“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 . . .”
