J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

“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 somewhere 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.

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.