Where Hayden Eversman was, at that moment, was a hundred and twenty miles north and west of them, watching his four-year-old daughter try to put a pink cape on a shih tzu. The daughter’s name was Brooke; Eversman and his wife had chosen it carefully after two weeks of considering every option they could think of. The shih tzu’s name was Meatball; Brooke herself had picked that one, after five seconds of considering probably zero alternatives.
So far, Meatball didn’t seem to grasp that the cape was supposed to go around his neck. As a result, the spectacle playing out on the living room carpet looked like the least dangerous bullfight in the history of the world.
Above the dog and the girl, the TV on the wall was tuned to C-SPAN. The current broadcast was sedate, even by C-SPAN’s standards: live coverage of oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Because cameras weren’t allowed in the courtroom, the coverage was simply an audio feed spruced up with still photos. Whenever someone was talking, that person’s name and picture filled the screen.
Softly, so that his daughter wouldn’t hear, Eversman said, “These assholes should have bowls of tea leaves on their shelves instead of law books.”
He was leaning back against the kitchen island that bordered the living room, watching the TV.
Nearby, seated on a stool and looking over documents spread on the island’s marble countertop, was Eversman’s business partner, Neil Chatham.
“They do seem to come in with their minds already made up,” Chatham said.
“Made up for them.” Eversman pushed off from the island and crossed to the sliding doors that overlooked the pool and the grounds.
He was forty-one years old and had been in the venture capital business since his late twenties. He’d had more ups than downs in that time; his net worth at the moment hovered around the three-quarters-of-a-billion mark.
It could have been higher by now—a hell of a lot higher—if he hadn’t limited himself to the world of renewable energy, though he didn’t regret that decision in the least.
On TV, Justice Scalia interrupted one of the lawyers and started droning on about a case from thirty years back, Fenley v. Oregon, which was about—well, what the hell did it matter what it was about? It was another tea leaf. One of tens of thousands of cases that a justice could pluck out of the stockpile to prop up a premade decision.
Eversman wasn’t directly tied to today’s case—in the sense that he had no stake in any of the parties involved.
Yet the outcome would affect him. No question about that. It would also affect everyone in America who felt like putting solar panels on their roofs, and the effect would not be positive.
It would be plenty positive for other people: enterprises that had tens of billions of dollars tied up in pipelines and tanker ships and refineries. For them, it would be time to pop open bottles of wine that cost more than most people made in a year.
Not that the Court’s decision was going to surprise them. Or anyone. It was going to be five to four. In fact, it already was, in every practical sense.
Why even have the arguments?
From the island, without looking up from his array of documents, Chatham said, “It’s Washington, Hayden. What are working stiffs like us going to do about it?”
Eversman didn’t answer, but he thought about the question. The fact was, he’d been thinking about it for a very long time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Dryden saw the problem five seconds after they walked into the Coalinga Township Library. It hit him as abruptly as the rush of cold air they encountered when the automatic doors sucked open.
“Dammit,” he whispered.
“What?”
They were still moving, slowing now, crossing the broad entryway that opened up to the central space beyond. Dryden stopped.
The library was essentially one giant room, sixty by sixty feet, with white stucco columns here and there supporting the ceiling. The different sections of the place—reading area, bookshelves, periodical racks, computer terminals—were all visible from anywhere in the room. And the place was packed, 3:10 on a Saturday afternoon.
“What is it?” Marnie asked.
Dryden swept his eyes over the space. There might have been fifty people or more. Two-thirds of them were kids. Of the adults, most seemed to be there with their children, but more than a few of the grown-ups were by themselves. There were men browsing the shelves or the magazine racks, or seated at computers. They wore jeans or shorts, with their shirts untucked and hanging loose. Any one of them might have a gun stuffed into his waistband—Dryden had one of the Berettas in his.
In any case, potential threats weren’t limited to the crowd. Dryden turned in place and took in the glass front wall of the building, facing onto the parking lot. Dozens of vehicles out there. Many with tinted windows. Anyone could be in one of them, watching the interior of the library.
“Hayden Eversman’s not a very common name,” Dryden said.
“No, it’s not. That’s good. If the guy in the articles was named Robert Smith, we’d never figure out who he is in 2015.”
“It’s bad, too, though,” Dryden said. “It makes it easy for someone to monitor Web traffic to watch for text searches of that name.”