An Absence of Light

Chapter 40

Graver called Lara into his office and for the next how-she helped him work through the stack of paperwork that had been piling up on his desk. It was important that his office didn’t attract attention as a bottleneck to the paper flow. Whatever else happened, he didn’t want it to appear as though Tisler and Besom’s deaths were causing any disruption of routine.

At one thirty-five he realized that Lara had stopped writing and was sitting with her hands folded on a stack of files in her lap, staring at him. He looked up.

“I’ve got to have something to eat,” she said. “Really.”

He looked at nis watch and slumped back in his chair. His head was splitting, and he was starving. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess you’re hungry, huh?”

“Oh, just a little,” she said dryly, brushing the red-nailed fingers of one hand across her cleavage to pick up a wandering hair. “And you’ve got a headache, right?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, you’ve got that look. I’ll bet you didn’t have breakfast, either.”

He nodded again.

“Right,” she said, pushing her chair away from the desk. “What about it? What do you want to eat?”

He grinned at her. “Okay. If you’ll go get it, I’ll buy it What about… Las Hermanas?”

“Perfect,” she said, standing and giving a smart tug at the sides of her skirt to straighten it.

Graver reached back to the coatrack behind him and took his wallet out of his suit coat pocket “I’ll take a couple of beef enchiladas- ranchera-a taco, and a tamale.”

“A tamale?”

“Just one,” he said, dropping the twenty on the stack of folders beside her ballpoint pen.

“And beer,” she said.

“Good try. How about an RC?”

She smiled and snatched up the bill. “Be back in twenty minutes.’’

Graver watched her walk out of the office and was still looking at her hips when the telephone rang. She looked back, he waved to her that he would get it, and she was gone. He picked up the telephone.

“This is Graver.”

“This is your secure line, isn’t it?” Arnette asked.

“Yeah, it is.”

“We’ve salvaged a little of the audio from the conversation at the Transco Fountain,” she said. “Not much on it in the way of context. But what has come through, twice, is a name. Marcus, you ever heard of a guy named Panos Kalatis?” She spelled the name.

Graver wrote it down, but he didn’t have to think about it. “No.”

“Okay. Well, I have. I think you’d better come over here, baby. We’ve got to talk.”

Graver felt suddenly warm and queasy.

“I’m on the way,” he said. He stood and grabbed his coat and headed out the door. Lara was already gone. As he slipped on his coat, he pushed through the door beside the receptionist’s booth and told her to tell Lara that he would call in.