Dead Watch

Georgetown. Jake was indifferent to the idea, but went along because everybody else agreed to do it. Besides, the noisome little asshole was probably right.
    Because of the street work, he had the cabbie drop him at the entrance to the alley at the back of the house, carded through the fence lock, and climbed the stoop to the back door.
    He ran a bachelor house: a functional kitchen, a compact dining room, a living room with a wide-screen television, a den used as a library and office, and a half-bath; and on the second floor, a master bedroom suite, a guest bedroom, and a third bedroom where he hid all his junk—obsolete golf clubs, a never-used rowing machine, old computer terminals that were not good enough to use, but too good to throw away, three heavily used backpacks and two newer ones—he was a bag junkie. He also had a gun safe, a bow locker, and a pile of luggage.
    The furnace, a washer and dryer, the telephone and electric service panels, and the master box for the alarm system were all tucked away in a small basement. A two-car garage had been added to the back of the house and occupied most of the backyard.
    He kept the place neat with two hours of cleaning a week, usually done on Saturday morning. He wasn’t a freak about it, simply logical. Two hours a week was better than two straight days once a quarter.

    By the time he got home, the workday was over. He went online with the Virginia State website, found a name for the governor’s chief of staff—Ralph Goines—and tracked him down through the FBI telephone database, then called him on his unlisted home phone. He identified himself and said, “I need to see Governor Goodman. Tomorrow if possible.”
    “Could I tell the governor why you want to talk to him?”
    “It’s about Lincoln Bowe. If you saw Randall James’s show . . .”
    “We did see it. Absolutely irresponsible,” Goines said. “Mrs. Bowe has been carrying on a campaign of slander and innuendo.”
    “So which one was the big guy in the videotape, the one with the leather jacket?” Jake asked. “Slander? Or Innuendo?”
    Bitch-slapping bureaucrats was one way to wake them up. Pause, five seconds of silence: “We are looking into that. It’s possible that it was a setup.”
    “Right,” Jake said. He let the skepticism show in his voice. “Maybe the governor could tell me about it.”
    Back and forth, and eventually an appointment: “One o’clock, then. Be prompt. The governor’s a busy man.”
    Jake nodded at the phone, said, “Sure,” and hung up, turned to his computer, and went back online.
    Because of his work with Danzig, he had limited access to government reference files. He went into the FBI telephone database again. The Bowes had a place in Georgetown, not far from him, and were also listed at a place in the Blue Ridge, and in New York. He found an unlisted cell-phone number for Madison Bowe and called it.
    She answered on the third ring.

3 

    Madison Bowe lived in a four-story red-brick town house in Georgetown, up the hill from M Street. Jake paid the cabdriver, straightened his tie, climbed the front steps, and rang the bell. She met him at the door, barefoot, wearing black slacks and a hip-length green-silk Chinese dressing-gown. She didn’t smile, but looked up and asked, “You’re Jacob Winter?”
    “Yes, I am.” Jake had only seen her on television, where everyone was cropped to fit the screen and gorgeous blondes were a dime a dozen, and you paid no attention. But Madison Bowe was real, and the reality of the woman was a slap in the face. She was smaller than he’d expected, had short blond hair, a sculpted nose, direct green eyes, and a touch of pinkish lipstick. She spoke with a soft Virginia country accent, in a voice that carried some bourbon gravel.
    She still didn’t smile; looked up and down the block, then said, “I hate it when I have to trust a Democrat.”
    “I apologize,” Jake said. “I’ll go home and kill myself.”
    Small blondes were his personal head-turner. His ex-wife might have been airmailed to him directly from hell—but she, too, had been a small blonde, and right up to the end, even at the settlement conference, the sight of her had turned him around. As did Madison Bowe. And Madison smelled good, like lilacs, or vanilla.
    “You better come in,” she said, ignoring the wisecrack. “We’re in the parlor.”
    He limped after her. He noticed her noticing it.
    The other half of the “we” was a lawyer