An Absence of Light

“If I go to them at this point,” he said, “I might run the risk of having this melt right in front of my eyes. I shouldn’t have to explain to you about jurisdictional squabbles. Well, at this point-maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day-but at this point, I want to be able to call the shots on the leads we develop. I don’t want anything taken away from me. I don’t want to be co-opted or condescended to. I don’t want to be pushed into the background.” He paused. “I guess when it comes right down to it I’m not any better than the rest of them about wanting to protect my jurisdiction. But Tisler and Besom were my people. Dean is my responsibility. I don’t want to turn them over to anyone else.”

He paused again. “Besides, from what I see happening I think we have as good a shot at Kalatis as any of the agencies. And I don’t want to share this bastard with anybody. If we get our hands on him, I don’t want to see him bargained away from us for some other agenda set by people in Washington or Langley or Quantico.”

Neuman was looking down at his steno pad, doodling on it with his pen. Paula was staring at him, but she wasn’t saying anything. She simply looked at him, lost in thought He guessed that she was trying to work it out He guessed she didn’t know what she thought, and until she did she wasn’t going to push it.

“But,” Graver continued, “I don’t think we’re going to have much time to worry about it anyway. A lot of possibilities are about to come into play here. If Kalatis is moving on some kind of big project, those other agencies are going to be onto him anyway. I don’t think for a minute we’re in this thing by ourselves. If Kalatis suspects he’s about to be compromised-and he probably knows more than we’d like to think-then he’s going to speed up the program. Our window of opportunity here is very small and shrinking.”

“How small?” Neuman looked up.

Graver shrugged and shook his head. “I’m guessing… a couple of days maybe. Tisler and Besom’s deaths will hit the newspapers in the morning. If those news stories take the form of something speculative, if they hint at something dark behind the deaths, Kalatis is going to want to disappear. And then Sheck is going to miss Heath. I just don’t think we have that much time before this turns into something a hell of a lot different than we have now.”

Chapter 49

12:18 A.M.

“Any room facing the harbor,” the man said. He said it quickly, having put his bag down in front of the registration desk without taking his other arm from around the young woman he was holding close to him. The desk clerk noticed the guy’s thumb was rubbing the side of the woman’s bra under her blouse. Or it would have been rubbing her bra. He didn’t think she was wearing one.

“High up,” the woman said, looking at the man and then at the desk clerk, smiling at him with a smile that the clerk would have described as mischievous if he had been familiar with the word. “I want to see the boats, the lights on the boats.”

“High up,” the man said, winking at the desk clerk. “Got to see those boats.”

“High up,” the desk clerk said, checking his computer. The man was some kind of Latin, not Mexican, maybe Colombian, a real macho hunk, good-looking, well-built, early thirties. The woman was in her mid twenties, the clerk guessed. A red-blooded American thing with caramel-colored hair streaked blond by the sun and a very fine set of hooters that this Latin character was getting his thumb all over and, now, even the rest of his hand. The clerk lost track of what he was hitting on the keyboard and had to mess around with the keys again to find his place.

“What about it, huh? Have you got something?” the Macho asked. “What have you got? We’re kind of in a hurry.” He said hurry with a kind of back-of-the-throat skitter across the r’s.

No shit. The clerk cut his eyes at the girl. She was beaming at him. Jeesus.

“Yeah, sure do. Got one right here. A good view of the marina. A pretty view. It’s not at the top, but it’s two floors from it.”

“Fantastic,” the Macho said, finally taking his arm from around the woman and reaching into his suit jacket for his wallet As the Macho filled out the forms, the clerk sneaked another look at the woman’s breasts but he forgot to look at her face first and when he finally did she caught him. But she just beamed at him again and pulled back her shoulders perkily, or he thought that was what she did, and his eyes hit on her chest again on their way down to the registration form. The clerk envied the Latin Macho. The clerk’s imagination did a little number on the woman as he looked at her one last time.

When the paperwork was done the clerk started to ring for a bellman, but the Macho stopped him.

“We don’t need any help,” he said. “We’ve just got these couple of bags,” and sure enough there was another bag the clerk hadn’t noticed that the woman was carrying, one of those fancy aluminum cases. “Many thanks,” the Macho said, and they turned and walked across the lobby to the elevators.