Dead Watch (22 page)

They talked for another twenty minutes, with Jake trying to nail down every piece of information Patterson had about the Landers package. When they were finished, Jake stood up, dropped his legal pad back in his briefcase, and asked, “What’re you going to do?”

“Keep my mouth shut, for the time being,” Patterson said. “Until I find out where the trouble is coming from. If I talk to the FBI, they’re gonna want to know why I didn’t bring this up right away. Then the whole Landers thing will blow out in the open, and you guys get what you want—Landers is off the ticket, and we’re fucked. If I don’t talk to them, I might still be in trouble, but there’s a possibility that I can slide through. Right now, at this moment, I think I’ll try to slide. But that could change.”

“You gonna let me know?”

Patterson showed a shaky smile: “Maybe. I might need a little help. I’ve given you a little help, I might need a little help in return.”

“Call me,” Jake said. “Things can always be done.”

As Jake headed for the door, Patterson called after him: “Have you got something going with Madison?”

That stopped him: “Why?”

“Because when I said ‘pussy,’ your eyeballs pulled back about two inches into your head. I thought you were gonna jump down my throat.”

“I talk to her,” Jake said.

“Sorry about the ‘pussy,’ then.”

“Yeah . . . well. You were right about the thought, anyway.”

“One more thing,” Patterson said. “What’s with that goofy
Hello Kitty
cap?”

Jake touched the cap: “Short version, I’ve got a cut with a bunch of stitches and a white patch of scalp where they shaved it. A cabdriver told me I was giving off a Frankenstein vibe. I was on the run, and didn’t have time to get a different hat.”

Patterson smiled again: “The hat . . . I’ve never been questioned by a guy wearing a
Hello Kitty
hat. Kinda scary, in a chain-saw-massacre way.”

When he left, Patterson was still on the couch, drinking a Coke from the minibar, staring at the television. Jake walked down to the front desk, asked the bellman to get a cab for him, saw an
Atlanta Braves
hat in the gift shop, bought one, shoved the
Hello Kitty
hat into a trash can, walked out on the front steps, and punched Danzig’s number into his cell phone. Gina put him straight through.

“We’ve got to be really careful,” Danzig said, without preamble.

“I know. I talked to Patterson. We need to talk, tonight, if I can get a flight. Could be late.”

“Call the travel office.”

He called the White House travel office and found he was already being booked on a seven o’clock flight back. He’d had his phone turned off during the first flight and his talk with Patterson, and when he checked messages, he found a voice mail from Madison Bowe.

“Please call me. It’s important.” She left both her home and cell-phone numbers. The cab came, and he put the phone away until he was at the airport. He got a ticket, walked through security, and called her from the gate.

She answered on the first ring: “Hello?”

“Madison, Mrs. Bowe—this is Jake Winter.”

“Jacob. Jeez, I’ve been trying to get you everywhere,” she said. “Johnson Black heard that you were beaten up last night, and they took you to the hospital. Where are you?”

Interesting. She seemed concerned. “Atlanta.”

“Atlanta?” She seemed less concerned. “How did you get to Atlanta?”

“By air,” he said.

She laughed and said, “No, stupid, I didn’t mean, I meant—oh, fuck it, I don’t know what I meant. You’re not hurt?”

“Bruised. Got some tape on my head.” He felt himself sucking for sympathy. “Are you . . . mmm, the funeral is tomorrow?”

Somber now: “Yes. One o’clock. It’ll be a circus. Listen, does Danzig still have you looking around, or are you all done?”

“We’d still like to know what happened,” Jake said.

“Good. You’re still looking. I’ve got more problems.”

“What happened?” He let the alarm show. “You don’t think, I mean, you haven’t seen anybody . . .”

“No, no. I’m in New York, I’m about to head back to Washington. We better talk face-to-face. I’m getting really paranoid.”

“Will you be up late?” he asked.

“Probably. When do you get back?”

“I’m scheduled in at nine o’clock,” he said. “I’ve got to stop to talk with Danzig. I don’t think I could be any earlier than ten or ten-thirty at the earliest.”

The airport had universal wireless, and while he was waiting for the plane, he went online to the State of Wisconsin website, and then to federal DOT records, adding file information to what he’d been told by Patterson. The road project had been real enough, and the money was just what Patterson had said it was. Much of the money had come from the federal government—which meant that if the Landers package was legit, then Landers had committed federal felonies.

The flight was called on time and the trip back was as quick and routine as the flight out: short, boring, noisy. When he got out of the seat in Washington, he had a little trouble standing up: his bruised muscles were cramping on him, and he stopped in the terminal to stretch a bit.

Nothing helped much: he simply hurt. Outside, he grabbed a bag, took a cab to the White House, called ahead, and had an escort waiting at the Blue Room. Gina was in Danzig’s inner office, shoes off, twitching her toes in her nylons. The other two secretaries were gone. When Jake walked in, she asked, “How’s your head?”

“Little ache. Could be hunger, though.” He had to explain exactly what had happened.

Danzig: “So after you were down and before your friend fired the gun, they didn’t go after your wallet? They didn’t get your briefcase?”

“No. That worries me.”

Gina shivered: “I don’t like the sound of it.” Then she stood up. “You want coffee? I could get you a sandwich?”

Jake said, “Yeah. Both. That’d be great.”

“Ham and cheese? Tuna?”

When she was gone, Danzig said, “She’s relentless . . . So?”

Jake dropped into a chair across the desk from him, dug in his case, brought out a yellow legal pad, looked at his notes. “In Wisconsin, under the Landers administration, the state began work on a ninety-one-mile improvement of Federal Highway 65. The improvements began at I-94 east of the Twin Cities and ran up to a resort area called Hayward, in the Wisconsin north woods. There were about three hundred million federal dollars spent on it, plus about fifty-five million in state money. Landers and his friends allegedly stole about eight million dollars of it.”

“Jeez, more’n two percent. That’s pretty good,” Danzig said. “How’d they do it?”

“Don’t know. There’s this package . . .”

Halfway through the briefing, they heard Gina come back, and Danzig put a finger to his lips, a “be quiet” signal. Gina came in with the sandwiches and coffee, and Danzig said, “Gina: take off.”

“Oh, if you’ve still got things . . .”

“Gina: go home. Say hello to your husband. I’m going to talk to Jake, get this whole project out of the way, then I’m going home myself. Tomorrow, I want to set up a daily report process for the convention, so get me a list of anyone critical that we need to bring into it.”

“I could start that tonight.”

“Gina: go home.”

When she’d gone, reluctantly, Danzig turned back to Jake. “You were saying . . .”

Jake finished the briefing, then Danzig asked, “How many people know about this package?”

“Patterson thinks that quite a few have had a smell. If he’s right about Goodman . . .”

Danzig was shaking his head. “That Goodman stuff sounds phony. Goodman’s way too smart to get mixed up in a kidnapping and murder. Or in beating you up, if you were thinking that.”

“I don’t know,” Jake said, shaking his head. “They seem to have a thing going on down there. Goodman develops a wish and somebody does something about it.”

“Like killing Lincoln Bowe?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “But if this package is out there, and Goodman knows about it . . . I can see why Patterson’s worried. Goodman likes power. He’s going to lose it. He’s got a year left. He might see this package as a way back.”

“Yup.” Danzig twiddled his thumbs: elementary.

“The question is, do I take all this to Novatny, or do I keep looking around, or do we just forget about it?”

Danzig studied him for a minute, then said, “This is the thing, Jake. Patterson was right about Landers, for sure. If we need to dump him, we need to do it soon. And
we
need to do it. We don’t need the
New York Times
or the
Washington Post
to break this on us. We need to look proactive.”

“We need the package.”

“Yes. Landers won’t go if we don’t have it. He’ll just dig in.”

“Maybe we could . . . Never mind.”

“You were going to say?” Danzig asked.

“I was going to say, maybe we could replicate it. Put it together independently. But that would take an investigation, the word would bleed out, and we’d be twisting in the wind.”

Danzig nodded: “Exactly. If there’s a package, we need it now, and we need it all. If there isn’t a package, we need to know that. What we don’t need is a long investigation, a special prosecutor, a controversy. We don’t need a long-brewed scandal. We need either to get it over with, or buried for good.”

“You want me to keep looking?”

Danzig said, “Jake, I do want you to keep looking—but I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I’m going to tell Gina tomorrow morning that we’re all done, to tote up what we owe you on the consult. I want you to continue on your own hook, and if you find the package, I want you to deliver it.” Another moment of silence, then Danzig said, “You get my drift.”

Jake said, “You want me to be deniable.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Danzig said. “I want the best of both worlds. I want you off the payroll, so we don’t have any backfires. I want you to keep looking, so that if there is something we need, you’ll find it and we’ll get it. Us, not anybody else. And I want it so if you get caught doing something unethical or criminal, we can throw you to the wolves.”

Jake smiled: “Thanks, boss.”

“You’re not a virgin.”

“One part of me is. I wouldn’t want that changed in a federal prison.”