Nothing to Hide drm-3

by J. Mark Bertrand

  What have I gotten myself into?

  Once the tire is changed, I back the car around carefully, not wanting to get stuck again. I edge my way up the embankment, then accelerate onto the road. At the first break in the median, I swing around to head east, picking up speed as I pass the site of my near-death experience. The engine whines.

  The apartment tower looms on my right again. In the next parking lot I see a black Hummer sitting with its lights switched off.

  Against my better judgment I hit the brake and pull in. I roll up behind the Hummer with my high beams on. With my gun drawn I get out to investigate. Before I can advance more than a few steps, the driver’s door pops open. Two empty hands poke into the light.

  “I’m not armed,” a familiar voice calls. “I’m coming out now.”

  He slides his feet down onto the blacktop, lifting his hands high. My muzzle is trained on the center of his chest, but he comes toward me, smiling.

  “That was a pretty close call,” he says. “I wasn’t sure what to do exactly. Four to one isn’t great odds, not in the real world, and I didn’t know if you were in any condition to help after they ran you off the road.”

  “Stop right there.”

  He stops. He raises his hands a little higher, showing off.

  “Are you gonna shoot me, March, or say thank you? ’Cause I’m pretty sure I just saved your life back there.”

  I lower my gun, then put it away. He extends his hand for me to shake.

  “Thank you, Jeff,” I say. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think you’d better start explaining.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I don’t know where I expected Jeff to take me.

  Not here.

  Not to a run-down auto repair lot wrapped in eight-foot hurricane fence and topped with concertina wire, where a line of rusted beaters sit rotting in the heat, and hand-painted signage on the side of the garage is sun-faded and semiliterate.

  This is his birthright, he says, the sum total of his inheritance.

  “And don’t get your hopes up, seeing it’s a car repair joint. It hasn’t been open for years.” The damage to my car will have to be fixed elsewhere.

  He gets out to unlock the chain threaded through the gate, reattaching the padlocks once I’ve driven onto the lot. I swing the car into a space near the garage entrance, but that’s not what Jeff has in mind. He directs me around back, where a channel of gravel runs between the back of the building and another row of dismembered Detroit muscle cars. When I switch off the engine, we’re sitting in darkness.

  “I don’t want to be visible from the road,” he says. “Come on.”

  The back entry has three dead bolts, shiny in the light of Jeff’s key ring LED. Newly installed, from the look of them. Judging from the outside, I wouldn’t have thought there was much in here to secure.

  He tells me to wait just over the threshold while he flicks on shop lights strung throughout the garage. The windows all seem to be blacked out for privacy. Inside, a small corner of the space has been reclaimed from the chaos of scattered tools and abandoned auto parts, all of it covered in a film of old grease, to make room for an Army surplus cot, some folding tables-one for dining, the other for cooking-and a desktop computer rigged to surveillance cameras with a view of the property outside.

  “You don’t live here,” I say.

  “If you can call it living.”

  There’s a restroom door with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign still affixed to it, a sink, a washing machine, and some drying lines hung with Jeff’s clothes. There’s even an ironing board and iron set up on the edge of a gaping hole in the concrete floor where a lift must once have been installed. The iron gets to me for some reason and I feel pity for the young man who’s just saved my life. Despite an oscillating fan at the foot of the cot, the whole garage is infernally hot.

  “It’s my base of operations,” he says, sounding a little embarrassed.

  “Makes sense.”

  It doesn’t, but I feel bad for having shamed him with my initial reaction. On the table, there’s an interesting mix of books and magazines. Back issues of Skeptic and Combat Handguns mixed together. A fat, dog-eared paperback whose title declares You Are Being Lied To.

  “I know it looks strange, but everything I need is here. And compared to where I was-over there-this is luxurious, believe me. To you, this looks like roughing it. But you’ve never lived off the grid. Which is fine. It makes you easy to find.” He drags over an incongruous-looking wooden dining room chair for me to sit in. “Me, I can’t afford to be easy to find. Not anymore.”

  I ease myself down, making sure the chair can take my weight. Absentmindedly I take up another of his books and flip through its pages. The Foxhole Atheist, it’s called, the content divided into daily readings like one of Charlotte’s devotional books.

  “And why is that?” I ask.

  “Well,” he says, “I used to have something for you, something I was supposed to give you. .”

  I put the book down. “To give me?”

  “But I don’t have it anymore because they found where I lived and they took it. If I still had it, this would have been a whole lot easier.”

  “What was it?”

  He draws a rectangle in the air with his fingertip. “An envelope. I can’t tell you what was in there, but it was thick. I never looked because he told me not to. My job was just to hand it over in the event that anything happened.”

  “Did something happen?”

  His eyes widen. “Of course. And I should have given that envelope to you right then and there. But under the circumstances, I didn’t know what to do. It was you people who killed him. I wasn’t sure who could be trusted. That’s why I waited, and as it turned out, I waited too long.”

  “You’re talking about Andrew Nesbitt?” I ask.

  He nods. “Mr. Nesbitt. He said you’d know what to do with the contents of the envelope. He said you were one of the good guys. I should have just done what he told me, but-”

  “How did you know him?”

  “I worked for him.”

  “So all those nights at the shooting range. .?”

  “Partly I was trying to get a read on you. Partly I was looking for an opening. It’s not like I could’ve just walked up and told you any of this. You would’ve thought I was crazy. Without that envelope I figured I had to bide my time.”

  “Until tonight.”

  He smiles. “I had an idea something like this would happen.”

  The only thing he’d tell me back in the parking lot was this: the men in the Hummer weren’t out to kill me. They would if they had to, but the mission was more likely a snatch. If all had gone according to plan, I’d have been run off the road, pulled from the wreckage, and whisked away to an undisclosed location. The Hummers, stolen earlier in the day for one use, would be recovered far away, their interiors scrubbed clean. And as for me, once they’d found out everything I knew, then a decision would be made as to my final disposition. Based on the fact that I’d snuffed one of their number, chances are my body would never have been found. These guys think nothing of killing cops, he tells me, something I know already firsthand. They think nothing of killing anyone.

  “But who are they?”

  “I wish I could tell you.”

  “You didn’t recognize any of them?”

  “I didn’t get real close.”

  I hand him the photo I’ve been carrying of Brandon Ford, the one I took from the box in the garage. “Do you recognize him? What about the other two?”

  He shakes his head and starts to hand it back. Then he pauses.

  “I do know her.”

  Hilda.

  “She worked for Mr. Nesbitt, same as me. When I was hired, he sent me to her. She snapped my picture and asked me all kinds of questions, and a couple of days later I went back and there was a driver’s license, a passport, the whole nine yards.”

  “A new identity?”

  “Like the witness protection program. T
hat’s what she does. Mr. Nesbitt said there was nobody better in the business. But I couldn’t even tell you her name. He believed in doling out information on a need-to-know basis. He believed in cell structures. If one goes down, the fact that its members only know their own role means the others can continue to function.”

  “Her name is Hilda,” I say. He seems impressed. “Do you know how to get back in touch with her?”

  He shakes his head. “When I got back, I was looking for more private security work, something that would let me take advantage of my skills. Mr. Nesbitt hired me as a bodyguard. I figured I’d be going everywhere with him, like a personal protection detail. I was cool with that. I’d done that kind of thing before. But instead, he kept me around as more of an errand boy. He wanted someone he could trust to make pickups and deliveries, to carry messages, things like that. I would’ve given notice-that’s not what I’d signed up for-but the truth is, he was this larger-than-life character and sticking with him seemed like my best shot for going places. Plus there was something exciting about all the precautions, the fake IDs.

  “I never got the impression from him that his life was in danger. But one day he sits me down in his command center, which is just this room in his house that’s got all these TV monitors and computers with news from all over, and he gives me an envelope I’m only supposed to deliver in the event of his death. He gives me a file, too, that’s got all your information in it. That I still have.”

  He reaches under the cot for a metal ammo box repurposed for storage. There’s only one thing inside, a thin file folder. I have one just like it in my briefcase. When I open it, a photo slips out onto the floor. My own face stares up at me. In every other respect, from the trim size to the thickness of the glossy paper, the picture is identical to the image of Ford in the file Bea Kuykendahl gave me. The pages inside could have been printed at the same time, from the same computer system. The type matches, the margins, everything. As if, somewhere back in time, the file on me and the file on my supposed John Doe resided side by side in someone’s cabinet, just waiting to be put into action.

  “You recognize your file?” he asks, surprised.

  I flip through the pages. There’s a detailed resumé, tracking my progress in life all the way back to high school, the Army, and my misguided years as an undergraduate in the University of Houston history department. My rookie class when I joined HPD, and every assignment since then. My marriage is here, the birth of my daughter, the car crash with Charlotte behind the wheel, the burial.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “I shouldn’t have shown you that.”

  “It’s fine.” I close the file. “I have one just like this on a guy named Brandon Ford. Have you heard of him? According to the National Criminal Information Center, his body was found in a park not far from where we had our little adventure tonight. Just the body, not the head. And the hands had been skinned. Does any of that ring a bell?”

  There’s a funny kind of smile on his face, like he thinks I’m putting him on. “Is this a case you’re assigned to?”

  “It was. The only thing is, Brandon Ford was there. I recognized his voice.”

  Now Jeff looks really confused. “So you knew him?”

  “He was one of the guys who held me at gunpoint. He’s in the picture I showed you a second ago. His accomplice murdered my partner, and I killed him. This is news to you? That’s the reason I’ve been on leave, the reason I was talking to Tom Englewood tonight.”

  “Him I know. Or know of.”

  I’m surprised he hasn’t heard about Lorenz’s death or the murder investigation that lit the fuse. Need to know. Maybe Jeff only has a small piece of the puzzle. Maybe he knows less than I do about what’s really going on.

  “Tell me about Englewood, then. Those were his men, I assume?”

  “Mr. Nesbitt met with him once, and I escorted him. I don’t know what they talked about, but afterward Mr. Nesbitt said to watch out for him, that he was a mercenary and men like him were the problem.”

  “The problem with what?”

  He shrugs. “He didn’t elaborate. I think the two of them were in competition. When Mr. Nesbitt retired from the CIA, he started his own company. Englewood’s consortium wanted to shut him down, discredit him.”

  “So you believed him when he said he worked for the CIA.”

  “You know he did.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Oh,” he says, confused again. “Only, the way he talked about you when he gave me the envelope, I was pretty sure you knew each other. He actually said that, I think. That he knew you from the old days and you were one of the good guys.”

  “He said he knew me? Maybe from around town?” I wrack my brain, but I can’t think of any professional encounters we might have had. Until now, though I’ve heard rumors about goings-on in the intelligence community, I don’t recall ever running across these people in person. At the time of Nesbitt’s shooting, when the conspiracy theories started to get some coverage, the idea that Houston was home to a club of ex-spooks seemed as quaint as it did unlikely. “I think he must have been mistaken.”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff says. “He was a pretty sharp guy. Maybe you’re the one who’s mistaken. If he didn’t know, I doubt he would have told me you could be trusted.”

  “What about the thugs tonight? Have you run into them before?”

  “Not until this,” he says. “You hadn’t shown up at the range for a while, so I decided to catch up with you. I was outside during your meeting with Englewood, and that’s when the Hummers rolled up. One of them got out and put something on your car, under the bumper-” I spring out of my chair, but he calms me with a smile. “Don’t worry, it’s not there anymore. After they pulled out, I moved it to another car. That’s why the second Hummer wasn’t on the scene. It was following the wrong signal.”

  When they pulled alongside me and shot out the window, Jeff was taken by surprise. Trailing in his own car, he hung back as far as he could, then passed us by once I’d skidded down the embankment. He parked and doubled back, not sure how exactly to help. “I figured we were headed for the O.K. Corral.” Then inspiration struck. He saw that the Hummer’s keys were in the ignition and decided to take it.

  “I wasn’t thinking too far ahead,” he says. “It didn’t occur to me they’d think I was you. I just thought that without their ride, they’d be sitting ducks when the cops arrived.”

  “They would’ve been,” I say, “assuming I’d made the call.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Why do you think? That would have been game over for me. We’ve had a shakeup in my shop, and I’m precariously placed at the moment. This would have been just the excuse they needed to clip my wings down to the nub.”

  “Well,” he says, “what do we do now?”

  He leans forward, elbows on his knees, his eyes full of trust and expectation. And I look back, seeing him in a new light entirely. The feat of tactical mimicry he’d pulled off on the range, the mature cynicism that comes from battlefield experience (something I admire because, despite my hitch in the Army, I never had any), the bravery he showed tonight-all of that goes transparent, revealing the youth and uncertainty underneath. Like a spy in a Le Carré novel, he’s been out in the cold and now he’s looking to me for instructions, as if I have the power to bring him back into the light.

  “You’ve got to stay out of this,” I say. “I appreciate what you did tonight, but if you keep going down this path”-I wave my hand to encompass the surreal surroundings-“I’m afraid you’ll get into some serious trouble.”

  “I’m already in. There’s no going back for me. I’ve been in this for months, keeping my head down and my eyes open, biding my time until I can hit back where it hurts.”

  “You can’t, Jeff. It’s not your job. You’ve got to leave this to the police.”

  “The police are who killed him.”

  “That’s not. . You’re not looking at the whole pi
cture. Nesbitt drew first. He fired first. Whatever the rumors are on the Internet, those cops didn’t assassinate him.”

  “Yeah,” he says, “and those guys tonight didn’t come after you. It was just a fender bender, right? Wrong place at the wrong time. You don’t get it. You still have blinders on. It’s time to wake up and see what’s happening in this country. If tonight didn’t do the trick, what’s it gonna take?”

  It’s so late it’s early. Despite my warning that I might be out well past midnight, Charlotte will be worried about me. I should have called. If I do it now, though, I risk waking her up if she’s managed to get to sleep. Look at me, finding more excuses not to pick up the phone.

  I rise to my feet, tucking the file under my arm.

  “Lemme see that picture again,” he says.

  I hand it over and he studies the faces like he’s committing them to memory.

  “There’s one thing more I can tell you about this woman. Hilda, you called her? I liked her. She reminded me a lot of my own mom. Maybe she felt the same. After Mr. Nesbitt got shot, she did call me. Just checking to see if I was all right. This was after the others caught up to me and burgled my place. She gave me the address of somewhere I could hole up. A safe house, she said. But to be honest with you, I didn’t know if I could trust her. And I already had this scoped out.” He sweeps his hand through the air, indicating the garage.

  “Do you remember where this safe house was?”

  He goes to the table where his books are stacked and hands me The Foxhole Atheist. “You were flipping through it just a minute a go. It’ll be somewhere in the readings for April.”

  I skim the section until I find a handwritten note on the entry for April 14, a page with the heading COMFORT IN LIES IS NO COMFORT AT ALL. Down the inside margin, scrawled in blue ink, is the address of a Midtown apartment tower.

  I start to tear out the page.

  “Don’t,” he says. “Just take it with you. I have another copy, and it’s such a good book. You should read it.”