pants.”

Nodding to myself, I hang up the phone and stare down at the cab receipt with the block writing.

“Everything okay?” Dinah asks from her desk.

Scribbling as fast as I can, I up the bet to four thousand dollars and slide the receipt into the envelope. “Yeah,” I say as I head for the metal Out box up front. “Just perfect.”

The envelope comes back within an hour, and I ask the page to wait so he can take it directly to Harris. Roxanne’s done enough interoffice delivery service. Better to mix it up so she doesn’t get suspicious. Clawing my way into the envelope, I search for the signal that we’ve got the top bid. Instead, I find another receipt. Cab number 189. Fare of five hundred dollars. Five grand — plus everything else we already put in.

For one picosecond, I hesitate, wondering if it’s time to fold. Then I remind myself we’re holding all the aces. And the jokers. And the wild cards. 189 may have the cash, but we’ve got the whole damn deck. He’s not scaring us off.

I grab a blank receipt from the envelope and write in my cab number. In the blank next to Fare, I jot $600.00. That’s a pretty rich cab ride.

Exactly twelve minutes after the page leaves my office, my phone rings. Harris just got his delivery.

“You sure this is smart?” he asks the instant I pick up. From the echo, I’m back on speakerphone.

“Don’t worry, we’re fine.”

“I’m serious, Matthew. This isn’t Monopoly money we’re playing with. If you add up the separate bets, we’re already in for over six thousand. And now you wanna add another six grand on top of that?”

When we were talking about limits last night, I told Harris I had a little over eight thousand dollars in the bank, including all my down-payment money. He said he had four grand at the most. Maybe less. Unlike me, Harris sends part of his paycheck to an uncle in Pennsylvania. His parents died a few years back, but… family’s still family.

“We can still cover it,” I tell him.

“That doesn’t mean we should put it all on black.”

“What’re you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything,” Harris insists. “I just… maybe it’s time to catch our breath and walk away. No reason to risk all our money. We can just bet the other side, and you’ll make sure the project never gets in the bill.”

That’s how it works — if you don’t have the high bid, you and the rest of the low bidders shift to the other side and try to stop it from taking place. It’s a great way to even the odds: The person with the best chance of making it happen faces off against a group that, once combined, has an amazing amount of muscle. There’s only one problem. “You really want to split the winnings with everyone else?”

He knows I’m right. Why give everyone a free ride?

“If you want to ease the stakes, maybe we can invite someone else in,” I suggest.

Right there, Harris stops. “What’re you saying?”

He thinks I’m trying to find out who’s above him on the list.

“You think it’s Barry, don’t you?” he asks.

“Actually, I think it’s Pasternak.”

Harris doesn’t reply, and I grin to myself. Pasternak may be the closest thing he has to a mentor, but Harris and I go back to my freshman year. You can’t lie to old friends.

“I’m not saying you’re right,” he begins. “But either way, my guy’s not gonna go for it. Especially this late. I mean, even assuming 189 is teaming up with his own mentor, that’s still a tractorful of cash.”

“And it’ll be two tractorfuls when we win. There’s gotta be over twenty-five grand in the pot. Think about the check you’ll send home after that.”

Even Harris can’t argue with that one.

There’s a crackle on the line. He takes me off speakerphone. “Just tell me one thing, Matthew — can you really make this happen?”

I’m silent, working every possibility. He’s just as quiet, counting every consequence. It’s the opposite of our standard dance. For once, I’m confidence; he’s concern.

“So can you pull this off?” Harris repeats.

“I think so,” I tell him.

“No, no, no, no, no… Forget ‘think so.’ I can’t afford ‘think so.’ I’m asking you as a friend — honestly, no bullshit. Can you pull this off?”

It’s the first time I hear the tinge of panic in Harris’s voice. He’s not afraid to leap off the edge of the cliff, but like any smart politician, he needs to know what’s in the river below. The good thing is, in this one case, I’ve got the life preserver.

“This baby’s mine,” I tell him. “The only one closer is Cordell himself.”

The silence tells me he’s unconvinced.

“You’re right,” I add sarcastically. “It’s too risky — we should walk away now.”

The silence is even longer.

“I swear to you, Harris. Cordell doesn’t care about table scraps. This is what I’m hired to do. We won’t lose.”

“You promise?”

As he asks the question, I stare out the window at the dome of the Capitol. “On my life.”

“Don’t get melodramatic on me.”

“Fine, then here’s pragmatic. Know what the golden rule of Appropriations is? He who has the gold makes the rule.”

“And we got the gold?”

“We got the gold.”

“You sure about that?”

“We’ll know soon enough,” I say with a laugh. “Now, you in?”

“You already filled out the slip, didn’t you?”

“But you’re the one who has to send it on.”

There’s another crackle. I’m back on speakerphone. “Cheese, I need you to deliver a package,” he calls out to his assistant.

There we go. Back in business.

The clock hits 7:30 and there’s a light knock on my office door. “All clear?” Harris asks, sticking his head inside.

“C’mon in,” I say, motioning him toward my desk. With everyone gone, we might as well speed things along.

As he enters the office, he lowers his chin and flashes a thin grin. It’s a look I don’t recognize. Newfound trust? Respect?

“You wrote on your face,” he says.

“What’re you…?”

He smiles and taps his finger against his cheek. “Blue cheek. Very Duke.”

Licking my fingers, I scrub the remaining ink from my face and ignore the joke.

“By the way, I saw Cordell in the elevator,” he says, referring to my boss.

“He say anything?”

“Nothing much,” Harris teases. “He feels bad that all those years ago, you signed up for his campaign and drove him around to all those events without knowing he’d eventually turn into an asshole. Then he said he was sorry for dropping every environmental issue for whatever gets him on TV.”

“That’s nice. I’m glad he’s big enough to admit it.” My face has a smile, but Harris can always see deeper. When we came here, Harris believed in the issues; I believed in a person. It’s the latter that’s more dangerous.

Harris sits on the corner of my desk, and I follow his gaze to the TV, which, as always, is locked on C-SPAN. As long as the House is in session, the pages are still on call. And from the looks of it — with Wyoming Congresswoman Thelma Lewis gripping the podium and blathering away — we’ve got some time. Mountain standard time, to be precise. Right now, it’s 5:30 in Casper, Wyoming — prime news hour — which is why Lewis waited until late in the day to make her big speech, and why Members from New Mexico, North Dakota, and Utah are all in line behind her. Why fall in the woods if no one’s there to hear?

“Democracy demographics,” I mutter.

“If they were smart, they’d wait another half hour,” Harris points out. “That’s when the local news numbers really kick in and-”

Before he can finish, there’s a knock on my door.

“Matthew Mercer?” a female page with brown bangs asks as she approaches with an envelope.

Harris and I share a fast glance. This is it.

She hands me the envelope, and I struggle to play it cool.

“Wait… aren’t you Harris?” she blurts.

He doesn’t flinch. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

“At orientation… you gave that speech.”

I roll my eyes, not surprised. Every year, Harris is one of four staffers asked to speak at the orientation for the pages. To most, it’s a suck job. Not to Harris. The other three speakers drone on about the value of government. Harris gives them the locker room speech from Hoosiers and tells them they’ll be writing the future. Every year, the fan club grows.

“That was really amazing what you said,” she adds.

“I meant every word,” Harris tells her. And he did.

I can’t take my eyes off the envelope. “Harris, we should really…”

“I’m sorry,” the page says. She can’t take her eyes off him. And not because of the speech. Harris’s square shoulders… his dimpled chin… even his strong black eyebrows — he’s always had a classic look — like someone you see in an old black-and-white photograph from the 1930s, but who somehow still looks good today. All you have to add are the deep green eyes… He’s never had to work it.

“Listen, you… you have a great one,” the page adds, still staring as she leaves.

“You, too,” Harris says.

“Can you shut the door behind you?” I call out.

The door slams with a bang, and Harris yanks the envelope from my hands. If we were in college, I’d tackle him and grab it back. Not anymore. Today, the games are bigger.

Harris slides his finger along the flap and casually flips it open. I don’t know how he keeps his composure. My blond hair is already damp with sweat; his black locks are dry as hay.

Searching for calm, I turn toward the Grand Canyon photo on the wall. The first time my parents took me there, I was fifteen years old — and already six feet tall. Staring down from the south rim of the canyon was the first time in my life I felt small. I feel the same way next to Harris.

“What’s it say?” I demand.

He peeks inside and stays totally silent. If the bet’s been raised, there’ll be a new receipt inside. If we’re top dog, our old slip of paper is the only thing we’ll find. I try to read his face. I don’t have a prayer. He’s been in politics too long. The crease in his forehead doesn’t twitch. His eyes barely blink.

“I don’t believe it,” he finally says. He pulls out the taxi receipt and cups it in the palm of his hand.

“What?” I ask. “Did he raise it? He raised it, didn’t he? We’re dead…”

“Actually,” Harris begins, looking up to face me and slowly raising an excited eyebrow, “I’d say we’re very much alive.” In his hand he flashes the taxi receipt like a police badge. It’s my handwriting. Our old bet. For six thousand dollars.

I laugh out loud the moment I see it.

“It’s payday, Matthew. Now, you ready to name that tune…?”