“You said he seemed surprised to hear of their deaths,” Paula said. “Maybe he wasn’t told everything. Maybe he was just supposed to try to find out how much you knew, if you knew anything, and when he learned of the deaths that caught him off guard, he panicked, and gave up Faeber’s name.”
“No.” Neuman was shaking his head. “People like Kalatis, this Strasser, they never would have let someone at an informant’s level get close enough to them and run the risk of him doing something like that They just wouldn’t do it.”
“Yeah, I guess I agree with that,” Graver said, “and that’s precisely the point that makes me want to believe him. His story is just too… clumsy. I can’t see them deliberately setting up something like that. I just can’t imagine what they would have thought they could gain by having him do what he’s done.”
“Let’s say he’s telling the truth,” Paula said. “Who did he overhear? Sheck? You think Bruce Sheck is the kind of guy who would be at a tony party like Faeber’s?”
None of them, of course, believed a “stud” who frequented the kinds of bars where he could have picked up the likes of Valerie Heath would also have been at a party in the polite company of a Tanglewood crowd like the one Last had described. They fell silent Graver ate his sandwich as Neuman studied his notes again, and Paula stared at the kitchen floor. Graver didn’t know what they were thinking, but he was increasingly aware that this thing was all over the place. What in the hell did he expect to accomplish? It would take an enormous task force and a lot of time to investigate this properly. He didn’t have either the task force or the time. And even as he was thinking this, Paula was ahead of him.
“Graver,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. She had turned around in her chair and was facing him, her bare feet slightly apart on the floor, her hands together in her lap pushing the skirt of her dress down between her thighs. It was a college kid’s posture. “Do you really think anyone in the police department other than Dean is involved in this? Is that what you’re trying to discover before you get someone else in on this?”
He put an olive in his mouth and bit into it, tasting the pimiento and the salty oil. He chewed it and then washed it down with a swallow of beer.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you know as well as I do this is… impossible.” She cut her eyes at Neuman, then back to Graver. “We’re not doing this justice. There ought to be people all over this Heath and Sheck operation. It’s enormous. There could be five or six Shecks and thirty Heaths and more than a hundred, maybe hundreds of people stealing information to sell to them. It’s incredible when you think about it I’m probably not even imagining on a big-enough scale. It gave me the creeps listening to that woman upstairs. These people… the information they have is spooky. And even spookier is imagining what they might be doing with it It’s just that… this is so big, for Christ’s sake.”
Graver nodded, chewing the last bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t sure how he was going to answer her, but he was sure of how he felt about it.
“Look,” he said, taking a sip of beer and wiping his hands on a paper towel he was using for a napkin. He pushed the nearly empty beer bottle back on the tile countertop and walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
“You’re right It is big. You’re right, we absolutely cannot handle it. Not in the long run. But we’re actually only in the discovery stages of this thing right now. Do I think someone else from the police department is involved in this? I don’t know, but I have growing doubts that men like Kalatis and Strasser and even Faeber, for that matter, would be involved if it was the kind of operation that didn’t go any higher up than Dean Burtell. An analyst is nothing to these men. They may need an analyst, they may use him, but I’m guessing that what they’re trying to get into requires a higher level of cooperation. Dean, for all his intellect and ability, is only a stepping-stone here. I’ve got to believe they’re aiming higher than what he can provide. He’s simply being used.”
He looked at Neuman and then back at Paula.
“So what do I do? I make the assumption that a lot of money is involved here because the big players don’t come to small games. There’s a big game somewhere right under our noses. Now who among the HPD’s top people am I going to trust with this? It’s not that there aren’t any good men and women here who can be trusted. Of course there are. It’s just that there may be same here who can’t be trusted, but I don’t know who the hell they are. So how do I know who to bring into it? Who do I involve? Should I risk this whole operation that you’ve just talked about, this enormous something, on a bet that it stops with Dean? Or on a bet that I’ll be able to pick the right people to reveal it to?” He paused. “I don’t think so.”
“What about the FBI? If it’s so big, they ought to be the ones going into this. They’ve got the resources.”
Graver looked at her. “All right, Paula, here’s an honest answer to that. You’re right, in a well-ordered world that would be the way to go.”
Then he explained to her what Arnette had pointed out to him about the conflicting jurisdictions of the CIA, DEA, and FBI regarding Kalatis.
“If I go to them at this point,” he said, “I might run the risk of having this melt right in front of my eyes. I shouldn’t have to explain to you about jurisdictional squabbles. Well, at this point-maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day-but at this point, I want to be able to call the shots on the leads we develop. I don’t want anything taken away from me. I don’t want to be co-opted or condescended to. I don’t want to be pushed into the background.” He paused. “I guess when it comes right down to it I’m not any better than the rest of them about wanting to protect my jurisdiction. But Tisler and Besom were my people. Dean is my responsibility. I don’t want to turn them over to anyone else.”
He paused again. “Besides, from what I see happening I think we have as good a shot at Kalatis as any of the agencies. And I don’t want to share this bastard with anybody. If we get our hands on him, I don’t want to see him bargained away from us for some other agenda set by people in Washington or Langley or Quantico.”
Neuman was looking down at his steno pad, doodling on it with his pen. Paula was staring at him, but she wasn’t saying anything. She simply looked at him, lost in thought He guessed that she was trying to work it out He guessed she didn’t know what she thought, and until she did she wasn’t going to push it.
“But,” Graver continued, “I don’t think we’re going to have much time to worry about it anyway. A lot of possibilities are about to come into play here. If Kalatis is moving on some kind of big project, those other agencies are going to be onto him anyway. I don’t think for a minute we’re in this thing by ourselves. If Kalatis suspects he’s about to be compromised-and he probably knows more than we’d like to think-then he’s going to speed up the program. Our window of opportunity here is very small and shrinking.”
“How small?” Neuman looked up.
Graver shrugged and shook his head. “I’m guessing… a couple of days maybe. Tisler and Besom’s deaths will hit the newspapers in the morning. If those news stories take the form of something speculative, if they hint at something dark behind the deaths, Kalatis is going to want to disappear. And then Sheck is going to miss Heath. I just don’t think we have that much time before this turns into something a hell of a lot different than we have now.”
Chapter 49
12:18 A.M.
“Any room facing the harbor,” the man said. He said it quickly, having put his bag down in front of the registration desk without taking his other arm from around the young woman he was holding close to him. The desk clerk noticed the guy’s thumb was rubbing the side of the woman’s bra under her blouse. Or it would have been rubbing her bra. He didn’t think she was wearing one.