Dead Watch

o’clock, his weeping wife, in a pale orange dress, seated behind him. Landers was a large man, pink and fleshy, with thick political hair going white.
    “If these absurd and tendentious charges came at any other moment, I would fight them from office, as the president has urged me to do. But they are being made, as Lincoln Bowe was perfectly aware when he began this conspiracy, at the one moment when I could not afford to fight them from office—at the beginning of a long and difficult reelection campaign.
    “Bowe and his criminal gang have succeeded to an extent: I am going. But they attacked me not because they wanted to damage a mere vice president. They attacked me as part of a greater game, to damage our party, our president, and indeed the aspirations of the American people, as reflected by this presidency. I won’t allow that to happen. I will fight with all my might, but I will not allow the best American president since John F. Kennedy to be handicapped during a campaign of such great importance to the American people.”
    The speech was widely ridiculed in the papers and the television talk shows the next day, as was his wife in her orange dress, and his daughter, who was overweight, and who was filmed eating a caramel-and-pecan bun at a bakery near her apartment in Cambridge.

    The bodies of Darrell Goodman and George Brenner sat in the SUV for four days, until somebody got curious about the fact that the truck hadn’t been moved. When the somebody got close enough, he noticed a “peculiar odor” and called the cops.
    Arlo Goodman blamed the gangs, and vowed to free up more funds for gang-suppression efforts.

    The FBI announced a massive investigation under the direction of a special prosecutor, the federal district attorney from Atlanta, Georgia.
    “You remember when I begged you to appoint him,” Danzig said to the president. They were in the president’s private office, drinking a wonderful single-malt Scotch that the president had extorted from the distiller, using the British prime minister’s office as the pry-bar.
    “I remember that. I was reluctant. There was some question about his integrity . . .”
    “There was no question at all,” Danzig said. “He’s crookeder than Landers, and I’ve got the sonofabitch’s testicles locked in my desk drawer. That ‘independent counsel’ theory can kiss my ass.”

    Jake and Madison hid out in New York for two weeks, talking only to Danzig and Novatny. Then Jake called Arlo Goodman from a pay phone, and flew out to Richmond on a Wednesday afternoon. Goodman walked out of the governor’s mansion at six o’clock, the sun sliding down in the sky, told his bodyguard to take a break, and met Jake at the corner.
    They walked along for twenty yards without speaking, looking at the day: a good day in Richmond, summer heat coming on, but not there yet; flowers in the gardens next to the sidewalk. Two men walking, one with a limp and a cane, the other with a bad hand half curled in front of him.
    Goodman opened. “That was a cold thing with Darrell.”
    “I didn’t invite him out there.”
    Goodman grunted. “Don’t bullshit me, Jake. You had him on a string and you pulled.”
    Jake said, “I wouldn’t have done it, if it weren’t for Wisconsin.”
    Goodman looked at him. “Wisconsin? You don’t think . . .”
    “I do think. I can prove it,” Jake said. “And I think I can prove you knew about it. Enough to thoroughly fuck you. Maybe, with the right jury, get you sent away for first-degree murder.”
    Goodman thought it over. Then, “Gimme a hint.”
    “Did they do an autopsy on Darrell?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then they would have found some scratches on his arms, already partly healed. Wouldn’t have been a big deal, given the rest of the damage. The thing was, the scratches were put there by the secretary out in Madison. The FBI took skin and blood off her fingernails. They don’t know who it belongs to; don’t know where to look.”
    “Darrell was cremated,” Goodman said.
    “Yeah, but you weren’t,” Jake said. “You share most of Darrell’s gene load. If they did a test on you, they’d know that the skin didn’t belong to you, but that it did belong to your brother. And I’ve rounded up a few pieces of paper. Cell-phone calls, state airplane records . . . they don’t make it a sure thing, but they would cause you some trouble.”
    “The dumb shit,” Goodman said. They walked along. “You can