Mexico City, I got an invitation to attend a party at their house in Houston.”
Last took another drink of beer, and while he was savoring it, his pale eyes stayed on Graver. He was getting to the point of whatever it was.
“At the party, I met two other couples who interested me. One fellow owned an art gallery, and another was a businessman. Owned a huge business of a certain kind. I know nothing about this kind of business-it’s an innocuous business-so I was just asking questions and this fellow grew very wary, suddenly evasive with his answers. Now this was curious to me because this was like asking questions of a grocer. I mean, it was an innocuous occupation.”
Last smoked his cigarette.
“Now, before I go any further than this, let me ask you something.”
Graver nodded.
“Have you had any inkling”-Last clenched his teeth and softly sucked air through them-”any inkling of police corruption?” He held up his hand with the cigarette. “On the detective level, I mean.”
Graver felt his stomach tighten. “In what division?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know I wouldn’t tell you something like that. Victor.”
Last nodded understandingly. “Yeah, I know.” He smoked his cigarette and tapped the amber bottle with one of his fingers. He made a face, one of indecision, not knowing what to do.
“Do you know something?” Graver asked.
“No,” Last said quickly. “No, I don’t. It’s only a suspicion at something I overheard. I didn’t understand what I was hearing and this was one of the possibilities. There are other possibilities.”
“And where did you overhear this something?”
“Here in Houston. At a tony party about three months ago.”
“Three months?”
“I had distractions,” Last said, explaining his delay in bringing this to Graver. “But this kept… hanging back there.” He tapped himself on the side of the head. “It was one of those things that I thought if I mentioned to you, you’d know right off if it meant anything or not.”
“But you haven’t told me anything.”
“No, but I asked you about a subject, and it doesn’t seem to ring a bell. I think I was wrong.”
Last suddenly was uncharacteristically ill at ease. His aplomb was a distinguishing feature. It was what made him a good con artist and a good informant. He was one of those men who accepted dares with an easygoing smile and did outrageous things with a sophisticated fearlessness that made good stories for other people to tell years afterward. But just now he was not feeling very sure of himself.
He began drinking his beer with the clear intent of getting it all down so he could leave. Graver guessed that Last was just now realizing he had miscalculated, that whatever he had stumbled into wasn’t what he had thought it was.
Down on the wharves a gantry crane started up, whining like something hurt, moving cargo off the docks.
“Well, I apologize, Graver,” Last said. “Getting you out and all. Really sorry… I, uh, must’ve”-he smiled unsteadily-”really been off course here.”
“Look,” Graver said, “how can I get in touch with you? Are you living in Houston now or still in Mexico?”
“Houston,” Last said, putting his cigarette in his mouth as he reached inside his coat pocket for a pen and a small notepad. “More or less,” he added cryptically. Squinting around the smoke of his cigarette, he jotted something on the paper and ripped it off the pad. He handed it to Graver. “You’ll most likely get a woman. Her name is Carney.” He spelled it “She’ll always know how to get in touch with me.”
Graver didn’t ask any questions about Carney. He nodded.
“Let me think about this,” he said. “If you have any other thoughts, get in touch with me.”
Last finished the beer and reached for his wallet inside his coat pocket.
“No,” Graver said. “I’d rather you owe me.”
“Ah.” Last nodded once, his roguish smile returning. “Clever police psychology.” He put out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Well, Graver, despite the misfire it was good to see you. If ever you need me, call Carney.”
He stood and reached over, and they shook hands.
“I’m glad you called, Victor,” Graver said. “Take care of yourself.”
“Good-bye, Graver.” Last turned and walked back across the dance floor through the pastel patches of colored lights. In a moment he was opening the back door of the shabby little tavern and was gone.
Graver stood too and took out his wallet and got enough money for the drinks and a good tip for the crooked waiter and put it on the table under Last’s empty beer bottle. Taking one final look around at the doleful patrons of La Cita, he walked across the dance floor, into the rancid tavern, and out the front door into the barrio night. The narrow little street was empty, just as it had been when he arrived. Victor Last was nowhere in sight.
MONDAY
Chapter 10
The Second Day
When the radio alarm went off, Graver opened his eyes to a muted gray light. Without even moving, he could tell that the muscles in his neck and shoulders were drawn into knots.
After getting home late, Graver had sat up in bed for another hour trying to make notes for the next morning’s meeting. Though he found it hard to concentrate, he stayed with it until weariness and an aching back forced him to put aside his pencil and pad and turn out the light Then he had lain awake until the early hours of the morning thinking about Last He replayed their conversation, picked at every word Last had spoken, and wondered at his having appeared out of nowhere. Graver cautioned himself. This was no time to start believing in serendipity. Eventually he slipped into a restless sleep and the previous twelve hours melted into dreams of absurdity.
When he rolled over to get up, he found the legal pad and pencil among the rumpled sheets and threw them onto the floor at the foot of the bed. Resisting the temptation to fall back onto the pillow, he swung his legs over the side and sat there a moment, feeling heavy-headed and stiff. Then he stood slowly and walked into the bathroom, stepped into the shower, and turned on the cold water.
After bathing and shaving, he dressed and gathered up the dirty clothes that he had piled on the settee near the windows. After dropping off the clothes at the laundry, he stopped by a neighborhood bakery and bought a cinnamon roll, a small coffee, and a newspaper. The Kashmere Gardens shooting did make the headlines. The gunman holding the hostage had been killed in a barrage of gunfire after he shot his hostage on the small stoop of the garage apartment.
Graver quickly searched the rest of the paper, but there was no mention of Arthur Tisler’s death. Not a news item. He tossed the newspaper into a trash can and finished the cinnamon roll and coffee on the way downtown.
The Criminal Intelligence Division was located on the top floor of a doleful, three-story building at the back of the police headquarters compound on the northwestern edge of downtown. Separated from the architectural splendors of Houston’s building-boom years by the thundering concrete maze of ramps, piers, girders, and abutments of the Gulf Freeway, the homely, cement building had the peculiar distinction of having its single front door face outward from the back of the police compound rather than inward as did the other buildings. As a result, its ground floor had a marvelous view of the underbelly of the expressway where Buffalo Bayou screwed its way under the concrete superstructure, and the sticky weeds of summer grew out of control.
Graver parked in a small parking lot across the alley-like driveway that circled the building, and which was surrounded by a jungle of weeds that grew higher than his head and crowded right up to the lot’s margins. He got out of the car, locked the door, and inhaled the musty odors that emanated from the oozing and fetid cocoa waters of the bayou fifty yards away on the other side of the weedy embankment.
Lara Casares was always the first person in the office every morning. Always. She had been Graver’s
