An Absence of Light

As he was walking out to his car, he felt the pager on his belt vibrate. He looked down at the number, and then turned around and went back into the restaurant. There was only one pay telephone in the anteroom outside the rest rooms, and it was occupied by a young man in his twenties, a post-modern boulevardier with an attitude. He wore his black hair in a ponytail and was dressed in a fashionably baggy tan suit with a black shirt buttoned at the neck, no tie. When he saw that Graver was waiting, he turned his back and kept talking. He was telling the person on the other end that he and a friend were going to a few clubs after dinner and why didn’t she catch up with them at Tocino’s at ten-thirty. Oh. Why? Well, tell him something. Tell him you’ve got a girlfriend who’s sick, throwing up all over the place, and you have to go see about her. What? Well, tell him…

Graver took out his shield, opened it, reached over the man’s shoulder, and dangled it in front of his face.

“Give me five minutes,” he said. The young man flinched and turned around slowly, his eyes fixed in cautious surprise. “Tell her you’ll call her back in five minutes. It’ll give her time to think of something.”

The young man did as he was told, then pressed down the hook with one hand, and gave the receiver to Graver. “Jesus,” he said with mocking respect, his machismo requiring some kind of disparagement to cover his loss.

“Thanks,” Graver said.

Neuman answered on the first ring.

“Everything all right?” Graver asked.

“Oh, sure… I just need to see you for a few minutes.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m just finishing a hamburger at a diner called Sid’s, off Montrose.”

“I know where it is. I’m not far away. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

When Graver got to the diner, Neuman was sitting in his car in front where he had parked to one side under an old mimosa. Graver pulled up beside him, and Neuman got out of his car.

“The place was too small to talk inside,” Neuman explained through Graver’s window.

Graver came around and each of them leaned against their cars. Though the night was clear, the air was damp, and heavy with the sweetness of the honeysuckle that grew in great clumps, frothy white with blossoms, against a board fence that disappeared around behind the diner.

“What’s on your mind?” Graver asked.

Neuman was holding his car keys and jangled them gently as if to get himself started.

“Well, first of all I checked out Tisler,” he said. “Thoroughly. Went after hidden income possibilities, real property-he’s got a little rent house in Sharpstown. Had it a couple of years. Paid minimum down, fifteen-year mortgage, and he’s plunking away monthly payments. I checked business involvements, savings accounts, all the banking possibilities. Nothing. Toys: vehicle and boat registrations. Nothing. I did all this in Peggy’s name too. And in Art’s middle name, Sydney. And in her maiden name, Mays. Nothing. If he had an extra income he wasn’t stupid about taking care of it I don’t know how far you want me to go with this. Background checks next? Whatever.”

Graver started to speak, but Neuman went on.

“But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”

Graver waited.

“I hope this isn’t out of school… or… out of line.” Neuman shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He had left his jacket and tie in the car and his shirt was wrinkled the way shirts get after long days squirming in chairs in front of computers, rummaging through files, sitting and standing, sitting and standing. “This, uh, I guess this falls into the ‘it-seemed-odd-at-the-time-but…’ category, for what it’s worth.”

Neuman’s nervousness was uncomfortably reminiscent of Paula’s behavior earlier. Graver sensed the chill of foreboding. Neuman jangled his keys and then plunged in.

“I think there may be something… irregular… about the way Art and Dean were working their investigations,” he said.

Graver’s stomach clinched. He couldn’t even imagine what he was about to hear, but as of that moment he accepted as fact what had been only a premonition up until then: the surprise he was about to hear would be the rule, not the exception, regarding whatever the events that precipitated Tisler’s death would come to be called. Whether it would be known in retrospect as a scandal, or an affair, or an ordeal, it was clear to Graver at this moment that he was involved in something that was going to cause an uproar. He was as sure of it as if he were looking back from five years in the future.