Graver hung up and slumped back in his chair. He was limp with exhaustion. The day had begun around seven o’clock when he went to Arnette’s even before going to the office and viewed the surveillance photographs Boyd had taken of Burtell meeting with the Unknown at the Transco Fountain the night before… just a little over twenty- four hours from right now. Then around two o’clock in the afternoon he was back at Arnette’s reading the Yosef Raviv dossier after Arnette had picked up Kalatis’s name on the fountain interview recording. By four o’clock he was back at the office and Paula had turned up Colin Faeber’s name on the board of Gulf-stream Bank and an hour later Neuman returned to the office with the news that Faeber’s DataPrint was owned by Concordia International Investments, a subsidiary of Strasser Industries. Around eight-thirty in the evening Graver and Neuman had picked up Valerie Heath and around twelve-thirty Burtell was blown to bits in South Shore Harbor. And now the latest developments of the last few hours.
This had been one of the fastest-breaking investigations he had ever experienced, especially one of such complexity, all of which was complicated by the fact that he was trying to keep it off the books. He needed very badly to sit down and bring his journal up to date, but the thought of doing that now seemed an impossibility to him.
What he really wanted was a glass of wine, a rich, fruity Merlot that would almost be a meal in itself, but he knew if he did that his energy level would plummet right to the bottom.
The telephone rang. Startled, he snatched it off the receiver almost before it stopped ringing.
“This is Graver.”
“It’s Victor. Listen to me.” His voice hushed and quick. “I’ve only a moment We’ve got to meet in the morning, late morning. You’re not going to believe what I’ve got for you, my friend.”
“Give me a clue, Victor,” Graver said.
“I’m going to deliver Faeber’s ass.”
In the euphoria about Neuman’s discovery and then the immediate strain of confronting Ginette Burtell, Graver had forgotten about Colin Faeber, the only living direct link to Kalatis. Now here was Victor Last offering to “deliver Faeber’s ass.”
“What do you mean by that, Victor? Are you speaking physically or judicially?”
“Both, for Christ’s sake! What does it matter?”
“When do you want to meet?”
“Ten o’clock. I can’t get there before then.”
“Get where?”
“Oh, that Italian place of yours. Good coffee.”
The line went dead.
Shit! Graver buried his face in his hands, his elbows on the top of his desk. He seriously needed time to think. It was moving too fast, all of it, and he didn’t like the feeling of… hurtling.
“Graver.”
He turned around and saw Lara standing in the door.
“She’s sleeping. Why don’t you take time for a glass of wine?”
Chapter 60
They sat side by side on the sofa, their heads resting on the cushioned back, their shoes off, their feet propped on the ottoman with its tapestry picture of a Tuscan hillside.
“I needed this,” he said. “I appreciate your thinking of it.”
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I probably did this as much for me as for you. I’m drained. This has been hard, the whole ordeal, but these last few hours with Ginny have been… so painful. It’s… You just naturally put yourself in her place. I feel so terrible for her, but there’s nothing, really, that I can do.” Lara sipped from her glass. “This is really torment for her.”
“You were good with her,” Graver said. “I’m grateful to you for how you’ve handled it She needed the attention, the consolation.”
“Well, anyway, how are you holding up?” she asked.
“I’m doing okay,” he said evasively. “Much better right this minute than… in a long time.”
She moved a bare foot over to his crossed feet and rubbed the top of it against the arch of his socked foot The gesture was the kind of small thing that can mean so much at just the right moment Neither of them said anything for a while. Graver could have kissed her just for these few moments, even if they proved not to last very long. He was thankful for this brief shared tranquility, for the companionship in silence, for the shared Merlot, and, even if their thoughts were miles apart, for her willingness to sit quietly with him and not feel that she had to keep up a conversation. He liked seeing her out of her dress clothes, jean-clad legs and shoeless feet beside his on the ottoman. He felt the uniquely human comfort of being with another person who cared whether or not you were tired or worried or simply wanted some company.
“What do you think about all this?” he asked, turning to look at her.
She did not answer immediately, and he watched her profile framed in her abundance of chestnut hair casually pulled back, her eyes fixed on something across the room as she thought.
“I think… that this is a pretty cruel business,” she said. She looked at him. “I think it’s complicated, and it’s addictive, and it’s cruel.”
“Addictive?”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t really realize it myself until all this happened. There’s this race to uncover layers and layers of secrets. You don’t know where it’s taking you, but you like the ride. It’s challenging. There’s risk. Like gambling. You have to put up something, a stake, to be able to play the game. And it’s voyeuristic. You get to look at people from the back of a mirror. Or through cracks in the walls.”
“You don’t like that part of it The spying.”
“Well, that’s refreshing,” she said.
“What?”
“Calling it what it is instead of ‘a collection effort’ or ‘strategic intelligence’ or any of those other doublespeak terms.”
She took a sip of her Merlot, and he watched her, concentrating on the shape of her lips on the rim of the glass, the way the dark wine entered her mouth.
“There’s something… maybe there’s something a little hypocritical about it Or something like that I don’t quite know how to talk about it,” she said.
She seemed suddenly embarrassed. The first time Graver had ever seen that in her face. She looked down at her glass.
“It’s not a simple business,” he said, not wanting her to feel awkward. That hadn’t been his intention in asking her.
“I didn’t like it that you lied to Ginny Burtell,” she said suddenly. “That was… I don’t know… very hard to watch.”
“It was hard to do,” he said.
She turned and looked at him. “Was it?”
He felt himself flush.
“I just didn’t like seeing it,” she went on. “I didn’t like… seeing how easily it came to you.”
For a moment he couldn’t swallow. What she had just said, softly, almost kindly, was an indictment, and he was all the more embarrassed because, perhaps, it had come easily-or at least maybe it hadn’t been as difficult as it should have been.
“Aren’t you going to tell her at all?” she asked.
“Lara, I can’t.”
She took a deep breath and looked into her wine again.
“God, it’s a terrible thing to see this at work,” she said. “I guess… it’s always been just paperwork to me before. I should have known better, that this kind of… messiness lay behind it all. It was stupid of me not to have thought about it.”
