An Absence of Light

But eighteen months earlier he seemed to have come into his own as an organized crime investigator and had developed two lengthy and complex operations which ultimately resulted in joint operations with federal authorities and which yielded a dozen or more major arrests. The ongoing Seldon investigation was still another operation that promised to net him some significant players. Burtell was the analyst on each of these three investigations.

Graver reached for the file box that contained the diskette copies of Tisler’s folders. There were ten investigators in OC, and each of them was responsible for eight to ten targets. That was too many for Graver to keep in his head. Swiveling his chair around to the computer, he popped in the first diskette. For the next two and a half hours, ducking out only for cups of fresh coffee, he pored over Tisler’s first big success.

At twelve-twenty, he ejected the first diskette and stepped outside to go to the bathroom. Lara and several of the stenographers were heading for lunch, and he asked her if she would pick up a hamburger for him when they came back. He gave her some money, walked down the hall to the bathroom, and was back at the computer in ten minutes. He popped the second diskette in the CPU. The second investigation was more complex than the first one. When Lara brought his hamburger, he ate it at the screen, creating a pile of wadded paper napkins and filling his office with the heavy odors of mustard and onions.

At a quarter to five Lara knocked on his door and came in with a sheaf of pink message slips in one hand and a cup of ice and a Dr Pepper in the other. She put the messages in front of him.

“You’d better see these messages before I go home,” she said, pouring the Dr Pepper into the paper cup of ice. “And Chief Westrate called just now and said he was going to call you back in ten minutes.” She set the iced drink in front of him and straightened up, holding the empty bottle in one hand, the other hand on her hip.

“Fantastic,” Graver said, stretching his back which seemed to have calcified in the shape of the soft curve of his chair. He reached for the cold drink. “You must’ve been reading my mind.”

“Uh-huh. A pepper-upper.” She eyed his desk, still cluttered with the trash from his hamburger. “You’ve been cooped up in here too long,” she said, and started gathering up the greasy paper sack and the dirty napkins and tossing them in the trash. She went over to the windows, opened one of them with the leveraged help of a quick twist of her hips, and flapped her long fingers with their fire-engine red nails in front of her face. “Those onions! My God.”

She turned around and looked at him. He was sipping his Dr Pepper, watching her.

“So what’s the gossip,” he said.

“About what you’d expect, I guess,” she said, hands on her hips again, palms vertical. “Art was so… un-extreme, if that’s a word.” She hesitated a second. “I went into his office to clean it out like you asked. Put his stuff in a box in my office to give to his wife. There weren’t many personal things.” She rocked one high-heeled foot sideways absently. “You been in his office much?”

Graver shook his head, taking in the small movement of her hips as she rocked her foot.

“On the inside of his door-you couldn’t see it unless the door was closed-was a centerfold. A black girl. And it wasn’t from Playboy. This was from some magazine that went in for the gynecological poses. I mean, she was spreading herself.” Pause. “I left it on the door. I don’t suppose his wife would want a ‘personal effect’ like that.”

Lara was not being cute about this. In fact her expression and voice portrayed an element of sadness that Graver couldn’t quite interpret.

“Well, I appreciate you going through his things,” he said. “Dean seems to be taking this a little harder than I would have expected. I just didn’t think I should ask him to do it.”

“I didn’t mind it,” she said. “What about you? How are you doing?”

“Fine,” he said, sipping the cold drink.

She smiled, knowing he would say that, and nodded.

“That’s good,” she said. Pause. “Anything else I can do for you?”

Graver had to hand it to her. Lara had never once stepped over the line-albeit, for Lara, the line was a little further out there than it was for most people-during the past year, ever since Dore’s affair had made its way into public view of the gossip columns. But she certainly had given him every opportunity to find solace with her whenever he might have desired it And he had been sorely tempted. That he had not done so had nothing to do with professionalism or the fear that intimacy might ruin an enviable working relationship. He had never had any doubt that Lara could have managed to handle both. He wasn’t so sure about himself.

He started to speak, but the telephone rang.

“That’ll be Westrate,” she said, her smile fading to good-natured resignation as she headed toward the door. “I’m gone. See you in the morning.”

“Lara,” he said.