An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  In the center of the unfurnished room, with Venetian blinds pulled tightly closed over its windows, was a sizable computer setup. Graver stared at it with a mixture of dread and hope. This clinical-looking piece of hardware, the smell of its heat-warmed plastic filling the closed room with an odor distinct from the rest of the house, represented simultaneously a potential disaster and, perhaps, his best hope of dealing with it.

  The work station itself was a flimsy-looking, L-shaped structure of thin metal and pressed wood, laden to overloading with what appeared to be a substantial computer system and laser printer. Graver walked over to it and surveyed the books on the single shelf above the monitor. They were only operating manuals for the hardware and the software. He looked at the system. Though not totally ignorant regarding computers, he was far from being proficient enough to be able to walk into a room, sit down at an unfamiliar system, and puzzle out its operation. He knew he would be lucky if he could even bring up the menu.

  Still, just by looking at it, he could tell that this was a fairly large system—that much was given to him on the front of the CPU—and that it had a hard drive, two disk drives, and a port for a back-up tape. Graver pulled out the chair under the desk and sat down. He looked over the shelves and found the two tapes Tisler used for backup along with a small spiral pocket notebook where he recorded the alternating tapes and dates. Tisler’s last backup had been the day before he died. Graver flipped on the computer and waited for it to clear. When it was ready, he began tapping at the keyboard. After fifteen minutes he had used everything obvious and still hadn’t gained access. He began to have the uncomfortable feeling that he shouldn’t be pressing his luck.

  Hoping that Tisler had not toyed with the backup procedures, he pecked around for a few minutes, found the parameters, and copied them down, knowing he would need them to access the backup tapes on another system. He double-checked his notes, suddenly afraid he was going to transpose some of the characters in the paths. After he was satisfied, he took the older of the two tapes and used it to run another backup of the hard drive.

  While he was waiting, he went through each book on the shelves and found nothing. By this time Graver thought he knew Tisler well enough to know that anything significant was going to be on the tape, and that it would be well protected by a labyrinthine cryptosystem. The loose ends—and there were always loose ends—all seemed to have been kept neatly swept into an unseen corner of what once had been Arthur Tisler’s mind.

  When the backup was completed, Graver retrieved the tape, put each of them in his pocket, and turned off the computer. The two tapes would give him everything that had been in the computer files the day before Tisler died, and everything that was on it now. If there were any discrepancies between the two, then Graver would know that someone other than Tisler had access to the computer. If there were no changes, he couldn’t be sure. The question was, did he now erase the hard drive to prevent anyone else gaining access? He decided to wait until he knew the two tapes were good. He took one last look at the computer, not entirely sure he wasn’t making a mistake by walking away from it, turned off the lights, and walked out of the room.

  Leaving the house the same way he had come in, he made sure both back doors were firmly closed even though their locks were broken. As he was pulling out of the driveway another light went on in the house, this time in the empty bedroom across the hall from the computer. Arthur Tisler was very thorough.

  He stopped at a convenience store and called Arnette from a pay phone.

  “You’re damned impatient,” she said, hearing his voice.

  “I’m not checking up,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.” He told her what it was.

  “Did you get the parameters?”

  “I did.”

  “This is going to take some crypt work,” she cautioned, “and crypt work, baby, is not what it used to be. These days, sometimes its simply impossible to get where you want to go.”

  “I’m bringing them over.”

  “We’ll be here,” she said.

  Chapter 26

  It struck Burtell as an odd place to meet, but he paid his three dollars in the lobby, asked the location of the Modern Israeli Photography exhibit, and ascended the north foyer steps of the Museum of Fine Arts. Tuesday night was not the usual night for the museum’s late hours, but the hours had been extended this week because of several special exhibits. Even so, the viewers were sparse as Burtell ascended another tier of stairs to a maze of exhibit panels set up in the largest exhibition hall.

  He crossed his arms and began looking at the photographs. In less than five minutes he rounded a set of panels and met Panos Kalatis, a program rolled up in one hand, the other hand in his trousers pocket, leaning slightly forward to study a photograph among a series taken in a kibbutz. He was wearing gray dress slacks, a pink shirt opened at the neck, and a navy linen blazer with a gold crest on its breast pocket.

  Kalatis continued to study the photograph as Burtell stood there.

  “Sometimes parts of the Israeli coast remind me of Greece,” he said, straightening up, but keeping his eyes on the photographs. “Harsh. Olive trees. Rocks. You can’t really tell in these black and white photographs, but the light is the same too. Especially in the late summer.”

  He moved to the next photograph. A young couple in khaki walking shorts and sandals were moving just ahead of him, talking softly. He said nothing more until, after a few moments, the couple rounded the exhibit panels to the other side. Burtell came up beside him again.

  “I thought we ought to talk, just the two of us,” Kalatis said. “Without Faeber.” He stepped close to another photograph, but then moved quickly to the next one. “You don’t much like him, do you?”

  “Not much,” Burtell said.

  “Why is that?”

  “He’s a little too ready to please.”

  “But that’s what I pay people to do, to please me.”

  “Do you want them to lie to you?”

  “Is Colin Faeber lying to me?” Kalatis asked, backing away from a photograph to see it better. He didn’t seem to be too concerned about his question.

  “He’s the one who advised you to come down on Tisler, wasn’t he?” Burtell said.

  “Maybe,” Kalatis said.

  “He gave you bad advice.”

  “Well, bad advice is hardly lying, is it?”

  Kalatis moved around the end of the panels to the next aisle. It was empty. They kept talking.

  “I guess you know a lot about computers,” Burtell said.

  “Computers? Not a lot, no. That’s why I hire people like Faeber. They know computers for me.”

  “Hiring someone to run your computer for you is like hiring a lawyer or an accountant. Before you turn your business over to them you’d better be damned sure you can trust them.”

  “I trust him,” Kalatis said. “I trust everyone who works for me.” He leaned a little sideways to look at a picture of an Israeli girl in a swimsuit She was standing close to the photographer and with a slender index finger thrust under the piping of her suit at her groin, she was delicately tugging on the elastic to adjust the fit of the suit She was smiling, wincing a little into the sunlight.

  “Why?”

  Kalatis turned away from the photograph and looked at Burtell. “Because,” he said without a trace of a smile, his mellifluous voice modulated to accommodate the resonance of the granite and marble surroundings, “every one of them knows that if he screws me over I will have four big men hold him down while one of those blue-snouted baboons rips out his throat.”

  He turned and stepped to the next picture. A couple of men came around the corner and locked onto the pictures. One of them whispered something in Israeli to the other, and Kalatis turned and looked at them. For a moment he studied them, and then he moved efficiently to the end of the aisle and rounded the corner into the next branch of the maze. Burtell followed.

  “I’m not sure Colin Faeber understands
that,” Burtell said.

  “Oh, he understands it,” Kalatis said. He had rolled his program into a tighter cylinder. He touched it quickly a couple of times to his trousers’ leg as though he were going to give in to a nervous gesture and then caught himself. Burtell was glad to see that.

  “Maybe he forgot,” Burtell said.

  “What the hell are you getting at?” Kalatis said in the same relaxed tone of voice that he might have used to make an observation about one of the photographs. He continued looking at the pictures, but there was a slight tension in his demeanor now, a tight pitch to his shoulders.

  “I’m not at all sure I can tell you,” Burtell said, more sure of himself after seeing the crack in Kalatis’s porcelain cool. “A few days before he shot himself Art came to me and wanted to talk. He said he thought Faeber was having him watched. I asked him why he thought that, and he told me he had picked up surveillance. I asked him why he thought it was Faeber, and he got nervous and started hedging. He would only say that Faeber had it in for him, but he wouldn’t explain why. I talked to him a long time about it, but he wouldn’t go into it Then he told me about receiving the envelope of photographs. He was distraught He said Faeber had photographed him with the black woman for insurance.” Burtell looked at Kalatis. “I couldn’t get him to calm down. That was Friday afternoon. I didn’t hear anything from him again until Graver came over Sunday night and told me he’d killed himself.”

  Kalatis stared at a photograph, but now Burtell could tell he wasn’t seeing it A woman laughed somewhere in the exhibit hall, and the laughter echoed off the hard surfaces of the museum and then suddenly died faraway in another gallery.

  “You believe this?” Kalatis asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why would Faeber want ‘insurance’ from Tisler? Was Tisler trying to blackmail him with something? Another woman? Faeber screws his secretary. Everybody knows that Christ That’s not anything to use against a man.”

  “I give Art more credit than that,” Burtell said.

  Kalatis snorted and turned and stepped to another photograph. Several people milled into their aisle, and Kalatis continued on to the end of the exhibit panels without saying anything further. Burtell guessed he was taking the time to collect his thoughts. Burtell went past him and turned another corner. The maze of panels seemed endless and Burtell hadn’t paid any attention to where they had started.

  Kalatis came around the corner and looked at the first photograph.

  “I’ve seen these,” he said and went to the next aisle. It was empty, and again Burtell joined him.

  “Do you think you could find out what Tisler was talking about?” Kalatis asked.

  “Regarding the insurance?”

  “Yes, of course,” Kalatis said with slight irritation.

  “Maybe.”

  “Find out,” Kalatis said. He stopped and looked down the curving wall of photographs. “I’ve seen enough,” he said. “This is depressing.”

  The two men walked out of the main exhibition space, descending to the foyer, then to the lobby, and out the north entrance of the museum to Bissonnet Street. As soon as they were outside Kalatis stopped and lighted a cigarette. Without speaking they crossed Bissonnet and turned left along the sidewalk, passing scatterings of people strolling in the sweltering June night. They came to Montrose and Kalatis stopped. He looked to his left at the three lighted, circular fountains inside the traffic ellipse. South Main stretched straight off the ellipse, flanked by colonnades of massive water oaks, the underside of their canopies illumined softly by streetlamps that shrank to tiny, faint sparks as the lines of the boulevard converged in the distance. Kalatis looked at this scene a moment and then turned on his heels and walked in the opposite direction to the entrance of the Cullen Sculpture Garden.

  They entered the walled garden which was laid out on the order of a small plaza with granite walkways, islands of emerald lawn, manicured shrubbery, and groomed trees. The sculpture sited variously within this environment was softly illuminated with special lighting that seemed to make some of the works hover in isolation out of the gray night.

  Kalatis did not immediately stop to study these works. Still walking, though not so briskly, he swung his hand holding the cigarette in a generalized arc.

  “A lot of modern stuff,” he said. “I’ve never liked the abstract What the hell is abstract anyway? Represents modern man’s confusion? His fragmented psyche? Shit The disorientation of the twentieth century? Alienation of modern man? Jesus Christ I don’t know.”

  Burtell was patient He reminded himself that it was Kalatis who had contacted him. After a few turns on the pathways Kalatis suddenly stopped in front of a single, isolated sculpture bathed in a haze of warm illumination.

  “‘Flore Nue,’ “he said, gesturing at the statue as though he were introducing Burtell. “Aristide Maillol.” His French pronunciation was fluid, subtle, perfect The bronze nude stood before them in uncontrived simplicity, her hands hanging straight down by her sides, one foot slightly advanced before the other, knee bent.

  “This is real art,” Kalatis said.” Look at her. The way of her shoulders. The shape of her breasts, her stomach. The simplicity of the way she presents herself to me.”

  To me? Burtell had been looking at the statues, but at these last two words he cut his eyes at Kalatis. The brute was almost salivating over the woman. He licked her with his eyes and smiled at her in a way that would have made a man who loved her want to kill him.

  “Maillol knew how to shape a breast, and this little one… carries it very well.”

  Kalatis studied the sculpture for a few more moments and then abruptly turned away, flicked his cigarette away into the dark, and began walking very slowly, his head down.

  “I am worried about something from yesterday’s conversation, when we met with Faeber,” he said, his voice low.” The idea of Graver keeps crawling right up into my forehead. When something squirms into my thoughts that much I have to pay attention to it. I’m not satisfied, my friend, that Graver is going to ignore this… business of Tisler.”

  He took a few steps.

  “That’s one thing. Another thing: I know very well that you would like to be more, let us say, involved a little more in my business.”

  Burtell’s heart jolted. Did this monster know more about him than he thought? Had he given himself away somehow?

  “I am an astute observer of human nature,” Kalatis said. “For your information, I know that Faeber has… limitations, but what would the world do without such people? Think about it His intelligence is very narrow, but it is very uncommonly concentrated. He serves a purpose, that’s the most important thing. The second most important thing is recognizing when something does not serve a purpose… and getting rid of it. If something does not serve, don’t keep it around you. This is a very clean way to live.”

  A few more steps, the rolled program still in his left hand, his right hand in his pocket.

  “So,” he said, as if everything had been explained, “I want to make sure Graver stays away from me. You want to have a little bite of my business so you can make a load of money. It’s clear to me that we can serve each other well.”

  Kalatis stopped talking as they passed other night strollers, all talking softly as though viewing art from out of the darkness was an act of inherent holiness.

  “What I propose is this,” Kalatis resumed. “For the next five days I want to know immediately if Graver learns of my existence. After five days other arrangements will come into play, and it will not be so important. Now, if you do this… I will make it possible for you to retire… with a generous ‘pension.’”

  As they continued walking, Kalatis reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, took out a small paper booklet, and handed it to Burtell.

  “This is a Belgium bank account in your name. It is empty now. At the end of five days, if you have done as you were asked, it will contain five hundred thousand American dollars. Only three people
in the world will know about it. Me, the Belgium bank officer with whom I opened the account, and yourself. After I make the deposit, only one person in the world will be able to touch it—you.”

  Burtell was stunned. Unaware of the act of walking, he could only feel the weight of the little paper booklet in his hand, as heavy as thirty pieces of silver.

  “I doubt that’s likely to happen,” he said.

  “What?”

  Burtell realized his mistake. “Graver—it’s not likely he’ll get that far in the investigation.”

  “Fine, but if he does I want to know about it.”

  Burtell was still wary. He thought he hadn’t yet seen the whole picture. Kalatis wanted something more for his five hundred thousand dollars.

  ‘This is a lot of money for such a small service. Just a telephone call,” Burtell said.

  They walked a little farther together before Kalatis said:

  “Well, some men think betrayal is no small thing.”

  Burtell’s face burned. It was like Kalatis to be so cruel as to refuse to use euphemisms. He could have let it pass, but he wanted Burtell to know, to be reminded just what it was he was doing for his money. Burtell could live with it, but he hated Kalatis for being the kind of man who would go out of his way to corrupt another man, who would entice him with a fortune for only a moment’s effort, and then when the man took the bait, ashamed and groveling, would pull his head back and shove a mirror in front of his face. There was something carious at the very core of Kalatis’s dark life, something that brought out the worst in people who associated with him. Art Tisler had discovered that with tragic results.

  Chapter 27

  The dense foliage of the overarching trees that covered the serpentine street where Arnette lived reflected Graver’s headlights so that it seemed as if he was being drawn into a coiling green tunnel, a meander that led to the Sibyl’s cavern. If ever he needed a necromancer it was now, someone like Arnette to summon Tisler’s spirit for an interview or, failing that, to summon the next best thing, his former thoughts from whence he had locked them in a timeless silence, embalmed to perfection inside another kind of memory, not of man, but of man’s making, hundreds of thousands of words in a few minuscule coffins of silicone.