The Zero Game Read online

  The Congressman extends a handshake, but Harris pulls away. “Sorry . . . wet hands . . .” he explains. “By the way, Congressman, this is Matthew Mercer. He does Interior Approps for Congressman Cordell.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Enemark jabs with a fake laugh as he pumps my hand. Asshole. Without another word, he opens his coat and slides an arm into the sleeve. I check the lapel. There’s nothing there.

  “Have a good day, sir,” Harris says as Enemark slides his other arm in. Enemark rotates his shoulder blades and pulls his suit jacket into place. When the other half of the jacket hits his chest, a tiny flash of light catches my eye. There . . . on his other lapel . . . there’s a tiny American flag pin . . . a little triangle with an oil well on it . . . and the Lorax, whose big Dr. Seuss eyes smile at me.

  I motion to Harris; he looks up and finally grins. When I was a freshman at Duke, Harris was a senior. He got me into the fraternity and, years later, got me my first job here on the Hill. Mentor then, hero now.

  “Look at that,” Harris says to the Congressman. “I see you’re wearing the logging mascot.”

  I turn toward LaRue, but he’s staring at the ground to keep himself from laughing.

  “Yeah . . . I guess,” Enemark barks, checking the Lorax out for himself. Anxious to be done with the small talk, the Congressman leaves the bathroom and heads across the hallway to the House Floor. None of us moves until the door closes.

  “The logging mascot?” I finally blurt.

  “I told you there’s still fun going on,” Harris says, looking up at the small TV and checking out C-SPAN. Just another day at work.

  “I gotta tell Rosey this one . . .” LaRue says, rushing out of the room. “Harris, they’re gonna catch you sooner or later.”

  “Only if they outthink us,” Harris replies as the door again slams shut.

  I continue to laugh. Harris continues to study C-SPAN. “You notice Enemark didn’t wash his hands?” he asks. “Though that didn’t stop him from shaking yours.”

  I look down at my own open palm and head for the sink.

  “Here we go . . . Here’s the clip for the highlight reel . . .” Harris calls out, pointing up at C-SPAN.

  On-screen, Congressman Enemark approaches the podium with his usual old-cowboy swagger. But if you look real close—when the light hits him just right—the Lorax shines like a tiny star on his chest.

  “I’m Congressman William Enemark, and I speak for the people of Colorado,” he announces through the television.

  “That’s funny,” I say. “I thought he spoke for the trees . . .”

  To my surprise, Harris doesn’t smile. He just scratches at the dimple in his chin. “Feeling better?” he asks.

  “Of course—why?”

  He leans against the inlaid mahogany wall and never takes his eyes off the TV. “I meant what I said before. There really are some great games being played here.”

  “You mean games like this?”

  “Something like this.” There’s a brand-new tone in his voice. All serious.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, jeez, Matthew, it’s right in front of your face,” he says with a rare glimpse of rural Pennsylvania accent.

  I give him a long, hard look and rub the back of my sandy-blond hair. I’m a full head taller than him. But he’s still the only person I look up to in this place. “What’re you saying, Harris?”

  “You wanted to bring the fun back, right?”

  “Depends what kinda fun you’re talking about.”

  Pushing himself off the wall, Harris grins and heads for the door. “Trust me, it’ll be more fun than you’ve had in your entire life. No lie.”

  2

  Six Months Later

  I USUALLY HATE SEPTEMBER. With the end of the August recess, the halls are once again crowded, the Members are frozen in preelection bad moods, and worst of all, with the October 1st deadline that’s imposed on all Appropriations bills, we’re clocking hours twice as grueling as any other time of the year. This September, though, I barely notice.

  “Who wants to taste a food item less healthy than bacon?” I ask as I leave the polished institutional hallways of the Rayburn House Office Building and shove open the door to room B-308. The clocks on the wall shout back with two loud electronic buzzes. The signal for a vote on the House Floor. The vote’s on. And so am I . . .

  Wasting no time, I make a quick left at the hand-woven Sioux quilt that hangs on the wall and head straight for our receptionist, a black woman who always has at least one pencil sticking in the bun of her prematurely gray hair. “Here you go, Roxanne—lunch is served,” I call out as I drop two wrapped hot dogs onto her paperwork-covered desk. As a professional staffer for the Appropriations Committee, I’m one of four people assigned to the subcommittee on Interior. And the only one, besides Roxanne, who eats meat.

  “Where’d you get these?” she asks.

  “Meat Association event. Didn’t you say you were hungry?”

  She looks down at the dogs, then up at me. “What’s up with you lately? You on nice pills or something?”

  I shrug my shoulders and stare at the small TV behind her desk. Like most TVs in the building, it’s on C-SPAN for the vote. My eyes check the tally. Too early. No yeas, no nays.

  Following my gaze, Roxanne turns around to the TV. I stop right there. No . . . there’s no way. She can’t possibly know.

  “You okay?” she asks, reading my now-pale complexion.

  “With all this dead cow in my gut? Absolutely,” I say, patting my stomach. “So, is Trish here yet?”

  “In the hearing room,” Roxanne says. “But before you go in, someone’s at your desk.”

  Crossing into the large suite that houses four separate desks, I’m thoroughly confused. Roxanne knows the rules: With all the paperwork lying around, no one’s allowed in back, especially when we’re in preconference—which means, whoever’s back here is someone big . . .

  “Matthew?” a voice calls out with a salty North Carolina tinge.

  . . . or someone I know.

  “Come give your favorite lobbyist a juicy hug,” Barry Holcomb says from the chair next to my desk. As always, his blond hair is as perfectly cut as his pinstriped suit—both of which come courtesy of bigshot clients like the music industry, the big telecom boys, and, if I remember correctly, the Meat Association.

  “I smell hot dogs,” Barry teases, already one step ahead. “I’m telling you, free food always works.”

  In the world of Capitol Hill, there’re two kinds of lobbyists: those who swoop in from the top and those who burrow in from below. If you swoop in from the top, it’s because you have direct connections to the Members. If you burrow from below, it’s because you’re connected to staff—or in this case, because you went to the same college, celebrated your last two birthdays together, and tend to see each other out for a beer at least once a month. The odd thing is, since he’s a few years older, Barry’s always been more Harris’s friend than mine—which means this call is more business than social.

  “So what’s happening?” he asks. There it is. As a lobbyist at Pasternak & Associates, Barry knows he’s got two things to offer his clients: access and information. Access is why he’s sitting here. Now he’s focused on the latter.

  “Everything’s fine,” I tell him.

  “Any idea when you’ll have the bill done?”

  I look around at the three other desks in the room. All empty. It’s a good thing. My other three office mates already have their own reasons to hate me—ever since Cordell took over the Interior Approps subcommittee and replaced their former colleague with me, I’ve been the odd man out. I don’t need to add to it by letting them catch me back here with a lobbyist. Of course, Barry may be the sole exception.

  Sitting just below the Grand Canyon lithograph that hangs on my wall, Barry leans an elbow on my desk, which is packed with volcanoes of paperwork, including my Conference notes of all the projects we’ve funded so far
. Barry’s clients would pay thousands, maybe millions, for those. It’s sitting four inches to Barry’s left.

  But Barry doesn’t see it. He doesn’t see anything. Justice is blind. And due to a case of congenital glaucoma, so is one of the Hill’s best-known young lobbyists.

  As I cross around to my desk, Barry’s vacant blue eyes stare into the distance, but his head turns as he traces my steps. Trained since birth, he absorbs the sounds. My arms swinging against my body. The in-and-out of my breath. Even the crushed hush as my foot hits the carpet. In college, he had a golden retriever named Reagan, which was great for meeting girls. But on the Hill, after being slowed down by strangers who were constantly asking to pet the dog, Barry branched out on his own. These days, if it weren’t for the white cane, he’d be just another guy in a snazzy suit. Or, as Barry likes to put it: Political vision has nothing to do with eyesight.

  “We’re hoping October first,” I tell him. “We’re almost done with the Park Service.”

  “How ’bout your office mates? They moving as happily along?”

  What he really wants to know is, are the negotiations going just as well? Barry’s no fool. The four of us who share this office divvy up all the accounts—or sections—of the Interior bill, each doing our own specialty. At last count, the bill had a budget of twenty-one billion dollars. When you divide it by four, that means we’re in charge of spending over five billion dollars. Each. So why’s Barry so interested? Because we control the purse strings. Indeed, the whole purpose of the Appropriations Committee is to write the checks for all discretionary money spent by the government.

  It’s one of the dirtiest little secrets on Capitol Hill: Congressmen can pass a bill, but if it needs funding, it’s not going anywhere without an Appropriator. Case in point: Last year, the President signed a bill that allows free immunizations for low-income children. But unless Appropriations sets aside money to pay for the vaccines, the President may’ve gotten a great media event, but no one’s getting a single shot. And that, as the old joke goes, is why there’re actually three parties in Congress: Democrats, Republicans, and Appropriators. Like I said, it’s a dirty secret—but one Barry is all too aware of right about now.

  “So everyone’s good?” he asks.

  “Why complain, right?”

  Realizing the clock’s ticking, I flip on the TV that sits on my filing cabinet. As C-SPAN blooms into view, Barry turns at the sound. I once again check the vote count.

  “What’s the tally?” he asks.

  I spin around at the question. “What’d you say?”

  Barry pauses. His left eye is glass; his right one is pale blue and completely foggy. The combination makes it near impossible to read his expression. But the tone in his voice is innocent enough. “The tally,” he repeats. “What’s the vote count?”

  I smile to myself, still watching him closely. To be honest, if he were playing the game, I wouldn’t be surprised. I take that back. I would be. Harris said you can only invite one other person in. Harris invited me. If Barry’s in, someone else invited him.

  Convinced it’s just my imagination, I check the totals on C-SPAN. All I care about are the yeas and nays. On-screen, the white letters are superimposed over a shot of the still mostly empty House Floor: thirty-one yeas, eight nays.

  “Thirteen minutes left. Thirty-one to eight,” I tell Barry. “It’ll be a slaughter.”

  “No surprise,” he says, focused on the TV. “Even a blind man could’ve seen that.”

  I laugh at the joke—one of Barry’s old favorites. But I can’t stop thinking about what Harris said. It’s the best part of the game—not knowing who else is playing.

  “Listen, Barry, can we catch up later?” I ask as I grab my conference notes. “I’ve got Trish waiting . . .”

  “No stress,” he says, never wanting to push. Good lobbyists know better than that. “I’ll call you in an hour or so.”

  “That’s fine—though I may still be in the meeting.”

  “Let’s make it two hours. Does three o’clock work?”

  Again, I take it back. Even when he doesn’t want to, Barry can’t help but push. It was the same way in college. Every time we’d get ready to go to a party, we’d get two calls from Barry. The first was to check what time we were leaving. The second was to recheck what time we were leaving. Harris always called it overcompensation for the blindness; I called it understandable insecurity. Whatever the real reason, Barry’s always had to work a little harder to make sure he’s not left out.

  “So I’ll speak to you at three,” he says, hopping up and heading out. I tuck my notebooks under my arm like a football and plow toward the door that connects with the adjoining hearing room. Inside, my eyes skip past the enormous oval conference table and even the two black sofas against the back wall that we use for overflow. Instead, like before, I find the small TV in the back and—

  “You’re late,” Trish interrupts from the conference table.

  I spin midstep, almost forgetting why I’m here. “Would it help if I brought hot dogs?” I stutter.

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  Harris would have a great comeback. I offer an awkward grin.

  Leaning back in her chair, she’s got her arms crossed, completely uncharmed. At thirty-six years old, Trish Brennan has at least six years more experience than me, and is the type of person who says you’re late even when she’s early. Her reddish hair, dark green eyes, and light freckles give her an innocent look that’s surprisingly attractive. Of course, right now, the hottest thing in the room is the small TV in the back. I have to squint to see it. Forty-two yeas, ten nays. Still looking good.

  As I pull out the chair directly across from her at the conference table, the front door of the hearing room swings open and the last two staffers finally arrive. Georgia Rudd and Ezra Ben-Shmuel. Already prepped for battle, Ezra’s got a sparse poor-man’s-environmentalist beard (my-first-beard, Trish calls it), and a blue dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. Georgia’s the exact opposite. Too much of a conformist to take chances, she’s quiet, wears a standard navy interview suit, and is happy enough following Trish’s lead.

  Each armed with an oversized redwell accordion file, they quickly head to different sides of the table. Ezra on my side, Georgia next to Trish. All four horsemen are here. When it comes to Conference, I represent the House majority; Ezra does the House minority. Across the table, Trish and Georgia do the respective same for the Senate. And regardless of the fact that Ezra and I are in different political parties, even House Republicans and Democrats can set aside their differences for our common enemy: the Senate.

  My pager vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out to check the message. It’s from Harris. You watching? he asks in digital black letters.

  I glance over Trish’s shoulder, toward the TV in the back. Eighty-four yeas, forty-one nays.

  Crap. I need the nays to stay under 110. If they’re at forty-one this early in the vote, we’ve got problems.

  What do we do? I type back on the pager’s tiny keyboard, hiding my hands under the desk so the Senate folks can’t see what I’m doing. Before I can send it, my pager shakes with a new message.

  Don’t panic just yet, Harris insists. He knows me too well.

  “Can we please get this going?” Trish asks. It’s the sixth day in a row we’ve been trying to stomp each other into the ground, and Trish knows there’s still plenty to go. “Now, where’d we leave off?”

  “Cape Cod,” Ezra says. Like speed-readers in a race, all four of us flip through the hundred-page documents in front of us that show the spending difference between the House and Senate bills. Last month, when the House passed its version of the bill, we allocated seven hundred thousand dollars to rehabilitate the Cape Cod Seashore; a week later, the Senate passed its version, which didn’t allocate a dime. That’s the point of Conference: finding the differences and reaching a compromise—item by item by item. When the two bills are merged, they go back to the House and Se
nate for final passage. When both bodies pass the same bill, that’s when it goes to the White House to be signed into law.

  “I’ll give you three hundred and fifty thousand,” Trish offers, hoping I’ll be satisfied by half.

  “Done,” I tell her, grinning to myself. If she’d pushed, I would’ve settled for an even two hundred.

  “The Chesapeake in Maryland,” Trish adds, moving to the next item. I look down at the spreadsheet. Senate gave it six million for stabilization; we gave it nothing.

  Trish smiles. That’s why she was kissing tush on the last one. The six million in here was put there by her boss, Senator Ted Apelbaum, who also happens to be the Chairman of the subcommittee—the Senate equivalent of my boss, Cordell. In local slang, the Chairs are known as Cardinals. That’s where the argument ends. What Cardinals want, Cardinals get.

  In quiet rooms around the Capitol, the scene is the same. Forget the image of fat-cat Congressmen horse-trading in cigar-smoke-filled backrooms. This is how the sausage is made, and this is how America’s bank account is actually spent: by four staffers sitting around a well-lit conference table without a Congressman in sight. Your tax dollars at work. Like Harris always says: The real shadow government is staff.

  My pager again vibrates in my lap. Harris’s message is simple: Panic.

  I take another look at the TV. One hundred seventy-two yeas, sixty-four nays.

  Sixty-four? I don’t believe it. They’re over halfway there.

  How? I type back.

  Maybe they have the votes, Harris replies almost instantly.

  Can’t be, I send back.

  For the next two minutes, Trish lectures about why seven million dollars is far too much to spend on Yellowstone National Park. I barely register a word. On C-SPAN, the nays go from sixty-four to eighty-one. It’s impossible.

  “. . . don’t you agree, Matthew?” Trish asks.