19
Madison Bowe heard about Howard Barber’s death from Johnson Black, who heard about it from a television reporter who was calling Black to ask him to call Madison for a comment. She turned on the television, watched for a moment, then found the maid and said, “Harriet, I’m going shopping for a few minutes. I’ll just run down the hill, I’ll be back in half an hour.”
Afraid reporters might already be lurking, she put on a hat, went out through the back door, cut through the yards of a half dozen neighbors, then out to the street, not quite running.
Jake was working on the script for the evening’s drama when Madison called. “I’m down on M Street. Did you hear about Howard?”
“What about Howard?”
“He’s dead.” Her voice was hushed, nervous. “Three of Goodman’s cops went to arrest him, they supposedly got some information that he was involved in Linc’s disappearance. But something happened, and he crashed through his office window and fell five stories and he’s dead. Some of his office workers told the television that he was screaming for help and then they heard the crash . . .”
Jake was astonished, groped for words. “Jesus. What do the cops say?”
“All three claim he threw himself through the window. Right through the plate glass. I don’t know. I just don’t know. The FBI is there, I guess they’ve taken over.”
“I’ll call Novatny, see what I can find out.”
“What about tonight?”
“It’s still on, unless the cops delay you . . . I’ll come in, we’ll talk about Barber, I’ll tell you everything I know, you tell me what you found out—you should start calling people about it, because that’s what you’d naturally do. Then we’ll go into our play. Just follow my lead.”
“What if there’s no bug?”
“Then nothing will happen,” Jake said.
“Should I make a comment about Howard? For the media? They’re going to start calling. They were already calling Johnnie Black to see if I’d do one.”
Jake scratched his forehead, thinking for a minute, then said, “I guess . . . That’s up to you. It won’t make any difference, one way or another, to the play tonight. But we can’t have anyone else in the living room when we talk. We have to be alone, or we wouldn’t do it.”
“All right. Maybe . . . I’ll tell Johnnie that I could have a comment tomorrow, but I want to wait and see what happens.”
“What do you think about Barber? Could it be suicide?”
She hesitated, then, “Maybe. He’s depressive. He’s excitable. He could do it . . . I don’t know.”
“All right. Hang on: manage it. See you at nine.”
Jake called Novatny, but the FBI man wouldn’t talk. “You’re too deep in this, ol’ buddy.”
“I’m not asking for a state secret—I just want to know if it was suicide.”
“That’s what the Virginia State Police say.”
“What do you say?”
“Too early to tell.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Jake called Danzig’s office and talked to Gina. “Tell Bill that there’s a story on television about a guy who jumped, fell, or was thrown out a window over in Arlington. Virginia State Police were there and some of the witnesses say the guy was thrown. The thing is, this guy is mixed into the Lincoln Bowe disappearance. There’s going to be a stink around Goodman, at least for a while.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“You almost done over there?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t.”
She knew everything, of course. They were building some distance between themselves and Jake, just in case. “Talk to you later.”
They were getting into the endgame on Lincoln Bowe: Jake could feel it coming. In a week, there’d be nothing left to do but the cleanup. The cleanup, depending on who was doing the cleaning, could send a few people off to jail.
For the moment, there was still room to maneuver.
He climbed the stairs to his junk room, unlocked his gun safe, took out the Remington .243 and a semiautomatic Beretta 20 gauge with two boxes of shells. He’d last used the .243 six months earlier, on an antelope hunt in Wyoming. When he left Wyoming, he could keep three slugs inside three-quarters of an inch at a hundred yards, shooting off sandbags. It was sighted a half inch to an inch high at a hundred, so any shot he wanted to take, from muzzle-tip to two hundred yards, was point ’n’ shoot.
