“I repeat the story whenever I can,” Jake said. “I’ve been to a half dozen dinner parties on it.”
They were still chatting, the girl a little flirty, but way too young, Jake thought—twenty, maybe, twenty-two— when Alan Green popped through the interior door. Green was short, bald, and burly, wide shouldered and narrow waisted, like a former college wrestler or gymnast. He wore khaki slacks, a white dress shirt, and striped tie, the tie loose at his thick neck, and a corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows. He smiled and asked, “Mr. Winter? Can I help you?”
“I need to speak to you privately,” Jake said.
“Could you tell me the subject?”
“Lincoln Bowe.”
“I heard the news. The news was terrible,” Green said. “What is your involvement?”
Jake glanced at the receptionist, then said, “I can tell you here, or privately. If I tell you here, you may pull this young lady into what’s about to happen.”
Green’s smile faded. “What’s about to happen?”
“You should know that as well as I do, Mr. Green. The, mmm, package is about to break into the open. A number of people think it may be the motive for this murder.”
The blood drained from Green’s face, and Jake knew that he’d connected. He looked at the receptionist, who shook her head, confused, and Green said, “You better come in. Katie, stop all my calls. Call Terry and tell him I can’t make it. I’ll call him later. Tell him I had an emergency.”
Green’s office was a twenty-by-twenty-foot cubicle furnished with a cheap Persian rug over the standard gray business carpet, leather chairs, and photographs: the faces of fifty politicians, ninety-nine predatory eyes and one black eye-patch worn by the former governor of Colorado, all signed. There were ten more of Green with two presidents and a selection of Washington politicians; and three personal photos, all of striking young men.
“What about this package?” Green asked. He picked up a short stack of paper, squared it, put it in an in- box.
“I have a general outline of what the package is, the highway deal,” Jake said. “I don’t yet have it. The package has apparently caused at least one and perhaps two murders. Very likely two. I’m coordinating with the lead investigator for the FBI on this, a man named Chuck Novatny. You can call him if you wish.”
“I don’t know this package,” Green said.
Jake let the annoyance show on his face: “Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Green. I got your name from one of the principals in this case. And if you really didn’t know, we’d still be talking out in the hallway.”
Green blinked. He’d felt the trap snap. Jake continued: “We can handle it as a political issue or we can handle it as a criminal matter. Once this package gets out there, nobody’s going to much care about the route—but they will care about who tried to suppress it, who tried to keep it undercover, because those are the most likely motives for the murders.”
“I don’t know . . . What murders? Lincoln Bowe, I’ve heard there’s some question . . .”
Jake shook his head: “There’s no question. There are people who’d like you to believe it was a suicide, but he was alive and heavily drugged when he was shot through the heart, and that makes it murder. The killers tried to frame a second man, a Virginia man, for the murder—and the second man is missing and we believe he’s also dead. You are playing with fire, Mr. Green. You are in deep jeopardy, not only from the law, the FBI, but from people with guns . . . unless you’re one of the gunmen yourself, or are cooperating with them.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Green snapped. They stared at each other for a minute, then Green asked, “Another gentleman came to see me about this. I told him that I had no idea where this package might be.”
“Who was that?”
He shook his head: “I won’t tell you that, if you don’t already know.”
“I probably know, but there are several possibilities,” Jake said.
“A black gentleman.”
“Yes. I know him. A good friend of Lincoln Bowe’s, and possibly of yours.” Jake’s eyes flicked toward the pictures of the young men, and then back to Green. “The black gentleman shares a cultural . . . choice . . . with you.”
Green said nothing.
“And he doesn’t have the package?” Jake asked.
“Apparently not. He didn’t when he was here.”
“Mr. Green, I’m sure you’ve done the calculations that we’ve all done. I know from your background that you’d like the package to be broken out later in the year. That’s not going to happen now. I don’t care how it comes out, only that it comes out soon. So that we can have a fair election, straight up. If I leave here without it, I am going to sit in my car and call my FBI contact on the telephone, and tell him about it. I think you’ll almost certainly be in jail tonight. I don’t think you’ll be getting out any time soon.”
“Jesus Christ,” Green said. He pulled a Kleenex out of a box in his desk drawer and patted his sweating scalp. “You don’t mess around, do you?”
“There’s no time. There’s just no time,” Jake said. “There are some violent people looking for this package, and I’m afraid more people will wind up dead if they keep struggling to find it.”
“That goddamned woman,” he said. “If she hadn’t put that paper together . . .”
“What woman?”
