“You know that’s off-limits to me,” I said.
“Ten minutes.” He hung up the phone.
When I arrived, a couple of MPs were descending the second-floor stairs. They wouldn’t answer any questions. “Sergeant Crewes is upstairs, sir. We were never even here.”
I went up. The building layout reminded me of a dormitory. An entrance at either end led into a long corridor with doors on either side. Because of the hour, the common area lights were dimmed. Some of them flickered as I walked beneath them. I glanced up to see the husks of dead insects trapped inside the plastic.
Crewes stood outside one of the doors, looking pale and thin as woodsmoke.
“I couldn’t put this on my men,” he said. “But you know the score.”
Then he led me into the suite. The front room was bare apart from the furniture and a couple of garbage bags with bright yellow twist-ties. The hallway opened into a central bathroom with a bedroom on either side.
At the right-hand door stood Magnum, his expression blank.
“All right,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Good man.”
In the bedroom there were two bunks. She was on one of them, covered to her forehead with a green woolen blanket so that only her bobbed hair showed.
“What is this?” I asked.
“We need your help,” Magnum said. “This has to disappear.”
I walked to the side of the bunk, my hand edging toward the blanket.
“I wouldn’t do that—”
She looked barely human, she’d been so badly beaten. She looked like a mutant in some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong, covered in blood, her bones smashed and twisted, her bruised skin a record of fingertips and the tread of boots. The stud was missing from her nose. Shaking, I forced myself nearer, listening for breath.
“There’s no point in that,” Magnum told me. “I’m not an idiot.”
I wheeled on him. “What happened?”
“It was one of the cabana boys,” Crewes said. “They’ve ordered up some girls before, which is what put the major on the warpath.”
“And this time,” Magnum said, “it got out of hand. He was alone with her; otherwise it would have been stopped.”
“Where is he? Do we have him in custody?”
Crewes studied the linoleum floor while Magnum got the same amused look he’d had in the major’s office.
“We’re talking about your golden boy, right? César?”
“I asked for you,” Magnum said, “because you seemed reliable. We’ve got some tough hours ahead of us, and the longer we spend talking, the closer daybreak is.”
The protocol wouldn’t come to me. An image of the warrant officer at the PX flashed in my mind. That’s who should have been there, not me. I had no business at the scene of a murder, no business witnessing what was under that blanket. I looked from one man to the other, my features twisted in shock. Crewes wouldn’t make eye contact. Magnum seemed disappointed, like he’d expected me to be made of stiffer stuff.
“What . . .” I said. “What do you expect from me?”
“We’re going to need more blankets,” Magnum began. “And some kind of conveyance so we can move her quickly and cleanly. Apart from the mattress, everything’s taken care of, so no worries on that score.”
The trash bags in the front room. Everything’s taken care of. The evidence, he meant.
“You want to move the body?” I asked, incredulous.
“Lieutenant,” Crewes said, his voice paternal and warm.
I had come straight over when the sergeant called, which meant I didn’t have a side arm. Ordinarily I didn’t. Magnum, if he’d been true to his namesake, would have had a Government Model tucked into the small of his back, but I hadn’t seen one. Crewes had one, though, hidden under the leather flap of a duty holster.
My eyes rested on that holstered pistol, calmness shrouding me. In four years of military service I’d never been threatened, never had the opportunity to test whether I would bear up under life-or-death stress or not. But I’d known since I was a boy that I could be cold-bloodedly serene in times of danger. When the stress got so intense that others couldn’t think, I could. And that’s how it was that night. I saw the holster, envisioned the movement, and suddenly I made my move. I rushed Crewes, using my hip to knock him off-balance, opening the holster flap and drawing his weapon.
The two men watched me, frozen. I stepped back, then racked the slide, glancing down into the chamber in time to see the shiny full-metal-jacketed round slide into place. We all stood there, looking at each other.
“That’s not what I was expecting,” Magnum said, smiling so hard his laugh lines deepened into slits.
Crewes, disarmed, looked dumbfounded. “Lieutenant, now stop and think—”
“Stay where you are,” I said, swinging the muzzle from one to the other. In my rush, I’d adopted a point-shooter’s crouch, not so much aiming as jabbing the barrel toward them. I took a deep breath and squared off into the Weaver stance, letting them know I wasn’t fooling.
I knew Magnum had to be strapped, so I turned the pistol on him.
“You know the drill,” I said.
He used two fingers to untuck his polo shirt, then raised it to reveal a belly-band holster, the butt of a small black automatic jutting out.
“Keep your hands in the air,” I told him. Then, “Crewes, you take it out. Slowly.”
The sergeant lowered the pistol onto the floor and kicked it over to me. One glance down confirmed that Magnum was playing the role to the hilt. His pistol was a Walther PPK, the original short-gripped version that could no longer be legally imported into the country. The weapon James Bond carried in the movies.
“Now what?” Magnum asked. “It’s your call.”
“If you see that man,” the major had said, “if he asks for anything or seems to be engaged in any activity out of the ordinary, I want you to inform me immediately.”
I turned to Crewes. “Get Major Shattuck down here.”
He shook his head. “You’re making a mistake here—”
“You’d better do it,” Magnum told him. “He’s liable to shoot us both.”
“I’ll do what I have to,” I said. “And I won’t do what you’re asking. You said you could measure a man up. Well, the sergeant here might think nothing of covering up a murder, but you made a mistake when it comes to what side I’m on.”
“We’re all on the same side here.”
“Tell that to the major.”
After Crewes left, Magnum went to the bed and pulled the blanket up over the dead girl, watching me the whole time to ensure my approval. Then he pulled a wooden chair away from the wall and sat down. He checked his watch, then motioned for me to have a seat on the empty bunk opposite the girl. I stayed where I was.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “You’re sure this is what you want to do? All right, then. The thing is, I had you pegged for a different kind of guy—and I wasn’t kidding when I told you I was a good judge of character.”
“Is that right?” I spat the words out.
“Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t know himself.”
“I do now.”
He was studying me the way a climber might study a rock, looking for a way up, trying to assess whether the attempt was worth making.
“What’s your real name?” I asked. “Everybody calls you Magnum.”
“On account of this?” He stroked the mustache and shook his head. “You can go on calling me that. Doesn’t bother me.”
“Tell me something. If you’re such a good judge of character, how’d that girl end up dead? Are you sure you’ve got César pegged? Maybe it’s him that has the measure of you.”
“A man in the throes of passion will sometimes get carried away. He gets angry. He does something like this. Does that make him a bad man? An evil man? Or just a man like any other? I’ve seen a little bit more of the world than you have, son, and I’ll tell you this: I’ve never me
t a man who wasn’t capable of something like this.”
“I’m not capable of it.”
“You might tell yourself that.” He gets a faraway look in his eyes, maybe reminiscing about his own transgressions. “I judged you wrong, Lieutenant March, but I don’t think I’m that far off. You’re the one standing there with the gun, after all. I haven’t killed anyone tonight and I don’t plan on it. What are your plans, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I plan on bringing you to justice. You’re aiding and abetting a crime. You’re trying to cover up the evidence. And I plan on slapping the cuffs on César, too. If he thinks he’s getting a pass on this—”
“I’m only doing my job. And I told you already, I’m building relationships here that are going to last a long time. When you walked in and saw that girl, what went through your mind? You were horrified, weren’t you? So was I. But something else occurred to me. I’ve been watching these men. I’ve been looking to see which ones will last, which of them will rise to the top. When I saw this, I thought, he’s the one. The man who did this, if he doesn’t self-destruct, will go far. Trust me.”
“Shut up,” I said. “You’re not gonna talk that way with her lying there.”
I made him rise and walk down the hallway into the front room. I made him untie the garbage bags and dump out their contents on the floor. Up to that point, he’d been easygoing, as calm under pressure as I was. But emptying the bags got to him. His cheeks flushed with anger. The sides of the mustache curled down.
“You’re a student of history, aren’t you, March? That’s what you were checking out at the bookstore, if I remember. I’m more of a literature man myself, but as a historian, maybe you can appreciate this. There are certain historical events that, if you understand the relationship between them, will unlock the way of the world. You know what I’m talking about?”
“I think you’re insane.”
“You ever studied the French Revolution? Liberty, equality, fraternity, all of that rot. The whole of modern history is just footnotes to the French Revolution. In 1789, when the people started guillotining their masters, that got the slaves down in Haiti thinking, If you guys are all about freedom, then how ’bout giving us a little? Now, in Europe, the French were all about exporting the revolution. Every monarch on the continent started itching around the collar. But when their own colony starts talking about the rights of man, what do you think happened?”
“They suppressed it,” I said.
“That’s right. The ideas you champion for yourself become a threat when they’re embraced by the people you need to subjugate. You overthrow your tyrant, but you still have to make friends with tyrants everywhere. You have no choice.”
“You can choose not to subjugate anyone.”
“Can you?” He seems genuinely surprised. “That’s not as easy as you might think.”
Outside in the corridor, I could hear footsteps. Then Crewes’s voice. Then the voice of the major. I pulled the door open wide, leaving the pistol aimed at Magnum.
“Sir,” I said.
Major Shattuck strode through the doorway with Crewes in his wake. He ordered me to lower the gun and I did. Even Magnum stood straighter, halfway to attention. The major looked the room over, then turned to me for a report.
“There’s a dead girl in the bedroom,” I said. “One of the cabana boys—one of the Latin American officers—raped her and beat her to death. When I arrived, Sergeant Crewes and Magnum—and this gentleman—were in the process of cleaning up the scene. They expected me to help them remove the body, sir.”
Shattuck glared at Crewes. “Is this true?”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant March took my side arm and threatened to shoot me if I didn’t come and fetch you out of bed. So that’s what I did. Sir.”
“And you?” He faced Magnum. “Anything to add?”
“Only that if we don’t do something about the body in there, this could get very ugly very fast. Like I told you before, we have to extend every courtesy.”
“There’s a limit.”
“Maybe so,” Magnum said. “But this isn’t it.”
Shattuck pondered the situation with a taciturn expression. As he did, I felt a weight drop from my shoulders. I had not only proven myself, I had defined myself. I had declared which side I was on. Years later, at the bed of a victim I’d been unable to help, a reverend by the name of Curtis Blunt would quote some Scripture at me, to the effect that cops are God’s instruments for doing justice, and only the wicked need to fear them. Setting aside any delusions of grandeur, an instrument is what I was. A servant of the abstract idea. “Justice,” I’d said to Magnum, and with a straight face, too. And I still believe it. The same fire burns in me, muffled though it is by cynicism and failure and the passage of so many years.
The pistol in my hand felt so heavy that when the major asked for it, I was happy to give it up. He ejected the magazine, drew back the slide, and released the chambered round. It thudded to the floor. He handed the pistol to Sgt. Crewes.
As soon as he did, Magnum sprang forward.
I never saw the blow coming. But there it was. The crack against my cheek, my neck twisting, my eyes clenched shut in agony. When they opened, the world was decked in gauze and I was reeling. I must have staggered back against the wall, because there I was, sliding down to the floor. I was down and out, and Magnum’s fist was already recocking for the next punch.
The last thing I remember seeing was Sgt. Crewes pistol-whipping the CIA agent. He crumpled and went down. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but the way I remember it, my eyes stayed open a moment longer than his.
CHAPTER 26
I don’t have to get out of my car or even roll the window down. Like the white van, I just drive straight through, one of the hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists crossing back and forth across the border today. All the precautions were seemingly for nothing, though it brings me no relief. The sound of Charlotte’s voice still rings in my ear. The Rio Grande might as well be the Rubicon.
Three bridges over the river connect Brownsville to Matamoros, and we have taken the middle one, which feeds onto a fingerlike promontory wrapped by a bend in the river. The northbound lanes, like the ones at Sarita, are backed up with Americans heading home. The rush into Mexico must slacken by early evening, because once we’re through the checkpoint, the cars in front of me accelerate at a brisk pace. Keeping the van in sight, I scan the sidewalks for any sign of Jeff among the stream of pedestrians.
He slips through the crowd, jogging into the street just ahead of me with a silly grin on his face, reaching for the door handle and slipping inside.
“That was anticlimactic,” he says. “It seems you don’t need a passport at all to get into Mexico. This guy on the bridge told me, it’s getting back that’s the problem.”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
He nods toward the van. “So they just drove straight through?”
“That could be typical. I don’t know. It’s not a chance I would have taken with all those guns, though. Either they’re the most cold-blooded risk takers in the world, or they know something we don’t.”
“Or the Feds just waved them through,” he says. “If what they told you is true, it’s not like they have a problem with the guns going south.”
I glance over at Jeff, whose walk across the bridge seems to have left him feeling refreshed, wondering whether he didn’t already know he could get across without a passport. A more cynical man might wonder if his little detour served no purpose but to insulate him from any consequences if my car had been searched and the weapons underneath discovered.
He sees me looking at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Now the hard part begins.”
Although the transition from Brownsville isn’t jarring—apart from the signs in Spanish and the different license plates, this city isn’t all that different from the one I’ve just left, equally shabby and run down, with a superficia
l lipstick for the sake of the tourists—there are a few buildings here and there you wouldn’t find across the river, including a stately mustard-colored place, pure Bourbon Street, with wrought-iron balconies and ornate windows shut away behind weathered shutters. A few street vendors are still working on the corners. Many of the shop fronts, however, are already hidden behind roll-down metal doors.
The white van makes a turn, travels a few blocks, then turns again. We follow them through a verdant city park, the slope dominated by a crazy sculpture that looks like two twists of red licorice rising out of the ground. They stop the van and get out.
“Here we go,” Jeff says.
I pass them and drive back onto the street, pulling into an empty space where we can watch through the back window. A minute later, a silver Toyota turns into the park and rolls up beside them. A tingle runs through me as Brandon Ford exits the passenger side, coming around to shake hands with the two men from the van. He slides open the van door, peers inside, then snaps it shut. The three of them exchange a few words between the vehicles; then Ford motions them toward the Toyota.
“They’re gonna leave the van here. Someone else is picking it up.”
“What do we do?” Jeff asks. “Stick with them or wait around?”
I tap the steering wheel, indecisive. Ford is why we’re here, but leaving the van’s cargo for pickup by the cartel would be an inexcusable breach. The handoff I’d envisioned, a classic guns-for-money trade going down somewhere secluded where we might have a shot at interdiction is clearly off the cards. I have to choose between Ford or the guns.
“I can’t let them have those guns,” I say.
Jeff, half turned in his seat, gets a constipated look. “Forget about the guns. We stick with Ford. That’s why we’re here.”
Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) Page 27