“Hell no, I didn’t know.” Last was frowning. He didn’t know. “Dead when? A year ago or yesterday or what?”
Graver hesitated. It had been in the paper. It wouldn’t matter.
“He killed himself Sunday night.”
Last straightened his shoulders in surprise. He studied Graver, slowly bringing his glass to his mouth, sipping the wine to cover his uneasiness, keeping his eyes on Graver over the rim.
“Killed himself,” he said, suspicious of that explanation.
“That’s right.”
“Was he dirty?”
“I didn’t think so. But now you’re telling me he was.”
Graver could see Last thinking. He was going to hold on to it.
“Well, yeah, that’s what I heard.” He paused. “Maybe that’s why he killed himself.”
“Could be. What kind of information?”
“What?”
“What kind of information was he selling?”
Last was thinking again. He straightened up in his chair and leaned forward over the small table.
“You didn’t know any of this?” he asked.
“You seem surprised.” Graver was finding this a very slippery conversation. “Did you think you were telling me something I already knew? Did you think that was going to be helpful?”
“I thought I might be corroborating.” Last was indeed an old hand at this. He knew all the roles. And apparently he hadn’t believed Graver the previous evening when Graver had said there was no breach in CID security. “I don’t think I’m understanding what’s going on here,” he said.
He was decidedly uncomfortable. Which was fine with Graver. He was pretty damned uneasy himself.
“Is this it, then?” Graver asked. “Tisler was selling CID information, and that’s it?”
Last didn’t say anything. He sipped his wine and smoked his cigarette, once again slumped back in his chair. It was apparent he had been given good information, but maybe for the wrong reasons, which seemed to be Last’s concern. Graver wanted desperately to know what Last had stumbled onto, and he was trying to decide how to get information without giving away any more than he had to. As Graver sat looking at his only direct link to an independent source who obviously knew invaluable information, he began to wonder if he was up to the opportunity. He began to wonder if there weren’t extenuating circumstances.
Last straightened up in his chair, leaned his elbows on the table, and smiled uneasily.
“This is awkward, isn’t it,” he said. His voice was soft, soothing.
“Not for me,” Graver lied.
“Well, I’m not at all sure… I mean, I thought you already knew this.”
“You’ve said that, Victor.”
“Yeah.” Last looked away, his right hand on the stem of the wineglass as he turned the flat base of it on the surface of the table, the uncomfortable smile giving an enigmatic expression to his profile. “Okay, there’s somebody else, too, in CID.”
Graver waited. This was going to be telling.
Last looked back to Graver. “Guy named Besom.”
Graver thought so. Three men involved, as far as Graver knew, and Last had named the only two who were dead. Last was giving him leads to nowhere. The question was, did he realize that? Last was looking at him closely, hoping to learn something himself from Graver’s reaction.
Graver sipped his coffee, put down his cup, and leveled his eyes at Last.
“Before I react to that,” Graver said, “I want you to tell me, right now, if you have any other names. Don’t dribble them out to me, Victor. This is internal. I’m not inclined to joust with you over internal matters that affect the security of my Division.”
A pause as Last stared into Graver’s eyes and made quick mental calculations that Graver could only imagine.
“No. No other names,” he said. He was almost squinting at Graver, puzzled, maybe a little apprehensive. Graver had the feeling Last didn’t know what it was he had gotten into and was wondering if he had made a big mistake.
“Okay,” Graver said. “The man you are referring to is Ray Besom. He’s the supervisor of the Organized Crime Squad. He’s been on vacation, fishing down on the border, near Port Isabel. About noon today he was found dead.”
“Bloody hell…” Last swallowed; his face was rigid. It conveyed no self-assurance, no easy smile that connoted a smug knowledge that he was one step ahead of developing events. Graver guessed that not only was Last not ahead of developing events, but it was now beginning to dawn on him that maybe he was being used for reasons that had been hidden from him and which might have put him at great risk.
“Christ, and you people weren’t suspicious?”
“I didn’t say that. I only said we didn’t know we had a breach in security.” Graver paused and gave Last a moment to run over his options once again. He watched Last take another drink of wine and savor it, tasting it with the back of his tongue. “I don’t have much room to maneuver, here, Victor.”
Last looked at Graver as though he wanted to see if he could read in Graver’s eyes what he thought he was reading in the inflection of his voice.
“I see,” Last said, nodding a little. “Well, that’s pretty clear, isn’t it.”
Graver said nothing.
Last looked around at the other tables under the arbor. It wasn’t as if he was concerned about being overheard, rather it was more a gesture of restlessness. Again he picked up on the hips of the waitress and watched her bring coffee to a couple of girls who had just sat down at a table nearest the street. Watching the girl walk back into the deserted dining room, his prematurely old eyes followed her with the practiced imagination of a decadent When she was out of sight, he looked into his glass. He swirled the wine.
“Fellow I met in Veracruz,” Last said softly, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, “and at whose house I overheard the conversation, is Colin Faeber. He owns a computer company called DataPrint. I don’t know much about the company, I mean, what it does, compiles data for businesses looking to buy other businesses or something like that. I checked it out a bit, though, you know, to see if the guy had a heavy purse. He does.” He sipped his wine.
“But you don’t know the names of the men you overheard talking?”
“No, I don’t. And I don’t know of any way to find out without raising immediate suspicion. I mean, I can’t just ask Faeber outright, can I. And I didn’t see them well enough to make some circumlocutious inquiry. Something tells me I’d be a damn fool to do that.”
“What about the names? Where’d you get Tisler and Besom’s names?”
Last nodded. He knew he was going to have to explain that now.
“Both were mentioned by the peeping Tom.” He looked at Graver and saw the disgust on his face. “Well, shit, you can’t really blame me for trying to string it out, can you?”
“Then he did mention the CID?”
“No. When he mentioned the names I made a point to remember them, but I only had a phonetic knowledge. Tisler. Besom. Those are not common names. But of course a conversation like that, I suspected the police department. So I called information at police headquarters and asked to speak to them-then your CID receptionist answered, and I hung up.”