“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.
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
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.
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.”
