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

by Bertrand, J. Mark

  I try Jeff’s number again, listening at the gap in the cardboard in case the phone rings inside the garage. There’s no sound in there and no answer on the line. I make up my mind to get inside, so I start scouring every car on the lot, peering into threadbare backseats and holed-out trunks for a stray crowbar or a length of pipe.

  Then it happens.

  The crowd at Burger King starts going “Oh” and “Ah,” like guys in front of a football game when the quarterback is sacked, and then I hear the metallic rattling of chains and the big gate heaving on its dry hinges. I step out from behind the trunk of a catercorner land yacht just in time to intercept Jeff with his arm cocked high in the air, some kind of vicious-looking club in his hand.

  I raise my arm to block, clenching my teeth for impact.

  “March,” he says, lowering the club. He takes a step backward.

  “Where did you come from?” I ask. “Why aren’t you answering my calls?”

  He glances at the club in his hand, a short, studded hardwood rod that swells toward the tip, the handle wrapped in tape, and smiles with embarrassment. “I’ve had some trouble with people trespassing, mostly vagrants, so I made them a little something to remember me by. If I’d have realized it was you . . .”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Through the open gate I see an old Camaro on the curb behind my car, its door hanging open, the finish dull enough that it could have been stored in a barn for the past decade. Parked on this lot, it would pretty much blend in, only it runs.

  “Listen, let’s go inside,” he says. “People are watching.”

  “Give me that,” I say, reaching for the club.

  He surrenders it. “Can we go in now?”

  I walk back to the garage while he retrieves his car and drives it inside the gate. We head around back, side by side and silent. He works some keys out of his jeans pocket and undoes the dead bolts. Inside, the air is stifling. He turns on the fan, then goes to a window unit air-conditioner I hadn’t noticed the first time. It shudders to life with a dull hum.

  “I’ve been reading that book you gave me,” I tell him. “You made some interesting notes in there, and underlined some things.”

  “That’s a great little book. I highly recommend it. Living down here in the Bible Belt, it doesn’t hurt to inoculate yourself against all the stupidity.”

  “What I was particularly interested in was the word you kept spelling.”

  Digging through the books on his folding table, he seizes on a floppy softback with a lurid cover. “That’s what I’m talking about. You ever read this one?” He fires the book across at me, forcing me to catch it against my chest. “Dante’s Inferno. It’s all in there, all the hysteria. What he does is, he writes a poem about hell, and guess what? Everybody who crossed him in life happens to be down there in torment. I mean, yeah right. That’s why they invented hell, so they could send their enemies down there.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re interested in poetry.”

  The book is heavy in my hands. A memory surfaces. The same copy of Dante—the very same one—thumping down on a picnic table at Ft. Polk more than twenty years ago.

  “Mr. Nesbitt, he gave me that book. He wanted me to read it.”

  The pages are brown with age. I turn them slowly. “We both know the significance of Inferno, right? Let’s not make this harder than it has to be. You know more about Nesbitt’s operation than you led me to believe.” I put the book down. “Tell me what you know, Jeff.”

  “If I didn’t give you everything,” he says, “maybe it was for a reason. Maybe I wanted to see if you were going to keep me in the loop or not. After all, I’ve been working on this longer than you have, and there’s more at stake for me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like everything, man. They’re after me. Why do you think I holed up here? What do you think I’ve been doing ever since they killed Mr. Nesbitt? Twiddling my thumbs? Hardly. I’ve been getting on top of this thing, figuring out who they are and how they operate.”

  “So tell me who they are. Tell me how they operate.”

  “I could,” he says, wagging his finger. “Oh, believe me, I could. Only there’s nothing you could do about it, March. I realized that right off, even before I decided to bail you out that night. You can’t help me. You’re too tied up in the rules. You’ve got no room to maneuver.”

  “Try me.”

  His smile is halfway to a sneer. “What were you doing anyway, trying to break in here? If you wanted to rile me up, congratulations. I’m riled. I did you a favor—more than a favor—and this is what I get in return?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you ever since I saw the underlining in your Foxhole Atheist book. You gave me the book for a reason. You wanted me to make the connection.”

  “Did I? You took your time.”

  “I’ve been busy since last time. I caught up with Hilda, for one thing, and now I have names on all the guys who came after me that night. It was one of them who killed my partner. I’m pretty sure it was one of them we found in the park, which is what started this whole thing.”

  “What started it for you,” he says.

  “And I found out about Nesbitt’s intelligence operation down in Matamoros, and the code name of his insider there. Inferno. But you already knew about that, Jeff.”

  Something I’ve said flips a switch in Jeff’s head. He freezes a second, then turns, his eyes burning. He starts coming toward me, raising a finger in the air. Not threatening, but argumentative, like he’s determined to set me straight. “You wanna know what I know? You want me to tell you what I know? You think I’m the one who’s holding out—?”

  As he rushed forward, my pocket starts to buzz. The ringer grows louder and louder as we stand there looking at each other, waiting. His mouth twitches. He blinks. A smile cracks across his lips.

  “Are you gonna get that or not?”

  I smile, too. The absurdity of the situation. I take out my phone and step away. The number on the screen is unfamiliar and I don’t recognize the voice at first.

  “You’re gonna want to hear this,” the voice says in my ear, “but first I need assurances. Just because I came by the information doesn’t mean I’m in any way involved—”

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “What?” He sounds disappointed. “It’s Sam Dearborn. From Dearborn Gun and Blade. You said if I found out anything, you’d be in my debt.”

  “Right. Mr. Dearborn.” I motion Jeff to sit tight for a minute. “What did you find out?”

  “Like I said, I want assurances.”

  “Absolutely. Now what do you have for me?”

  “Well,” he says. “You’re not going to believe this. I just got off the phone with a certain friend of mine, and what he told me I think you’re gonna be interested in. You were asking me all those questions about Brandon Ford, on account of him being dead.”

  “I remember.”

  Jeff walks back to the window unit, sucking up the cool air. I turn away from the corner of the garage he’s converted to living space, picking my way into the garage’s dead zone, the empty lift hole and the grime-covered, long-abandoned equipment.

  “Only this friend of mine,” Dearborn is saying, “it turns out he’d been contacted by Ford a while back about getting some assault rifles. He wanted ten M4 carbines and . . . well, he didn’t want them tracing back to him. This friend of mine, he’s apparently not as ethical as me. Point is, he has the guns in his shop, but never heard back from Ford for the obvious reason that he was dead.”

  “So where are these guns exactly?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jeff stand upright. Alert. He starts coming toward me.

  “He moved them to a storage lockup he has, but that’s not important. The important thing is that just a minute ago he gets a call wanting to arrange to collect them. And it was Brandon Ford on the phone.”

  “It was Ford?”

  Jeff’s eyes go
wide.

  “Who’s supposedly dead,” Dearborn says.

  “And when is this collection supposed to happen?” I ask, my pulse racing.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s happening right now.”

  Five minutes later I’m pushing my way out the door, heading around the garage toward my waiting car. Behind me, Jeff does up one of the dead bolts and runs to catch up. Later, I’ve already told him. We’ll continue this later.

  “What’s going on?” he asks. “Where are you going? You’ve found out where Ford is, haven’t you?”

  “I’ll call you,” I tell him. “Answer next time.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re not coming with me.”

  “I am,” he says. “Try to stop me. Besides, you’re flying solo now. Who else are you gonna call for backup? You know I can handle myself, March. Come on.”

  He’s standing at my passenger door, his hand on the latch.

  “Fine. Get in,” I say. Knowing I’m going to regret it.

  CHAPTER 24

  With Jeff riding shotgun, I take the Gulf Freeway into downtown, snaking back and forth through midday traffic, availing myself of the shoulder when necessary. Jeff wants to slam a flashing light onto the roof, Starsky and Hutch-style, but I’ve been driving my own car since my unofficial suspension began. Traffic stacks up at the Southwest Freeway exit, reducing our progress to a crawl. Once we’re through it, the pace picks up and I steer to the far left lane, hurtling by at ninety miles per hour. We slow down again at the Loop, then pour on the speed through Sharpstown, past Houston Baptist, hooking a left on the Sam Houston Tollway en route to Missouri City.

  Exiting the tollway, we pull into a gas station along the feeder, where Dearborn waits in the front seat of a glossy black Chrysler with a stacked Bentley-clone grill. He locks up and jumps in the back, reaching over the seat to shake hands.

  “It’s just up the road,” he says. “I just got off the phone with him, and he says he’s still waiting for Ford to show up.”

  “So we beat him?”

  “I think Ford might have a number of stops to make.”

  The assurances Dearborn wanted weren’t mine to give. I gave them anyway in the interest of time. His “friend” was only willing to cooperate if I would agree that he wouldn’t be prosecuted.

  “The past couple of weeks,” Dearborn says, “this friend of mine has been filling the order, picking up one piece here, one piece there, buying from private sellers when he can find them and from dealers if he can arrange a straw purchase. This is not my kind of business—you know that. He came to me because he knew I’d been asking around about Ford, after our first conversation. From what he says, it sounds like Ford had several people freelancing for him, putting together a nice little cache of weapons.”

  “They’re all M4s?” I ask. Military carbines, basically updated M-16s.

  “Far as I know. And Ford was offering good money to make it worth everybody’s time.”

  On the drive down I explained to Jeff what I expected of him: basically silence. You’re just along for the ride, I told him, and he agreed. Now he sits there quietly, lips pursed and arms crossed as if to hold himself back from talking.

  “So what makes you think Ford has other pickups to make?”

  Dearborn leans forward between the seats, blocking the rearview mirror. “Because when he found out the guns weren’t in the shop anymore, that they were sitting down here in a lockup, he wasn’t too happy. Said he was on a tight schedule and didn’t have time to mess around.”

  Jeff can’t keep quiet anymore. “Which means when he gets here, he’ll have an arsenal with him, probably some other guys. And you’re gonna take him all by yourself?”

  “You’re offering your services?”

  “I’m not even packing. But yeah, I’ll pitch in.”

  “You don’t sound as gung ho as you did back at the garage.”

  “I’ve had time to think.”

  Dearborn jabs a finger at Jeff, catching my eye in the mirror. “So this guy’s not a cop? I guess you have, like, a SWAT team or something lined up?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  Neither one of them seems satisfied with that, Dearborn because he doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into, and Jeff because, with his military background, he realizes there’s a level of planning required to go up against armed men successfully, not to mention overwhelming force. Trouble is, I’m in no position to call on what resources I have, and even if I were, there may not be time. My plan at the moment is to see what develops and go forward from there, something I don’t intend to share with Jeff or Dearborn, neither of whom would want to hear it anyway. Instead, I resolve to project an attitude of calm—in other words, to bluff my way through.

  We pull up across the street from a gated plot of corrugated, subdivided longhouses, with red-painted garage doors granting access to each stall. If Dearborn’s friend had an outer stall, everything would happen out in the open, but instead it’s on the inside. We can watch them drive up and go inside, but whatever happens after that will be invisible.

  “How are we gonna play this?” Jeff asks.

  I sit and think for a moment. All that matters is that I take Ford into custody. I’m not trying to build a case against him for gunrunning. So the important question is whether he’ll be more vulnerable and off guard inside the facility or out in the parking lot loading his cargo. The answer seems obvious. Once he’s outside, his radar will be switched on. The only way to get the jump on him is to get inside.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I say, turning in my seat. “Dearborn, I want you to take me in there and introduce me to your friend. Then you can make yourself scarce while I get into the lockup. That’s where I’ll wait for him.”

  Jeff is already shaking his head. “And what about me?”

  There are lines you cross without realizing, and others you step over deliberately. I pause, knowing I’m on the verge of stepping over and not feeling good about it.

  “You . . .” I say. “How about overwatch?”

  I get out of the car and lead him around to the trunk, conscious of Dearborn watching from the backseat. I pop the lid, obstructing the gun dealer’s vision, then open up the padded case mounted into the trunk that holds my AR-15 carbine.

  “You know how to use one of these, obviously.”

  He nods.

  “And you know when not to? I mean, you’re not going to do anything crazy. If this thing goes pear-shaped, then you do something about it. But not until.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Am I making a terrible mistake here?” I ask.

  He looks me in the eye. “No, you’re not.”

  “I can trust you?”

  “If you have to ask, it’s too late.”

  “All right, then. They’ll have to pull up at the entrance there to load up, so take the keys and maneuver around for a clear field of fire. Ford will go inside himself, and he’ll have at least one man staying with the vehicle to keep an eye on the guns they’ve already picked up. That’s who you need to watch. If Ford comes out and I don’t, then I’ve scrubbed it. Don’t do anything.”

  “Check,” he says.

  “If the opportunity presents itself, I’ll take him. Otherwise, we’ll let him walk and try to keep an eye on him.”

  “I understand,” he says. “Now get in there before he shows up.”

  ———

  At the far end of the corridor, a gaunt man in Wranglers and a tightly tucked shirt stands with his back turned, one hand pressed against his ear.

  “That’s him,” Dearborn says in a stage whisper.

  As we approach, the man turns. “Uh-huh,” he’s saying in a cellphone, “that’s fine. Like I said, I’m already here waiting. So long as you brought the money, there ain’t no problem.” He gives us both a nervous once-over, putting a finger over his lips for silence. “Well, I wish you’d hurry up, then. I’
m ready to get this done with as much as you are. Fine, I will.”

  He ends the call and curses under his breath.

  “This is the detective I was telling you about,” Dearborn says, “and we’ve already discussed the conditions. You don’t need to worry about any legal entanglements.”

  The man in Wranglers puts his phone away, wipes his hand on his jeans, and offers it to me to shake. “That’s good to hear, because I tell you, this is not what I signed up for. If I’d ha’ known the kind of business Ford was up to, I woulda told him to take a hike.”

  As implausible as this sounds, I’m not surprised he feels the need to justify himself. Even with assurances against prosecution, you can never be too careful.

  “So he’s on the way?” I ask.

  “That’s what he tells me. I done been here a whole hour.”

  “And this is your lockup?” I point to the sliding door next to us, with its padlock hanging loose on the hinge.

  “This one,” he says, hiking the door up, “and I got another one across the hall there. Inside I got a couple of safes, too. This is more secure than it might look to you.”

  To prove the point, he flips the lights on and walks us down a row of black gun safes, lined up like so many filing cabinets. At the back of the unit he’s stored a couple of motorcycles lengthwise, one of them under a tarp and the other bare.

  “What’s in there?” I ask, indicating a waist-high old-fashioned icebox against the opposite wall. It looks like a white metal casket, to be honest, the lid secured in the middle with another padlock.

  “That’s where they are. They’re in padded cases, packed up real nice, so I couldn’t put them all in the safe.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  Wrangler makes a show of checking his watch, only opening up the lid when he realizes I won’t be deterred. Inside, packed five across and two deep, there are ten matching black Cordura cases, the kind that zip around and have pouches on the front for spare magazines. I slide one out and open it up to find a pristine M4 carbine with a collapsable stock and a gaping mag well.

  “You have magazines for them?”