An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  Her eyes burrowed into his eyes. In this brief moment, by her manner, by her tone of voice, by the expression on her face, she was letting him know that such a request from him, and her agreement to it, would not be without its consequences.

  Graver waited.

  “The reality is that you are now asking for something of Lara Casares, not of your secretary,” she said. “And I will gladly do this, not as your secretary, but as Lara.” She raised a dark eyebrow slightly, wanting to know if he understood.

  Graver nodded.

  “I trust you,” she said. “Completely. But I’m not a fool. I understand enough of this business now to know that sometimes it’s necessary for you to lie—to withhold the truth—whatever it is you find yourself having to call it” She paused, her black eyes still holding him across the short distance between them. “I have only one request: never He to me. Lie to your secretary, if you must I’m not so naive as to think I can ask you not to do that. But never lie to me… to Lara.” She paused again. “And if you don’t understand the difference between the two, well, then, I guess it’s time for me to know that about you.”

  She stopped and looked at him, almost sadly, he thought, and suddenly he realized there was a story here, behind this request, a story that had much to do with who she was and which had been entirely invisible to him for all these years until this moment Either Lara was a master of secrets herself, or he had been shamefully obtuse, having been too self-absorbed to detect a vulnerability where he had thought none existed.

  “This is important to me,” she said. “Do you understand that? No lies… between you… and me.”

  Graver nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Agreed.”

  “I believe that,” she said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

  Graver was tremendously relieved and, at the same time, chagrined. In a real sense he already had lied to her by his vague approach. Or, if he had not exactly lied to her, he had not been entirely honest either. She saw that, and that was precisely the kind of thing she was talking about Even so, she had consented to work with him under decidedly bizarre circumstances. She had consented, but she also had put him on notice. Gently.

  Chapter 24

  He called them into his office separately. Paula first, because she did not yet know of his conversation the night before with Neuman. When Graver told her of Neuman’s discovery, she was uncharacteristically quiet Like many deskbound thinkers, Paula’s understanding of life, while brilliantly analytical, was largely acquired through theories and paradigms rather than experience, and she was visibly disquieted by this harsh and untidy intrusion of flesh-and-blood reality. It was one thing to read and write about subterfuge and betrayal and quite another to find yourself wiping away the actual sweat of it.

  She was sobered but not intimidated. She immediately agreed to work with Graver without any higher authority for what they were about to do. Graver was a little uncomfortable that she so readily assented to step into unchartered country with him. On the other hand, though, it was Paula’s characteristic refusal to shrink in the face of the formidable that recommended her to the job they were about to take on.

  After Paula, he called in Casey Neuman.

  “At this point only the three of us know about this,” Graver said. “Since I don’t know where in the hell this thing goes, it’s got to stay that way.”

  The two of them were sitting in Graver’s office again, and it was late in the afternoon. Everyone had gone home. Neuman was turned almost sideways in the straight-back chair in front of Graver’s desk, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, his left arm draped over the back of the chair. As Graver spoke, Neuman was looking down at a piece of paper he had been using as a bookmark and which he was now folding and unfolding as he listened.

  “What you’ve got to consider now,” Graver continued, “before you even agree to go along with this, is that something like this could go both ways. At some point down the road, next month, next year, if we deal with this thing successfully, we could be testifying for the prosecution. Fine. On the other hand, it could blow up in our feces. Let’s say we’ve discovered the breach, but we’ve botched the inquiry, or we’re hauled up on charges of running a rogue investigation that should have had authorization and direction from a higher level.”

  Neuman was still listening with his head down, and Graver was beginning to wonder if he was doing too good a job with this, maybe even talking him out of it. It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to get Neuman into something he hadn’t thought through to the end. Which he probably had. Still, Graver wanted to know that he had.

  “The thing is,” Graver emphasized, “you’ve got to imagine having to defend yourself in front of a court, in the newspapers, on television. Just make the assumption now that someday it’ll hit the media and your actions will be questioned… in public. You’ve got to think about that, and—if you decide to stay on—you’ve got to think about it tomorrow and the next day and every day until this is over. I’m telling you right now, if you can’t live with yourself after you’ve done something I’ve asked you to do, then you’d better have the guts to tell me no.”

  Graver had been leaning on his desk, talking straight across it to Neuman, turning the cobblestone around and around on a stack of papers. Now he picked up the stone and tapped the wood of the desk with it Neuman looked up.

  “I don’t own your soul, Casey,” Graver said with a softly measured emphasis. “I’m not going to have to grow old with what you do, and I’m not going to have to answer to your conscience. I’ve got my own to deal with.”

  Neuman stared back at him, and Graver did not see any signs of trepidation, no uncertainty, no fear of the inexperienced. He didn’t know if that was comforting or not.

  “I understand the rules,” Neuman said. “And I also understand that you think I can do this, or you would’ve cut me out and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I’m ready to work.”

  Graver looked at him and put down the cobblestone. Jesus. “Okay.” He picked up the telephone and punched in a number. “Paula,” he said, “bring in the files.”

  As Graver had driven back from Arnette Kepner’s he had wrestled with the logistics of what he was about to do. He wanted to keep the investigation as small and tight as possible. Since Burtell would be out of the office now for two weeks, it would be relatively easy for Graver to communicate with Neuman and Paula about their progress. He would tell the other analysts with whom Neuman was working on other investigations that he was pulling him for a couple of weeks. The routine compartmentalization of an Intelligence Division at least eased some of the covert maneuvering that would be necessary to do this. Intelligence officers at all levels were used to not being given explanations. It was part of the business and worked to their advantage more often than not It was this claim to silence, justified by the necessity to maintain security, that so often rankled intelligence outsiders and struck them an unnecessary arrogance.

  Graver had already talked with Matt Rostov about using Paula, and even though Graver would be handing in his report on Tisler the next morning, everyone would assume there would be loose ends to deal with. And Ray Besom was still out of town. These arrangements would allow Neuman and Paula to work in isolation from the others and enable him to see them regularly during the course of the day without raising any particular notice.

  The first thing he would do would be to complete the report for Westrate. If there were others within CID involved along with Burtell and Besom and Tisler, they would be able to pass along the fact that the case indeed had been closed out.

  Now, as they each sipped fresh cups of coffee that Neuman had stepped across the hall to make before they got started, he explained how he was going to handle Burtell.

  “I’ve got someone from the outside for surveillance,” he said bluntly. Both Paula and Neuman registered shock. “There was no way I could use anyone in law
enforcement in this city. Burtell’s been around too long, knows too many people. Besides, if I’m going to keep this unofficial… I couldn’t risk a leak.”

  “These people,” Paula said, “they’re another agency?”

  “No.”

  “A private investigator?”

  “No,” Graver said firmly. He wasn’t going to explain, and he didn’t want any questions about it He went on immediately. “As soon as we have something from them, from surveillance, we’ll follow up as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we’ve got plenty to do.”

  He opened a folder in which he had been filing away notes since Sunday night after Westrate’s visit.

  “First,” he said, “we’ve got to determine the status of the sources listed in Tisler’s contributor files for the Probst and Friel investigations. Did Tisler and/or Dean simply steal the names of real people, or do these people actually know Probst and Friel? Paula, you’ve already found out that most of these people can’t be located. Bruce Sheck, we don’t know. Colleen Synar, maybe. Let’s get to the bottom of what’s going on here. But be goddamned careful. We’re working against our own people here. They know all the tricks; they can read all the signs. And they’re expecting us.”

  “If we locate them, do you want us to go ahead and talk to them on the telephone?” Paula asked.

  Graver hesitated. “No. Hold off on that. Just make sure we know where we can find them.”

  “What about the Seldon thing?” Neuman asked. Graver was expecting it. After all, neither of them knew what had happened that morning with Burtell after they had walked out of Graver’s office. He told them Burtell’s account of what had happened.

  “Jesus Christ. Marcus.” Paula was incredulous. “I don’t believe that. Did he expect you to swallow that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I hope so.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Paula was shaking her head. “That’s outrageous. That means the investigation is just vapor.” Her eyes were wide as she gaped at Graver. “Besom. What about Besom? What are we going to do about him? We at least ought to go through his office. And Dean’s too, for God’s sake.”

  Neuman was shaking his head. “No, that’d be a mistake. They’re not going to have any tangible evidence in their offices, Paula. And they’d know for sure if we went in there. We’d only be giving ourselves away.”

  “Look, when he left to go fishing he didn’t know Tisler was going to kill himself,” Paula said, turning to Graver. “Like you said, they’ve been doing this for so long they have their routine down pat. But maybe they’ve grown complacent, too, a little careless, maybe.” She turned back to Neuman. “Look at Dean’s screwup with your folders, Casey.”

  Graver stood and walked to the windows. Once again late afternoon was muting the colors of the city. He was beginning to hate this office. He had seen too much of it, and he was dreading how much more of it he was going to have to see before this was over.

  “No, I’ve thought about going through their offices, too,” he said, half-turned away from them, “but I think Casey’s right. Besides, I can’t believe they’d leave anything incriminating while they were away for any period of time.”

  “But Dean…”

  “Yeah, I know that, Paula, but I think he must’ve been working on those drafts at the time he left. Yes, he left them there… even in the wrong folders, but he was only going to be gone for an hour. Yes, he was careless, maybe even complacent But he’s not going to do something like that and leave it overnight or for two weeks while he’s on vacation. Especially now, after what’s happened. I think Casey’s right It wouldn’t be worth the risk.”

  He stepped back to his desk and, standing beside it, turned another page in his file.

  “Casey, you said Tisler had rental property.”

  “Right. In Sharpstown.”

  “Did you check it out? Did you see if there were renters?”

  “No.”

  Graver sat down at his desk and turned around to his computer. “What’s the address?”

  “Six twenty-three Leiter.”

  Graver pulled up the street index in the city directory.

  “Lewis O. Feldberg, 555–2133.”

  He pulled up the name index. “Four Feldbergs,” he said. “Lewis O. at 623 Leiter… is retired.”

  Graver tapped the keys a few more times and brought up the Water Department records. “The old man sure as hell doesn’t use much utilities. Minimum billing. And, apparently, he moved into the place shortly after Tisler bought it. Feldberg started paying the utility bills just a few weeks later.”

  He kept tapping. “Mr. Feldberg’s never had a traffic ticket.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Paula said.

  Graver tapped some more.

  “Last time Mr. Feldberg registered to vote was in 1956,” he said.

  “That’s hard to believe,” Paula repeated. “Go to vital stats.”

  Graver made a few more entries and then waited for the screen to quit flashing. When it stopped, he read the information: “Lewis O. Feldberg. Christ, he died in Fort Worth on August 3, 1958.”

  Chapter 25

  It was nearly dusk and the streetlights already had come on by the time Graver found the address of Tisler’s rent house in a dying neighborhood off Beechnut inside the Southwest Freeway. The area looked as if it had been developed in the late fifties and had started its decline fifteen years later—several streets of small ranch-style houses with low-pitched pebble and asphalt roofs and brick veneer wainscoting. He drove by the house once very slowly.

  There was nothing about it that distinguished it, a fact that did not surprise Graver. Tisler wouldn’t have owned anything that distinguished itself. There was an old mulberry in the front yard growing close enough to the straight, short sidewalk for the tree’s roots to have burrowed up under it, buckling the concrete until it broke. Graver was glad to see that on either side of the front yard a dowdy ligustrum hedge marked the property lines. The front door was introduced by a little stoop with a wood railing the same height as the brick veneer. A dull black mailbox was tacked to one of the wooden posts that held up the stoop’s roof.

  Turning around at the end of the street, Graver came back by the house just in time to see a light go on in one of the windows fronting the street. Momentarily startled, he quickly guessed what had happened and turned into the driveway, pulling his car right up to the garage door that faced the street.

  Before he got out of his car, he bent down and picked up a crowbar from the floor on the passenger side. He had bought it in the hardware department of a discount mart just off the freeway only minutes before. Quickly closing the car door, he walked around the side of the garage and saw with relief that the hedge continued to the back of the property. At the rear of the garage he came to a gate in the chain-link fence which enclosed the backyard. He lifted the gate’s latch and went in. Even in the dull light he could see that the yard was badly in need of mowing and that, since it grew in dark clumps and tufts with bare spots scattered here and there, it was probably mostly weeds.

  He stepped onto an uncovered concrete slab “patio” attached to the back of the house and walked to the door. An aluminum storm door was on the outside with a solid wooden one behind it Taking a small penlight out of his pocket, Graver shined it on the door frame. He didn’t believe that Tisler would have gone to the expense of having an alarm system installed, but if he had, it would have been difficult to hide on a house like this. Satisfied that none was there, he put the penlight in his mouth and directed the small beam at the edge of the aluminum door where he inserted the thinnest end of the crowbar and popped it open. Holding it open with his back, he did the same with the wooden door, which should have been more difficult but wasn’t, though it was noisier, which required him to work more carefully.

  When he pushed open the door he found himself in a bare kitchen, and immediately noted the stale smell that a house acquired when it was long unoccupied. There were no tables or chair
s, and there was nothing on the cabinets except a coffeemaker, its pot washed clean and sitting in its receptacle. A dish towel was folded beside it with a coffee mug turned upside down on the towel. The kitchen was separated from the adjoining dining room by a small bar and through the dining room Graver saw the soft glow from the light that he had seen come on earlier. He put down the crowbar on the kitchen counter and went through the dining room which was also bare except for a few cardboard boxes scattered in one corner. He continued into the living room. Here a few pieces of furniture were clustered together, an old sofa, a couple of armchairs, the lighted lamp on an end table beside one of the armchairs, and a coffee table with a few magazines neatly stacked in one pile in its center. Graver went over and picked up one of the magazines. They were all old issues of Newsweek. He put down the magazine and stepped around the coffee table to find the wall plug for the lamp. As he had guessed, he also found the electric timer that automatically turned on the lamp at irregular intervals.

  The house was hot and stuffy, but Graver remembered seeing a window unit on the end of the house opposite the garage. He entered the hallway that opened off the living room and came immediately to a bathroom. Reaching around the corner in the dark, he found the light switch and turned it on. Again the room was empty except for a towel on the towel bar beside the sink, and on the rim of the sink, a bar of soap that was well used but cracking from the heat in the house. A packet of paper towels was torn open and sat next to the sink. There was a half-used roll of toilet tissue on the spool beside the toilet Nothing in the medicine cabinet.

  Leaving on the light, Graver continued to an open door on his right, a bedroom. Empty. There was one more door at the end of the hallway, on his left It was closed. That would be the room where he had seen the air conditioner unit in the window. He went to the door, opened it, and flipped on the light.