Madison said, “Damnit, I can’t win with these cards.” She stood up, blew a hank of hair out of her face, and took off her blouse. “The TV people probably think we’re in here plotting strategy.”
“I am plotting strategy,” Jake said.
He collected the cards and shuffled. He hadn’t lost a hand yet. Madison watched him shuffle and her eyes narrowed: “Hey, are you cheating?”
“Would I cheat?” He shuffled a second time, glanced at her. She was watching his hands, and he thought how solemnly she was doing it. She was solemnly playing strip poker. He’d seen her laugh, frown, cry, groan—had seen any number of expressions, including a really nice snarl—but he’d never seen her smile with simple pleasure.
Late morning. One of Johnson Black’s assistants brought over two sacks of groceries, mostly vegetables, and Madison began making veggie chili, which she told Jake that he’d love. At noon, dressed in a blue suit with a green tie—not an intuitive match, Madison said, but it looked terrific—he got in the car and headed for the White House. The moment he backed into the alley, he was surrounded by shouting reporters. He eased through them and headed east.
Danzig, Gina, and the president’s counselor, a sober middle-aged woman from Indianapolis named Ellen Woods, were waiting in Danzig’s office. Woods had the package in a black leather portfolio. She was dressed in a blue power suit; her eyes were like black flint. “We want you to inventory the items before we go over,” she said, glancing at her watch.
Jake went through it quickly: it was intact. “It’s all here.”
“Then let’s do it,” she said.
They went in a presidential limo. Danzig called twice while they were en route, though the trip took only five minutes. “Just wondering if we were there yet,” Woods said dryly.
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
“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?”
