Dead Watch (17 page)

“Ms. Packer hasn’t been acting in our name. If she’s been acting in any way, it’s on her own. The RNC has nothing to do with . . . anything.”

Jake smiled: “I wish I could take a tape recording of that back to Bill Danzig. He’d put you on TV.”

Merkin didn’t smile back: “We’ll have a chat about this, and I’ll get back to you. Soon.”

“Do that.”

On the way out the door, he gave Merkin his private phone number.

“If you hear anything, call me anytime. I mean it: three
A
.
M
.” He said good-bye, nodded at Packer without smiling. They were already snarling at each other when the door closed behind him. He backed out through the building security, and figured that about the time he got to the bottom of the steps, they were putting the red-hot rebar on the soles of Packer’s feet.

Maybe something would bleed out; and maybe not.

But from the way Packer was acting, he thought it probably would.

Jake hadn’t expected to hear from Howard Barber until after lunch—but Barber called back as he was on his way home.

“Can you tell me what exactly you want to talk about?” Barber asked.

“Not on a cell phone,” Jake said. “Basically, I spoke to a friend of yours last night, and she said that I should get in touch with you. About her husband.”

“Ah.” Pause. “I’m in Arlington. Where are you?”

“Burleith, north of Georgetown.”

“Why don’t I come there? One o’clock?”

Jake would have preferred to see Barber at his office, to get a look at it, to make a judgment, but couldn’t turn the offer down. “That’d be great.”

Jake had one egg left, so he fixed himself a last egg-salad sandwich, then went out to his stamp-sized backyard to swing a golf club, working on his hip release. Get ready for summer. He made fifty swings, struggling not to lose his bad leg on the follow-through, and was sweating when he finished. He’d just put the six-iron away when Barber arrived.

Howard Barber was a tall black man wearing a steel gray suit, a black golf shirt, and opaque blue-glitter sunglasses with a phone bug dropping to one ear. Jake saw him clambering over the ditch in the front yard, and went to get the door. Barber had just rung the bell when Jake popped the door open.

Jake said, “Mr. Barber? Come in. I should have told you about the construction. I should have had you come around back. . . .”

Jake took him into the study, pointed him at a reading chair in the corner. Barber sat carefully, looking around the office, then crossed his legs and leaned back. “Nice place,” he said. “That new sidewalk ought to kick the value up.”

“That’s what my neighbors tell me,” Jake said.

They chatted about real estate values for a moment, then, “I talked to Maddy this morning after I called you back,” Barber said. “She filled me in on what you’re doing. I don’t understand how I can help.”

“She said you were Lincoln Bowe’s closest friend. Bowe may have been kidnapped and murdered . . .”

“What do you mean,
may have been?”
Barber said, frowning, and leaning forward. “The boy’s dead. Decapitated. Burned. I mean, Jesus Christ, what do you want?”

“It’s not all that clear,” Jake said. “The FBI is chasing a suspect, but there are problems, quite frankly.”

“What problems?” Barber asked, frowning.

Jake shrugged. “Anomalies. Like the fact that he had a huge collection of guns, but left one where it would be found, and it may be the gun that ties him to Lincoln Bowe. Like the fact that he’s become invisible. Can’t find him, nobody’s seen him. In the opinion of a number of people, the suspect was set up and is probably dead himself.”

Barber said, “Huh.” Then, “I could think of reasons for all of that. If I was trying. I mean, the guy obviously ain’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.”

“Yeah, but I’m not trying to alibi him,” Jake said. “I’m noticing anomalies.”

“Okay.” Barber lifted his hands, slapped them down on his thighs. “All I can tell you is, Linc and I talked the day before he disappeared. We were going to play golf the next week, but by that time, he’d been gone for four days. I didn’t know he’d disappeared until I saw the first story in the papers. Then I called Maddy down at the farm, and she told me.”

“Was he . . .” Jake hesitated. “Look, I’m trying to ask if he had any gay friends that you may know about, who were passionately involved with him. I’m trying to figure out if this could have been a relationship thing.”

“Gay murder.” Barber settled back, shaking his head.

“Yeah.”

Barber exhaled, said, “Shit,” looked at the ceiling, then said, “I can’t tell you for sure. He was not, mmm, monogamous. But I don’t think . . . I think if he was involved in something really hot, really difficult, he would have told me. The sex cooled off for him the last few years. Gays get older, too, you know.”

“Never thought about it,” Jake said.

“Well, it’s true. Anyway, I could call a couple of people and ask.”

Jake smiled. “I’d really prefer to do it myself.”

Barber shook his head. “Linc moved in political circles. Political gay circles. Some of the people are already out, but some absolutely couldn’t afford to be outed. You’re doing staff work for some Bible-thumper from Alabama, you get outed, you lose your job.”

“I wouldn’t out them.”

“I might believe you, except . . . what would you do if it became expedient to out them? If it helped the cause?” Barber asked. “I don’t know you well enough to trust you on it.”

“Okay. But you’ll ask around.”

“I’ll ask, and I’ll get back to you.”

“I’ll take it, if that’s the best I can do,” Jake said. “But if it’s a relationship thing . . .”

“Then I’ll call the FBI. I’m not going to let somebody walk on Linc’s murder.”

Jake: “So who do
you
think did it?”

“The Watchmen,” Barber said, without hesitation. “One way or another. Linc had a lot of influence, both through his family and through his political contacts, and he couldn’t keep himself from going after Goodman. Couldn’t help himself. Looked at Goodman’s combat records, made some comments he shouldn’t have.”

Jake broke in: “There’s a question about Goodman’s records?”

Barber shook his head again. “No. That was one of the problems. Linc thought there was, and couldn’t keep himself from saying so. He believed there were problems with his Silver Star and with the Purple Heart. But there were twenty guys there when Goodman got hit, and several of them actually saw it happen. They were down in a road cut, some Iraqis were lobbing RPGs at them. Goodman was directing traffic, running on his feet, and whack! He gets it in the hand. A couple of guys actually got sprayed by his blood. And Goodman stayed on his feet and kept directing traffic until his guys got on top of it.”

“So there was no doubt.”

“None. Not only that, the guys in his unit say he was a pretty good officer. Took care of them. But you know how it is when a politician has a medal and a war wound—there are always people ready to piss on them. Linc bought into the stories, repeated them. Goodman proved they weren’t true, but Linc wouldn’t shut up.”

“Really bad blood, then.”

“They hated each other,” Barber said. “Goodman took Linc’s Senate seat away in a dirty campaign. Linc went out of his way to smear Goodman every chance he got, and with his family connections and old Virginia loyalties, he’s caused Goodman some problems. Social problems. Not getting the old-boy invitations he should get, not playing golf with the old money.”

“Status.”

“Yup. Status. Goodman thinks he’s terrifically important, and he wants to be treated that way.”

“When Senator Bowe vanished, did you think he’d been kidnapped?” Jake asked. “Or did you think something else was going on?”

“At first, I thought something else might be going on,” Barber said. “Then two, three days went by—that wasn’t Linc’s style. A week out, I thought he was probably dead.”

So there it was: Barber had thought Bowe was dead, as Madison suspected . . . but the way Barber put it, the feeling was purely rational. Nothing to lie about.

“So, shoot. I go back to my boss and tell him it’s a straight kidnapping case,” Jake said.

“That’s what it looks like to me,” Barber said.

Jake laced his fingers, rubbed his palms together, thinking, then, “What do you think of the Watchmen? Could somebody say that you’ve got a reason for pointing us in their direction? Is there something personal . . . ?”

“I think two things. First, when we—the Bowes and I—say Watchmen, we’re not really talking about the guy on the corner in a jacket helping an old lady across the street. We’re not talking about the Boy Scouts. When Goodman was still a prosecutor, he put together a group to do intelligence work. Half dozen guys, maybe. John Patricia was the first guy . . .”

“I’ve met him.”

“Patricia was air force intelligence. He brought military interrogation to Norfolk. And Darrell Goodman joined up. He’s Arlo’s brother and he’s a crazy mother. He’d take a guy apart with a pair of wire cutters if he needed some information. There are stories down in Norfolk about Goodman’s boys fuckin’ up some people pretty bad. Of course, they cut way down on prostitution and street crime about disappeared, and drugs went away. Everybody was happy to look the other way, ’cept the druggies and the stickup men.”

“Okay . . .”

“The thing is, Arlo carried those same guys over to his campaign for governor. Dirty tricks, spies, disinformation, the whole works. Intelligence operations, in other words.”

“I saw a guy outside the governor’s mansion,” Jake said. “He had a special forces look about him—he was wearing a raincoat and one of those floppy-brim tennis hats, black tennis shoes. Looks like he had some kind of complexion problem, like really bad acne . . . but then I thought, maybe a burn, maybe service-connected.”

“That’s Darrell Goodman,” Barber said, snapping his fingers, then pointing his index finger at Jake. “Always that raincoat. You ought to look him up. Take a look at his military records. I mean, there’s nobody in the Pentagon who really wants to know what those guys did in Syria. They might think it needed to be done, but they don’t want to know about it.”

“So. An asshole.” Jake made a note.

“Yes. A major asshole.”

“You said you thought two things about the Watchmen. What’s the other one?”

Barber nodded. “Okay. From what Maddy told you, you know that I’m a gay black man. The Watchmen are a proto-fascist group, with their own little charismatic führer. What should I think about them? I’d like to see them run out of the country.”

“They don’t seem to have a problem with blacks,” Jake said. “Or gays, for that matter. Not that I’ve read about.”

“Give them a while,” Barber said. “Being antiblack or antigay or anti-Jew isn’t useful to them yet. But they’ll get to it. Right now, they’re against immigrants. That’s not going to be enough, not when Goodman runs for national office. You know that thing he says, about how he never met a Commandment he didn’t like? Well, do not fuck your brother is in there somewhere.”

“You’re a pessimist, Mr. Barber.”

Barber smiled and spread his hands: “Hey. I’m a gay black guy. Pessimism keeps me alive.”