Dead Watch

Jake stood up, leaned on his cane for a moment, then took a slow turn around the office, looked at the Remington bronze that sat on the credenza, touched the buffalo head, turned back, and said, “The whole thing, the package thing, started with an anonymous tip. A guy calls in the middle of the night and says, ‘See what Packer and Patterson talked about at the Watergate.’ So—who was that, and what was the motive? There’s somebody else out there. I can’t see him. I can’t see what he wants.”

Danzig tapped on his desk with a yellow pencil, staring at Jake but not focused on him, and finally sighed and said, “Shit, Jake, there’s always somebody out there. What he wants . . . he might want anything. The simple pleasure of knowing he took down Landers. Maybe there’s a better job in it for him. Maybe he figures they’ll make a movie about him, he’ll get to go to Hollywood and fuck Brittany West.”

“Patterson suggested that Goodman could benefit. Take a big step up,” Jake said.

Now Danzig’s eyes snapped. “Well. We’ll see how things work out. I know why he’d say that, though. God help us.”

Jake headed for the door: “I’ll see you.”

“You’re gonna do it?”

Jake smiled. “You don’t want to know, right?”

11 

Jake arrived at Madison’s town house at 10:30, wrestled his overnight bag out of the cab, hung it over his shoulder, carried his briefcase on the other side, tapped his way up the walk with his cane. He’d called Madison from the cab. Halfway up the walk, the porch light came on and she opened the door.

“Mrs. Bowe . . .”

“Did you have a good time at the White House?”

“You hardly ever have a good time at the White House, unless you’re the president,” Jake said. He thought about Danzig, and the What do you want? “You can have interesting times.”

“Gonna tell me about it?”

“No.”

She had a black dress hanging on a hook in the entryway, still in a plastic dry-cleaning bag, and a shoe bag sitting on the floor beneath it. Funeral clothes, Jake thought, as he went by into the living room. She had a gas fireplace. The fire was on, flickering behind a glass door. He dropped his bags, sat on the couch, and she asked, “A glass of wine?”

“That would be great.”

She was back in a minute, with two glasses. The wine was already open, and she held it up to the ceiling light and peered through it. “I started without you,” she said. She poured and handed him a glass. “I talked to Novatny. They have no ideas, other than this Schmidt man.”

“But Schmidt’s a pretty good idea,” Jake said. “What happened in New York? You said something odd happened.”

“First of all, tell me what happened the other night. When you got mugged.”

He told her, succinctly, trying not to show his embarrassment, nipping at the wine while he talked. She listened intently, and then said, “Doesn’t sound like a robbery.”

“I know,” he said. “And I know what you’re going to say. I don’t think the Watchmen are involved. Goodman thinks I’m out scouting around for him. I was actually thinking that your friend Barber might be a possibility—though I don’t see what beating me up would have gotten him.”

She frowned: “He has a violent streak in him. I’ve seen that in the past. I think Linc was attracted to it. But remember when you told me about The Rule? Who benefits from your getting beaten up?”

“The Rule doesn’t say that the benefit has to be obvious. In fact, it usually isn’t. We just don’t know enough yet . . . So: New York?”

“Yes.” She poured a glass of wine for herself, set the bottle on the coffee table, and perched on an easy chair, folding her legs beneath herself as women do. “I took the shuttle up early this morning and went to the apartment. To check it, make sure everything was okay, to look for some papers, to pay the maid. I needed to get Linc’s will, for one thing, some insurance policies that Johnnie Black needs to see. I got everything I needed, but . . . his medical records were gone. There were two big folders, in the top drawer of the file cabinet, and they were gone. They aren’t here and I know they aren’t at the farm. I can’t see why they’d be in Santa Fe, his doctor is in New York.”

Jake thought about it and shrugged. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I. Except that underneath the bed sham, I found a bottle of prescription medicine, Rinolat. I looked it up online, and it’s a painkiller. I didn’t understand it all, something about monoclonal antibodies. Anyway, he was taking a heavy dose. The stuff would put a horse to sleep.”

“I know . . .” He slapped his leg. “I have some experience with it. Was it dated?”

“Yes. A month before he disappeared.”

“He was sick?”

She shook her head: “Not as far as I know. I haven’t seen him for a while. The last time I saw him, he was a little cranky, but he wasn’t in pain. Not that I could see.”

“Huh. The stuff isn’t of any use recreationally . . . Are you sure it was his?”

“The prescription was in his name, from his doctor.”