Free Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich Page B

replaced the answers. When they were finished with the forgery, James drove Elliot back to school so he could plant it in Douglas’s desk. While Lance practiced free throws in the gym, Elliot strolled through the empty halls and quietly sealed my political opponent’s fate.
    Elliot staked out Mr. Douglas’s classroom for a while from the classroom across the hall. And sure enough, after about an hour, he saw Lance creep into the room and copy down the answers from Elliot’s phony exam. After Lance fled, Elliot took back his fake and returned Mr. Douglas’s original.
    The next morning, when Mr. Douglas read out his questions during history class, Lance wrote down Elliot’s answers, wholly convinced of their accuracy.
    “He was like a man accidentally signing his own death warrant,” he told me, “or mistakenly digging his own grave.”
    “So you put in wrong answers?” I asked.
    “Not exactly,” Elliot said. “Even if Lance had gotten a zero on the test, he wouldn’t have received any disciplinary action. He could’ve just claimed not to have studied. Everyone is entitled to an off day, even proven scholars like Lance.”
    “So what did you do? How did you get him in trouble for cheating?”
    “I didn’t,” Elliot said, handing me his modified exam. “I got him in trouble for something far worse.”
1) Which fearsome terrorist organization sprung up in the South during the 1860s?
    The Underground Railroad
2) Who commanded this group of terrorists?
    Harriet Tubman
3) Which 1863 decree is commonly referred to as “our country’s finest law”?
    The Poll Tax
4) Which series of laws have since been debunked as an unjust perversion of democracy?
    The Emancipation Proclamation
    On and on it went, each answer more damning than the last.
    “Lance wasn’t punished for cheating,” Elliot explained. “He was punished for his hateful belief system.”
    I pictured Lance, sitting with his parents in the principal’s office, weighing his nightmarish options. He was either a thieving plagiarist or a horrible racist. Either way, his presidential campaign was over.
    Elliot snatched the fake exam out of my hands, held it out the window, and ignited it with a cigar lighter.
    “One down,” he said. “One to go.”
    James opened the sunroof and the smoke filtered out of the limo. He was talking on his cell phone, but the soundproof window was closed and I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
    “Where did your father find James?” I asked.
    “It’s a long story,” he said. “One that you’ll enjoy immensely.”
    He was about to launch into it when the limo pulled up to the curb in front of a nondescript granite building.
    “What’s this place?” I asked.
    Elliot sighed.
    “My father’s club.”
    Terry staggered down the stone steps and shuffled over to the car, his face unusually red. James hopped out of the limo and opened the door for him, discreetly holding his elbow to keep him from falling.
    “Seymour!” he said. “It’s always a thrill to see you. How is everything?”
    “Great, Mr. Allagash,” I said. “Elliot’s about to tell me a story, about how you found James?”
    “How I found James? Please! I don’t have the energy or patience to find anyone.
James
found
me
!”
    Elliot finished his drink and turned his gaze toward the window.
    “I’ll tell you the whole business,” Terry told me. “We wouldn’t want this one to butcher it. I’ll give it to you in the study—but no interruptions!”
    • • •
    “Fifteen years ago, I was sifting through my mail at this very desk when I came across an unusual postcard. The glossy side featured a terrifying painting of a skull. The other, a short handwritten message.
    “‘The Giants will win Game One.’
    “I threw the postcard into a special drawer my lawyers makeme keep for death threats and forgot about it, until the following week, when another morbid postcard landed on my desk. This one featured two dancing skeletons—and predicted