An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  “He didn’t know her name?”

  “Kalatis never spoke to her. Just motioned to her to do what he wanted. Bring drinks. Take away drinks. Whatever.”

  There was another pause as Graver tried to push his brain in the right directions, tried to probe possibilities, the opportunities that would give him the most advantage with the least expenditure of time.

  “Look, uh,” Rayner said, speaking for the first time, glancing at Last with a look of impatience, “what is it, exactly, that you can do for us?”

  Graver leveled his eyes on her. “What is it you want me to do?”

  Rayner stared at him. She clearly was uncertain whether or how she should describe her plan to him. She seemed to be trying to figure out how to get to the subject without getting to the point She said:

  “We want to use the information we’ve obtained to convince Faeber and Kalatis that we need some retirement security.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Connie,” she said, tilting her head at the other woman. “There aren’t any golden parachutes for wives and secretaries. It would be… only fair for us to have some financial assurance.”

  “You mean extortion.”

  “I mean,” she said, glancing at Last, “that Victor led me to believe that you knew something about these matters and could help us… inform us how to protect ourselves from… legal complications as we go about doing this. That’s what I mean.”

  She was a little testy.

  “Well, what you seem to be suggesting might be a little hard to do now,” Graver said.

  Rayner frowned at him. Last squirmed in his seat.

  “What do you mean, ‘now’?” Rayner asked.

  “From the way Connie described this morning’s meeting with your husband,” Graver said, “it sounds to me like he thinks his house of cards is collapsing. And he thinks he’s been left behind to be buried in the rubble. It looks like Kalatis and Strasser are closing down the operation. They’re burning their bridges—Tisler, Besom, Burtell, Hormann, Sheck. And if Kalatis doesn’t kill your husband first, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life in jail. As soon as the police put together all these deaths, it won’t take them long to shut down DataPrint and its ‘intel project’ “He paused, his attention still fixed on Rayner. “I’m afraid your idea is just a little late in coming,” he concluded.

  “Jesus Christ” Connie sank back against the door.

  “That damn stupid pud,” Rayner said, shaking her head, half-pissed at Faeber, half-pitying him. “He might as well have just waded out into the damn Gulf of Mexico, just kept going until he fell off the damn continental shelf. Wasn’t even smart enough to get himself blackmailed.”

  Nobody moved or spoke in the cool, perfumed compartment Graver watched Connie. Something had hit her harder than the other two. She was worried, staring out into the midday glare. Rayner’s mind was churning, though, and it didn’t take her long to come up with the obvious. But Last was there ahead of her, and tried to stop her before she opened her mouth.

  “That’s it then,” Last said. “We’d better let this man get on with his business.”

  “Wait just a damn minute,” Rayner said to Last “There’s a plan B here, and I think he”—she nodded at Graver—”might be able to help us out on it.”

  “I don’t think we ought to worry him about any plan B’s right now,” Last said, trying to cut her off. “He agreed to help us if he could, but it’s clear that he can’t He’s not obligated to anything else.”

  “Plan B,” Rayner said forcefully, ignoring Last and speaking directly to Graver, “is that we go after the biggest clients in the ‘intel’ file. These are big people, corporate people, who paid cash for personal intelligence on competitors, political enemies, people they wanted to ruin or outbid or outmaneuver or blackmail. There are politicians on that list, CEO’s, bankers. If it became known what they had done it could ruin careers, bring down corporations, ruin marriages, destroy reputations…” She stopped. “But there’s a small ‘window of opportunity’ here. We’ve got to move in a hurry. Once the police get onto this, once they have the ‘intel’ tapes, we won’t be able to touch these people. It’ll all be over.”

  She looked at Last triumphantly. “Hell, that could be the ticket right there. We could tell them up front: Look, the police will be onto this thing in ten days. We have access to the computers. In exchange for a little financial consideration, we can erase your name from the files, and when the investigation breaks your name won’t even exist…”

  She stopped and looked at Graver, then back at Last who was slumped against his door, staring at her like he could have strangled her.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  Graver turned to Last. “I’ll let you deal with this,” he said. Then he looked at Connie. “You want to tell me where he is? I could probably get some more information from him that might be useful. That would take the responsibility off you. You wouldn’t have it on your conscience… if something happened to him.”

  “What?” Rayner was looking around at everyone, confused that everyone was acting as if she hadn’t said anything at all, that she didn’t exist.

  “He’s at my place,” Connie said, and she gave him the address.

  “Colin?” Rayner snapped her head around to the secretary.

  “Does Kalatis know where you live?” Graver asked.

  Connie shook her head. “That’s why I sent him there.” She looked sick.

  “Don’t go back there,” Graver said to her. “Not today, not tonight” Her eyes widened. “I’ll call you when it’s all right,” he said. “Stay at a hotel tonight, at a friend’s. Go on to work tomorrow as usual, and when it’s okay I’ll leave a message at your office. It won’t be explicit, but you’ll understand.”

  She nodded. Graver knew she would do whatever he said. She had crossed the line from out of control to under control.

  “Hello? Hello? Am I missing something here?” Rayner sputtered. “Did anyone hear anything I said?” She had turned around now and was crouching on her knees, facing the back seat, her cleavage well presented.

  “Bloody hell,” Last said to her. “Give it a rest, love.”

  “What!” Rayner was incredulous.

  “Don’t get lost,” Graver said to Last. “I’m going to want to reach you.”

  Last nodded miserably. Graver opened the door of the BMW and got out. He walked to his car, got in, started the motor, and backed out of the parking slot Punching in Arnette’s number on the handset, he started down the ramp, and looked in his rearview mirror. The midnight blue BMW hadn’t moved. He could only imagine the conversation inside.

  Chapter 67

  “No, I don’t want to pick him up,” Graver said. He was headed back to the police department and had just given Faeber’s location to Arnette. “I already know his lines of communications to Kalatis are closed so he wouldn’t be any good to me in that regard.” “But…”

  “But…”

  “But I suspect they’ll try to hit him. And I don’t know anyone who could have a more direct contact to Kalatis than a hit man. Kalatis would want to order something like that personally. And he’s been doing a lot of it.”

  “Then you think they know where Faeber is?”

  “If they don’t they’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  “And you want us to pick up the hit man when he comes for him.”

  “If you can. If you have people who can do that.”

  There was a pause on Arnette’s end of the line.

  “Yeah,” she said finally. “I’ve got people who can do that.”

  Graver said nothing else. This was a big decision for Arnette. Though some of her people had had plenty of experience in operations, she always had stayed away from it, which was professionally prudent and legally imperative. Now she was stepping across the line too. This entire operation had been a study in crossing the line.

  “I’ll get them on the way as soon as we hang up,” Ar
nette said.

  Graver was relieved but said nothing about it Instead he asked, “Any luck on those first names of those pilots?”

  “Neuman is running them on Sheck’s data, which we were finally able to scan onto a diskette,” Arnette said. “And Paula’s doing the same for Burtell’s document We ought to have something—or nothing—in a few minutes.”

  “If you get a last name and an address, have Neuman call me,” Graver said. “I want him to be the one to pick them up, but I want to talk to him first.”

  “Will do. What’s going on ‘officially?”

  “I haven’t heard anything. I don’t think Hormann’s death will cause even a ripple. He’s not a subject in any file so his ‘heart attack’ will go unnoticed. Kalatis really has something there with his veiled hits. I still think this whole thing will stay under until they identify Dean’s body. The amazing thing is that no matter how much the FBI and the DEA swarm around this bombing, they’re not ever going to come up with Kalatis. It’s hard for me to believe the guy’s completely off the screen. It makes you wonder who else is out there we haven’t got a line on.”

  “I wouldn’t dwell on that if I were you,” Arnette said. “Incidentally, I like your people. Very good. My compliments.”

  “Look, I’ve got to get off of this thing,” he said. “I’m going to be waiting to hear from you.”

  When he got back to the office he had been gone almost three hours, so he checked once again with his squad supervisors. Nothing had come up, and it was still too soon for anything to have developed at the marina. There were check-in calls from both Westrate and Hertig, both of which Graver decided not to return since there was nothing to add to what he had already told them. He went through his messages, all of which could wait, and just as he was about to call in his temporary secretary to check on the paperwork his handset rang. He answered it immediately and was surprised to hear Lara’s voice.

  “Marcus. Ginette and I have just walked into her condo to get some clothes… the place has been wrecked.”

  “Jesus—are you sure there’s nobody still there?”

  “Yes, I checked. Ginette’s really upset…”

  “Lara, grab some of her clothes and then get the hell out of there. Listen, I’ve called her sister from Seattle. She’s on her way. Okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. She’s getting her clothes now. After we made sure nobody was here I got her busy getting her things together. But what about someone following us? Should I worry about that? I mean, I wouldn’t know what to do about that.”

  “Just get straight back to the house,” Graver said. “I’ll have a squad car get right over there to Ginette’s and follow you back to my place. I’ll have them go inside the house with you, make sure everything’s okay. If you have the slightest concern about anything, call me.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. This is just a little creepy, that’s all.”

  “I know it is. I’m sorry to have to put you in this position.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that.”

  “Lara, I’m going to call the shift lieutenant in patrol right now. You want to hang on?”

  “No, go ahead. Really, we’re all right I’ll check in with you later.”

  He hung up and called the patrol lieutenant He explained briefly what he wanted without going into any background information. One of the advantages of commanding the CID was that if you didn’t always explain yourself there was the assumption that you couldn’t because of the nature of your responsibilities. Everyone accepted that, though sometimes grudgingly.

  As soon as he put down the telephone, his handset rang again.

  “Captain, this is Casey. I think we may have the two pilots. Found them in Sheck’s document He refers to a couple of pilots by last name only, Ledet and Redden. We went to the FAA records and found a Richard D. Ledet and an Edward E. Redden. Ledet lives in Atlanta, hangars a plane at a small airport there. Redden lives in Seabrook, a couple of miles from Sheck. He hangars a small Beech-craft at the Gulf Airport where Sheck kept his.

  “Now, we checked utility records, and Redden is currently paying the bills at the Seabrook address. The place is definitely occupied. Telephone unlisted. We called Gulf Airport, and his plane is in the hangar. Arnette has a woman in Seabrook who’s checking right now to see if she can tell if he appears to be home. Car in the driveway, newspapers in the yard, whatever.

  “And it turns out that Arnette has both Ledet and Redden in her files. They were contract pilots for Army Intelligence and the CIA during the 1980s in Central America, most of the time stationed out of Tegucigalpa in Honduras, but doing regular junkets as far down as Colombia. They don’t have a military background, just a couple of good ol’ boys who got the flying bug in college, got their pilot’s licenses, dropped out to fly and have been doing it ever since, for anybody, everybody, anytime, anywhere—for good money. Much of the time they fly together. They’re single, late thirties.”

  “Has she got photographs?”

  “Yeah, sure does.”

  “Okay, Casey, let’s get out there. Ask Arnette if we can have a printout of their files, if not, read them before you leave, remember as much as you can. I’ll leave from here in ten minutes and meet you at… Are you coming out the South Loop?”

  “Yeah, that’s closest.”

  “Okay, listen. Right after you go through the interchange coming onto the Gulf Freeway, look for the Broadway exit. Take Broadway south. A block or so off the freeway there’s a branch post office. I’ll be waiting in the parking lot for you.”

  Graver grabbed his coat, told his temporary secretary he would be gone for a couple of hours, and avoided looking down the long corridor as he went out through the reception area. He didn’t want to get caught by anybody.

  He guessed Arnette would not give Neuman a printout, so Neuman would be stuck there for ten or fifteen minutes reading the files, which would give Graver time to grab a sandwich on the way. He stopped at a barbecue place just east of downtown, bought a sliced beef sandwich with extra onions, a spear of dill pickle, and an RC in a bottle. Then he got on an up ramp to the Gulf Freeway and headed south.

  Driving with one hand and eating the sandwich with the other, laying it down every so often on the greasy paper sack on the car seat beside him, he squinted into the high noon glare and thought about the best way to interview the pilot. So much depended on his immediate impression and on what Neuman had to tell him from Arnette’s file. He wished he had been able to read them himself, but he knew he had used up a lot of luck just finding the guy. He imagined what a man named Redden would look like, his mind entertaining several types, none of which seemed right to him. Still, by the time he passed the interchange at the South Loop and slowed for the Broadway exit, he had settled on a fair-complexioned, Irish-looking Southern farmer’s son. The South was full of them.

  Graver waited at the post office parking lot for nearly fifteen minutes—plenty of time to choke down the rest of the barbecue and gulp the RC to the bottom—before he saw Neuman coming along Broadway. Graver got out of his car, locked it, and was taking off his tie as Neuman pulled up.

  “You get the file?” Graver asked, closing the door.

  “Nope, no file.” Neuman grinned, realizing that Graver knew all along that he wasn’t likely to get it He pulled out of the parking lot, got on the access road, and floated up on the freeway to join the traffic.

  “Redden’s from Sweetwater, Texas,” Neuman began. “Father was a high school principal there. Went to college at Texas Tech, majoring in mechanical engineering, dropped out when he learned to fly. He was a crop duster for a while, a few years, then he got a job with a charter service flying people over the Grand Canyon. A few years at that, and he joined the National Forest Service in California flying firefighters into the summer fires. A few years at that. Next he turns up in the Rio Grande Valley, Mission, Pharr, that area. No visible employment, but visible mon
ey, so the DEA begins keeping tabs on him. They catch him one night in Ojinaga across from Presidio with a load of Mexican Brown. The State Department had the word out that they needed some pilots, and Redden was persuaded to go to Honduras and Nicaragua for some covert action. That’s what he was doing when he landed a load of arms on a little private strip outside Villavicencio, Colombia. After that he seemed to have disconnected from CIA to ‘independent’ work, probably with Kalatis. His bio peters out very quickly after that. Just sightings throughout Central America.”

  “But there’s no warrant out for him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Christ Kalatis. I don’t believe that guy’s reach.”

  “I don’t believe a lot that I’ve seen in the last twenty-four hours,” Neuman said. “I don’t believe Arnette. That place is like a government installation…”

  “What about Ledet?”

  “I didn’t spend much time on Ledet since he’s in Atlanta.”

  “Remember anything about him?”

  “He’s from Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Went to LSU. Apparently met Redden when they both were flying drugs on the border. I don’t think he was picked up by the DEA, he just showed up in Tegucigalpa shortly after Redden. Probably because of Redden. Their history generally parallels after that. I think they’re pretty good buds.”

  Graver looked across the coastal flats as they left the city. The sun was fierce.

  “Ledet from Red Stick,” he said. He could feel the sun’s heat radiating off the window beside him as it came through the glass like a laser and fell across his shoulder. The air conditioner in the car was cranked up as high as it would go as he stared out the window to the coastal flats.

  Chapter 68

  Eddie Redden lived on a piece of expensive property. He had a beachfront house that was protected from the street by a thick screen of pink and scarlet oleanders and clumps of cerise bougainvillea. Turning into the drive you could see a large, low-slung bungalow with a shallow-sloped roof, and Jamaican-style jalousies of bleached cypress. A deep veranda, flanked by palms, ran around to the back of the house where Galveston Bay glittered on the other side of a thick, emerald lawn that someone else mowed and fertilized and watered. Beyond that a dock ran out into the flats and a small blue skiff was tied to the pilings, bobbing in the southerly breeze.