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

by Bertrand, J. Mark

  All this is interesting, but it’s not what I came for. “What about Nesbitt? Which road was he on?”

  “Oh, I would have had him pegged as a High Roader. You know about his newsletter? You don’t?” He raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Nesbitt compiled an intelligence report specifically for policy makers, drug enforcement administrators. That was his bailiwick, international criminal organizations, particularly the Latin American ones.”

  “The cartels?”

  He nods. “The way he described it—and obviously I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, considering our government’s denial of the whole thing—his career had two phases: there was Cold War Andy and then Drug War Andy. He’d cut his teeth doing the usual cloak-and-dagger, so he seemed like a good candidate for Colombia in ’91. The idea was to help the military set up networks for gathering intel on the drug lords. Shut down the problem at its source. The results, unfortunately, were mixed, but Andy came away a believer.”

  “So he would have been interested in what’s going on with the Mexican cartels?”

  “Very.” I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. An impish light shines in his eyes.

  “Is there something more?”

  “Funny,” he says. “I get the impression you have something more to say. I’ve been pretty candid, haven’t I? Maybe it’s time for you to show your hand.”

  With a man like Tom Englewood, it’s hard to know how much information to share. As forthcoming as he seems, he could simply be priming the pump, feeding me just enough background to win my trust in an effort to discover how much I really know. If I tell him about the operation Bea inherited, he might be able to confirm that it was set up by Nesbitt. From what he’s saying, the Gulf Cartel op sounds like the kind of thing Nesbitt did for a living. On the other hand, he might respond by clamming up, filing away the information for future use.

  “You’re wondering how much you should say. That’s smart. But remember, it was you who called me.”

  “All right, then. If I were to say that, before he died, Nesbitt was running an undercover operation inside one of the major Mexican cartels, how would you respond?”

  He calls a waitress over and orders a single malt, glancing my way to see whether I’ll have anything. The butt end of his cigar drops into the ashtray and he reaches into his jacket for another, withdrawing it from a hallmarked silver case. It’s his last, so he offers it to me first.

  “No thanks,” I say. “I’m still waiting for your answer.”

  “I’m thinking.” He clips the cigar and toasts the tip with a torch lighter before putting it to his lips for a few puffs. “The thing is, I know a little bit about your situation. After you called, I made a couple of enquiries. You aren’t assigned to the Nesbitt investigation. In fact, that investigation is closed.”

  “I didn’t say I was.”

  “No, you didn’t. So what I’m wondering is, why do you care? You’re not interested in drug enforcement, and as far as I know, as bad as things are south of the border, the drug war hasn’t made its way up here yet.” He cuts off my objection with a wave of the cigar. “Oh, I know, I know. The drugs are here. But no one’s assassinating prosecutors or snuffing police detectives.”

  “I have a victim in the morgue,” I say. “He’s been decapitated and, before he died, he was de-gloved. You know what that means?”

  His eyes narrow. “Oh, I know what it means. And I have an idea the sort of people who’d do something like that.”

  “So you understand my interest.”

  “Maybe. But you’re not planning to slap the cuffs on some low-level cartel enforcers. You have a different idea in mind.”

  “I want to know whether Nesbitt had an operation going, that’s all.”

  “Of course he did.”

  “He did? You know that for a fact?”

  “I don’t know anything for a fact. Let me put it this way: I was under the impression that’s what he was up to, or something like it. Andy had a theory. In the 1830s, the Texans set off a chain of events that led to a U.S. invasion of Mexico a decade later. A lot of people in the American government didn’t want that to happen, but the Texans led out and sucked the rest of the nation in.”

  “More or less,” I say.

  “Right. I’m not intending this as a history lesson. It’s just a point Nesbitt used to make. The reason Latin America in general and Mexico in particular are so unstable is that we’ve ignored them. We turned our attention to the other side of the world and left our backyard to fend for itself. A familiar complaint.

  “Andy’s theory was, only a disaster could focus our attention on doing something. Only a disaster could shake us out of the complacent notion that we can just wall ourselves off from the problem. What he wanted for Mexico was what we’d already given to Baghdad and Kabul.”

  “Regime change?”

  He smiles. “Stability. When the border became such a contentious issue after 9/11, Andy started telling people the border would never be secure until the nation of Mexico was, and that wouldn’t happen without some kind of intervention. Cooperation simply wasn’t enough. The question was, what would have to happen before Americans would support such a move?”

  “You mean, before they’d support an invasion of Mexico? That’s insane.”

  “Not an invasion. What he had in mind was something similar to what he’d worked on in Colombia, only with a more effective U.S. component. And anyway, it’s not that insane. We’ve invaded Mexico before, and not just when Santa Anna was in charge. Remember Black Jack Pershing?”

  “What does all this have to do with the drug cartels?”

  He gives a theatrical shrug. “You tell me. You’re the detective. We put pressure on the Mexicans to crack down on the cartels, so they started waging war, which sent the borderlands into a death spiral. Now the headlines are full of the excesses and Americans are shocked, shocked at what’s happening on our doorstep. Someone has to do something.”

  “That’s a very cynical point of view.”

  “What can I say? My profession doesn’t breed many idealists. What I’m telling you is this: Andy tried to convince anyone in power who’d listen that the cartels were running wild and the Mexican government was out of its depth. If you were one of the people paying top dollar for his intel reports, that was the message he hammered into you day in and day out. So, no, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that Andy had a line into the cartels.”

  The cigar in my hand has burned down to my fingers and my throat burns from sucking it down. The column of white ash suggests that Englewood has good taste in smokes, but I feel compromised somehow in partaking of his largess. When he signals the waitress again, I scoot my chair back.

  “You’ve had enough?” he asks.

  “The night he was shot, Nesbitt seemed to believe those cops were planning to kill him.”

  “They did kill him.”

  “Right, but he thought it was a hit. He thought HPD pulled him over with the express intention of punching his ticket. What would have made him so paranoid?”

  “Your colleagues asked me the same question. I’ll tell you what I told them: I have no idea. In most parts of the world, though, when you do the kind of work we did, it’s not so strange to assume that when the police pull you over, they intend something more sinister than to write up a traffic citation.”

  “Is that the kind of thing you worry about?” I ask.

  “Me?” He knocks back the last of his scotch. “No, I don’t. But like I told you, my line was analysis. I never got my hands dirty. Andy did. Always assuming he never worked for the CIA at all. Naturally, I take the official denials at face value.”

  “Naturally.”

  I put a few dollars on the table despite Englewood’s objection. I believe in paying my own way. He leans forward a little, the mischievous glint back in his eyes.

  “I forgot to mention something,” he says. “You and I, we have a mutual acquaintance. I thought I’d heard your name s
omewhere before.”

  “Oh really?” I ask, thinking he means Wilcox, though why Wilcox would have mentioned my name to him—

  “Reginald Keller,” he says. “I think you guys called him Big Reg.”

  At the sound of the name, my whole body tenses.

  “How do you know Keller?” I ask.

  “Before his troubles, he was involved in a little business venture. I was one of the investors. So was Andy, if I’m not mistaken. I guess you could say that when you brought Keller down, you cost us all a pretty penny.” He reaches for the money on the table and pockets it. “I’ll consider this as repayment.”

  “It’s supposed to be for the tip.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” he says. “I always leave a big tip.”

  As I leave, I can hear him laughing under his breath. I push through the doorway, out into the balmy night, a few cars racing down Kirby with their stereos thumping. I go to my car, fumble through my pockets for the keys, then slump down behind the wheel. Everything he told me about Nesbitt is forgotten. The spooks and the cartels, the interventions and the border wars. All of it erased by the sound of that name.

  I brought him down, but I didn’t bring him to justice. He disappeared into thin air as we closed in on him. With friends like Englewood, maybe that wasn’t so hard to do.

  Reg Keller. Big Reg. He once threatened to come back and settle the score. The name alone is enough to have me checking over my shoulder. But Keller’s not in the backseat with a garrote. He’s not in the parking lot taking aim. He’s gone, long gone, and he’d be crazy to return. I slip the Browning out of its holster and press the slide back, touching my finger against the reassuring round in the chamber. He’ll never come back again.

  But just in case.

  CHAPTER 15

  The last time I saw Reg Keller, we faced each other in the gutted wreck of my garage apartment after Hurricane Ike knocked a tree into the roof, him pointing a submachine gun in my face and me blinded by the flashlight mounted under the barrel. He gave a rambling, self-justifying excuse for why the death of a girl named Evangeline Dyer, which led directly to the murder of her friend Hannah Mayhew, wasn’t his fault. He’d put a bullet into the brainpan of one of his own men, Joe Thomson, and that wasn’t his fault, either. I’d driven him to it, and someday I was going to pay for it. But not that night. He’d had his chance, but despite everything Big Reg didn’t have the nerve to pull the trigger.

  I turn onto Kirby and head past San Felipe, following the curve in the road around to Allen Parkway, heading home to the Heights north of Interstate 10. Somewhere along here—I slow down to try and pinpoint the spot—Andrew Nesbitt was pulled over and eventually killed. A grass verge runs down the middle of the road, separating east- and westbound traffic, the streetlights distantly spaced, alternating cones of light with stretches of shadow. Off to my left in the darkness I glimpse the headstones of the Jewish cemetery and beyond them Buffalo Bayou, which looks lovely in the tourist brochures but in the doldrums of summer is essentially a fetid swamp with bicycle trails cutting through it.

  Perhaps Englewood’s job is not the only one to breed cynicism.

  While I reflect on this, a pair of headlights comes alongside in the right-hand lane. It’s an H3 Hummer, one of the smaller ones, just a little bit larger than a Sherman tank. I glance over in time to see the rear passenger window rolling down.

  As I watch, a flash erupts and my passenger window shatters into a cloud of glass. Reflexively I jerk the wheel, running up onto the grass median, then panic and pull back onto the road with a thump. I stomp on the brake but catch the accelerator instead, jolting forward. Which is just as well. My car slides right and glances off the Hummer, forcing it to swerve and lose a little ground.

  I keep the pedal down, checking my rearview. The Hummer jumps ahead. I clench my teeth for impact, holding tight to the wheel. All my evasive driving skills have gone out the window, my strategy just to go fast and hold on for dear life. Instead of ramming, which is what I expected, the Hummer makes a surprisingly agile slip. Now the headlights are on my left.

  The Hummer flicks into my rear fender near the back tire, accelerating into the contact. My car wrenches and spins. The tires slide back onto the median. I’m moving sideways, my right tire in the lead, skimming the grass until I shear off a newly planted sapling. Then the car finds purchase and leaps the median into the opposite lane.

  My body is rigid with fear. I try to level out the wheel, but suddenly there are headlights coming westward, threatening a head-on collision. I slice the tires to the left, overcompensating. I’m off the roadway, sucking in breath, careening down a wooded embankment with my foot on the brake.

  My car slides to a stop, the wheel jerking at the last moment, tires jammed in the soft dirt. At this angle, all I can see in my rearview mirror is a towering apartment block on the opposite side of Allen Parkway. Turning around in my seat, I watch the Hummer crawl to the edge of the embankment, where the doors open and the dome light comes on. I count four men inside. They’re only twenty, twenty-five yards away.

  This is bad.

  I turn off my engine, killing the headlights, then feel around for my own dome light and switch it off. Then I force my leg over the middle console and pull myself to the passenger seat, ignoring the sound of crushed glass. With the Browning in hand, I push the door open. I roll onto the damp ground, aiming toward them.

  The men are lined up on the curb, but they haven’t started down. They seem to be waiting for traffic to clear so they can descend without any passing motorists noticing anything odd. I reach back into the car for my phone, ripping it free of the charger. Glancing behind me, I spot a dark thicket of trees outlined against the sky. While they’re still standing on the edge of the road, I close the passenger door and raise myself into a crouch.

  There’s no pain in my leg, I realize.

  I dash for the trees. The sprint takes just a few seconds, but in my mind I’m moving in slow motion, silhouetted against the night, the fatal bullet tearing its way through the air. I reach the thickest of the trunks and hide behind it for cover, which only leaves about a quarter of my body exposed. I hunker down next to the roots, trying to make myself invisible. My breathing is loud and ragged and must be audible for miles.

  When I look back, they’re not on the embankment anymore. The bright apartment tower makes it hard to pick out their shadows in the dark. Squinting, I see them fanned out, advancing on either side of my car. They move with precision, minding each other’s fields of fire, like men who’ve been trained in the art and have worked a long time together.

  At that moment I realize I don’t have a chance.

  In training it’s so different. The targets stay put while you pepper them with holes. All the drills, all the preparation locks your muscle memory in so you can’t act without thinking. When the balloon goes up all the sudden, hopefully the training kicks in and keeps you from freezing. You draw and fire, you get a good sight picture, you’re careful of your backstop so nobody innocent comes to harm.

  If you have time, though, and nothing else, no one to back you up, no advantage in numbers or tactical surprise, if all you have is time to run through all the possibilities, knowing your opponents won’t stand still, that they’ll react unpredictably and all too fast, then the result all too often is hopelessness. Walking up to Skull Ring and mashing the trigger on the Krinkov, that was nothing. I flash back to my most recent performance on the range, when I bungled the reload in the middle of the course and dropped my mag on the ground. Just remembering that, I know I can’t shoot my way out of this. These men are careful. They know what they’re doing. Even if I drop one, the others will return fire. I won’t make it out alive.

  I pat my pockets for my flashlight, but I know it’s not there. Like the rest of my things—my briefcase, my ballistic vest, the zeroed-in AR-15 locked in the trunk, everything that might have helped me in this situation—it’s back there in the car. All I have is the Browning
with one magazine. That and my phone. And I’m afraid to use it. The screen is so bright I’m afraid to switch it on for fear of attracting their notice. I can hear their voices declaring the car empty.

  Glancing behind me, I try to make out a path. Maybe there’s a line of retreat that will get me out of here. There should be parkland deeper in, and then I should hit Buffalo Bayou. Only they’re so close that if I make a break, I know they’ll see me, and at this range it would be hard to miss. I like my chances better hunkered down. If I fire first, I know at least that I can drop one of them. That’s better than nothing.

  “Tracks,” a voice hisses.

  The sound makes me freeze. One of the shadows points a hand in my general direction.

  I have to force myself to move. I raise the Browning, lining up the Tritium night-sights over his silhouette. I take a deep breath, then let it out.

  The first shot has to count.

  I’m sorry, Charlotte. I should have been a better—

  Up on the embankment, the Hummer’s engine rumbles to life. The shadows all stop in their tracks, then turn to watch. Now they’re the ones frozen in place. The back wheels spin out and the Hummer tears onto the road with a throaty roar.

  Then it’s gone, leaving silence in its wake.

  “Are you kidding me?” a loud voice says.

  The reply is softer: “He must have doubled around.”

  “And you left the keys in? Is that what you’re tellin’ me?”

  The voice is familiar. The last time I heard it, the speaker was holding me at the point of his shotgun. Brandon Ford. I strain to listen, trying to make out which one of the men is him. If I can figure that out, then I’ll know where to aim my first round.

  A third speaker, loudest of all: “Shhhhh.”

  They aren’t crouched anymore. They stand flat-footed. They think they’re unobserved. This would be a good time to hit them, if only I trusted my ability to pull it off. I don’t. While I lick my lips in pained anticipation, one of them races up the embankment. He reaches the crest, looking hard down the length of the road, then signals to the others. The Hummer is long gone. They huddle up near the trunk of my car, conversing in subdued tones, words I can’t make out. Clearly an argument, and by the sound of it, desperate. This is a development they didn’t anticipate.