Dead Watch

“I’m talking about a panic-stricken bunch of Watchmen looking for a gun guy named Carl V. Schmidt. I’m talking about the search being run from your office. Your Watchman even left a note hanging on Schmidt’s front door. The feds are closing in on Schmidt’s house now. If you guys know anything . . . I mean, it’ll all come out in the investigation.”

“What’s the name again?”

“Carl V. Schmidt.”

“I don’t know it. The Watchmen are looking for him?”

Jake ignored the lie; it was routine politics. “Yes.”

“I’ll talk to John Patricia. Right now,” Goodman said. “Will you be on this phone?”

“I will.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Out through Buckingham, at Sprouse’s Corner, Jake stopped, looked left. He could take Highway 20 back through Charlottesville, and then north. He could be home in two and a half or three hours. Or he could go straight down Highway 60, back into Richmond. If he went north, he could stop at Schmidt’s place and see what the feds were doing. On the other hand, Danzig would want him doing political assessment, not crime-scene work, about which he knew nothing.

He thought about it for a few seconds, then went straight through the intersection, down 60, back toward Richmond.

Back toward Goodman.

6 

Howard Barber arrived late, cursing the traffic, the cops who wanted ID, who might have doubted that he could be both a friend and a Republican, who suspected he might be a media interloper of some kind

Barber disabused them quickly enough. He had an officer’s voice, a CEO’s voice, the voice of a man who ran one of the hottest high-tech start-ups. They waved him through when he used the voice, pointed him at a parking spot next to a stand of azaleas. Before he got out of the car, he got on his cell phone, checked in with his office: “Hold everything for me, don’t put anything through. I’m at the Bowes’, it’ll take a while.”

His secretary said, “You’re meeting Price and Walton at six o’clock at the Hay-Adams. You’re still going?”

“I’ll be there. And call Colonel Lake and tell him what’s happening, that I can’t get out of this. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow.”

He clicked off, sighed. He’d dreaded this. He got out of the car, went up the walk, said hello to a couple of people on the porch, got a biceps squeeze from one of them, then pushed into the scrum of people standing in Madison Bowe’s living room. Madison was talking to an old friend from Lincoln Bowe’s golf club, but broke away and came to Barber and hugged him. “Thanks for coming, Howard.”

“Jesus, Maddy . . .”

“We need to talk.” People were watching them from around the room, the late senator’s wife hugging a strikingly tall, handsome black man who was wearing what appeared to be a five-thousand-dollar suit. You could almost hear the hmmm. Madison said, “Let’s go, ah, God, not in the kitchen, there are a hundred people in there, let’s go somewhere.”

He followed her past the stairs to the study. The door was closed, and she opened it and poked her head in, saw that it was empty. “In here.”

They stepped inside and she pulled the door closed: “Linc . . . Was it Goodman?”

“I assume so,” Barber said.

“Did they torture him? I don’t think he could have taken any pain . . .”

“Maddy, I just don’t know,” Barber said. “Most of my contacts are at the Pentagon, not with the FBI. I called some staff people over on the Hill, but they haven’t been able to find out much. I assumed . . . What did the FBI tell you?”

“They don’t know anything,” she said. “This Winter, the guy I told you about—he was apparently there. I tried to call him at home, but he’s not answering. I left messages.”

“You said he was with Danzig’s office.”

“That’s right. I assume he went down there with the FBI. He said he was going to kick some FBI bureaucrats, get them going. I pointed him at Goodman.”

“I doubt that Goodman himself is involved—probably some Watchmen, maybe Darrell Goodman,” Barber said. “But Arlo Goodman is too smart . . . Actually, I don’t know what I think.” He shrugged, and glanced away.

And Madison thought, He’s lying about something. She said, “I’ll try to talk to Winter. I’ll try him every fifteen minutes until I get him. He’s like you, he was in Afghanistan.”

“I know about him,” Barber said. “He wrote a book about the Pentagon.”

She nodded. “Johnnie Black told me. Winter’s Guide to the Inside.”

“I think I ought to talk to him,” Barber said. “At some point, we might want to . . . influence the investigation. It’d be better if I did it, than you.”

“Okay. When I get him, I’ll tell him to call you.”

“It’d be better if he called me,” Barber said. “And I think it’d be a good idea if you told him about Linc and me. You know, the whole thing. That’d bring him in for sure . . .”

“Oh, Howard . . .” She was appalled.