Riding down in the moaning elevator, he thought of how Besom’s death suddenly had galvanized the investigation. None of them, Neuman or Paula or himself, could imagine anything but the worst now. It still felt like he was living a bad dream when he thought of Burtell’s role. Even when he spoke to Ginette on the telephone earlier, he felt as if the expression on his face was unnatural. He simply found the whole distorted situation too bizarre to know how to behave. The hardest part now was trying to decide whether Dean was in danger, or whether he was the danger. The thought of it ate at Graver like an ulcer.
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.
