Dead Watch

investigation, the word would bleed out, and we’d be twisting in the wind.”
    Danzig nodded: “Exactly. If there’s a package, we need it now, and we need it all. If there isn’t a package, we need to know that. What we don’t need is a long investigation, a special prosecutor, a controversy. We don’t need a long-brewed scandal. We need either to get it over with, or buried for good.”
    “You want me to keep looking?”
    Danzig said, “Jake, I do want you to keep looking—but I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I’m going to tell Gina tomorrow morning that we’re all done, to tote up what we owe you on the consult. I want you to continue on your own hook, and if you find the package, I want you to deliver it.” Another moment of silence, then Danzig said, “You get my drift.”
    Jake said, “You want me to be deniable.”
    “Took the words right out of my mouth,” Danzig said. “I want the best of both worlds. I want you off the payroll, so we don’t have any backfires. I want you to keep looking, so that if there is something we need, you’ll find it and we’ll get it. Us, not anybody else. And I want it so if you get caught doing something unethical or criminal, we can throw you to the wolves.”
    Jake smiled: “Thanks, boss.”
    “You’re not a virgin.”
    “One part of me is. I wouldn’t want that changed in a federal prison.”
    “I can understand that,” Danzig said. “But believe me, there’s a terrific upside if you pull this off.”
    “What upside?”
    “What do you want?”

    The question hung there. Jake stared at him, then said, “You’re serious.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “I might want a lot,” Jake said.
    “I can’t give you a billion dollars, but I can get you something good.”
    Jake thought about it for a minute, then nodded. “You’ll pay off this consult?”
    “As of tonight.”
    “Should I stay in touch?”
    “Call me if you get it,” Danzig said.
    “And if I don’t?”
    “Then don’t call me. But Jake: you gotta get it.”

    Jake stood up, leaned on his cane for a moment, then took a slow turn around the office, looked at the Remington bronze that sat on the credenza, touched the buffalo head, turned back, and said, “The whole thing, the package thing, started with an anonymous tip. A guy calls in the middle of the night and says, ‘See what Packer and Patterson talked about at the Watergate.’ So—who was that, and what was the motive? There’s somebody else out there. I can’t see him. I can’t see what he wants.”
    Danzig tapped on his desk with a yellow pencil, staring at Jake but not focused on him, and finally sighed and said, “Shit, Jake, there’s always somebody out there. What he wants . . . he might want anything. The simple pleasure of knowing he took down Landers. Maybe there’s a better job in it for him. Maybe he figures they’ll make a movie about him, he’ll get to go to Hollywood and fuck Brittany West.”
    “Patterson suggested that Goodman could benefit. Take a big step up,” Jake said.
    Now Danzig’s eyes snapped. “Well. We’ll see how things work out. I know why he’d say that, though. God help us.”
    Jake headed for the door: “I’ll see you.”
    “You’re gonna do it?”
    Jake smiled. “You don’t want to know, right?”

11 

    Jake arrived at Madison’s town house at 10:30, wrestled his overnight bag out of the cab, hung it over his shoulder, carried his briefcase on the other side, tapped his way up the walk with his cane. He’d called Madison from the cab. Halfway up the walk, the porch light came on and she opened the door.
    “Mrs. Bowe . . .”
    “Did you have a good time at the White House?”
    “You hardly ever have a good time at the White House, unless you’re the president,” Jake said. He thought about Danzig, and the What do you want? “You can have interesting times.”
    “Gonna tell me about it?”
    “No.”
    She had a black dress hanging on a hook in the entryway, still in a plastic dry-cleaning bag, and a shoe bag sitting on the floor beneath it. Funeral clothes, Jake thought, as he went by into the living room. She had a gas fireplace. The fire was on, flickering behind a glass door. He dropped his bags, sat on the couch, and she asked, “A glass of wine?”
    “That would be great.”
    She was back in a minute, with two glasses. The wine was already open, and she held it up to the ceiling light and peered through it. “I started without you,” she