An Absence of Light

“You thought you had to do that,” Burtell clarified. He wasn’t going to let Kalatis weasel out of that so easily. Faeber cut his eyes at Kalatis to see how he was going to react to Burtell’s challenge, but Burtell didn’t give a damn. He went on. “Whatever reason you had to doubt him was a stupid reason. Somebody way overplayed this. Somebody didn’t know what they were doing. You pushed him, and you lost him. Now you’ve got a dead man on your hands, and you want me to make sure it doesn’t mean anything. Well, I can’t do that.”

“We’re only suggesting,” Kalatis said with calculated patience, “that you need to be sure about what you’re telling us.”

Faeber nodded in agreement.

Burtell didn’t like this alliance he was seeing between the two men in front of him. He didn’t like being on the defensive. Something was poisoning the well.

“There’s… nothing… in… CID,” Burtell emphasized. “If he’s got something squirreled away outside, I can’t be responsible for knowing anything about that. If he did that, it’s because he was desperate, felt like he’d been pushed up against the wall.” He let this hang in the sticky air for a moment “It didn’t have to be that way.”

There was a long silence, Kalatis and Faeber half-turned in the front seat, Kalatis looking away now, out the windshield. He was big, and he often reminded Burtell of a minotaur. It was an apt image: Kalatis, his feet planted firmly in front of the doorway to darkness, guarding a subterranean maze of lies.

“What about Seldon, then?” Kalatis asked. He was holding his cigar, looking at its glowing tip. “What do we do now?”

“You forget about it,” Burtell said. “It’s gone, done.”

Kalatis turned his head slowly toward Burtell. “Oh, I don’t think so, my friend. I just said a moment ago that I didn’t want to lose my situation here.”

“You’ll lose that and everything else if you try to force this,” Burtell warned. “We can’t screw around with Graver too much, Panos. We won’t get by with it very long.”

“What do you mean?” Kalatis asked softly, smiling. “We’ve been screwing him for two years.”

“No, we’ve been lying to him for two years,” Burtell clarified. “There’s a difference. Tisler’s death, that’s screwing with him. Any idiot can tell lies, but you’ve got to be at the other end of the IQ scale if you want to deal successfully with Marcus Graver’s suspicions.”

“So it’s over?” Faeber was incredulous.

“Seldon is, yes,” Burtell said. “We put everything on hold for right now. Let everyone relax over there. Wait until Ray gets back from his vacation and then see if we can’t restructure, pull this back together.”

Kalatis had turned back to looking out the windshield. From where they sat they could see the tops of the downtown skyscrapers rising out of the darkness, just beginning to glitter in the twilight.

“Okay,” Kalatis said suddenly with a huge sigh. He tossed his cigar out onto the asphalt of the parking lot “We’ll get with Besom when he gets back. When is that?”

“Tomorrow,” Burtell said.

“Okay,” Kalatis continued. “We’ll get with him, get his opinion. Let’s give this some thought Work up the options. If we want to go on with the operation, how do we do it? Are the gains worth the risks? What do we do if Graver does come up with something?” He looked at Burtell and then at Faeber. “You know what we need.” Again to the back seat “I’ll be in touch.”

That was all there was to it.

Kalatis turned around to face the steering wheel and hit the buttons on his armrest that controlled the windows. As the windows were going up Burtell picked up his suit coat, feeling as though he ought to say something else, but not knowing just exactly what or just exactly why. Nothing more was said, so Burtell opened his door and got out He closed the door just as the windows locked into place, and Kalatis started the car and flipped on the air conditioner.

Burtell hesitated a beat beside the dark windows of the Mercedes and then turned and walked across the small lot to his car, unlocked it, and threw in his coat He looked back at the Mercedes which didn’t move, just sat there with its motor running, its air conditioner humming along with the cicadas in the dark heat. He got into his own car and started the engine, feeling a little queasy as he adjusted the air conditioner vents to blow directly on him. The goddamned Greek was just too spooky. He was so goddamned byzantine he made intrigue look like a game of checkers.

Burtell put the car in gear and turned toward the narrow lane that led up past the condominium. The lights were coming on here and there in the condominium, and he wondered if the two women lived there or somewhere farther back in the neighborhoods. He drove past the Greek’s car, which sat motionless and dark, seeming to have an intelligence about it, a mute and incomprehensible cunning like one of those crusty bayou cockroaches that lived in the layered armor of the palm trees. Jesus Christ.