“I have looked. I watched the video over and over.”
“Whatever you think really happened, Andy believed his life was in danger. So did Brandon. He told me someone was gunning for all of us. All I know is that Andy was murdered, and then when Brandon tried to take over, he was murdered, too. At least that’s what I was told.”
Before his death, Nesbitt entered into a negotiation with a contact at the FBI, essentially offering to hand his network over in return for protection and a financial consideration. Hilda waited two weeks after the shooting to get in touch with the contact herself to renew the offer. She handed over herself, Brandon, and the anonymous insider in Matamoros, who was known only by the code name Nesbitt had given him: INFERNO. She kept the rest of Nesbitt’s operation, including the men in her files, out of the spotlight.
“Your people have a lot of faith in you,” Hilda says, turning to Bea. “They told me we’d be in good hands, that your record with drug intelligence operations was unparalleled. You were an iconoclast, a rule breaker. I liked the sound of you right away.”
“Great.”
“If I had realized what Brandon was up to, honey, I would have warned you. I guess he saw the opportunity to expand his role, so he took it.”
Bea clears her throat. “He told you about . . . us?”
“Eventually. I suspect what attracted you to each other was what you both have in common: ambition. You could use each other and neither one of you really minded. It would have been better, though, for all of us, if your bosses had put somebody less ambitious in charge. Somebody who could’ve shot Brandon’s ideas down instead of falling for them.”
“Who told you March’s headless victim was Brandon?” Bea asks.
“One of them,” Hilda says, nodding toward the stack of dossiers. “He called me in a panic, sounded very convincing. I actually cried—which I didn’t do for Andy. He told me Brandon was dead and that the rest of them were going to disappear. They didn’t need my help, which I thought was strange and a little ungrateful, but then I’d been guilty of leaving the boys in limbo since Andy’s death. Of course, we were all in limbo after that.”
“So you called Bea to warn her—?”
“I called her because Inferno, the insider, had stupidly vouched for Brandon to the cartel. If they were watching the investigation, and it came out that Brandon wasn’t really who he’d said, if you made his real name public along with his military record . . . well, let’s just say that Mr. Inferno would have found himself in some hot water. I owed it to him to prevent that, if I could.”
“And then you disappeared yourself.”
“Partly,” she says, glancing across the room. “I am on my way. If you had shown up here a week from now, you would have found the place vacated. I’d tell you where I’m headed, but . . . You understand.”
“We already found your bag of passports,” Bea says.
“Those are old lives,” Hilda replies. “I’m moving on to something new.”
“You’re not going anywhere, not anymore.”
“You can’t arrest me, dear. I haven’t done anything. And besides, if you did slap me in cuffs, there are parts of my story I don’t think you’d want your superiors to hear.”
To my surprise, Bea doesn’t respond to this. She buries her face in her hands, shaking her head. She is ambitious, and Hilda is right. A story like this would end her professional rise, if not her entire career. Losing some expense money, even such a big chunk of it, hardly compares to jeopardizing a major intelligence asset like Inferno.
“Whatever anxiety Bea might have,” I say, “the fact is, I didn’t track you down for a history lesson. I’m looking for a murderer. I want to know who took the skin off my John Doe’s hands and cut his head off, and I want to know where I can find the men in your files—your ‘boys.’ They killed a good cop, and tried to kill me, too.”
“And what, I’m supposed to do your job for you?” There’s a flash of anger in her eyes, the first I’ve seen, a glimpse of the cornered animal behind her innocuous act. “I’ve already told you more than you could ever have figured out on your own. This is not something you can drag into a courtroom, Detective. This is not something you could ever document, let alone prosecute. And even if you could, before you got that far, there are people who would stop you. That’s not a threat. It’s a simple fact.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I can’t let you walk out of here without giving me more. Where do I find Brandon Ford, for example?”
“How would I know? I think we’re both aware of the fact he’s switched allegiances. You should go and ask your new friend, Mr. Englewood.”
“Not good enough.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Tell me about this courier business. He was traveling down to Matamoros, you said? Where’d he stay down there? What kind of transport? Where did he like to stop for gas? There are all kinds of things I bet you could tell me, and we have plenty of time.”
“In return for what? You’ll let me go?”
“Possibly.”
“If I give you what you’re asking, then I can walk out of here. That’s what I’m asking.”
“You’re not walking out of here,” Bea says.
“Hold on a second,” I tell her. “I think Hilda wants to help us out. There must be some kind of agreement we can come to, right?”
The two women glare at me, then at each other. After a while, Bea nods. Hilda shifts in her chair, draping one arm over its back.
“All right, then,” she says. “Where was I?”
Lo ’mperador del doloroso regnoda mezzo ’l petto uscia fuor de la ghiaccia.
The emperor of the realm of grief protruded
from mid-breast up above the surrounding ice.
He had had his chance to blow his horn
at the beginning and save all those lives,
but for his own glory he would not blow.
—GRAHAM GREENE
CHAPTER 21
As the days pass and Wanda Mosser’s confidence in her grip on Homicide increases, the question of my work status remains ambiguous. My legal counselor subscribes to the “no news is good news” school, insisting that if Internal Affairs had anything concrete, they would be acting on it. What’s going on, he explains, is that the department is holding its breath. If I had shot the man only once or twice, if I had shot him with my own side arm, then I would be back on the job already, a hero who put down his partner’s killer, even if it was too late to save his life. But because I used another weapon, a cut-down assault rifle converted illegally for automatic fire, and because I riddled his body with bullets, a total of sixteen entry wounds, there was enormous political risk in signing off on the shooting.
“All it would take is one cry of police brutality,” he says, “one outraged demagogue to lash out at the department. There could be bad publicity, lawsuits, even protests at city hall. So they’re gonna do nothing until they’re sure it won’t backfire.”
This is Bascombe’s opinion, too, which he gives in a late-night phone call prompted by the discovery that his newest detective, Cavallo, is for some reason making international phone calls to the jefatura of the Argentine Federal Police. I’m tempted to keep everything from him, remembering that we haven’t always seen eye to eye. But the bond of trust that’s developed between us recently outweighs any conflict from the past.
So I tell him everything I know about the case. I tell him about Englewood and the attempt on my life. I tell him about Bea’s relationship with Brandon Ford and how we managed to track down Hilda. I recount the whole convoluted tale of intelligence networks and couriers and false identities. He listens without interruption. Maybe he doesn’t know what to say.
“There are more dossiers,” I tell him. “Including one for the man I killed. According to that, his name is James Lodge. I wrote down the info. There’s an address in Meyerland.”
“You have a file on him?” he asks, incredulous.
�
��Bea has all the files. And the informant. She’s using her resources to try and locate the men on that team.”
“But when they tried to run his DNA, they came back with nothing?”
“Hilda created the false IDs, but she’s not the one who gave us the match on Brandon Ford. That had to be Englewood pulling the strings.”
He lets out a long sigh, then goes quiet for a while. I understand how crazy it all sounds. I realize, too, the complications that all this unsubstantiated, unverifiable information introduces to the black-and-white world of a homicide investigation. Is he supposed to walk into Mosser’s office and declare that the John Doe we have identified as Brandon Ford really isn’t, because the real Brandon Ford is still on the loose—only he isn’t really Brandon Ford? Is he supposed to assign the name James Lodge to the second unidentified corpse on my say-so?
“I’m putting you in an awkward spot, I know. But that’s the spot I’m in. I don’t know what else to do.”
“You’re not supposed to be doing anything. And I’m worried about you dragging Cavallo into this. You’re not doing her any favors.”
“She’ll be fine. Wanda likes her. How is the new captain doing, anyway?”
He sighs again. “She’s riding me, March. Making sure I know who’s the boss.”
“That’s just her way. Don’t let it get to you.”
“When she gets wind of what’s going on, things are gonna be bad. She’ll want your head and mine if we’re not careful.”
“So we’ll be careful,” I say. “It would be nice if you could get Internal Affairs off my back.”
“Listen, I’m worried about this Englewood character. If he’s as all-powerful as you’re making out, why have I never heard of the man?”
“They know who he is in Internal Affairs. Maybe you should ask around over there, kill two birds with one stone.”
“Maybe. In the meantime, try not to drag Cavallo down with you, all right? I’m already shorthanded as it is.”
———
The next morning, my throbbing leg wakes me up while it’s still dark. I swing my feet onto the floor, try to do some stretches. There’s a spot in my lower back, just to the left of my spine, where I can dig with my fingertips and with enough pressure force the muscle to give just a little, to start to relax. The floor creaks under my weight and Charlotte turns in bed.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “Here, let me do that.”
She has me lie flat on the bed, then, kneeling beside me, works her finger into the nerve.
“Breathe out,” she says. “Try to relax.”
Her hands are cool against my skin.
“Does this hurt?”
“It’s fine,” I whisper, though it does hurt some.
After a while she adjusts her angle, pushing deeper. I feel the tightness at the back of my thigh. As she leans down, her hair brushes against me.
“There,” she says, “I just felt it let go.”
I let out a long breath, lying as still as I can. She sits back, then sinks onto the mattress beside me, running a finger up the length of my arm.
“I could stay home today,” she says. “We could spend it together. It’s been a long time.”
“I thought you had a meeting.”
“Meetings can be rescheduled.”
The idea sounds appealing, spending the morning in bed, dragging ourselves up for a late lunch, maybe getting in the car and just driving. Escaping. I bend my leg at the knee, bringing my foot up as high as it’ll go and there’s no pain anymore, just a pleasant numbness. I straighten my leg out, close my eyes, and lapse back into sleep.
When I open them again, a faint light filters through the blinds. Through the open bathroom door I hear the drum of water against the shower wall and feel the humidity in the air. I can just make out Charlotte’s form behind the foggy, spray-flecked glass. I throw the covers back and go downstairs to make coffee, then bring her up a steaming mug. Wrapped in a white towel, her hair clinging in damp tendrils to the side of her face, Charlotte takes the coffee with a smile and asks what we’re going to do with our day.
“I thought we would sleep late, but I guess not.”
On my nightstand, my cellphone starts to buzz. The ring grows progressively louder until I pad across the room.
“It’s Cavallo. I better take it.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’m dressed and out the door. Charlotte walks me out, still nursing her mug. “Maybe next time,” she says, and I peck her on the cheek. She puts her hand on the back of my neck, pulling me down for a proper kiss.
———
“I don’t have any sympathy for you,” Cavallo says. “I’ve been up for hours already. Buenos Aires is three hours ahead of us, and he sent this stuff over first thing. It’s lucky for you that he called to let me know or it would be still sitting on the fax machine.”
She stifles a yawn, then glances at her watch. Her hair is still damp and her makeup, applied in the car, is minimal. With a cop’s instinct for greasy spoons, she has commandeered a booth at a diner on Yale just a few minutes from my house, where she’s spread out official-looking faxed pages, all in Spanish, and some crime-scene photos—printouts muddy with toner. Her Español runs rings around mine, so I leave it to her to translate.
“I’m impressed you got anything out of them.”
“The Federal police were no help at all,” she says. “Too many hoops to jump through. This is all courtesy of a journalist down there. Turns out there’s an English-language newspaper and Brad Templeton knows one of the reporters. I dropped his name and here we are.”
Brad Templeton, a former journalist turned true-crime author, is an on-again-off-again contact of mine. Since our falling out last year, the relationship has been decidedly off. But Cavallo’s better than I am at maintaining lines of communication.
“I’m impressed,” I say. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to even ask him.”
I turn the crime-scene photos to face me, peering down at the body of Chad Macneil.
For two innocent weeks in 2008, in between updates on the presidential elections, before word of the impending worldwide financial crisis broke, the nightly news in Houston obsessed over the disappearance of Chad Macneil, a former Arthur Anderson exec who had transformed himself post-Enron into a freelance money manager with a rumored net worth in the tens of millions. He sat on a couple of boards, but otherwise kept a low profile, devoting himself full-time to the creation of wealth. As his privileged clients whispered to each other over cocktails, Macneil worked wonders with other people’s money.
What those clients didn’t know was that for months Chad Macneil had been the subject of a fraud inquiry and that investigators believed the case was so strong they were on the verge of making an arrest. In the middle of lunch at The Houstonian, Macneil received a tip-off by phone, probably from his attorney. He excused himself and wandered off in the direction of the restroom. The last he was seen was on surveillance video, collecting the keys of his Maserati from a valet. Macneil disappeared, and so did a sizable chunk of his clients’ money.
“The Herald reporter had photos from the scene, the autopsy report, everything. Unfortunately some of the pages have been redacted. Somebody got a little heavy-handed with the permanent marker.”
“I see that.”
At the time, Macneil’s disappearance meant nothing to me. It only became relevant when I discovered that one of his cheated clients was Reg Keller, who at the time headed up an elite team inside the police department dubbed Comprehensive Risk Assessment, derisively renamed the Golden Parachute Brigade, since its sole reason for existence seemed to be to guarantee a bright future in security consulting once Keller made the long anticipated move into the private sector. To further that end, Keller had wooed some outside investors into creating a company to bid on port-related Homeland Security contracts, keeping his own involvement a secret until the groundwork was laid for his retirement. Chad Macneil, who helped put it all together, held the pu
rse strings. When he disappeared, so did everything Keller had built.
The golden parachute was gone, leaving Keller on the hook with the investors. If he had been a businessman himself, Keller might have sought new investment or figured out some other way to keep the enterprise intact. Despite his rise through the ranks, Keller remained a street cop at heart. On his team he had officers with tactical ops experience, and he also had Tony Salazar, a former gang homicide unit detective who knew the city’s drug infrastructure better than most anyone. They started jacking drug dealers, amassing cash and product both, spreading the damage across different gangs and different parts of the city so that no one could pinpoint who was responsible. In the process they managed to put a small crimp in the supply lines and stir up rivalry and suspicion on the street. They could tell themselves they were helping the city and themselves at the same time.
It all came to an end at a house off of West Bellfort. An informant gave Salazar some bad intelligence, which led to a raid on a loan shark named Morales. There were no drugs, no stash of bills, but there was a teenaged girl strapped down on the bed. In the confusion of the gun battle, one of Keller’s men accidentally shot the girl. Investigating her murder fell to me, and the cop who shot her, consumed by guilt, wanted to confess to everything. He was a liability to the team, and Keller had gone too far to allow himself to be exposed now. So he put a bullet into one of his own men.
That didn’t stop me from finding out what had happened, but by the time I did, Keller had followed Chad Macneil’s example and disappeared. Cavallo, Wilcox, and I raided his apartment with a team of detectives. He was long gone.
It was a year later that police in Argentina responded to a call from a Buenos Aires luxury hotel, where they found a guest dead in the bathroom of his suite. He was kneeling on the tile floor, his body arched over the rim of the half-filled bathtub, his head submerged under the water. Although no one was ever charged, the rumor in Houston among people familiar with the case was that Reg Keller had caught up to him and taken revenge.
Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) Page 21