An Absence of Light

“Then it’s almost certain we can’t trace the numbers,” he said. “I’d guess they’re using a digital clearing box. It’ll be in a rented apartment somewhere. Since there are different numbers for different dates, there are probably several locations, several boxes. The return calls will also go through the clearing boxes, scrambling the signals so that a trace will stop at the box. All we’ll find at the end of the trace is an unfurnished apartment with a little black box sitting on the floor. They’ve probably got several apartments so if one is tracked down they’ll be able to clear calls out of the others.” He stopped. “Who do the numbers put him in contact with?”

She looked down at the card which she had been holding in her lap behind the seat and read the names. “Panos. Dean. Rick. Bruce. Ray. Eddie.”

“Rick and Eddie? Do you know anything about them?”

She shook her head. “I just know they’re pilots.”

“You know they’re pilots?”

“Yeah. They’re a couple of the guys who pick up Colin and take him to Kalatis’s place. He told me.”

“Okay. Wait a minute.” Graver got out of the BMW and walked to his car. He sat down in the front seat, picked up his handset, and called Arnette. Then he went back to the BMW carrying the handset with him.

“What was that?” Connie said as soon as he closed the door. She seemed to be the only one talking.

“You said Faeber would be flown to Kalatis’s?” Graver asked, ignoring her question.

“That’s what Colin says. Kalatis flies him there when he wants to talk to him.”

“Do you recall Faeber ever saying how long the flight was?”

She glanced at Rayner as if to see if there were any objections to her going on with this. She got no reaction. She looked back at Graver.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “One time he was telling me about how they always make sure he can’t see where they’re going, even though he doesn’t know anything about flying, and the flight’s always at night If he was in one of the smaller planes they’d put him facing backward into the cabin so he couldn’t see, and then they’d put headphones on him and make him listen to Muzak or something so he couldn’t hear the pilot giving his navigating coordinates to the towers. He said the flights were about an hour.”

“Did he ever say what kind of plane he flew in?”

“No, he doesn’t know planes.” She hesitated, thought a second. “But he did say they always landed on water, so I guess it was one of those pontoon planes. They taxied up to a pier and then walked up to the house.”

“What kind of a house?”

“He said it was… just this big white house. Palms in front. A porch… a, uh, veranda he called it.”

“And Kalatis was there?”

“Yeah, on the veranda. Colin said he’d never even been on the inside.”

“Was anyone else there?”

“He said there would be men waiting at the pier to tie up the plane. The pilots would stand around and talk to these guys while Colin went up to the house.”

“You said, “up to the house.’ Was it hilly? A rocky cliff?”

“No, actually, I don’t think so. He described it like… you know, up from the beach to the house.”

“That’s all? No one else there?”

“Well, yeah. There was someone else. Colin said that about half the time this woman would be there. He said she was maybe in her late twenties, a foreign woman, he thought maybe Middle Eastern. He said that on several occasions she would be in the house… naked or with very little on… and as they sat on the veranda he could clearly see her through the windows. He said he thought Kalatis liked that, for Colin to be able to see her naked through the window behind Kalatis’s back. Sometimes she brought them drinks out on the veranda.”

“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.