An Absence of Light

“There’s beer and soft drinks in the refrigerator,” he said and started putting together a sandwich while Paula began clearing the table of its collection of notepads and Heath’s assortment of forged identities. When Graver finished the sandwich, he cut it in half diagonally, put it on a plate with both kinds of chips and some olives, and got a beer from the refrigerator. He opened it, put the plate and the beer on a tray with a napkin and walked out of the kitchen.

They were sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed like a couple of schoolgirls, the cards between them.

“Jesus Christ!” Valerie said, walling her eyes from beneath her shock of parched, black hair. “Look at the butler, will ya. You make that yourself?”

“Yeah,” Graver said, putting the tray down on the floor beside Lara.

“Thanks,” Lara said.

“You don’t have a wife?” Heath asked. “You divorced or what?”

“You sure you don’t want something?” he asked her.

“Well… not a sandwich.” She grinned, running her eyes over him.

Graver walked out of the room and looked at his watch. Arnette had called well over an hour ago. Something should have happened by now. As he passed his bedroom he glanced in the open door and stopped. He stepped inside. His bed had been made and Lara’s off-white linen suit was spread out on it. An open suitcase was on the other side of the bed. He walked over and looked in the suitcase. There were slips, a couple of silk blouses. Lingerie. The cups of the bras tucked into each other, the panties folded once. There was the familiar fragrance of fading perfume that lingered in women’s suitcases, even when they were empty. He walked to Dore’s closet and opened the door. There were three dresses hanging there, isolated in the empty space that echoed even in the silence. He closed the door and walked back into the bedroom, pausing once again at the opened suitcase. He stared at the lingerie and resisted an impulse to reach down and touch the lace on the upper parts of the bras, the slippery silk. He turned away and quickly walked out of the room.

Downstairs Paula and Neuman were sitting at the kitchen table eating and talking, a steno pad and ballpoint pen lying beside Neuman’s plate. Graver went to the cabinet and started making a sandwich for himself.

“Okay, let me run this by you,” Neuman said, wiping his mouth with a napkin and picking up the pen as he leaned over his notes. “Sheck is somewhere higher up in the chain for whoever’s buying the information. It’s a pretty good bet Sheck knows Dean, or at least Dean knows him since Sheck’s name is in the Probst file. Kalatis is in the picture only because Dean mentioned his name when he met with the Unknown at the Transco Fountain.”

“That’s right,” Graver said, slicing his sandwich. “And, incidentally, that telephone call earlier was from our surveillance people. Dean’s been on the move for about an hour.”

“Jesus,” Paula said. She threw a look of incredulity at both of them. “Jesus, this is just wild.”

“And there’s Faeber. We connect him with Kalatis through Brod Strasser who bought controlling interest in DataPrint and who was mentioned as a Kalatis associate in the Raviv file.”

“Just for the record,” Graver put in, “I don’t think it was a coincidence that it was at Faeber’s house that my informant overheard the conversation where Tisler and Besom’s names came up.”

Paula nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “And I don’t think it’s too much of a leap in logic to assume that Faeber’s company, or at least someone inside his company, is buying the take from Bruce Sheck’s little data acquisition operation.”

Graver opened a beer for himself, leaned back against the kitchen counter with his legs crossed at the ankles, and began eating his sandwich, looking across the kitchen at them.

“Which speaks also to Sheck’s ‘expertise,’ “Neuman said. He ate a potato chip and drank a couple of sips of his soft drink. He looked at Graver as he wiped his mouth again. “And which makes me wonder about your informant Do you… are you fairly sure…”

“You mean, am I sure he’s not a plant?” He shook his head. “No. His timing-coming out of nowhere just now-is suspicious and his ‘good luck’ at Faeber’s party strains credulity.” Graver shook his head. “No, I’m not comfortable with it at all. But the one thing that doesn’t jibe with his being a plant is his deliberately bringing Faeber’s name into it Why would they volunteer anybody’s name? Especially the name of a key player.”

“You said he seemed surprised to hear of their deaths,” Paula said. “Maybe he wasn’t told everything. Maybe he was just supposed to try to find out how much you knew, if you knew anything, and when he learned of the deaths that caught him off guard, he panicked, and gave up Faeber’s name.”

“No.” Neuman was shaking his head. “People like Kalatis, this Strasser, they never would have let someone at an informant’s level get close enough to them and run the risk of him doing something like that They just wouldn’t do it.”