Dead Watch

Jake sipped the wine, swirled it in his glass. He didn’t know much about wine, but it tasted fine; tasted like money. And he thought about the autopsy report. Novatny said that Bowe’s body had been suffused with painkiller, possibly to keep him helpless. But was that what happened? “You think somebody stole the medical file? Have you talked to the maid?”

Madison nodded. “Yes. I did. This is the other funny thing. She saw his doctor. At the apartment. With medical equipment.”

“What doctor?”

“James Rosenquist. He’s an old friend of Linc’s. One of his special friends, or once was. I called him, and he said he hadn’t seen Linc for six months, since a physical. But James has a white streak in his hair—he’s a little vain about it—and the maid said the man she saw in the apartment, the doctor, had a stripe like a skunk.”

“Ah, man.” Jake leaned back, rubbed his face, and yawned. Shook his head and admitted, “I still don’t know what it means.”

“Neither do I. It’s just that there seems to be another mystery in New York and there shouldn’t be two mysteries at the same time. Not unrelated ones,” Madison said. “I was thinking about siccing Johnnie Black on James, but since James denies even seeing Linc . . .”

“Rosenquist is in New York City?”

“Yes. He has one of those practices on the bottom floor of a co-op, on the Upper East Side.”

“One of the rich guys,” Jake said, “who’ll be all lawyered up.”

“Absolutely.”

Jake sighed, gulped the wine, bent forward to pick up his case, winced at the pain. “Mrs. Bowe. Let me check around, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know what I can do.”

“What if James, what if Rosenquist is hooked up with Goodman somehow? I mean . . .” She flapped at him.

“There’s no reason to think that? That there’s a connection?”

“No, but it seems odd. Linc didn’t hide things from me. We no longer had a sexual relationship, but we were still married. We were certainly fond of each other. I didn’t know anything about an illness. I didn’t . . . I mean, what if Rosenquist drugged him somehow? Delivered him?” Her voice trailed away, and she frowned. “Am I being a dingbat?”

“Not at all,” Jake said. “Nothing you said is crazy, I just don’t see where you’re going with it. Or where it can go.”

She chewed her lip for a moment, looking at him, then said, “You don’t trust me.”

“I do, as far as . . .” He stopped.

“As far as what? You can throw a Toyota?”

“No. I do trust you.” Another little lie. Or was it? She felt trustworthy. On the other hand, apparent trustworthiness was a quality that Washingtonians spent a lifetime perfecting.

He’d thought of asking her about the Landers package, but decided not to: he had to do more checking. If she had it, or knew who did, he didn’t want to do something that might inadvertently pull a trigger, get the package dumped to the Times. Not until Danzig was ready for it, anyway.

He stood up, said, “I’ll call you tomorrow. Let me think about all of this. I’ll call you.”

She leaned back in the chair for the first time, took another sip of wine, looking at him over the top of the glass, and then said, “All right. This probably won’t help you learn to trust me, but I need to tell you something. I thought about it when we started talking about his sexual orientation.”

“Okay.”

“Linc had his outside relationships—but so did I. I’ve had two affairs in the last nine years. Both of them lasted about two years, with nice, discreet men, and then they stopped. They stopped basically because they weren’t going anywhere. Linc knew about both of them, and it was okay with him. I mean, he was a little wistful—but he understood.”

Jake said, “Mrs. Bowe . . .”

“You should call me Madison, under the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“The circumstances of me using you as a confessor. But let me finish. I thought you should know, because it’s another thing about us . . .” Her forehead wrinkled, and she gestured with the glass, then, “. . . it’s another thing, that if I hadn’t told you, and you found out later, you’d wonder about. You’d wonder if there might be some reason that somebody would want to get rid of Linc. But: I promise you, I have had exactly two relationships, no more. Neither of the men involved would have any reason to wish harm to Lincoln. Neither affair continues. Everybody is more or less happy. So . . .”

He nodded now, and said, “You really didn’t have to tell me. I don’t think people do what was done to Lincoln because of your outside relationships. In the most extreme cases, somebody might get shot, I suppose. But in this day and age . . .”

“You’re a little cynical,” she said.

“I work in Washington.”

That night, he lay awake for a while, considering possibilities. One seemed clear: all roads to the truth ran through the dead body of Lincoln Bowe. And he thought about Madison Bowe and the medical records . . .

He was gone before he knew it, awake again before five o’clock. He cleaned up, stretched, worked his leg. He ached from the beating, and the bruises, if anything, were darker, bluer. The lingering headache was still there, a