“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 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.”
“I can understand that,” Danzig said. “But believe me, there’s a terrific upside if you pull this off.”
“What upside?”
“What do you want?”
The question hung there. Jake stared at him, then said, “You’re serious.”
“Absolutely.”
“I might want a lot,” Jake said.
“I can’t give you a billion dollars, but I can get you something good.”
Jake thought about it for a minute, then nodded. “You’ll pay off this consult?”
“As of tonight.”
“Should I stay in touch?”
“Call me if you get it,” Danzig said.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then don’t call me. But Jake: you gotta get it.”
