Dead Watch

drunk. He essentially said that the president and the Senate minority leader are criminals. It was completely out of control.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Danzig flashed a thin-lipped fat-lizard’s smile: “I should ask, Jake—have any questions occurred to you?”
    “The obvious one. Did the Watchmen take him?”
    Danzig spun in his leather chair, a complete turn, caught himself before going around a second time: “That’s the question. And the answer is We don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. God only knows what Goodman is cooking up down there.”
    “So what’s our problem?” Jake asked.
    “Embarrassment. Goodman is one of us, we can’t deny it. We loved that whole Watchman idea, the idea of volunteering for America—it was like the Peace Corps, but for us. Like something John Kennedy might have thought of. Best of all, it didn’t cost anything. Now people are starting to say that they’re a bunch of Nazis. We wanted to get rid of Lincoln Bowe, we wanted to get him out of the Senate, and we gave Goodman everything he needed to do the job. Then Bowe disappears, and it all comes back to bite us in the ass.”
    Jake nodded. There wasn’t much to say. The Democrats, with the president leading the way, had poured seventy million dollars into the Virginia election, had used Goodman as their point man.
    “So. Find out what happened to Bowe,” Danzig said. “Legal as you can. Use the FBI for the technicalities. But find him and give me updates through Gina.”
    Jake said, “What’s the FBI doing? I’m not sure I could help.”
    Danzig was irritated: “The FBI—they’re doing a tap dance, is what they’re doing. They know a dead skunk when they see one. They’re out looking around, but I’ve been talking to the director, and I know goddamned well that they don’t have their hearts in it. They’re saying that there’s no evidence of a kidnapping, no evidence of force, no evidence of anything. They just stand around and cluck.”
    “So, what do I do?”
    “Kick some ass. Turn over some rocks. Go threaten somebody,” Danzig said. “Do what you do. We need to get this thing out of the way. We can’t carry this through the summer, into the election, for Christ’s sake.”
    “How much time?”
    Danzig shook his head. “No way to tell. It’s already a mess. Right now, we’re sitting tight, going back-door to all the media, talking about how it’s a Virginia problem, not a White House problem. They’ve bought it so far. But you know how that works: one thing changes, and they’ll turn on you like a pack of rats.”
    “What’s my authority?” Jake asked. Sometimes Danzig didn’t want anyone to know who was interested.
    “I am,” Danzig said. “You can use my name. Gina will back you up.”
    “Okay.” Jake slapped his thighs. “I’ll move on it.”
    As he got up and turned to go, Danzig asked, “Kill any turkeys?”
    “Nope. Interrupted by a phone call.”
    “Life in the big city, son,” Danzig grunted, already flipping through the paper in front of him. “Maybe you can squeeze a little blood out of this job.”

    Out of Danzig’s office, Jake walked with an escort to the working door, then into the sunshine through the security fences to the street, where he caught a cab home. The magnolias were in full bloom, pink and white, beds of daffodils jumped up like yellow exclamation marks. Early April: the cherry trees would be gorgeous this week down at the Tidal Basin, if you could get to them through the tourists. He made a mental note to stroll by, if he found the time.
    Several days of rain had washed the city clean. The Washington Monument needled into the sky, telling the world exactly who the studhorse was. The streets were lined with flowers, busy with bureaucrats with white ID tags strung around their necks, fat brown briefcases dangling from their hands. Good day in Washington when even the bureaucrats looked happy.
    Jake lived in Burleith, north of Georgetown, in a brick-and-stone town house that might have been built in the early twentieth century, but was actually a careful replica only fifteen years old.
    At the moment, his street was torn up. The owner of a town house three down from his, a stockbroker, had convinced the other residents to rip out the old concrete sidewalks and replace them with brick walkways. Bricks would enhance the value of the neighborhood, the broker said, and would increase the resale value of their houses by making the neighborhood more like