Dead Watch

“What’s the lead?”

“Bowe thinks it might be with a guy named Alan Green, out in Madison. Should have thought of him, but I didn’t know he was from Wisconsin. He was a staffer on Bowe’s last campaign.”

“Holy shit.” Goodman jumped out of bed, took a turn around the bedroom. “This is fuckin’ wonderful. Get the package, Darrell.”

“We’re trying to get out to Madison, me ’n’ George. Winter’s going tomorrow morning, I don’t think we can beat him out there. We’ve lined up a state plane, we’re getting the paperwork done now, but we can’t take it right to Madison. Somebody might see it. So we’re flying into Chicago, we’ll drive from there. It’ll be close.”

“Get the package, okay? That’s what you’re for. Get the package,” Arlo said. “You get it, I’ve got one foot in the White House.”

Darrell smiled a thin dark smile. “If Winter gets it, do we take it away from him?”

Goodman pondered for a moment, then said, “No. If you’re sure he’s got it, we can float a rumor that the administration has it, and that’d force their hand. But we’ve got to be sure they have it.”

“There’s another thing,” Darrell said. “Bowe had brain cancer. He probably planned his own murder—it was probably carried out by Howard Barber.”

Goodman whistled. “How sure?”

“Ninety-five percent. That’s why the body was full of painkillers. If we do an analysis of the people around Barber, we could probably pick out the ones who helped pick up Bowe. We could grab one of them, stick a battery up his ass, and get enough detail to hang Barber.”

Goodman said, “The package first. We can handle Barber later. Was Madison Bowe in on it? The killing?”

The man shrugged. “We don’t know that yet.”

“If we could find out . . .”

“Grab a guy, stick a battery up his ass.”

Goodman was irritated. “You’re a little too quick with that, Darrell. We’re not talking about cats. When people disappear, other people ask questions.”

“If the guy disappears, we could probably hang that on Barber, too. A smear of blood in the trunk of his car . . .”

“Get the package, Darrell.”

13 

Jake was moving early. The fastest way from Washington to Madison was through Milwaukee, driving the last ninety miles into Madison. He got a car from Hertz and headed west, a drive of an hour and a half, including the time spent fighting traffic going out. He’d gone back into the end of winter—the trees were just opening up, the wind was from the south, warm and smooth, telling of spring.

The car’s navigation system took him off I-94 down into the city, to Johnson Street, two or three blocks from the Wisconsin capitol. He must not be far, he thought, from the university—the sidewalks were full of buzz-cut students with book bags. Undoubtedly, he thought, full of that fuckin’ Ayn Rand and Newt Gingrich.

The PollCats’ address was a shabby two-story brick-and-glass professional building left over from the 1970s. The narrow parking lot, in back, had only four cars in it, with grass and weeds growing through a jigsaw pattern of cracks in the blacktop. Jake got his cane and his case, walked in the back door through a long dim hallway smelling of microwave chicken-noodle soup, to a cramped lobby, and found a listing for PollCats on the second floor.

He went up, stepped off the elevator: PollCats had an office at the end of another gloomy strip of carpet, one of eight doors off the hallway. The hall was silent. Two of the doors had signs next to them, six did not, and through the glass door-inserts, appeared empty.

At PollCats, through the glass door panels, he could see a blond receptionist reading a Vanity Fair. Jake turned the knob and went inside. The receptionist dropped the magazine into a desk drawer when she heard the doorknob rattle, perked up, and smiled at him. He smiled back and said, “I’m here to see Alan Green.”

She was pretty, peaches-and-cream complexion, blue eyes, hair done in a French twist. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I don’t. I’m a government researcher, visiting from Washington. It’s quite important.”

She picked up her phone. “What branch of the government?”

“The executive,” he said. He took his White House pass from his wallet and handed it to her. She looked at it for a second, then put the phone down and said, “Just a moment.”

She disappeared through a door into the interior. Jake waited, ten seconds, fifteen, she was back. “He just has to get off a phone call.”

At that moment, they both heard, faintly, the flushing noise from a toilet, and she got a little pink: Jake said, “I would have told me the same thing.”

“It seemed better than the alternative,” she said. Then, “When was the last time you were at the White House?”

“Last night.”

“Did you see the president?”

“No. But once I did, and he nodded at me.”

“Must give you a feeling of power,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.