An Absence of Light (44 page)

“Graver,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. She had turned around in her chair and was facing him, her bare feet slightly apart on the floor, her hands together in her lap pushing the skirt of her dress down between her thighs. It was a college kid’s posture. “Do you really think anyone in the police department other than Dean is involved in this? Is that what you’re trying to discover before you get someone else in on this?”

He put an olive in his mouth and bit into it, tasting the pimiento and the salty oil. He chewed it and then washed it down with a swallow of beer.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you know as well as I do this is… impossible.” She cut her eyes at Neuman, then back to Graver. “We’re not doing this justice. There ought to be people all over this Heath and Sheck operation. It’s enormous. There could be five or six Shecks and thirty Heaths and more than a hundred, maybe hundreds of people stealing information to sell to them. It’s incredible when you think about it I’m probably not even imagining on a big-enough scale. It gave me the creeps listening to that woman upstairs. These people… the information they have is spooky. And even spookier is imagining what they might be doing with it It’s just that… this is so big, for Christ’s sake.”

Graver nodded, chewing the last bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t sure how he was going to answer her, but he was sure of how he felt about it.

“Look,” he said, taking a sip of beer and wiping his hands on a paper towel he was using for a napkin. He pushed the nearly empty beer bottle back on the tile countertop and walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

“You’re right It is big. You’re right, we absolutely cannot handle it. Not in the long run. But we’re actually only in the discovery stages of this thing right now. Do I think someone else from the police department is involved in this? I don’t know, but I have growing doubts that men like Kalatis and Strasser and even Faeber, for that matter, would be involved if it was the kind of operation that didn’t go any higher up than Dean Burtell. An analyst is nothing to these men. They may
need
an analyst, they may
use
him, but I’m guessing that what they’re trying to get into requires a higher level of cooperation. Dean, for all his intellect and ability, is only a stepping-stone here. I’ve got to believe they’re aiming higher than what he can provide. He’s simply being used.”

He looked at Neuman and then back at Paula.

“So what do I do? I make the assumption that a lot of money is involved here because the big players don’t come to small games. There’s a big game somewhere right under our noses. Now who among the HPD’s top people am I going to trust with this? It’s not that there aren’t any good men and women here who can be trusted. Of course there are. It’s just that there may be
same
here who
can’t
be trusted, but I don’t know who the hell they are. So how do I know who to bring into it? Who do I involve? Should I risk this whole operation that you’ve just talked about, this enormous something, on a bet that it stops with Dean? Or on a bet that I’ll be able to pick the right people to reveal it to?” He paused. “I don’t think so.”

“What about the FBI? If it’s so big, they ought to be the ones going into this. They’ve got the resources.”

Graver looked at her. “All right, Paula, here’s an honest answer to that. You’re right, in a well-ordered world that would be the way to go.”

Then he explained to her what Arnette had pointed out to him about the conflicting jurisdictions of the CIA, DEA, and FBI regarding Kalatis.

“If I go to them at this point,” he said, “I might run the risk of having this melt right in front of my eyes. I shouldn’t have to explain to you about jurisdictional squabbles. Well, at this point—maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day—but at this point, I want to be able to call the shots on the leads
we
develop. I don’t want anything taken away from me. I don’t want to be co-opted or condescended to. I don’t want to be pushed into the background.” He paused. “I guess when it comes right down to it I’m not any better than the rest of them about wanting to protect my jurisdiction. But Tisler and Besom were
my
people. Dean is
my
responsibility. I don’t want to turn them over to anyone else.”

He paused again. “Besides, from what I see happening I think we have as good a shot at Kalatis as any of the agencies. And I don’t want to share this bastard with anybody. If we get our hands on him, I don’t want to see him bargained away from us for some other agenda set by people in Washington or Langley or Quantico.”

Neuman was looking down at his steno pad, doodling on it with his pen. Paula was staring at him, but she wasn’t saying anything. She simply looked at him, lost in thought He guessed that she was trying to work it out He guessed she didn’t know what she thought, and until she did she wasn’t going to push it.

“But,” Graver continued, “I don’t think we’re going to have much time to worry about it anyway. A lot of possibilities are about to come into play here. If Kalatis is moving on some kind of big project, those other agencies are going to be onto him anyway. I don’t think for a minute we’re in this thing by ourselves. If Kalatis suspects he’s about to be compromised—and he probably knows more than we’d like to think—then he’s going to speed up the program. Our window of opportunity here is very small and shrinking.”

“How small?” Neuman looked up.

Graver shrugged and shook his head. “I’m guessing… a couple of days maybe. Tisler and Besom’s deaths will hit the newspapers in the morning. If those news stories take the form of something speculative, if they hint at something dark behind the deaths, Kalatis is going to want to disappear. And then Sheck is going to miss Heath. I just don’t think we have that much time before this turns into something a hell of a lot different than we have now.”

12:18 A.M
.

“Any room facing the harbor,” the man said. He said it quickly, having put his bag down in front of the registration desk without taking his other arm from around the young woman he was holding close to him. The desk clerk noticed the guy’s thumb was rubbing the side of the woman’s bra under her blouse. Or it would have been rubbing her bra. He didn’t think she was wearing one.

“High up,” the woman said, looking at the man and then at the desk clerk, smiling at him with a smile that the clerk would have described as mischievous if he had been familiar with the word. “I want to see the boats, the lights on the boats.”

“High up,” the man said, winking at the desk clerk. “Got to see those boats.”

“High up,” the desk clerk said, checking his computer. The man was some kind of Latin, not Mexican, maybe Colombian, a real macho hunk, good-looking, well-built, early thirties. The woman was in her mid twenties, the clerk guessed. A red-blooded American thing with caramel-colored hair streaked blond by the sun and a very fine set of hooters that this Latin character was getting his thumb all over and, now, even the rest of his hand. The clerk lost track of what he was hitting on the keyboard and had to mess around with the keys again to find his place.

“What about it, huh? Have you got something?” the Macho asked. “What have you got? We’re kind of in a hurry.” He said hurry with a kind of back-of-the-throat skitter across the r’s.

No shit. The clerk cut his eyes at the girl. She was beaming at him. Jeesus.

“Yeah, sure do. Got one right here. A good view of the marina. A pretty view. It’s not at the top, but it’s two floors from it.”

“Fantastic,” the Macho said, finally taking his arm from around the woman and reaching into his suit jacket for his wallet As the Macho filled out the forms, the clerk sneaked another look at the woman’s breasts but he forgot to look at her face first and when he finally did she caught him. But she just beamed at him again and pulled back her shoulders perkily, or he thought that was what she did, and his eyes hit on her chest again on their way down to the registration form. The clerk envied the Latin Macho. The clerk’s imagination did a little number on the woman as he looked at her one last time.

When the paperwork was done the clerk started to ring for a bellman, but the Macho stopped him.

“We don’t need any help,” he said. “We’ve just got these couple of bags,” and sure enough there was another bag the clerk hadn’t noticed that the woman was carrying, one of those fancy aluminum cases. “Many thanks,” the Macho said, and they turned and walked across the lobby to the elevators.

Once inside the elevators Remberto pulled a radio from his waistband under his coat and spoke into it.

“Room 1202. She wants you to bring the other aluminum suitcase. Don’t go in the main lobby door. There is another entrance at the marina end of the lobby with elevators out of sight of the front desk.”

Within seven minutes Cheryl was standing at the floortoceiling windows in their room looking down at the sailboats in the marina below. The lights were off in the room, and they moved around in the pale glow thrown up from the strings of lights draped up and down the docks and boat slips.

“Isn’t this too far?” Remberto asked.

“Nope. Perfect,” Cheryl said as she bent down and opened her aluminum suitcase and took out a tripod and began assembling it. Remberto took binoculars out of his suitcase and began scanning the rows of docked boats. Just as Cheryl was putting the tripod in place someone knocked at the door, and she went to the eyehole and looked out “Good,” she said and opened the door.

Murray came in carrying Cheryl’s larger aluminum suitcase, and behind him was Boyd with his bags of photographic equipment and carrying his own tripod.

They worked quickly, Murray and Remberto standing on either side of the large window with binoculars while Boyd and Cheryl set up their equipment in the middle. In twelve minutes everything was in place. Cheryl sat behind her parabolic microphone mounted on its tripod, her headset in place, the receiver on her lap.

“Okay, guys. Any suggestions?”

“Yeah,” Remberto said. His binoculars hadn’t left his eyes since he got there. “See the first dock from the left? Boat slips on either side. Go out to the second dock light, from there… one, two, three… third boat. It’s a small cabin cruiser, blue trim. There are people inside, more than two, talking.”

Cheryl leaned forward over the scope of the microphone, found the boat, and began toying with the receiver dials. Everyone waited. Two minutes, three.

“I just don’t think so,” she said. “They’re talking, uh, office politics. Lou got a lot bigger raise than this guy, and this guy’s pissed because he did most of Lou’s work on the ‘Fleming deal’ and Lou never gave him credit for what he’d done except in private…”

“Okay,” Remberto said. “Fourth dock over. Between the main walkway and the dock, first boat before the first light.”

The trial-and-error process was frustrating, but everyone was used to it and remained calm and focused. They found their targets on the fourth boat.

“Got ’em,” Cheryl said, clapping one hand to her headphones. With her other hand she flipped on the recorder.

“I’ve worked for that son of a bitch a long time,” the man said, “and I’m telling you, something’s going wrong here. I mean, really wrong, not just some glitch.”

“You have how many numbers?” Burtell’s voice was immediately recognizable.

“Three.
Three
contact numbers. Always the same system. First one’s routine. Second one’s secure from everyone. Third one’s the ‘get the hell out of Dodge’ number, when it’s time to clear out, drop everything, save your ass. I can’t get him on any of them, and he sure as hell hasn’t called me on any of mine. That’s damned unusual.”

“Maybe he’s cut you out, doesn’t trust you anymore.”

“The hell he doesn’t! We started using this method in Buenos Aires, that far back. I’ve always worked the street-level stuff for him, and he depends on me to tell him when the people he’s got me working with are starting to stink. That’s what that second number’s for. Just him and me.”

They were sitting inside, the cabin table between them, two bottles of beer on the table along with a nearly consumed fifth of Wild Turkey. The cabin door was thrown open to the still, humid night. Outside, the lazy sound of an idling inboard motor carried across the water.

Burtell looked at Sheck. He was nearing forty, and he had lived in a moral wasteland most of his adult life. He made his living by doing casually and without hesitation deeds that were punishable by death or life imprisonment in every society in the world. His life was a rejection of every concept that comprised the glue that held together the societies that the mass of men called civilized. He was incapable of compunction. He was entirely self-serving. And right now, he resembled more than anything an alerted hyena, his hackles raised, his jaws slightly open and rigid, ready to maul as he snuffled the wind for verification of his suspicions.

“You know about Tisler,” Burtell said.

“Yeah, sure, I heard that.”

“Do you know about Besom?”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead too.”

Bruce Sheck stopped swallowing in the middle of swigging his beer. He lowered the bottle, putting it down on the table without a sound.

“Dead.”

“Had a heart attack while he was surf fishing.” Burtell watched him closely.

“Heart attack.” Sheck’s face was static, but at the same time reflected a thought process way ahead of the words that had been spoken. “When was this?”

“He died sometime Monday afternoon or night. They found him yesterday, brought his body to Houston last night.”

“When did you talk to Kalatis last?”

“Same night Besom died, though none of us knew it at the time,” Burtell lied. Sheck, especially a drunk Sheck, didn’t need to know about the previous night’s meeting at the art museum. “Faeber was there too. They wanted to know if Tisler’s death had initiated an investigation, a witch-hunt inside the Department. They wanted to know if they should be afraid that Art had left behind something incriminating.”