Dead Watch

quarter slipped, and he stopped to shove it back in place with his tongue. Drooled a bit, and wiped his lips with his hand; saw Rosenquist pick up on the drool. “It’s supposed to be five-to-one every time, right? But if you do it enough, it’s gonna go off eventually, right? How many times on average? You’re a doctor, you should have the math. Is it five times to fifty-fifty? Or is it two and a half times to fifty-fifty? I could never figure that out.”
    He pointed the gun at Rosenquist’s head again and the doctor’s hands came up as if to block the bullet, and he turned his face away and blurted, “He had cancer.”
    “Cancer.” Jake looked at him over the barrel. “Where, cancer?”
    “Brain. A tumor.”
    “How bad?” Jake asked.
    “Untreatable.”
    “How long did he have it when he disappeared?”
    “He’d had it for probably a year, but we’d only known about it for a few weeks. Growing like crazy. Nothing to do about it. When he went, he was already showing it. He was losing function, physical and mental. He had some deep pain. We could treat that for a while, but not for long.”
    “Was he planning to suicide?”
    “I think so. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened with this . . . beheading. I don’t know. He told me to keep my mouth shut. He was my friend.”
    Jake stepped back, flipped the cylinder out again, reloaded the gun.
    “You’re going to kill me?”
    “I don’t have to,” Jake said. “If you say anything about any of this, it’ll all come out. Prison’s not the best place for a fat soft gay guy. You’d have to deal with it for a long time.”
    “I can’t believe Madison had anything to do with this,” Rosenquist said, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
    “Jesus Christ.” Jake laughed, his best dirty laugh, shook his head, drooled again, wiped his lips. “You’re just so goddamned dumb, fat man. This is way past Madison Bowe. You don’t know what you’ve done with this little game. You don’t know what you’ve stepped into. The FBI’s in it, the CIA, God only knows what the security people are doing. I know the Watchmen are working it and there’re some guys working for Goodman you wouldn’t want to meet. They’ll cut your fuckin’ legs off with a chain saw. Madison Bowe? You fuckin’ dummy.”
    “If you’re not with Madison . . .” Rosenquist was confused. “Who are you with?”
    “Best not to know,” Jake said. He smiled the crooked coin-holding smile. “It’s one of those deals where I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
    Old joke; Rosenquist recognized it, at the same time he seemed to buy it. Jake pushed on: “So. Mouth shut, ass down. Maybe you’ll live through it—though I don’t know what the other side’s thinking. Wouldn’t destroy any records, but you might put them someplace where your lawyer can get them if he needs them. They’re about the only chip you’ve got in this game.”
    And he was out of there.

    On the street, clear of the building, walking fast, he called Madison. “I think I should come and see you,” he said.
    “Come on,” she said.
    Then he started to laugh. If his grandmother had heard him up there, using the language, she would have washed his mouth out with soap.
    So he laughed, and the people on the sidewalk spread carefully around him; a man, alone, laughing aloud on a New York street, in the dark. Not necessarily a threat, but it pays to be careful.

12 

    On the way back in the plane, Jake tried to work through what he knew: that Lincoln Bowe had been dying, and that Bowe had known about a scandal, a package, that would unseat the vice president of the United States, and, if delivered at the right time, probably the president as well.
    They did not fit together. He kept trying to find a way, and not until they were coming into National, the Washington Monument glowing white out the right-side window, did one answer occur to him.
    He resisted the idea. Struggled again to find a logic that would put all the pieces together—but Occam’s razor kept jumping up at him: the simplest answer is probably the right one.
    And the simplest answer was very simple indeed: they weren’t related at all.

    Jake got out of the cab at Madison’s a little after midnight. The front-porch light was burning, and Madison opened the door as he climbed the stairs.
    “What happened?” she asked. “Come in . . . You look exhausted.”
    “I’m fairly well kicked,” Jake admitted. “The