An Absence of Light (31 page)

His consternation was one of the main reasons he was keeping a detailed journal of the developments and of his reasons for his decisions and actions. He hoped that keeping a precise record somehow would help clarify the events. He felt like an alchemist performing rituals he didn’t wholly understand in the hope that magic would happen and with the magic would come knowledge and the fine gold of the truth.

This journal remained in the computer in a password file while he kept a printed copy at home. His initial thought had been to keep the copy with him at all times, an impulse that was the emotional equivalent of the fetal position. Later a saner view prevailed, and he decided to keep the second copy at home. If the investigation became increasingly unstable, he would put a third copy in the safety deposit box at his bank. This was a flat-out effort to cover his ass, and even at that he had no idea how something like this would hold up in an inquiry, if it ultimately came to that.

Outside, the night was warm and moist, and the smell of sticky weeds and bayou mud was laced with the pungent odor of the oil-stained asphalt that, even at this late hour, was still radiating an uncomfortable fever. Pausing, he looked toward the city across the bayou, at the high urban sierras of scattered light He recalled Arnette’s observation that trying to anticipate the “bad guys of this world” was like gazing at the stars, by the time you saw the light it was all over. You had to use your imagination, she said, to get the jump on the physics of iniquity.

In her own inimitable way, of course, Arnette had been giving him good advice. Under the circumstances, he was dealing with this entirely too cautiously. In the normal course of events he was used to looking way out in front of the curve, having plenty of time to gather information methodically, to think it through. But this wasn’t the normal course of things, and it clearly was looking like a Darwinian lesson: adapt to change or perish. He had better start thinking imaginatively, or this was going to be over before he even knew what it was that had happened.

The pager on his belt vibrated. He pushed back his coattail and looked down at the number. He didn’t recognize it But fewer than a dozen people had his new number, and he would want to talk to any of them. Without hesitating he turned around and walked back into the building to the pay telephone in the lobby. He set his briefcase on the floor, put a quarter in the slot, and dialed the number. It rang only once before someone answered.

“This is Graver.”

“Graver, good.” Victor Last sounded as controlled as ever, but there was an undercurrent of eagerness in his voice. “I’ve got something for you. I think you’re going to like this. Can you meet me now, at La Cita?”

“Not there,” Graver said. “Where are you?”

“I’m rather in the north part of the city,” Last said vaguely.

“Okay. There’s a little Italian restaurant called La Facezia just off Montrose. Do you know where Renard is?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, it’s very near that intersection, on Cerano.”

“I’ll find it,” Last said and hung up.

Graver pressed the lever on the pay phone, dropped another quarter in the slot, and dialed another number. When Lara answered on the third ring, her voice was husky with sleep.

“Lara, this is Graver.”

Pause.

“Yes… hello…”

“I’m sorry to have to wake you, but I need your help for a little while.”

“Now?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“Yeah, okay, sure.” She was still a little fuzzy with sleep. “Uh… it’ll take me a few minutes to get dressed,” she said, sounding more awake now. “What do I wear?”

“Anything. I’ve got a meeting with someone at a small restaurant. I just want you to watch us from across the street.”

“Oh.”

“It’s no big deal. I just need another pair of eyes.”

There was a hesitation as if she were mulling over the questionable veracity of this claim. “Okay, where are you?”

“At the office.”

“Okay, I’ll be ready when you get here.”

“Oh, Lara, bring a fairly good-sized shoulder bag.”

He made good time since the traffic was sparse at this hour of night, and when he pulled up to her apartment fifteen minutes later, she was waiting for him at a small gate that led out of the courtyard that her apartment shared with three others. She was wearing a sleeveless summer shirtwaist dress of a dark color, maybe chocolate brown, and her thick hair was combed out, pulled back loosely, and clasped behind her head. She was carrying a shoulder bag which she held with one hand as she reached down to open the car door.

“You’re quick,” Graver said, as she got in and closed the door.

“Well, Jesus,” she said, “once I finally woke up… I don’t know why it took me so long to clear my head. Sorry.”

A hint of fragrance—though not perfume, something softer, the way he imagined her body, her skin, must smell—wafted into the car with her, and as Graver pulled back onto the street she settled into her seat, putting her purse between them and turning slightly toward him, angling her legs.

“I hope this dress is all right,” she said. “I thought, God, I shouldn’t wear anything with a light color.”

“No, that’s just fine,” Graver said. The dress, of course, fit her perfectly, buttoning up the front, the several topmost buttons left undone, the belted waist snug above her hips. Just having her there beside him relieved some of his exhaustion.

“You’ve been at the office all this time?” she asked. There was a note of concern in her voice, as if she sensed something important had taken place since she had seen him that afternoon.

“Most of it,” Graver said.

“Okay,” she said, “what’s happened?”

He related chronologically the things that had happened since he had seen her late in the afternoon. He told her of the results of his meeting with Neuman and Paula, about the Feldberg house and its contents, about Paula and Neuman interviewing Valerie Heath, about Burtell being tailed and of Arnette’s people getting photographs of his meeting with the unidentified man. The only thing he left out of sequence was Besom’s death, and when he told her about it, her reaction was much like Paula’s: a gasp of shock and instant suspicion.

She had been looking at him, but at this revelation she turned and looked out the windshield, watching the night go by and, for a few minutes, consulting her own thoughts. Graver would like to have been inside her head at that moment.

“This gets creepier by the hour,” she said finally, still looking out the windshield. She had crossed her arms under her breasts. “Of course, you don’t believe the heart attack business do you?”

“I don’t believe the autopsy tells the whole story.”

“God, I guess not You still think the thing to do is to keep this closed? Just the four of us, and Arnette?”

“That’s just about the only thing I am sure of now,” Graver said. “I’m doing that right, if nothing else.”

“I guess Westrate’s all over you?”

“He’s beside himself. He knows it’s going to look bad, but I keep assuring him nothing’s turning up. He smells something, and he’s suspicious, but he doesn’t know what to do about it except threaten me.”

Graver changed lanes. He had been watching his rearview mirror, but he saw nothing to make him suspicious. And if there had been someone there he would have picked them up in the sparse traffic.

“So then you do think Besom was killed.”

“I do,” he said.

Lara turned to look out the windshield again. “This is scary,” she said. “Really, really scary.”

“The frightening part is not knowing what the hell lies behind it. Not knowing why. If I knew why, then I think some of the other stuff would fall into place. Motive at least would be an indicator of how they might be thinking.”

“They’?”

“Whoever the hell ‘they’ are.”

They passed under the Southwest Freeway. Graver was looking at everything, the side streets, the parking lots of restaurants, service stations, but trying not to let Lara see what he was doing. Suddenly he was seeing something suspicious in everything. Everything seemed to be a collusion between a car he had seen five blocks ago and the one he was approaching down the street, or the one parked on a side street with the one parked in the shadow of a service station.

“What is it you want me to do?” she asked, shifting in her seat “You want me to sit in the car during this meeting, is that it?”

“No, not in the car,” he said, pulling his mind back to the moment “I’ve got to meet a man named Victor Last. Last was an informant for me years ago when I was still an investigator. He was a good source, productive, but I haven’t seen him or heard from him in about eight years. Then late Sunday night, after the ordeal with Tisler was over, after Westrate had finally left the house, Last called me. Sometimes informants do that, years later. If you’ve had a good relationship with them, they crop up, get in touch with you. Since his call I’ve met with him twice. I met him at a tavern Sunday night, and then last night he showed up at my house.”

“At your house? Christ You didn’t know he was going to be there?”

Graver shook his head. “No. And he’s an intelligent man; he knew better than that. The fact that he did it anyway worries me. He never would have done it in the past. Last claims to have ‘Accidentally’ come across some information about a security breach somewhere in the police department. Thinks it might have been in the CID. But he was vague about the details. Now, I think, he wants to give me a little more information.”

“But you don’t trust him so much now,” Lara said.

“That’s right. Though maybe I should. I just find it hard to believe he happens to be at the right place at the right time.”

They were driving south on Montrose. There were only a few cars on the streets, and though there was no threat of rain, the humidity was high enough to make faint, hazy orbs around the streetlamps.

“So, what is it you want me to do?” Lara asked.

“I’m meeting this guy at a small restaurant called La Facezia?”

“In the museum district? Yeah, I know that place.”

“All I want to know is whether there’s someone watching us. Normally that would be a tricky thing to do. I mean, it’s a countersurveillance job. But there’s an odd intersection there that gives us an edge. Three streets come together, roughly in the shape of the letter “K,” forming three corners. La Facezia sits on the bottom corner. There’s another corner to the right, with a residence behind a high wall. Directly across from the restaurant, on the third corner, there’s an old brick apartment building. Two floors. There’s no security system. Front door’s always open.”

His right hand left the steering wheel, and he picked up a pair of binoculars that had been sitting beside him next to her purse. He handed them to her.

“I think they’ll fit in your bag,” he said. “They’re night-vision binoculars. Everything will look greenish through them, but you’ll get used to it.”

She took the glasses and held them up to the window and looked outside.

“I’m going to drop you off about a block from the restaurant I’ll watch you from down the street, make sure you get to the building safely. I want you to go up the stairs. On the second floor, opposite the landing, there’s a window that overlooks the intersection. You’ll have a clear view of the entrance of the restaurant and the sidewalk tables. You should also be able to see all three streets for quite a ways.”

“What do I look for?” she asked, putting the binoculars into her purse.

“Anybody hanging around, in cars maybe. Make a note—you have a steno pad?—of the kinds of cars you see, get license numbers if you can. Just be observant.”

“And what if somebody comes out of one of the apartments, wants to know what I’m doing?”

“Just flash your CID photo identification. Give them some bullshit about ‘security’ and ‘criminal intelligence.’”

She was quiet. He glanced at her as he slowed for the intersection of Main and the Mecom fountains.

“Are you okay with this?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m up for it,” she said, taking a deep breath and looking at him.

“But… ?”

“No ‘buts’… It’s just… Well,” she said, raising her eyebrows in subdued surprise, “me doing this, this really is on the edge, isn’t it? I mean, it’s kind of like coming in on a wing and a prayer, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Graver said, turning onto the heavily wooded Cerano Street. “That’s exactly what it is.”

Graver had been going to La Facezia for years, ever since the owner’s daughter had provided him with information on a protection racket in the Oriental restaurant business where her boyfriend’s parents owned several establishments. The restaurant was in an old stone building that sat on a neighborhood corner where three quiet, tree-shaded streets came to an intersection.

The restaurant had three faces which opened onto the intersection, and which accommodated an arbor-covered sidewalk with small bistro tables at which they served wine and coffee, but not meals, until one o’clock in the morning. Meals were served until ten-thirty, but only in the large interior dining room that was accessible through French doors that opened to each of the three faces of the arbored sidewalk. There were many other restaurants in this Left Bank-ish neighborhood of antique shops and bars near the museum district that was known as Houston’s “art community,” but only this one was so distinctive that when Graver sat down at one of its tables with a newspaper and a cup of coffee, he almost could forget he was in an American city. It was a family restaurant There was no music, only the low murmur of conversations and the clinking of tableware and glasses. The chic and trendy crowd went elsewhere, places where there was more “atmosphere.” Graver considered it a paradise, and since Dore had left he had gotten in the habit of eating here sometimes twice a week in the evenings when he didn’t want to be alone. He would bring a book, get a table near one of the doors that opened onto the sidewalk, and settle in for a two-hour dinner.

Now, though, he took a table on the sidewalk next to one of the stone walls covered in a felt of fig vine. This would afford them some measure of privacy, though only a few other tables were occupied. He ordered a cup of coffee from one of the owner’s several nieces who waited tables and settled back.