Dead Watch (45 page)

Novatny, Mavis Sanders, and three other high-ranking FBI functionaries and lawyers met Jake and Woods in Sanders’s office. Woods pointed Jake at a chair, gave the feds a brief oral explanation of the materials, and then handed over the package.

Though he’d been warned, Novatny was astonished. He asked Jake, “Wisconsin? Wisconsin? You knew about this when Green and his secretary were killed?”

“There were rumors here in Washington of a package like this. I was checking them out—I went out to Wisconsin because I’d learned that Green and Bowe had been lovers, and that Green was well connected around the state,” Jake said. “My feeling was, if he didn’t know about the package, he might be able to point me at somebody.”

“And he pointed you at this Levine woman? Wait a minute . . . I don’t understand the timeline.”

Jake took him through his arrival in Madison, the morning interview, the afternoon discovery of the bodies, and then he began to lie a little.

“Green told me he didn’t know about it but he could make some calls,” Jake said. “I gave him a specific name: he denied knowing it. Later, when I tracked the woman down—this was the next day—she admitted that she did, in fact, know Green. By that time, I had the feeling that I was in the grip of a political conspiracy to damage the administration, and that it might all be a fraud set up by Lincoln Bowe. I brought the package back for evaluation, and the instant we realized that it might be valid, the president ordered me to turn it over to you guys.”

The FBI people all sat back. “You’re willing to talk to a grand jury?” one of them asked.

“Absolutely. But I don’t have a lot of information. All I have is fragments. I pressed Madison Bowe on the subject and she knows even less than I do. It appears that Mrs. Bowe was deliberately kept out of the circuit by her husband, as a way to protect her.”

“I understand from media reports that you and Mrs. Bowe are friendly,” one of the feds said.

“Yes. We are. But most of this developed before we became . . . friendly.”

“And you think there
was
a conspiracy,” one of the suits said.

“Yes, I do. I think—I’m not sure—that it was set up by Lincoln Bowe, when he found out that he was dying from brain cancer. I think it was carried out by Howard Barber. I think the body was burned to attract the kind of intense press attention that it got, and I think the head was removed so that an autopsy would not show the cancer. I think if he is exhumed, an analysis of his spinal fluid would show the presence of cancer cells. Mrs. Bowe knew none of this—she never even saw him after the cancer diagnosis. They lived apart.”

The feds all looked at each other, and one of them said, “Heavy duty.”

“Did Barber kill Green?” Novatny asked.

“Barber or one of his group,” Jake said. “I don’t know that for sure, but that’s what I suspect.”

“Jesus Christ.”

One of the functionaries, looking like he couldn’t wait to get to a telephone, said, “And the vice president is going to resign?”

“Yup,” Jake said. “He’s toast.”

After a moment of silence, the sober, middle-aged presidential counselor said, “Given his home state, more like a grilled-cheese sandwich.”

When Jake got back home, a little after three o’clock, the place smelled wonderful, though meat-free. Madison was still cooking, barefoot in jeans, wearing one of his T-shirts, crunching on a stick of celery. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, asked, “All done?”

He thought,
What a gorgeous woman this is
, and said, “Everything we’re going to do, unless there’s a grand jury—and I’m sure there will be. But that’s probably not going to happen until after the election. You Republicans don’t want to talk about what Lincoln did, we Democrats don’t want to make the Landers mess any bigger than it is . . . so it’ll be a while.”

“I still don’t want to go to prison,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. You could get hit by a car before then.”

“God, you’re such a comfort.”

“Mmm . . .” He looked at the potful of chili. “Think we could stick a pork chop in there?”

They ate early. As they were eating, Fox flashed a newsbreak: “Sources at the White House are telling Fox News today that there is speculation the vice president will resign. We repeat: Vice President Landers may be resigning his office. Sources say he has been accused of corruption going back to his administration in Wisconsin . . .”

“In my day, when I was on TV, you generally didn’t let your nipples show through your blouse,” Madison said.

“Poor girl’s excited,” Jake said. “She can’t help herself.”

“I think we should go into seclusion,” Madison said. “The New York apartment—we could leave a phone number for Novatny.”

“If we did that, we could walk over to the Met, down to MoMA.”

“Museum of Natural History.”

“Spend a lot of time in the bathtub,” he said.

“Down on Madison Avenue. I could use a new hat.”

“Hide out until midnight,” Jake said. “Catch the red-eye out of National.”

“Good idea.”

A minute later, he said, “Sooner or later, I’ll go down to talk to Arlo. We need an understanding.”

“Is he going to be vice president?”

“No. As I understand it, the front-runner is the senator from Texas.”

“Hmm. Our first female VP,” Madison said. “It’s gonna be tough to get you fuckin’ Democrats out of there, if all the girls are voting for you.”

“That was the thought,” Jake said.

The vice president announced his resignation at seven o’clock, his weeping wife, in a pale orange dress, seated behind him. Landers was a large man, pink and fleshy, with thick political hair going white.

“If these absurd and tendentious charges came at any other moment, I would fight them from office, as the president has urged me to do. But they are being made, as Lincoln Bowe was perfectly aware when he began this conspiracy, at the one moment when I could not afford to fight them from office—at the beginning of a long and difficult reelection campaign.

“Bowe and his criminal gang have succeeded to an extent: I am going. But they attacked me not because they wanted to damage a mere vice president. They attacked me as part of a greater game, to damage our party, our president, and indeed the aspirations of the American people, as reflected by this presidency. I won’t allow that to happen. I will fight with all my might, but I will not allow the best American president since John F. Kennedy to be handicapped during a campaign of such great importance to the American people.”

The speech was widely ridiculed in the papers and the television talk shows the next day, as was his wife in her orange dress, and his daughter, who was overweight, and who was filmed eating a caramel-and-pecan bun at a bakery near her apartment in Cambridge.

The bodies of Darrell Goodman and George Brenner sat in the SUV for four days, until somebody got curious about the fact that the truck hadn’t been moved. When the somebody got close enough, he noticed a “peculiar odor” and called the cops.

Arlo Goodman blamed the gangs, and vowed to free up more funds for gang-suppression efforts.

The FBI announced a massive investigation under the direction of a special prosecutor, the federal district attorney from Atlanta, Georgia.

“You remember when I begged you to appoint him,” Danzig said to the president. They were in the president’s private office, drinking a wonderful single-malt Scotch that the president had extorted from the distiller, using the British prime minister’s office as the pry-bar.

“I remember that. I was reluctant. There was some question about his integrity . . .”

“There was no question at all,” Danzig said. “He’s crookeder than Landers, and I’ve got the sonofabitch’s testicles locked in my desk drawer. That ‘independent counsel’ theory can kiss my ass.”