“Spell it out for me,” Graver said impatiently.
“When Eddie called me he said something big was up with Kalatis. He, Eddie, needed me for a long-distance run.”
“As copilot.”
“Right. But I copiloted on other kinds of things, too, not just cash runs. Kalatis has people brought to his place, people he does business with. He always wants copilots on those.”
“What people?”
“Eddie said they’re ‘clients,’ people the Greek needs to talk to. I’m not sure about what kind of dealings. But I do know they’re more cash customers of some sort, having to do with either the information business or the dope business.”
“Then you think you’re here for taxiing services, to take people to Kalatis for meetings?”
“Yeah. My understanding is tonight’s going to be hectic. I think all the pilots are on duty tonight.”
This was what Graver wanted to hear. He wanted to hear something about Kalatis. He wanted to hear the details of a plan of which Kalatis was an integral, necessary participant.
“Each pilot has a copilot as well?” he asked.
“Right. There’re six of us.”
“Three aircraft.”
“Right. We’ve done something like this before, when he was closing deals, a big program with everything coming together in one tight time frame. All three planes, carrying people, money, dope. That’s kind of Kalatis’s strong suit Organization. These big operations, men and schedules coordinated real close, planes and boats on the move, everything clicking like clockwork. And that’s the way it happens too”-he snapped his fingers in a quick, measured cadence, snap, snap, snap, snap-”just like that.”
“All of you taking people and money down to Mexico, to Kalatis’s place.”
“To Kalatis’s place, yeah,” Ledet confirmed, but his eyes slid away from Graver as he said it.
Graver and Neuman exchanged looks.
“You realize,” Graver reminded Ledet, “that the point of all this is still the first thing I said to you. I want to know how to get to Kalatis.”
Ledet nodded and dragged on his cigarette. His hands were resting on the rattan next to the ashtray. The one holding the cigarette was trembling. He seemed to be coming to some crucial decision, a personal Rubicon.
“I want to be in one of those special wings of a maximum security prison,” Ledet said abruptly. “Where they put you if they think your life’s in danger in there. I’m not saying anything about where Kalatis lives without that I’ll tell you that right now. I don’t care how much you threaten me with this lifer shit.”
Ledet was looking at Graver now, straight at him, his face pinched with the seriousness of his situation.
“This guy’s not just any bad-ass out there,” Ledet said. “He’s quiet and methodical and never forgets anything anybody ever did to him. If you wrong him, he’ll get you.” He smoked his cigarette. “The man’s got incredible reach. You could be half a world away from him and then wake up some night and realize he’s got you by the balls… squeezing. I’d never tell you if I thought he’d outlive my prison sentence.”
“Okay,” Graver said. “It’s a deal. The special section of maximum security.”
He had no authority to say that. He wasn’t even the right person to be discussing it Nor did Ledet’s almost pitiful, animal fear move him in the least He just wanted Kalatis and would have agreed to any absurdity, would have promised this man any lie, to get him.
Ledet studied him a moment as if the readiness with which Graver had agreed had made him suspicious. He seemed to suspect that promised easy time was going to be a lot like promised easy money-it never was. But the weight around his eyes also betrayed his realization that he really didn’t have much of a choice anyway.
“Kalatis doesn’t live in Mexico,” Ledet said. “Every time we take somebody to him we do a two-hour decoy flight Tell them we’re headed to Mexico when in fact we’re actually riding around out in the Gulf or cruising down the coast to Florida. Kalatis’s place is in Galveston.”
“Galveston?” Graver was incredulous.
Ledet nodded. “Yeah. About thirty miles as the crow flies”-he tapped the top of the table with his middle finger-”from right here.”
Chapter 71
2:40 P.M.
Graver leaned against a pillar of the porch and stared out across the bay, watching two freighters moving dead into Pelican Spit Soon they would tack sharply to the southeast and steam between the peninsula of Port Bolivar and the eastern tip of Galveston Island and head out into the open Gulf. The hazy heat of late June made it seem as though he was seeing them through a mirage or a daydream, ghost ships, sea-bound for ports unknown.
The diversion lasted less than a minute, and then Neuman was coming out the battered screen door that Ledet had bashed through.
Graver turned. “He can’t go anywhere?”
Neuman shook his head. “No.” He squinted out to the bright haze over the bay. “Now what?”
Graver looked at his watch. He stepped away from the edge of the porch and sat down in a rattan armchair. Both he and Neuman had shed their coats and rolled up their sleeves, and Graver’s gun, hugging his waist, had rubbed a raw spot on his side that was beginning to itch because of the sweat He wasn’t used to wearing the Sig-Sauer that much. It was too big to be comfortable.
“We’ve got enough evidence,” he said, watching the two ships. They were like the hour and minute hands of a clock, you could see that they were moving, but you couldn’t see them doing it “But I don’t think we’ve got enough time.”
Before Neuman could say anything, Graver went on. He spoke quickly, thinking out loud, his mind almost tripping over itself as he tried to work out the best course of action.
“Enough evidence to justify a tactical intervention, to go out to Kalatis’s and sweep up everything and everybody, and let it all get sorted out in the days and weeks to follow. I don’t have any doubt that what we have in the computers from Tisler and Burtell will justify it That and all the other crap, what we know, what we can substantiate, even keeping Arnette out of it… we have more than enough, enough even to spin this off into a dozen other directions and investigations.
“But,” he said, wiping his sweaty forehead on the shoulder of his shirt, “there’s not enough time to present all of this in the way it needs to be presented to convince the people who have to be convinced in order to get the raid authorized. And then there’s the matter of the tactical preparation. If this thing isn’t planned right…”
“If Kalatis is moving that kind of money,” Neuman said, “he’s going to have a lot of firepower. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to move around underprotected.”
“No, you’re right,” Graver agreed. “And it’s going to take time to prepare a tactical action against something like that It’s probably even irresponsible of me to ask our tactical people to try an operation on this scale on only four or five hours notice. To do it right, it ought to involve boats, helicopters, cars”-he shook his head-”who knows how many men.”
“And we don’t have any idea of the layout at Kalatis’s place, do we?”
“No, we don’t,” Graver said. “It would be a nightmare. Frankly, I doubt if the tactical commanders would even consider it under the circumstances.”
He stood impatiently and shifted the gun at his waist. “Shit,” he said, and leaned again on the porch post The freighters were at another angle now, headed into the strait.
The telephone in the house rang, and Graver whirled around and burst past the broken screen door, through the kitchen and into the main room where Ledet sat bound on the floor, looking at the telephone on the rattan table as though it were a cobra.
“If this is Redden… be careful,” Graver said, putting his hand on the telephone. “If you screw this up, by God, I promise you I’ll make sure you die of old age in a cage.”
Ledet looked as if he were being confronted by Satan. The telephone kept ringing. Ledet nodded, and Neuman was on his knees unlocking Ledet’s handcuffs. Then Neuman stood and rushed back to the bedroom as Graver took the telephone off the rattan table and put it on the floor with Ledet.