Jack clicked his. “Mine’s ink, not lead like yours.”

Paul held his Zebra between his two hands, admiring the iconic shape of the solid stainless-steel barrel. “I’ve been using Zebras for decades.”

“I started using these the day I graduated from college—my dad gave me a set of them. Told me my Zebra would never let me down.”

“Small world,” Paul said. He pulled the napkin closer. “Have you ever heard of Benford’s law?”

“No.”

“This is pretty cool stuff.” Paul stopped. “Wait, am I boring you?”

“No, it’s interesting. Really.”

Paul smiled, grateful for Jack’s white lie. “Benford was a physicist who began noticing a pattern in numbers. So one day he took a bunch of random figures—numbers he found in a magazine, the surface area of bodies of water, molecular weights—a whole series of uncorrelated data sets, and then he analyzed the numbers, and what he discovered is fascinating and, frankly, hard to explain.”

Paul sketched out a two-by-two graph, with percentages listed on the y-axis and numerical digits 1 through 9 on the x-axis. He plotted his graph out as he spoke.

“Turns out, no matter where you look in nature, there’s a uniform pattern in numbers. What Benford discovered was that the first digit of any number is going to be the number one about thirty percent of the time.” Paul marked an X at the intersection of thirty percent and 1.

“The number two will occur in the first position almost eighteen percent of the time, the number three about twelve-point-five percent, and so forth.” Paul filled in the rest of the graph. “The number nine will be the first number less than five percent of the time.”

“So . . . if you find patterns of numbers that don’t correspond to Benford’s law, you think you’ve found fraud?”

“If I find a break in the Benford’s law pattern, then I know it’s something worth looking into. But then again, there are lots of reasons why it can be broken. For example, if a company has a regular purchase of an item that costs $97.86, and if that’s the most purchased item on their books, well, that’s not going to conform to Benford, is it? There are many other patterns and incongruences my software can check for besides Benford, but you get the idea.”

“So I take it your Benford template hasn’t pulled up anything?”

“I haven’t run it yet. It would take several weeks to do a decent audit of Dalfan’s books, so all I’ll be able to do is a few random spot checks.”

“I still think we need to keep at it.”

“I get paid either way.” Paul swallowed his disappointment as he drained his glass. He fought back a monstrous yawn. “Mind if we grab a cup of coffee before we head back? I’m beat.”

“Sure.” Jack waved at the pretty server. She smiled and came over.