Dead Watch (43 page)

Before he left it, he took the plastic bag off the driver’s seat, stuffed it in his pocket, closed the truck’s doors, and locked them. Madison picked him up at a gas station six blocks away.

“Still think it was foolish,” she said.

“It’s not. We’ve given them a story. We’ve given them something they can work with. Darrell was involved in cleaning up the gangs down here, and there are stories about his interrogation techniques. Stories about bodies that went in the Atlantic. We gave them the payback story.”

“What about the slug in the cabin?”

Jake shrugged: “Means nothing. First of all, it’d be almost impossible to find. The hole is tiny and I rubbed it over. Neither guy has a slug in him, so there’s nothing to match. Goodman’s full of shotgun shot, but that’s not diagnostic. We’ll get rid of the rest of the shotgun shells, buy new ones of a different brand, clean the guns.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “I didn’t mean to get on you for driving to Norfolk, but I was pretty scared. I haven’t done this before.”

“Neither have I. Not like this,” Jake said. “Are you pretty freaked out about the dead guys?”

She shook her head. “No. They were killers and they were coming to kill us. As for the blood . . . I’ve got two hundred head of angus. They get butchered and sold for meat. Blood’s not a new thing if you raise farm animals.”

They left Norfolk, headed back to Washington. Jake drove, fast now, seven miles over the speed limit, and after a while, she said, “Actually, we’re pretty good at this.”

“It ain’t fuckin’ rocket science,” Jake said. “The only problem is the stakes. You make a mistake, you go to prison. Or worse.”

“Even if Arlo Goodman knows what happened, what can he say about it?” Madison asked, building her confidence. “That he knows we did it, because he sent his brother to kill us?”

“And if they investigated, what could they prove? Nothing. On top of all that, there’s the credible alternate story: hoodlums did it, in Norfolk. I think we’re good.”

She straightened herself in the passenger seat, pulled down the vanity mirror, and checked her face. They’d heard the stories about Howard Barber; television was waiting for her in Washington. “You’re gonna be hard to train,” she said.

“My first wife said the same thing.”

“She was right.” She pointed out the windshield. “Now shut up and drive for a while. I’ve got to think about what we might have missed.”

Arlo Goodman sat at home and waited for his brother to call. He expected a call around seven o’clock in the morning, or maybe eight, depending on how long it took to get through the forest above Winter’s hideout. But Darrell had warned him that it might take longer, and it would be unwise to use cell phones from the site of a murder . . .

Especially with the murder victim in bed with Madison Bowe, and Bowe so willing to make accusations.

Darrell had also suggested that after they did Winter, and got him in a suitable hole, he might put George in with him. That’d take some extra work.

At eight, with no call, Goodman still wasn’t too worried. He sat in his office and watched television, the breaking story on Howard Barber—the FBI was investigating the possibility that Barber had killed Lincoln Bowe, with Bowe’s own connivance, the anchors said, with convincing excitement. The media was camped outside Madison Bowe’s house, waiting for a statement.

At ten o’clock, he was apprehensive.

At a little after ten, he learned that Madison Bowe was not in her town house, although she’d been there at midnight the night before, and the first newsies had arrived by 5
A
.
M
. Had she slipped out? they asked. Had she gone into seclusion? Where was Madison Bowe? The last person to be seen at her house was a man with a cane.

Arlo Goodman heard that and thought,
Uh-oh
. If she’d slipped out to be with Winter, if Darrell had killed them both, if something had gone wrong . . . He continued working: the state of Virginia doesn’t stop for a simple news story, or a missing brother.

At eleven, he tried Darrell’s cell phone, and it rang but cut out to an answering service. Where the hell was he?

At noon, now seriously worried, he was working at his desk when a thought popped into his head. Darrell and George had only gone to Wisconsin, where the pollster and his secretary had been killed, because of a conversation they’d overheard on the bug in the ceiling of Bowe’s town house. A conversation between Winter and Bowe, with no other witnesses.

Winter hadn’t known the pollster’s name. Had never heard of him. When the killings were done, and Winter had a chance to think, might he have asked, “How did these people get here so fast?”

If he was smart—and he was—he might have suspected a bug. If he suspected a bug . . .

Had he set them up? Jesus Christ: had Winter dragged them into a trap?

By six o’clock, he knew something had happened, but he didn’t know what. He could ask somebody to check on the location of Darrell’s cell phone, but he was unsure whether he should make the request. Better to wait until Darrell was obviously missing, let somebody else notice.

The TV was still on, and he caught Madison Bowe, escorted back to her house by her attorney: she had been talking to the FBI, she said from her porch. She refused to believe that Howard Barber had killed Lincoln; refused to believe that it was all a fraud. Broke into tears for the first time: refused to believe that Lincoln could have done this without giving her a hint; done it to
her
, as much as anybody else.

A good performance, Goodman thought. In fact, he was riveted.

Not by Madison, though.

The camera swung across the crowd of newsies, clustered on the porch. On one of the swings, it picked up a man leaning against a Mercedes-Benz, a half block away. One arm was braced against a cane.

“That fuckin’ Winter,” Arlo Goodman said aloud to his television set. “That fuckin’ Winter.”

Darrell, he thought, was dead. So was George.

He suspected that he should cry, that he should feel some deep emotional choke at the loss of his brother. He didn’t. He didn’t feel much at all.

What he did do was smile ruefully at the television and think,

Darrell’s dead—and that’s not all bad.

They got back to Washington late in the day, went to Jake’s house, unloaded the car, turned on the television. Jake went up to the junk room and got a gun-cleaning kit. When he came back down, Madison, pale faced, said, “There’s a story out that Howard killed Linc and that the FBI knows it.”

“Then they’re probably looking for you,” Jake said. “The media, anyway. Let me check my phones.”

He’d had a call from Novatny early that morning: “Get back to me if you know where Madison Bowe is. We need to talk to her.”

“What do you think?” she asked.

“People may have seen you here,” Jake said. “Neighbors, when we came in. I should call Novatny—but you should call Johnson Black first.”

“That’ll make it look . . .” She paused, shook her head. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“That’ll make it look like I’m trying to hide something—but that’s silly. Everybody in Washington would call their lawyer first.”

Johnson Black arrived thirty minutes later. The guns had been put away, they’d taken showers, the clothes from the cabin were running through the wash cycle. Black was beaming when he came through the door, kissed Madison on the cheek, shook Jake’s hand, said, “Now it’s getting interesting. Jake, if I could talk to Madison alone for a minute?”

“He can stay here,” Madison said. “What do you want to know?”

Black peered at Madison for a moment, then said to her, “I have to warn you that your interests might not be identical. Maybe it’d be better if I talked to you alone.”

“Forget that,” Madison said. “I want him here.”

Black shrugged. “All right. The FBI will ask if you know anything about Howard Barber killing Linc.”

“I guessed. Howard came over, I accused him of it. He more or less confessed, and I threw him out.”

“You didn’t tell the FBI or anyone else?”

“It was two days ago, Johnnie. I was going through a nightmare.”

“All right. When the FBI asks, I’ll advise you to stand silent. If they really want to know, they’ll take you before a grand jury, but they’ll have to give you immunity.”

“If I won’t talk to them, then they’ll know . . . I mean, they’ll
really
know.”

“Having them know, without going to prison, is better than going to prison. Period. End of story.”

“All right.”

“Besides, if you and Barber had a private conversation, well, Barber’s dead—so who’s there to contradict you?” Madison glanced at Jake, and Black caught it. “What? Who else was there?”

“Nobody. But Jake thinks my house might have been bugged.”

“Uh-oh.” Black looked at the ceiling. “How about this place? Who would have given them a warrant. You think Homeland Security . . . ?”

“We think it’s Goodman,” Jake said. “No warrants, just the Watchmen. Every time Madison has a conversation in her living room, it seems to wind up in the papers the next day.”

“Huh. Well, I know the people who can find it, if it’s there,” Black said. He looked at his watch. “Let’s go. First to the FBI, then home. You’ll have to make a statement to the press.”

He looked at Jake, then back to Madison: “Did you tell Jake? About Barber and Linc?”

“No. Not then. Not until we heard on the car radio that the FBI was looking into it.”

“What exactly is your relationship with Mr. Winter?”

Madison shrugged, then said, “Intimate.”

Black said, “That may not have been wise. To have become . . . intimate . . . under the circumstances.”

“I would have said ‘athletic,’ ” Madison told Black, hands on her hips. “And screw the circumstances.”

Black said, “Okay. Now, let me phrase this next question as carefully and fully as I can. Was Howard Barber suicidal because of his relationship with Linc? If he was, and if you were willing to say that, we might be able to smooth over some embarrassment that everybody’s feeling about his death. We might be able to . . . apply some political salve. Can you say that Howard was suicidal?”

Madison didn’t hesitate: “I pleaded with him not to do anything rash. He seemed absolutely despondent. He had a history of clinical depression. He told me that he’d thought about going along with Linc—when Linc died.”

Black showed a smile, then said, “Let’s call the feds. Jake, you’ve got the connection . . .”

Novatny picked up the phone and asked, “Have you seen Madison Bowe?”

“She’s here, hiding out,” Jake said. “She’s afraid a Watchman will find her and throw her out a window.”

“That’s about eighty percent bullshit,” Novatny said. “I think Barber jumped.”

“That’s not what they’re saying on TV—and the FBI’s not talking to us, if you remember. Ol’ buddy.”

“Yeah, well . . . Is she going to talk to us?”

“She’ll talk to you or a DOJ lawyer. Her attorney’s with her now,” Jake said. Across the living room, Johnson Black wiggled his thick eyebrows. “I don’t know what they’re talking about, but they’ve been in the study for a while.”

“We’re talking about Johnson Black?” Novatny asked.

“Yup. They told me to call you. Do you want to come here, or do you want them to come there?”

“Really?” Novatny was skeptical.

“Really.”

“It’d be more convenient if she came here.”

“Give her half an hour,” Jake said. “Where do you want her exactly?”

“My office. Call ahead—I’d like to take a walk around the block with you, before we go upstairs.”

“With me?”

“Yup. A chat. Nothing sworn, no wires, no games. Just talk. Two ol’ buddies.”

“See you in an hour,” Jake said.

They went in two cars, Johnson Black leading in his limo, Madison and Jake following. They called ahead and found Novatny waiting at a pull-in parking strip, accompanied by what looked like an intern or possibly a random teenager. Novatny said, “Park where you are.”

“The signs say that’s illegal,” Jake said; a row of signs warned of heavy fines and immediate towing.

“Joshua here is going to guard the cars. He’ll shoot anybody who objects,” Novatny said. “C’mon, Jake. Two hundred yards.”

They went off together, Jake tapping along with his stick, Madison moving up to Black’s limo for a last-minute conference. Jake said, “So. What do you need?”

“I want to know what the White House is doing,” Novatny said. “If we’re about to have nine million pounds of shit land on our heads.”

“Judging from the television . . .”

Novatny stopped and turned. “Fuck the television, Jake. I want to know if we’re going to get hammered. If I’m on my way to Boise, if Mavis is going to get shuffled off to a basement somewhere.” Mavis Sanders was Novatny’s boss. “If I should quit and get a security job before it’s too late.”

Jake shook his head: “Chuck, I honest to God don’t know. The White House cut me loose a couple of days ago, closed the consulting contract. I may be on my way back, though. Something else came up.”

Novatny was interested. “Having to do with this case?”

“Having to do with something serious. Maybe related, maybe not. I can tell you, just between us ol’ buddies, it’s not this penny-ante shit you’ve been dealing with so far. Lincoln Bowe and Howard Barber.”

Novatny rubbed his forehead. “Not like this penny-ante shit?
This penny-ante shit?
Jesus Christ, Jake.”

“I’m telling you this because we’ve worked together, and I like you, and I like Mavis,” Jake said. “Get yourself braced for something coming from an entirely new direction. Political. You should know about it in twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the outside. I’ll try to get them to bring it directly to you and your office. You’ll be a star for bringing it in. You’ll go in a history book.”

“What do you want? For doing that?”

“Consideration,” Jake said.

“Consideration?”

“Yeah. We want some consideration. If we don’t get it, somebody’s going to shove some consideration up your ass and break it off. With what’s coming, you can look at it two ways—you can decide whether every niggling little procedure’s been followed, or you can go for the substance. If you go for the substance, you’ll be okay. I think. But that’s just me doing the thinking.”

Novatny licked his lower lip. “They’ve got some good hunting out of Boise.”

“Didn’t know you hunted,” Jake said.

“I don’t. That’s what I hear from the guys who’ve been there,” Novatny said. “That’s what they always say. ‘There’s some good hunting out of Boise.’ ”

“Well, that’s one thing.”

Novatny looked up and down the block. Joshua was guarding the cars like a hawk. “I’ll tell you, Jake. I’ve never worried too much about procedure. I’ve always been a substance guy. So’s my whole office.”

“You’re speaking for the office? For Mavis?”

“I am.”

“Substance is good. This new thing that’s coming, it has everybody so scared that we’ve literally been hiding out,” Jake said. “I’m afraid to let Madison out of my sight. I’m afraid somebody’s going to kill her, like those people in Wisconsin.”

“Ah, shit. The new stuff has to do with that?”

“It might. I’m not sure. You’ll know soon enough.”

They finished their walk and Novatny said, “Do what you can, man.” He collected Madison and Black and disappeared into the building, Madison turning to give Jake a finger wave before she went in. Novatny walked beside her, awkwardly straightening and restraightening his tie. If you didn’t know better, Jake thought, you might have thought Novatny was the one being investigated.