Dead Watch

heart, and that makes it murder. The killers tried to frame a second man, a Virginia man, for the murder—and the second man is missing and we believe he’s also dead. You are playing with fire, Mr. Green. You are in deep jeopardy, not only from the law, the FBI, but from people with guns . . . unless you’re one of the gunmen yourself, or are cooperating with them.”
    “Don’t be absurd,” Green snapped. They stared at each other for a minute, then Green asked, “Another gentleman came to see me about this. I told him that I had no idea where this package might be.”
    “Who was that?”
    He shook his head: “I won’t tell you that, if you don’t already know.”
    “I probably know, but there are several possibilities,” Jake said.
    “A black gentleman.”
    “Yes. I know him. A good friend of Lincoln Bowe’s, and possibly of yours.” Jake’s eyes flicked toward the pictures of the young men, and then back to Green. “The black gentleman shares a cultural . . . choice . . . with you.”
    Green said nothing.
    “And he doesn’t have the package?” Jake asked.
    “Apparently not. He didn’t when he was here.”
    “Mr. Green, I’m sure you’ve done the calculations that we’ve all done. I know from your background that you’d like the package to be broken out later in the year. That’s not going to happen now. I don’t care how it comes out, only that it comes out soon. So that we can have a fair election, straight up. If I leave here without it, I am going to sit in my car and call my FBI contact on the telephone, and tell him about it. I think you’ll almost certainly be in jail tonight. I don’t think you’ll be getting out any time soon.”
    “Jesus Christ,” Green said. He pulled a Kleenex out of a box in his desk drawer and patted his sweating scalp. “You don’t mess around, do you?”
    “There’s no time. There’s just no time,” Jake said. “There are some violent people looking for this package, and I’m afraid more people will wind up dead if they keep struggling to find it.”
    “That goddamned woman,” he said. “If she hadn’t put that paper together . . .”
    “What woman?”
    Green took a cell phone out of his coat pocket and began working one of the buttons with his thumb. As he did, he said, “Mr. Winter. I don’t have the package. I know about it. I’ve actually been through it. I’ll probably tell you who has it, but I’ve got to talk to her first. I can’t just have you show up . . . I mean, what if you’re the guy with the gun? I’ve never seen you before. And maybe the best thing would be if she went to the FBI. I’ve gotta have some time. I’ve gotta think.”
    Jake looked at his watch. “How much time?”
    “I don’t know if I can get her. If she’s out . . . she doesn’t have a cell phone. Anyway, she didn’t the last time I talked to her.”
    “So try her,” Jake said.
    “Not with you sitting here. We may have to talk  . . .”
    “I’ll come back in an hour,” Jake said. “Get in touch with her.”
    “I’ll tell you right up front that she was hoping to get a little something out of the package,” Green said. “Linc suggested that she could get a decent job, if the package came out at the right time. Maybe I could . . .”
    “Our friends get taken care of,” Jake said. “Nothing illegal, or unethical, but they get the attention they deserve. They wind up with decent jobs and benefits and pensions.”
    “Okay . . . I’ll try to call her,” Green said. He looked at the cell-phone screen, then laid it on his desk, pulled out another tissue, and patted his scalp again. “Jesus Christ.”
    Jake got up, stepped toward the door, said, “See you in an hour.”
    Green called after him, “You’ve seen the FBI reports on Linc?”
    “I have not—but I talk to the lead investigator every day.”
    “There are rumors . . . barbed wire, no head, that sounds like he was tortured,” Green said.
    “I wouldn’t want you to pass this around . . .”
    “No, no, of course not.”
    “We think that was an effort by his friends—your friends—to increase publicity,” Jake said. “I can’t tell you everything behind the supposition, and you might know more about it than I do . . .”
    “I do not,” Green protested.
    “. . . but he was definitely dead before he was decapitated, and before he was burned. The whole burning scene seems to have been set up to imply that the Watchmen were