An Absence of Light

As soon as he put down the telephone, his handset rang again.

“Captain, this is Casey. I think we may have the two pilots. Found them in Sheck’s document He refers to a couple of pilots by last name only, Ledet and Redden. We went to the FAA records and found a Richard D. Ledet and an Edward E. Redden. Ledet lives in Atlanta, hangars a plane at a small airport there. Redden lives in Seabrook, a couple of miles from Sheck. He hangars a small Beech-craft at the Gulf Airport where Sheck kept his.

“Now, we checked utility records, and Redden is currently paying the bills at the Seabrook address. The place is definitely occupied. Telephone unlisted. We called Gulf Airport, and his plane is in the hangar. Arnette has a woman in Seabrook who’s checking right now to see if she can tell if he appears to be home. Car in the driveway, newspapers in the yard, whatever.

“And it turns out that Arnette has both Ledet and Redden in her files. They were contract pilots for Army Intelligence and the CIA during the 1980s in Central America, most of the time stationed out of Tegucigalpa in Honduras, but doing regular junkets as far down as Colombia. They don’t have a military background, just a couple of good ol’ boys who got the flying bug in college, got their pilot’s licenses, dropped out to fly and have been doing it ever since, for anybody, everybody, anytime, anywhere-for good money. Much of the time they fly together. They’re single, late thirties.”

“Has she got photographs?”

“Yeah, sure does.”

“Okay, Casey, let’s get out there. Ask Arnette if we can have a printout of their files, if not, read them before you leave, remember as much as you can. I’ll leave from here in ten minutes and meet you at… Are you coming out the South Loop?”

“Yeah, that’s closest.”

“Okay, listen. Right after you go through the interchange coming onto the Gulf Freeway, look for the Broadway exit. Take Broadway south. A block or so off the freeway there’s a branch post office. I’ll be waiting in the parking lot for you.”

Graver grabbed his coat, told his temporary secretary he would be gone for a couple of hours, and avoided looking down the long corridor as he went out through the reception area. He didn’t want to get caught by anybody.

He guessed Arnette would not give Neuman a printout, so Neuman would be stuck there for ten or fifteen minutes reading the files, which would give Graver time to grab a sandwich on the way. He stopped at a barbecue place just east of downtown, bought a sliced beef sandwich with extra onions, a spear of dill pickle, and an RC in a bottle. Then he got on an up ramp to the Gulf Freeway and headed south.

Driving with one hand and eating the sandwich with the other, laying it down every so often on the greasy paper sack on the car seat beside him, he squinted into the high noon glare and thought about the best way to interview the pilot. So much depended on his immediate impression and on what Neuman had to tell him from Arnette’s file. He wished he had been able to read them himself, but he knew he had used up a lot of luck just finding the guy. He imagined what a man named Redden would look like, his mind entertaining several types, none of which seemed right to him. Still, by the time he passed the interchange at the South Loop and slowed for the Broadway exit, he had settled on a fair-complexioned, Irish-looking Southern farmer’s son. The South was full of them.

Graver waited at the post office parking lot for nearly fifteen minutes-plenty of time to choke down the rest of the barbecue and gulp the RC to the bottom-before he saw Neuman coming along Broadway. Graver got out of his car, locked it, and was taking off his tie as Neuman pulled up.

“You get the file?” Graver asked, closing the door.

“Nope, no file.” Neuman grinned, realizing that Graver knew all along that he wasn’t likely to get it He pulled out of the parking lot, got on the access road, and floated up on the freeway to join the traffic.