Zero Game by Brad Meltzer Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
Fifteenhundred. 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