An Absence of Light

Once inside the elevators Remberto pulled a radio from his waistband under his coat and spoke into it.

“Room 1202. She wants you to bring the other aluminum suitcase. Don’t go in the main lobby door. There is another entrance at the marina end of the lobby with elevators out of sight of the front desk.”

Within seven minutes Cheryl was standing at the floortoceiling windows in their room looking down at the sailboats in the marina below. The lights were off in the room, and they moved around in the pale glow thrown up from the strings of lights draped up and down the docks and boat slips.

“Isn’t this too far?” Remberto asked.

“Nope. Perfect,” Cheryl said as she bent down and opened her aluminum suitcase and took out a tripod and began assembling it. Remberto took binoculars out of his suitcase and began scanning the rows of docked boats. Just as Cheryl was putting the tripod in place someone knocked at the door, and she went to the eyehole and looked out “Good,” she said and opened the door.

Murray came in carrying Cheryl’s larger aluminum suitcase, and behind him was Boyd with his bags of photographic equipment and carrying his own tripod.

They worked quickly, Murray and Remberto standing on either side of the large window with binoculars while Boyd and Cheryl set up their equipment in the middle. In twelve minutes everything was in place. Cheryl sat behind her parabolic microphone mounted on its tripod, her headset in place, the receiver on her lap.

“Okay, guys. Any suggestions?”

“Yeah,” Remberto said. His binoculars hadn’t left his eyes since he got there. “See the first dock from the left? Boat slips on either side. Go out to the second dock light, from there… one, two, three… third boat. It’s a small cabin cruiser, blue trim. There are people inside, more than two, talking.”

Cheryl leaned forward over the scope of the microphone, found the boat, and began toying with the receiver dials. Everyone waited. Two minutes, three.

“I just don’t think so,” she said. “They’re talking, uh, office politics. Lou got a lot bigger raise than this guy, and this guy’s pissed because he did most of Lou’s work on the ‘Fleming deal’ and Lou never gave him credit for what he’d done except in private…”

“Okay,” Remberto said. “Fourth dock over. Between the main walkway and the dock, first boat before the first light.”

The trial-and-error process was frustrating, but everyone was used to it and remained calm and focused. They found their targets on the fourth boat.

“Got ’em,” Cheryl said, clapping one hand to her headphones. With her other hand she flipped on the recorder.

Chapter 50

“I’ve worked for that son of a bitch a long time,” the man said, “and I’m telling you, something’s going wrong here. I mean, really wrong, not just some glitch.”

“You have how many numbers?” Burtell’s voice was immediately recognizable.

“Three. Three contact numbers. Always the same system. First one’s routine. Second one’s secure from everyone. Third one’s the ‘get the hell out of Dodge’ number, when it’s time to clear out, drop everything, save your ass. I can’t get him on any of them, and he sure as hell hasn’t called me on any of mine. That’s damned unusual.”

“Maybe he’s cut you out, doesn’t trust you anymore.”

“The hell he doesn’t! We started using this method in Buenos Aires, that far back. I’ve always worked the street-level stuff for him, and he depends on me to tell him when the people he’s got me working with are starting to stink. That’s what that second number’s for. Just him and me.”

They were sitting inside, the cabin table between them, two bottles of beer on the table along with a nearly consumed fifth of Wild Turkey. The cabin door was thrown open to the still, humid night. Outside, the lazy sound of an idling inboard motor carried across the water.

Burtell looked at Sheck. He was nearing forty, and he had lived in a moral wasteland most of his adult life. He made his living by doing casually and without hesitation deeds that were punishable by death or life imprisonment in every society in the world. His life was a rejection of every concept that comprised the glue that held together the societies that the mass of men called civilized. He was incapable of compunction. He was entirely self-serving. And right now, he resembled more than anything an alerted hyena, his hackles raised, his jaws slightly open and rigid, ready to maul as he snuffled the wind for verification of his suspicions.

“You know about Tisler,” Burtell said.

“Yeah, sure, I heard that.”

“Do you know about Besom?”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead too.”

Bruce Sheck stopped swallowing in the middle of swigging his beer. He lowered the bottle, putting it down on the table without a sound.

“Dead.”

“Had a heart attack while he was surf fishing.” Burtell watched him closely.

“Heart attack.” Sheck’s face was static, but at the same time reflected a thought process way ahead of the words that had been spoken. “When was this?”