An Absence of Light

But listening to Burtell was like listening to a brother. Graver didn’t have a brother, but he imagined that Burtell could have been one and to know that with each word he spoke he was another syllable closer to imminent, violent death was a painful thing to experience. They were so unsuspecting. True, Sheck did say he thought they were in danger, but clearly it was a danger he had every intention of being able to deal with, and neither of them thought they were in danger then, at that moment. And then too, the entire conversation was almost a monologue by Sheck. It seemed that he had been drinking for some time, which had made him loquacious. Burtell spoke very little on the tape and when he did speak it was brief, an indication, it seemed to Graver, that he was either tense or angry or maybe even cautiously uneasy. But, the fact was, the few words he did speak were all the more painful to listen to because they were so few. Graver found himself leaning toward the tape recorder on the table, hoping to hear Burtell say something, anything, at length.

Graver looked at Cheryl. “Thank you,” he said. He saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes, but that was all right He didn’t mind that his gratitude must have sounded a little odd to her. He was grateful for this last audible witness.

Arnette made a little gesture with her hand, and Cheryl snapped off the recorder, stood up, and left the room.

“That was a hell of a thing to have to listen to,” Arnette said, reaching for her cigarettes that lay on the table in front of her. “I’m sorry you had to do it I’m sorry it happened, baby.”

Graver’s stomach was a knot of queasiness and anger. He could hardly believe… any of it. It was outrageous, even grotesque. The events of the last two days seemed to be evidence of the unraveling of all that was sane and reasonable.

“That was pretty damn crude of Kalatis,” she said. “I think it signals a major change in the game.”

“You’re convinced it was Kalatis.”

Arnette flicked her lighter and looked at Graver over the flame, lit the cigarette and laid the lighter on the table.

“Think about it, baby,” she said. “Or do you know something you haven’t told me?”

Graver shook his head. “No, I know so damn little if I knew something it wouldn’t be much.”

“Christ, Sheck practically narrated his own death. He was pointing his finger at Kalatis when he blew up.”

“What about the man at the fountain?”

Arnette looked as though she dreaded giving him any more bad news.

“The pictures have been rolling in here over the computers ever since I told you I was going to look. But he’s not in there,” she said. “I don’t know who the hell he is. But that doesn’t mean he’s not government. It just means my source may not be as good as it used to be, or he’ll be in the next batch that comes through.”

“Or that he’s not government.”

“Okay,” she conceded, her elbow resting on the table, the cigarette up in the air.

“I just don’t understand why Kalatis would use a bomb, for God’s sake,” Graver said. “After he’d gone to all the trouble of making veiled hits on Tisler and Besom.” He tilted his head at the recorder. “Dean obviously thought Tisler killed himself because of the photographs.”

“Dean was mistaken,” Arnette said coldly. “I don’t have any doubt about that. Tisler’s death may have caught you people by surprise, but I can assure you it wasn’t a surprise to Panos Kalatis. What we’re seeing here is a methodical burning of bridges, an elimination of liabilities. Kalatis is distancing himself from the little guys who’ve been doing his dirty work in this operation. I think Sheck was right about that.”

“And do you also think he was right about Kalatis bringing something to culmination here?”

Arnette tapped her cigarette on the edge of the glass ashtray.

“It looks like it,” she said. She read his thoughts and shook her head. “Forget it What are you going to do? Go to the feds with what you’ve got? You don’t even have enough… I mean actual documentation… to get them to stop him from leaving the country. And if you did find some goof who would authorize it for you, Kalatis’s lawyers would shred it, and in twenty-four hours he’d be gone for good.”

She stood up and crossed her arms, her cigarette lofted in the air next to her face as she paced to one end of the room and then back, stopping across the desk from him, leveling her eyes at him.

“You know what’s happened here, baby?” she asked. “Misfortune. You got in on the tail end of a god-awful operation. You may never know what happened. Ever. You lost two dirty cops, and you gotta face it, maybe three. If there’s more, odds are you’ll never know. The bad guys were organized so far over your head that all you got was a glimpse of hell before they slammed the gates closed. Consider yourself lucky.”

She smoked her cigarette and looked at him through the acrid haze. It was a brutal assessment and probably accurate, and Graver guessed there was a good reason why she had delivered it with so little finesse.