Silent as DeRosa picked up his papers, Nathan remained motionless in the center of the room.
“Nathan, I’m so sorry,” Ben said. “I tried my best to-”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Nathan interrupted. Walking over to DeRosa, he added, “I guess you knew about the blackmail letters Rick sent us.”
“All about them,” DeRosa said. “Don’t worry. We’ll let your office know that your participation in this case was invaluable. There’s no way they’ll fire you after I’m done with them.”
“Great. Fine,” Nathan said, walking to the door of DeRosa’s office.
Burke followed Nathan to the door. “You’re not going anywhere,” Burke growled. “We still have questions for you to-”
Nathan opened the door and stormed out.
“Let him go,” DeRosa said. “It’s been a long day.” When the door closed, DeRosa turned to Ben, who looked exhausted. “Well, that’s one battle lost-you ready for Hollis?”
Sitting outside of Hollis’s private office, Ben anxiously waited for the door to open. What’s taking so long? he wondered. Restlessly, he fidgeted with the sling on his left arm. Not since his first day on the job had he been this nervous about an encounter with Hollis. Twenty minutes later, the thick mahogany door opened, and Lisa walked out.
“How’d it go?” Ben asked. “What’d he say?”
“He’s ready to see you,” Lisa said.
“But how’d-”
“Go in and talk to him,” Lisa said. “He’s the boss. Not me.”
Uneasy as he stepped inside, Ben forced a smile and took his usual seat in front of Hollis’s desk. “Nice to see you,” Ben said.
With eyes that had watched the evolution of the law for more than thirty years, Justice Mason Hollis was the most accessible of the nine. The oldest of seven children and the father of five, he radiated a paternal presence. As a college baseball player at Yale, he was rumored to strike out on purpose when he felt the other team was losing by too wide a margin, and as a judge on the D.C. Circuit, he’d once granted an extension so that counsel could “get some sleep.” According to the employees of the Court, Hollis was the one justice no one feared. At this moment, however, Ben Addison was terrified.
“How are you doing?” Hollis asked. As his hand slid over his sparse white hair, his fingers brushed against the numerous liver spots that dotted his head.
“I’m fine,” Ben said, unable to look his boss in the face.
“Sounds like you’re lucky to be alive, yes?”
“I suppose.”
Hollis picked up a pencil and started nibbling on the eraser. “Don’t be so downcast,” he said. “You should be proud of yourself-quick thinking and all that.” Getting no reaction, he added, “A lesser person would’ve been beaten by this.”
“I’m just glad it’s finally over.”
Hollis smiled at Ben. “I have to tell you-when I hired you and Lisa, I knew you’d be a lively team. I didn’t expect you to be this lively, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Tapping his foot against the thick burgundy carpet, Ben wished Hollis would get to the point. He wanted to know Hollis’s decision. “Can I ask you a question?” he blurted. “Do I get to keep my job?”
“Ben-”
“Since I helped catch Rick, I’m not going to be criminally charged,” Ben said, his voice shaking. “The marshals said my record would stay completely clean, and they want to give me a commendation for helping them catch Lungen. They arrested him early this morning.”
“Ben, I’m sorry…”
“They said I could-”
“Ben, listen to me,” Hollis demanded. “Theoretically, you may be innocent, but you still violated the Code of Ethics of this Court. I have no choice but to let you go.”
At eight-thirty that evening, Ben returned home. Eric was in the dining room, hunched over a small canvas. Flicking drops of red, blue, yellow, and green paint from his fingers, Eric was trying to re-create the splatter painting that he had done directly on the wall. It was Eric’s fourth attempt to duplicate his earlier work; only a close match would be suitable to go in Ober’s coffin. Seeing Ben walk through the door, Eric rubbed his fingers with a turpentine-covered rag and headed toward the living room, rattling off questions: “What happened? Are you okay? How’s your shoulder? What’d they say? What took so long?”
Ben took off his coat and put it in the closet. He then turned toward Eric and gave a single answer. “I was fired.”
“What?” Eric asked as Ben moved into the kitchen. “I don’t believe it. Tell me what happened.”
Ben poured himself a tall glass of water. “There’s nothing to tell. They fired me. I told my story to Hollis. He listened. He tried to soften the blow. He fired me. Then he took me to see Osterman. After a long lecture, they let me leave. That’s it. I no longer work at the Supreme Court.”
Ben drank the entire glass of water.
“What else did they say?”
Ben ignored Eric’s question. “Where’s Nathan?”
“He drove back to Boston. Ober’s funeral is tomorrow.”
Slowly rotating his shoulder, Ben felt a heavy ache setting in. “Did he say anything?”
“He told me the story about Rick, packed up his stuff, and left.”
“Was he still mad?”
“I wouldn’t call him until we get to Boston. He’s pretty pissed off.”
“I understand,” Ben said. Pulling a small vial from his pants pocket, he read the directions for his pain medication. Ben poured some more water and took one of the tiny pink pills.
“So tell me what happened,” Eric demanded. “I just saw the story on the news.”
“Great,” Ben said sarcastically. “Did they mention my name?”
“No. It was just a short clip. They said someone named-”
“Mark Wexler,” Ben said as Eric struggled to remember the name.
“That’s it. Mark Wexler,” Eric repeated. “They said he was arrested for insider trading using confidential Supreme Court decisions. They didn’t have much information, so I wasn’t sure-”
“Mark Wexler is Rick’s real name,” Ben explained, turning back to the living room. “Apparently, he used to work in a high-powered Seattle law firm that did high-tech legal work for CMI and Charles Maxwell. About a year ago, he was fired for ethics violations-they thought he was buying stock in one of the cases he was working on.”
“So he has a criminal record,” Eric said as he sat on the small couch.
“No, he’s clean,” Ben explained. “The law firm could never prove anything. Whatever Rick was doing, he was good about keeping it secret. Even though they couldn’t find proof, the firm asked him to leave. It looks like he moved to New York after that, and he’s been living there ever since. When he needed to do business in D.C., he was only a shuttle away.”
“Amazing,” Eric said.
“I really don’t want to talk about him anymore,” Ben said. “He’s been the topic of conversation all afternoon.”
“Well, at least tell me what happened with Hollis.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Since the story was going to be announced to the public, they couldn’t just turn their backs on the whole thing. And if they let me stay, I’d be a stigma on the Court. I violated the Code of Ethics. If I wasn’t asked to step down, no one would take it seriously.”
“But you weren’t fired,” Eric clarified. “They asked you to step down.”
“There’s no difference,” Ben said.
“Was Hollis at least nice about it?”
“He couldn’t have been nicer. He told me how much he appreciated my work for him, and how he hoped we’d stay in touch. He said he’d write me a recommendation for my next job. He even said he was impressed with how we caught Rick. But it didn’t change his decision.”
“What’s going to happen to Lisa?”
“Nothing,” Ben said. “I made sure she was left out of it. As far as anyone’s concerned, she’s the co-clerk who designed the plan and helped me through the hard times. Otherwise, she had nothing to do with the original leak.” Ben rested his arm on one of the couch’s pillows and wondered how long it would be before the pain medication kicked in.