Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3)

by Bertrand, J. Mark

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, baby. Just stating the facts.”

  Which is how I end up, a couple of hours later, perched on a blue vinyl examination table wearing nothing but a stiff cotton gown. X-rays of my lower spine glow on the light board across the room, placed there by a nurse with appliqué crystals on her fingernails. As she departs, she estimates the doctor’s arrival time at three minutes.

  Twenty minutes later, a short, handsome Asian man in his mid-thirties appears, wearing mint scrubs and a modish pair of black plastic glasses. He launches into a speech about the mysteries and complexities of the human back. His tone sounds a little defensive, as if I’ve suggested there’s an easy fix. “Have you ever known anyone who’s had back surgery?”

  “Not surgery,” I say. “Surgeries, yes.”

  He laughs. “I’ll have to remember that one. There’s some truth to it, for sure. You don’t want to go down that path, assuming you don’t have to.”

  The vertebrae could be compressed, he notes in a dubious tone, pinching the sciatic nerve, but there’s no herniation. “The symptoms you describe, though, sound consistent with a herniated disc.” He says a lot more, most of which I don’t catch. In my case, he says it’s possible we might do nothing and the pain will go away. Or we could take action and inadvertently make it worse. The thing to do is to wait and see.

  “For now, I’m going to recommend rest,” he says. “And I’ll write you an anti-inflammatory prescription to bring the swelling down. No heavy lifting.”

  In other words, no gun, no cuffs, no lugging that thick leather briefcase.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  ———

  When I get home, I swallow a couple of pills and start running a bath. Just as my toe touches the water, the doorbell rings. I slip on a terry cloth robe and grab my Browning before descending the stairs. Through the peephole I see Bascombe, his eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans.

  “Open up, man.”

  I welcome him inside. He smirks at the gun in my hand.

  “Can’t be too careful,” I say.

  We go through to the kitchen. He’s never been to the house before. He pauses to appreciate Charlotte’s marble counters and stainless appliances. Then he pulls out a barstool and sighs. “You didn’t make things easier on me this morning.”

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

  “You and me, we’re the last of the old breed. If we don’t stick together . . .”

  “I hear you, Lieutenant. I guess I felt a little blindsided. I mean, with Hedges, I got shot in the leg and was back on the job within twenty-four hours. He knew when to bend the rules.”

  “Well, he’s gone now.” He shakes his head. “You might think you and Mosser have some kind of relationship, but let me tell you, she’s ready to throw you to the wolves. There’s a lot of pressure being put on her, March. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Somewhere higher up, maybe even from outside the department. They want to come down on you for this shooting.”

  “The guy murdered a cop.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. But these IAD guys, they’re treating Lorenz’s death and your shooting as two separate events. To them, you might as well have walked up to the man at random and lit him up. And they didn’t come up with that on their own. Somebody’s telling them how to play this. Somebody with a lot of pull.”

  “You’re freaking me out.”

  “I hope so. Now tell me one thing: are you absolutely sure that the man you saw at the scene was the same one in the photo Bea Kuykendahl provided?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure. How can I be? But it looked like him. When I saw him, the voice in my head went, That’s the guy.”

  “I don’t know, man. I don’t know what to make of that at all.”

  “It means the man the FBI says is on the mortuary slab is really alive and kicking. Which makes you wonder why they’d want us to think otherwise. There’s some kind of connection to Andrew Nesbitt’s death, too—the guy who claimed he was working for the CIA. That’s what all the stuff they took from the scene was about. Lorenz put it all together. That finger was pointing at something after all. It was pointing to the stretch of Allen Parkway where Nesbitt was shot. You may not know what to make of it, but to me it looks like some kind of cover-up.”

  “A conspiracy,” he says. “You sound crazy.”

  “Maybe. Do you have another explanation?”

  He shakes his head.

  “So what are we going to do about this?”

  “We aren’t doing nothing. Wanda Mosser’s keeping tabs on me like nobody’s business. She barely let me leave her office for bathroom breaks. And you’re done. If she so much as suspects you’re working this case, she’ll come down on you like bricks. You were about to spill everything to her, too. If she’d found out about the file Agent Kuykendahl gave you, trust me, you wouldn’t have walked out with it.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not stupid, March. The point is, whatever your suspicions are, they’re just that: suspicions. You don’t know anything concrete, and you certainly can’t prove it. Right now, you’ve got to go with the flow. Stay under her radar, and she won’t feel like she has to do anything more to you for the time being.”

  “So just rest,” I say. “Just relax. You sound like my doctor.”

  “You should listen.”

  The sound of a car outside. I glance through the kitchen blinds and see Charlotte pulling up to the garage. Bascombe rises, making for the front door.

  “What about the ID on the guy who killed Lorenz? Have they gotten anything yet?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing on the prints, nothing on the DNA. He wasn’t carrying any identification, just cash, and it turns out you can buy those skull rings pretty much anywhere. It’s like he never existed.”

  “Or his files were erased.”

  “Man,” he says, “I’m getting out of here. Pretty soon you’ll have me believing it.”

  He closes the front door just as Charlotte comes through the back. She drops her purse and keys on the side table.

  “Was somebody here?” she asks.

  I stand there, uncertain what to say. The conversation fills my head like so much cotton wadding, muffling the sound of her voice. Then I flip the switch. I take the fears and suspicions and I bury them.

  “Bascombe,” I say. “He just left. And now my bathwater is probably cold.”

  She kicks her shoes off. “A bath sounds good.”

  It’s a pleasure just to be in the same room with her. To be able to reach out and touch her. To have more in my life than her disembodied voice.

  “You can join me,” I say.

  “Tempting.” She tilts her head to one side, her expression an alloy of mischief and concern. “I would, baby, but I’m afraid you might hurt yourself.”

  Interlude : 1986

  One morning, already late and breathing hard, a lather of sweat on my skin, I veered off the path of my usual run, cutting through a stretch of parkland on base. I passed through clusters of empty picnic tables set in clearings draped with camouflage netting. Going this way, I could slice five minutes off my time and avoid the hard glare from Sgt. Crewes.

  Rounding a corner, I wiped my brow on the sleeve of my olive drab T-shirt. When I looked up, a group of men were staring my way. Magnum and his death squad trainees sat huddled at one of the picnic tables. My sudden appearance had interrupted some kind of lesson. Magnum said something in what sounded like fluent Spanish, eliciting a laugh from his men. I should have kept jogging, but instead I pounded to a halt, doubling over to catch my breath.

  “Don’t let us interrupt you,” he called. “It’s Lieutenant March, right?”

  I nodded. A couple of weeks had passed since our first meeting, and in that time I’d mostly forgotten about Magnum and the so-called cabana boys. I’d even wondered whether Crewes had made all the cloak-and-dagger stuff up, having fun at the exp
ense of a credulous officer. Now I knew better.

  He held a long whippy reed in one hand and an open lockblade knife in the other, and he looked to be carving as he spoke. He held the reed at eye level, appraising the beveled end. Probably wondering if it was thin enough yet to slide under a fingernail.

  At the table I noticed César, the man who’d been leaning against Magnum’s Buick. Once again he was smoking a panetella, and once again he gave an ironic salute. Up close, his courtly smile reminded me of young Omar Sharif. There was a dark mole on his cheek. While his fatigues, like all the others, bore no insignias of rank, his manner combined with the deferential way the others hedged around him backed up Crewes’s idea that he was the boss man. I held his gaze a moment before looking away.

  Magnum glanced over his shoulder to see what was attracting my interest. Then he turned and gestured with the knife. “I’m sure you have somewhere to be.”

  I nodded again, then got going.

  I had some speed back then. For a couple of years in high school I’d gone out for track. The 440 was my race, and though I was never good enough to compete seriously, for a while I fancied myself quite a runner. Thanks to that conditioning I had aced my PT requirements, making it clear throughout ROTC and OCS that I could lead from the front.

  Unfortunately a good officer needs more than physical courage. He must be someone that other men can look up to and follow. Having grown up a loner, I always had trouble with that part. The Army figured this out long before I did, sorting me to one side for staff and administrative work, tasks that didn’t require too much personal charisma. After my assignment to the battalion, where my duties consisted mainly of office work, I began to worry that I was getting soft. Which is why, every other morning, I’d drive in early to jog around the base before showering and reporting.

  Brief as it was, my encounter with Magnum stirred something in me. By the time I reached my office I was half an hour late, still wrapped up in my own head. Crewes appeared at the door looking stern.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I snapped, echoing Magnum’s words to me.

  The sergeant stiffened at the unaccustomed rebuke and disappeared.

  ———

  The next day I took the same route, slowing my pace through the park trail. As I approached the netted picnic table, Magnum appeared. He sat by himself on the tabletop, his soft loafers resting on the seat. He seemed lost in the pages of the fat paperback clutched in his hands, but he saw me as I passed and gestured me over.

  “I thought you might drop by,” he said.

  I paused, jogging in place.

  “No, really. Have a seat. Let’s exchange a few words, Lieutenant.”

  He closed the book and thumped it down on the table. Dante’s Inferno.

  After what Maj. Shattuck had told me, I should have bolted. But I wouldn’t have come in the first place if I’d intended to do that. Besides, running away would be an unworthy response for an officer. I posted myself a few feet from the table, arms crossed, keeping a wary distance between us, trying to look hostile rather than defensive.

  “Suit yourself.” He fixed me with a disarming smile, a smile that lit up his face and said he was my friend and only wanted what was best. “What I’m wondering,” he said, easing the words out, “is whether your commanding officer put you up to this. Don’t try to lie to me, either. I can always tell when I’m being lied to.”

  “Nobody ordered me to run,” I said.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

  “What I mean is—”

  “Never mind.” The smile broadened. “So if you’re not spying on me, what are you doing here?” He patted the table next to him, inviting me to mount up. I stood my ground. “All right, then. What exactly did you see yesterday? I’m assuming you don’t speak the language?”

  “I’m from Texas.”

  “So you don’t.”

  He chuckled at his joke, then slid off the table. At the edge of the perimeter, he passed a hand through the draped netting and plucked a cattail from the bushes opposite. Then he dug a knife out of his pocket and cut the ends off, making toward me.

  “If you’re forcing me to guess, I will. What would I assume if I were you, stumbling onto a scene like that? I know—” He sliced one end of the stalk into a crude spear. “Maybe you figured I was teaching these boys to make punji stakes. Or how to make shoots to stick under people’s fingernails.” He tossed the reed away. “Or maybe I’m just one of those people who likes to whittle things as he talks.”

  “I know why you’re here,” I said.

  “Do you?” He slipped the knife away. “Or do you just think you do?”

  “Everybody on base knows.”

  I could hear my voice wavering. Nothing good could come of this conversation and I knew better than to continue. But I was weak. And frankly I was also intrigued. Whatever Crewes thought about the spooks, I’d grown up in the last phases of the Cold War. In college I’d dutifully attended Russian language classes, which in those days were populated almost entirely by ROTC students learning not to appreciate the culture or the literature, but how to interrogate prisoners. I’d grown up watching James Bond, too, and now here I was, in the presence of a real-life secret agent. Anxious as I was, I was excited, too. And Magnum had no trouble picking up on this. He gave me another one of those smiles.

  “Let me tell you something,” he said. “Everybody on base may think they know what’s going on, but they have no idea.”

  “What are you doing, then?”

  “Put it this way: I’m a talent scout. These guys you see me with, they may not seem like much today. They aren’t, and most of them never will be. Some of them will go nowhere, some will end up blindfolded against the wall. Some will end up jumping out of an airplane with no parachute.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, though, not all of them will sink. A couple will swim, and one of them? He might even fly.”

  “And when he does,” I said, “you’ll already be his friend.”

  “You’re smarter than you look. But no, I won’t be his friend. We will. The United States of America. And right here is where it all will have started. There are names I could mention—powerful men today—who are friends to this country as a result of relationships forged just like this. I’m not looking for quick results here. I take the long view.”

  I stood there not knowing whether to be appalled or electrified, whether to judge Magnum’s long view as ruthlessness or just common sense. Despite the Buick and the boxy suits, there was a glamor to the man. While the rest of us were playing soldier, he was fighting the secret war—the real war—and didn’t that lift him above our standards of judgment? Whatever Shattuck might think, I knew why I’d come, and it wasn’t to judge. I was here to be noticed. I was here to make my availability known. Here am I, send me.

  “It’s César, isn’t it?” I asked, hoping to impress him. “The one who’s gonna fly?”

  “You’re sharp, you know that? I spotted it right off. Like I said, I’m a talent scout. I don’t need much time to get the measure of a man. Now, tell me something . . .” He leaned closer. “Can you keep a secret, Lieutenant March?”

  I stepped toward him, the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

  “Yes,” I said. “I can.”

  “Good.” He patted my shoulder for the second time. “Prove it.”

  He got up and walked away.

  . . . credo ch’un spirito del mio sangue piangala colpa che là giù contanto costa.

  . . . a spirit of my own blood laments the guilt that brings so great a cost below.

  Dante accepts the idea of neutral agents

  in the quarrel between God and Satan. And he puts

  them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell.

  We are in the vestibule, cher ami.

  —ALBERT CAMUS

  CHAPTER 11

  Saturday in the Heights. Johnny Cash on the stereo and steaks on the grill, the neighbor’s automatic sprinklers
wick-wick-wicking on the far side of the wooden fence. I’m stationed, spatula in hand, comfortable as a lizard in the sun, trying to tell myself this is the life and I could get used to it. Charlotte, who’s flowering now that she’s practicing law full-time, has lectured me twice already about a man being more than his job description.

  I’m trying to take it in stride.

  Behind me, Carter Robb is trapped in a conversation with Cavallo’s husband, Dean, who gulps down Shiner like water and has none of the veteran’s stereotypical reticence when it comes to boasting about wartime exploits. Robb slips in the occasional yeah and uh-huh. Most of Dean’s stories seem to involve some combination of exploding goats and friendly fire, and I suspect he plays up the details, testing the young reverend.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, though, being over there,” he says, “it’s that people are more similar than they are different.”

  “Uh-huh,” Robb says. He must know, judging by what’s gone before, that there’s more to Dean’s heartwarming pronouncement than meets the eye.

  “Take this, for example. The Arabs, they think all the bad stuff that happens to them is the result of some international Zionist conspiracy. The family goat walks into a minefield, and they blame the Jews. Crazy, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Robb says.

  “Then I come back here, and Terry says we’re going to church. And I meet this old guy there, and when he finds out where I’ve been, he starts in on how the president won’t produce his birth certificate and steel doesn’t melt just because some jet wrecks into it. See what I mean? Different players, same idea. Somebody’s running things behind the curtains. Nothing ever just happens.” Dean chuckles to himself. “Although this guy, he really seemed big on Israel.”

  Cavallo’s husband may be a bit of a blowhard, but I figure he’s earned the right. And it’s not like he doesn’t have a point.