An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  “Most of it,” Graver said.

  “Okay,” she said, “what’s happened?”

  He related chronologically the things that had happened since he had seen her late in the afternoon. He told her of the results of his meeting with Neuman and Paula, about the Feldberg house and its contents, about Paula and Neuman interviewing Valerie Heath, about Burtell being tailed and of Arnette’s people getting photographs of his meeting with the unidentified man. The only thing he left out of sequence was Besom’s death, and when he told her about it, her reaction was much like Paula’s: a gasp of shock and instant suspicion.

  She had been looking at him, but at this revelation she turned and looked out the windshield, watching the night go by and, for a few minutes, consulting her own thoughts. Graver would like to have been inside her head at that moment.

  “This gets creepier by the hour,” she said finally, still looking out the windshield. She had crossed her arms under her breasts. “Of course, you don’t believe the heart attack business do you?”

  “I don’t believe the autopsy tells the whole story.”

  “God, I guess not You still think the thing to do is to keep this closed? Just the four of us, and Arnette?”

  “That’s just about the only thing I am sure of now,” Graver said. “I’m doing that right, if nothing else.”

  “I guess Westrate’s all over you?”

  “He’s beside himself. He knows it’s going to look bad, but I keep assuring him nothing’s turning up. He smells something, and he’s suspicious, but he doesn’t know what to do about it except threaten me.”

  Graver changed lanes. He had been watching his rearview mirror, but he saw nothing to make him suspicious. And if there had been someone there he would have picked them up in the sparse traffic.

  “So then you do think Besom was killed.”

  “I do,” he said.

  Lara turned to look out the windshield again. “This is scary,” she said. “Really, really scary.”

  “The frightening part is not knowing what the hell lies behind it. Not knowing why. If I knew why, then I think some of the other stuff would fall into place. Motive at least would be an indicator of how they might be thinking.”

  “They’?”

  “Whoever the hell ‘they’ are.”

  They passed under the Southwest Freeway. Graver was looking at everything, the side streets, the parking lots of restaurants, service stations, but trying not to let Lara see what he was doing. Suddenly he was seeing something suspicious in everything. Everything seemed to be a collusion between a car he had seen five blocks ago and the one he was approaching down the street, or the one parked on a side street with the one parked in the shadow of a service station.

  “What is it you want me to do?” she asked, shifting in her seat “You want me to sit in the car during this meeting, is that it?”

  “No, not in the car,” he said, pulling his mind back to the moment “I’ve got to meet a man named Victor Last. Last was an informant for me years ago when I was still an investigator. He was a good source, productive, but I haven’t seen him or heard from him in about eight years. Then late Sunday night, after the ordeal with Tisler was over, after Westrate had finally left the house, Last called me. Sometimes informants do that, years later. If you’ve had a good relationship with them, they crop up, get in touch with you. Since his call I’ve met with him twice. I met him at a tavern Sunday night, and then last night he showed up at my house.”

  “At your house? Christ You didn’t know he was going to be there?”

  Graver shook his head. “No. And he’s an intelligent man; he knew better than that. The fact that he did it anyway worries me. He never would have done it in the past. Last claims to have ‘Accidentally’ come across some information about a security breach somewhere in the police department. Thinks it might have been in the CID. But he was vague about the details. Now, I think, he wants to give me a little more information.”

  “But you don’t trust him so much now,” Lara said.

  “That’s right. Though maybe I should. I just find it hard to believe he happens to be at the right place at the right time.”

  They were driving south on Montrose. There were only a few cars on the streets, and though there was no threat of rain, the humidity was high enough to make faint, hazy orbs around the streetlamps.

  “So, what is it you want me to do?” Lara asked.

  “I’m meeting this guy at a small restaurant called La Facezia?”

  “In the museum district? Yeah, I know that place.”

  “All I want to know is whether there’s someone watching us. Normally that would be a tricky thing to do. I mean, it’s a countersurveillance job. But there’s an odd intersection there that gives us an edge. Three streets come together, roughly in the shape of the letter “K,” forming three corners. La Facezia sits on the bottom corner. There’s another corner to the right, with a residence behind a high wall. Directly across from the restaurant, on the third corner, there’s an old brick apartment building. Two floors. There’s no security system. Front door’s always open.”

  His right hand left the steering wheel, and he picked up a pair of binoculars that had been sitting beside him next to her purse. He handed them to her.

  “I think they’ll fit in your bag,” he said. “They’re night-vision binoculars. Everything will look greenish through them, but you’ll get used to it.”

  She took the glasses and held them up to the window and looked outside.

  “I’m going to drop you off about a block from the restaurant I’ll watch you from down the street, make sure you get to the building safely. I want you to go up the stairs. On the second floor, opposite the landing, there’s a window that overlooks the intersection. You’ll have a clear view of the entrance of the restaurant and the sidewalk tables. You should also be able to see all three streets for quite a ways.”

  “What do I look for?” she asked, putting the binoculars into her purse.

  “Anybody hanging around, in cars maybe. Make a note—you have a steno pad?—of the kinds of cars you see, get license numbers if you can. Just be observant.”

  “And what if somebody comes out of one of the apartments, wants to know what I’m doing?”

  “Just flash your CID photo identification. Give them some bullshit about ‘security’ and ‘criminal intelligence.’”

  She was quiet. He glanced at her as he slowed for the intersection of Main and the Mecom fountains.

  “Are you okay with this?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m up for it,” she said, taking a deep breath and looking at him.

  “But… ?”

  “No ‘buts’… It’s just… Well,” she said, raising her eyebrows in subdued surprise, “me doing this, this really is on the edge, isn’t it? I mean, it’s kind of like coming in on a wing and a prayer, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Graver said, turning onto the heavily wooded Cerano Street. “That’s exactly what it is.”

  Chapter 35

  Graver had been going to La Facezia for years, ever since the owner’s daughter had provided him with information on a protection racket in the Oriental restaurant business where her boyfriend’s parents owned several establishments. The restaurant was in an old stone building that sat on a neighborhood corner where three quiet, tree-shaded streets came to an intersection.

  The restaurant had three faces which opened onto the intersection, and which accommodated an arbor-covered sidewalk with small bistro tables at which they served wine and coffee, but not meals, until one o’clock in the morning. Meals were served until ten-thirty, but only in the large interior dining room that was accessible through French doors that opened to each of the three faces of the arbored sidewalk. There were many other restaurants in this Left Bank-ish neighborhood of antique shops and bars near the museum district that was known as Houston’s “art community,” but only this one was so distinctive that when Graver sat down at one of its tables
with a newspaper and a cup of coffee, he almost could forget he was in an American city. It was a family restaurant There was no music, only the low murmur of conversations and the clinking of tableware and glasses. The chic and trendy crowd went elsewhere, places where there was more “atmosphere.” Graver considered it a paradise, and since Dore had left he had gotten in the habit of eating here sometimes twice a week in the evenings when he didn’t want to be alone. He would bring a book, get a table near one of the doors that opened onto the sidewalk, and settle in for a two-hour dinner.

  Now, though, he took a table on the sidewalk next to one of the stone walls covered in a felt of fig vine. This would afford them some measure of privacy, though only a few other tables were occupied. He ordered a cup of coffee from one of the owner’s several nieces who waited tables and settled back.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later Last came sauntering around the corner and stepped under the arbor and joined Graver at his table. He ran his fingers through his long hair and smiled.

  “You’re always surprising me, Graver,” Last said, looking around, nodding approvingly. “This is a real find, a very nice place indeed.” He looked at Graver. “I’ll bet you this is your ‘usual’ place, isn’t it?”

  “I come here sometimes,” Graver said. The girl came and took Last’s order for wine. “What have you got for me, Victor?”

  Last sat back in his chair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. As he lit one, he looked casually around the sidewalk tables and then inside the nearby French doors at the empty dining room. He was wearing an expensive-looking linen sport coat with small brown and beige checks and a solid nut-brown silk shirt buttoned at the neck.

  “Well, this did not turn out to be as, uh, easy to do as I’d thought,” Last said, his voice softening. “But I have a name for you. Your ‘mole,’ as it were.” He stopped as the girl brought his wine, thanked her, watched her go to another table, appreciating her hips, maybe even taking his time in order to whet Graver’s curiosity. He turned to Graver. “Arthur Tisler.” He lifted his wine, grinned, and took a long drink.

  Graver could hardly contain himself. Goddamn it!

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “Not much,” Last said, sucking on his cigarette. “I just heard he was selling information from your intelligence records.”

  Graver was almost beside himself. Victor Last was sitting across from him telling him that Arthur Tisler was selling information. For the past twenty-four hours he had agonized about this and, even with all the progress they had made, the breach in security was still a matter of conjecture. The only thing they knew for sure was that Tisler, Burtell, and Besom were creating bogus contributor interviews. The rest they had to guess. Now Last had laid it in his lap. And if Last could be believed, it was coming from a completely independent source.

  But Last had delivered this astonishing information in a very relaxed manner, and Graver had the suspicion that Last did not understand the full impact of what he had just said. The information might have been parceled out to him. Graver did not believe that Last would have been so comfortable about giving this kind of volatile news to Graver if he had known what lay behind it.

  “Arthur Tisler,” Graver said.

  Last nodded, appreciating what he must have thought was a shocking revelation to Graver.

  “How did you get that name, Victor?”

  There must have been something in Graver’s voice. Last shot a look at him, his eyes regarding Graver with new interest, in a manner that sought an explanation for whatever it was he had heard that alerted him.

  “What’s the matter?” Last asked.

  “Arthur Tisler’s dead,” Graver said.

  “Wh-at?”

  “You didn’t know that?” Graver didn’t even know why he asked that question. Sometimes when you were talking to a man like Last there was a point at which you might find yourself wondering exactly where you were in the game. The whole point of the exercise was to learn something you didn’t already know, or to corroborate something you already had learned from someone else. Likewise, you later would take what you learned from this informant and try to corroborate it with another. You asked questions the answers to which you already knew, though you pretended you didn’t. You asked questions pretending to believe the responses, though you probably didn’t You tried to discern the informant’s hidden agenda, though he already had given you his reasons for what he was doing. You didn’t give the informant new information. You didn’t trade information. You fished and bobbed in deceptive currents, and you tried to discern the particles of truth suspended in the lies and half lies, and you tried not to overlook an actual truth when you stumbled upon it You imagined a world of mistakes and tried to anticipate how you would explain why you did, or why you didn’t, do something some other way. You imagined yourself coming. You imagined yourself going.

  “Hell no, I didn’t know.” Last was frowning. He didn’t know. “Dead when? A year ago or yesterday or what?”

  Graver hesitated. It had been in the paper. It wouldn’t matter.

  “He killed himself Sunday night.”

  Last straightened his shoulders in surprise. He studied Graver, slowly bringing his glass to his mouth, sipping the wine to cover his uneasiness, keeping his eyes on Graver over the rim.

  “Killed himself,” he said, suspicious of that explanation.

  “That’s right.”

  “Was he dirty?”

  “I didn’t think so. But now you’re telling me he was.”

  Graver could see Last thinking. He was going to hold on to it.

  “Well, yeah, that’s what I heard.” He paused. “Maybe that’s why he killed himself.”

  “Could be. What kind of information?”

  “What?”

  “What kind of information was he selling?”

  Last was thinking again. He straightened up in his chair and leaned forward over the small table.

  “You didn’t know any of this?” he asked.

  “You seem surprised.” Graver was finding this a very slippery conversation. “Did you think you were telling me something I already knew? Did you think that was going to be helpful?”

  “I thought I might be corroborating.” Last was indeed an old hand at this. He knew all the roles. And apparently he hadn’t believed Graver the previous evening when Graver had said there was no breach in CID security. “I don’t think I’m understanding what’s going on here,” he said.

  He was decidedly uncomfortable. Which was fine with Graver. He was pretty damned uneasy himself.

  “Is this it, then?” Graver asked. “Tisler was selling CID information, and that’s it?”

  Last didn’t say anything. He sipped his wine and smoked his cigarette, once again slumped back in his chair. It was apparent he had been given good information, but maybe for the wrong reasons, which seemed to be Last’s concern. Graver wanted desperately to know what Last had stumbled onto, and he was trying to decide how to get information without giving away any more than he had to. As Graver sat looking at his only direct link to an independent source who obviously knew invaluable information, he began to wonder if he was up to the opportunity. He began to wonder if there weren’t extenuating circumstances.

  Last straightened up in his chair, leaned his elbows on the table, and smiled uneasily.

  “This is awkward, isn’t it,” he said. His voice was soft, soothing.

  “Not for me,” Graver lied.

  “Well, I’m not at all sure… I mean, I thought you already knew this.”

  “You’ve said that, Victor.”

  “Yeah.” Last looked away, his right hand on the stem of the wineglass as he turned the flat base of it on the surface of the table, the uncomfortable smile giving an enigmatic expression to his profile. “Okay, there’s somebody else, too, in CID.”

  Graver waited. This was going to be telling.

  Last looked back to Graver. “Guy named Besom.”

  Graver thou
ght so. Three men involved, as far as Graver knew, and Last had named the only two who were dead. Last was giving him leads to nowhere. The question was, did he realize that? Last was looking at him closely, hoping to learn something himself from Graver’s reaction.

  Graver sipped his coffee, put down his cup, and leveled his eyes at Last.

  “Before I react to that,” Graver said, “I want you to tell me, right now, if you have any other names. Don’t dribble them out to me, Victor. This is internal. I’m not inclined to joust with you over internal matters that affect the security of my Division.”

  A pause as Last stared into Graver’s eyes and made quick mental calculations that Graver could only imagine.

  “No. No other names,” he said. He was almost squinting at Graver, puzzled, maybe a little apprehensive. Graver had the feeling Last didn’t know what it was he had gotten into and was wondering if he had made a big mistake.

  “Okay,” Graver said. “The man you are referring to is Ray Besom. He’s the supervisor of the Organized Crime Squad. He’s been on vacation, fishing down on the border, near Port Isabel. About noon today he was found dead.”

  “Bloody hell…” Last swallowed; his face was rigid. It conveyed no self-assurance, no easy smile that connoted a smug knowledge that he was one step ahead of developing events. Graver guessed that not only was Last not ahead of developing events, but it was now beginning to dawn on him that maybe he was being used for reasons that had been hidden from him and which might have put him at great risk.

  “Christ, and you people weren’t suspicious?”

  “I didn’t say that. I only said we didn’t know we had a breach in security.” Graver paused and gave Last a moment to run over his options once again. He watched Last take another drink of wine and savor it, tasting it with the back of his tongue. “I don’t have much room to maneuver, here, Victor.”

  Last looked at Graver as though he wanted to see if he could read in Graver’s eyes what he thought he was reading in the inflection of his voice.