An Absence of Light

Chapter 73

On the spur of the moment Graver decided not to take Eddie Redden back to his house in Seabrook for questioning. Instead he sat him down in the center of the empty hangar, his hands handcuffed behind his back, his legs crossed yoga fashion. He placed him so that he faced the hangar’s sliding doors that were pulled wide open so that he had a good view of his precious Pilatus PC-12 fifty feet away. Graver stood just to the side of the plane so that Redden just about had to look at both of them when he spoke to Graver. The sheet metal hangar was at its maximum heat level, having soaked up the coastal sun all day long. Even though the huge doors were wide open, the occasional breeze that slipped in was only a different way of feeling the heat, and caused the hangar to function very much like a convection oven.

Everyone removed their coats and hung them wherever they could find a place, on a nail or over the handle of an hydraulic jack, or on the hasp of a door latch. The empty hangar magnified their voices so that no one really had to talk above a conversational tone to be heard. Outside, the droning of cicadas and grasshoppers was interrupted occasionally by an airplane approaching or taking off. And occasionally, too, when there was a pause in the talk, you could hear the sheet metal walls of the hangar crackling and popping as they expanded in the heat.

Eddie Redden was harder to deal with than Richard Ledet For one thing, he was not the sort of man who let his imagination play tricks on him. He was long on common sense. You didn’t convince him of anything by trying to work on his anxieties-he didn’t have any. He seemed to face life with an unadorned philosophy of acceptance, a kind of West Texas stoicism that had no use for breast-beating and wailing. Sometimes life pissed on you, and sometimes it didn’t. When it did, you were unlucky. When it didn’t, you were lucky. There wasn’t anything you could do about it one way or the other. That could have been his credo. And in light of that, he had become adept at making the best of a bad situation. Life might piss on Eddie Redden, but he didn’t moan about it. What he did was, he took a long soapy shower during which he gave some serious thought to how to stay the hell out of the way next time.

And that’s what he was doing now, sitting cross-legged like an Indian-probably the first time he had done that since he was fifteen-trying to figure out how not to get pissed on any more than he already had.

Graver had laid it all out as methodically and dispassionately as he could, guessing that Redden would appreciate a right-to-the-bone explanation of his situation. Graver stated the facts like an accountant. The porno film with the little girls, the cocaine, the stolen ordnance, his employment by Kalatis, the weekly money jumps to the cruisers in the Gulf-Graver had the maps for documentation-the monthly money jumps to points south… for starters… enough right there to assure Redden that when he had taxied up to the hangar a few minutes ago he probably had piloted an airplane for the last time in his life.

Now Redden was thinking it over, breathing heavily-it wasn’t easy to sit on a hot concrete floor with your legs crossed and your arms cuffed behind you while the too-tight waist of your blue jeans cut into your beer-induced and doughy overhang. He was sweating profusely, so much so that dribbles of it rolled down his forehead and clung to his ginger eyebrows like drops of salty rain. He had sweated through his guayabera which clung to his back and stomach, and the strain of his position was giving him something like a charley horse in his side, causing him to tilt slightly to try to ease it.

Redden was grunting softly with each breath. He looked up at his Pilatus PC-12. He shook his head. He grinned a little.

“Hey, Ricky,” he said, speaking to Ledet who was sitting directly behind him in the same position, but out of his sight “You cut a deal with these boys, didja?”

Neuman shook his head at Ledet.

When he didn’t answer Redden grinned and said, “Shee-it.”

Since they had walked into the hangar no one had said a word except Graver and Redden.

“Well,” Redden said, shifting on his buttocks, trying to relieve the catch in his side. Sweat dripped off the end of his nose onto the concrete floor where it soaked up immediately. “The thing about cutting a deal is… the thing about this quid pro crow is… that I got to watch my back for the rest of my life.”

“That’s right,” Graver said, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “But if you don’t want to bother with that you can just spend the rest of your life in a cage.”

Redden snorted. “Well, shit, we know where this is going, don’t we? If I can help it I’m not about to spend the rest of my life in a cage.” He grunted. “You sure it’s really necessary to keep me cuffed up like this? Goddamn.”

Graver stepped over in front of him and squatted down. He looked at him. “You smoke?”

Redden frowned. “Yeah, I smoke.”

“Want a cigarette?”

“Yeah, I want a cigarette.”

Graver looked at Neuman who went over to Ledet and took his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, along with the disposable lighter.

“Take off one cuff,” Graver said to Neuman who got the key from Murray and unlocked one cuff. As he did, Remberto loudly cocked the slide on his Sig-Sauer.

Redden flinched and then slowly turned his head toward the sound as he took the cigarette from Neuman and lit it He looked at Remberto.

“You guys sure don’t act like the law,” he said. He didn’t try to get up, but stretched his waist and shoulders, twisting this way and that.

“Okay,” Graver said, still squatting in front of Redden, “tell me what’s supposed to be happening tonight.”

Redden was not given to dramatics, but his long pause before responding to Graver’s question clearly reflected the pressure he was feeling from what he was about to do. It seemed that no one talked about Kalatis without behaving as though they were about to open the doors of hell. You just didn’t do it unless you had no other choice.

“Kalatis has been working on some kind of a big business deal,” Redden began. “I don’t know anything about what the negotiations are over-drugs or information or arms, I just don’t know-but the thing’s going to be wrapped up tonight.” He pulled on his cigarette. “Now, when something like this happens, these people he’s dealing with are brought in to see Kalatis for the deal-maker meet They bring their last cash payment with them. And usually, and this is just a peculiarity with the Greek, usually all this happens after midnight, early hours of the morning. That’s just the way he likes to do it.

“The way it works is, these people, if they’re from out of town, are put up in a hotel in Houston, and Kalatis’s people pick them up and take them to whatever airstrip we’re using.”

“Do you always use the same ones?”

“Yeah”-Redden nodded-”all of them. On a kind of rotating basis, nothing regular. He keeps it random. But we’ll use most of them sooner or later, West, Southwest, Clover Field, here, Gulf, Andrau, Hull, Ellington, Hobby, Intercontinental, Hooks, Midwest, Weiser-all of them.

“Anyway, these people and their cash are transported by Kalatis’s security people from their hotel to the airport They get in, the money’s loaded, and we take off. Now, all these people think we’re going to Mexico, somewhere down in there. But what we do is we take a two-hour diversionary. We keep them occupied in the cabin so they don’t hear transmissions or see anything, even though it’s at night, then we land at Kalatis’s place if we’re in a ‘tooner-”

“A ‘tooner?”

“Plane with pontoons-or we land at a little transfer strip, transfer to a ‘tooner, and take it in.”

“But you always go to Kalatis’s in a plane with pontoons.”

Redden gave a single nod. “Got to. He won’t let that kind of stuff come in by car. Besides, it’s part of the scam, them thinking they’re in Mexico.”

“Is there just one transfer strip or several?”

“One, just one. A place called Las Copas.”

“But tonight is different?” Graver asked.

“Yeah, tonight is different,” Redden said, nodding hugely, taking one last drag off the cigarette which he had smoked down to the filter. He mashed it out on the concrete beside him. He used the thumb of his right hand to squeegee the sweat off his forehead, the one loose handcuff making a jangling sound like Paula’s bracelets.

“When there’s several in one night like this, they all take off from the same airport That way Kalatis’s security people have to check out only one hangar. The timing is worked out so that the clients arrive one hour apart so there’s plenty of time in between connections. None of the clients even know that Kalatis has met with anyone else that night. That’s the way he does it.”

Redden rocked on his buttocks again. “This is a hell of a place to sit down,” he said. He shot a look of disgust at Remberto. “Shit. Okay.” He used his thumb on his sweating forehead again. “Tonight all three are coming in at different airstrips.”

“Which ones?”

“Wade from Andrau. Maricio from Clover. I’m leaving from Hobby.”

“And this will be after midnight?”

“Nope, not this time,” Redden corrected. “That’s another thing that’s changed. First client will be here at ten-fifteen. Second one at eleven thirty-five. Third one, twelve fifty-five.”

“That’s”-Graver paused to calculate-”an hour and twenty minutes between each client arriving here.”

“That’s right.”

“Why the change?”

Redden stared at the concrete in front of him for a moment, and then looked up at Graver.

“Well, actually, to tell you the truth,” he said, “we were just a little worried about that point ourselves.”

“We?”

“Me and Wade and Maricio… the three pilots. We’ve, uh, been watching all this, and it looks to us like Kalatis may be going to drop out of sight after tonight.”

“Why do you think that?”

“There’s a guy name of Sheck who used to fly with us,” Redden said. “He’s been with Kalatis a lot longer than the rest of us, and we kind of get together with him pretty regular and talk about Kalatis. Ol’ Sheck’s got some pretty good insights into the guy. He still works for Kalatis on some kind of secret shit they got going. Sheck seems to think he’s winding down a lot of his operations here and that he’s getting ready to do some kind of super scam and then just disappear. After these changes that have been developing today-first one thing, then another-me and the boys are getting a little skittish. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Sheck for the last four or five hours to run these last developments by him, but I can’t find him.”

“Did you read the paper this morning?”

Redden looked at Graver. “Yeah.”

“Bruce Sheck blew up in one of those boats in South Shore Marina.”

Redden blanched and his facial muscles went slack. “Blew up?”

“You know Colin Faeber?”

“Yeah.”

“He was hit this afternoon.”

“‘Hit? Killed?”

“Gilbert Hormann?”

Redden nodded, already seeing it coming.

“He was hit last night.”

Redden swallowed. His eyes looked like they would never blink again. He swallowed again.

“And three of my intelligence officers who were working on the case,” Graver added without explanation.

Redden’s stare dropped to the tarmac outside the doors of the hangar. “Sheck was goddamned right… the Greek’s cutting himself loose. He’s going to run.”

“And where do you think his pilots fall into this scheme of things, Eddie? You think he’s just going to let you go-with all you know about him?”

“Son… of… a… bitch.” Redden seemed almost catatonic.

“This might have been your last day of flying anyway,” Graver said.

Redden said nothing. He just stared at the tarmac that was dancing in the heat waves beyond his plane.