Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) (27 page)

“What are you doing? Anyone could see you!”

“Are they leaving?” His voice sounds muffled. His legs protrude from under the bumper.

“The engine’s running. The headlights are on. It looks like they’re talking.”

“Hand me your pistol.”

Down on one knee, I peer under the car. He’s slotted the rifle into a gap in the undercarriage, securing it in place with the plastic ties. As I watch, he gives it a tug to make sure everything’s tight. Then he reaches his hand out.

“What are you doing?”

“We don’t have time to discuss this. They’re gonna pull out any second.”

“What about the spare magazines?”

“Find something to put them in, and I’ll stick them under here, too.”

After scanning side to side and making sure no one’s watching, I slip the Browning out of its holster and quickly drop the safety to lower the hammer. I place the pistol in his hand and it disappears immediately. In the trunk I pull a nylon bag from my crime-scene kit, dump the contents, and jam the three spare mags for the AR-15 inside. There’s enough room left, so I add the spare hi-cap for the Browning from my belt rig, along with the holster and mag carrier, then zip the bag closed and pass it under to Jeff.

“Hurry, they’re leaving!”

The van pulls back, stops, then accelerates down the row. I can see the red running lights over the tops of the parked cars.

“Come on, come on.”

Jeff slides out, brushes his hands on his jeans, and gives the trunk a quick search. “Is there anything else in here we need to dump?”

“It’s gonna look strange, me having an empty gun case bolted into the trunk.”

“Right.” He reaches into the case and starts ripping out the molded gray foam. I lean in and try to help. We toss the foam onto the pavement, then slam down the lid of the now-empty case. “That’s the best we can do. It’s good enough.”

In the car, racing to keep the van in sight, he outlines his plan. “If they do try to cross, I’ll get out and you can follow them alone. The odds of your car being searched are pretty slim. They’ll look inside, but they’re not gonna tear it apart. Don’t flash your badge or anything. Just show them the passport card like you’re any other visitor. If worse comes to worse, tell ’em that van is smuggling guns. That should distract them.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll make my way across on foot. You’ll be sitting in line, so I might even get there ahead of you. I’ll call you and you can pick me up.”

“And what if you can’t get across?”

“Don’t worry about me.” He notices my phone in the cup holder. “Did you break down and make the call?”

The van exits the highway, turning onto International Boulevard. There are signs up ahead for the University of Texas at Brownsville and the Gateway International Bridge.

“I can’t,” I say. “There’s no one I trust. With my own people it would take too much explaining, and with the Feds, I think they might be playing me. I have to see this one through. I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” he says.

“Then I guess I’m making it.”

Brake lights flash in front of us. The traffic ahead rolls to a halt. The white van is four cars ahead, edging its way toward the Mexican border.

“You’d better let me out,” Jeff says.

He crosses to the sidewalk in front of the duty-free shop, walking toward the bridge without waving, without glancing back, giving no sign that we’re together. A group of pedestrians, black-haired kids in shorts and T-shirts, files in front of my car. I scoot forward toward the bridge’s entrance, a line of kiosks that reminds me of a toll plaza or a drive-through bank teller. I have my passport card ready, but on the American side a man in uniform is waving everybody forward.

I can’t see Jeff anywhere. As I move onto the bridge, its sides lined with hurricane fencing topped by rusted barbed wire, I try to center my mind, to think only positive thoughts. My phone starts to buzz, and then the ringer fills the car.

It’s Charlotte.

“Honey, I got your message. Where are you?” she asks.

This makes me laugh. I briefly imagine what would happen if I told her the truth, that I was sitting in line waiting to enter Mexico with my guns zip-tied to the bottom of the car. The absurdity of the situation surges through me and suddenly I can’t stop laughing.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m gonna be a little late.”

I glance out across the brown ebb of the Rio Grande, gilded by the sinking orange sunset. I’m not sure what side of the line I’m on anymore.

“I’m calling you from the hospital,” she says.

The hospital.
Every dark thought flashes through my head. It’s been ten years almost since the car accident that put Charlotte in the hospital and our daughter Jess in the grave, but those words drag me right back, flooding me with the same helplessness.

“Are you all right, baby? Did something happen?” I’m hours away. There’s nothing I can do. My hands begin to shake.

“No, I’m
fine
,” she says, the fear she picked up in my voice forcing her into her uppermost, euphoric register. “Honey, it’s
time
. You need to get down here or you’re gonna miss it. Carter’s pacing so much he’s gonna wear a hole in the floor.”

The cars ahead of me roll forward. The white van disappears under the shade of the roofed checkpoint on the opposite end of the bridge.

“Baby, you got my message, didn’t you? I’m working a lead. I’m not even in Houston. I’m hours away.”

“Roland, they’re having the baby. Gina’s in labor. She was asking for you. Where are you? Can you at least tell me that?”

“I’m about to crawl over the devil’s back,” I say. “No, listen, that’s wonderful. I feel terrible that I’m not there. I would be if there was any way in the world. You tell them I’m thinking about them, and I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“Are you in trouble, Roland?”

The white van is no longer in sight. The cars move forward again. The phone is hot against the side of my face, hot and silent.

“I’ve got to go, Charlotte. I’m so sorry.”

“Are you all right?”

“Don’t worry about me. Everything’s going to be fine. I love you. Tell Carter and Gina I love them, too. And I want to see that baby when I get there. I want to hold it.”

The car in front of me advances under the soaring red arch that marks the end of the bridge. Half the lanes are blocked by orange pylons. Off to my right a flock of pedestrians passes through, the air around them humming with laughter. I pull my phone away, imagining a sterile hospital hallway, Charlotte standing off to the side, stricken with worry.

“Are you doing something stupid?” she whispers.

“Possibly. But get in there and be with them, okay? Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself just fine.”

I should turn around and go back. But I’ve come too far already.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too.”

Up above me, as my car moves forward into the shade, there’s a string of words emblazoned across the entry terminal, like the motto at the gates of Dante’s hell.
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
Only in this case, it’s a Spanish epitaph:

BIENVENIDOS A MEXICO

Interlude : 1986

When the phone rang,
I was twisted in my sheets, reliving old memories in my dreams. The glowing clock said it was two in the morning. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Sgt. Crewes. He spoke quietly, with great precision, like a man who doesn’t want to repeat himself. Like a man who doesn’t want to be overheard. “Report to base,” he said, only not to the office. I was to meet him at the special housing block set aside for the cabana boys.

“You know that’s off-limits to me,” I said.

“Ten minutes.” He hung up the phone.

When I arrived, a couple of
MP
s 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 met 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.