J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

He shakes his head. “When I got back, I was looking for more private security work, something that would let me take advantage of my skills. Mr. Nesbitt hired me as a bodyguard. I figured I’d be going everywhere with him, like a personal protection detail. I was cool with that. I’d done that kind of thing before. But instead, he kept me around as more of an errand boy. He wanted someone he could trust to make pickups and deliveries, to carry messages, things like that. I would’ve given notice-that’s not what I’d signed up for-but the truth is, he was this larger-than-life character and sticking with him seemed like my best shot for going places. Plus there was something exciting about all the precautions, the fake IDs.

“I never got the impression from him that his life was in danger. But one day he sits me down in his command center, which is just this room in his house that’s got all these TV monitors and computers with news from all over, and he gives me an envelope I’m only supposed to deliver in the event of his death. He gives me a file, too, that’s got all your information in it. That I still have.”

He reaches under the cot for a metal ammo box repurposed for storage. There’s only one thing inside, a thin file folder. I have one just like it in my briefcase. When I open it, a photo slips out onto the floor. My own face stares up at me. In every other respect, from the trim size to the thickness of the glossy paper, the picture is identical to the image of Ford in the file Bea Kuykendahl gave me. The pages inside could have been printed at the same time, from the same computer system. The type matches, the margins, everything. As if, somewhere back in time, the file on me and the file on my supposed John Doe resided side by side in someone’s cabinet, just waiting to be put into action.

“You recognize your file?” he asks, surprised.

I flip through the pages. There’s a detailed resumé, tracking my progress in life all the way back to high school, the Army, and my misguided years as an undergraduate in the University of Houston history department. My rookie class when I joined HPD, and every assignment since then. My marriage is here, the birth of my daughter, the car crash with Charlotte behind the wheel, the burial.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “I shouldn’t have shown you that.”

“It’s fine.” I close the file. “I have one just like this on a guy named Brandon Ford. Have you heard of him? According to the National Criminal Information Center, his body was found in a park not far from where we had our little adventure tonight. Just the body, not the head. And the hands had been skinned. Does any of that ring a bell?”

There’s a funny kind of smile on his face, like he thinks I’m putting him on. “Is this a case you’re assigned to?”

“It was. The only thing is, Brandon Ford was there. I recognized his voice.”

Now Jeff looks really confused. “So you knew him?”

“He was one of the guys who held me at gunpoint. He’s in the picture I showed you a second ago. His accomplice murdered my partner, and I killed him. This is news to you? That’s the reason I’ve been on leave, the reason I was talking to Tom Englewood tonight.”

“Him I know. Or know of.”

I’m surprised he hasn’t heard about Lorenz’s death or the murder investigation that lit the fuse. Need to know . Maybe Jeff only has a small piece of the puzzle. Maybe he knows less than I do about what’s really going on.

“Tell me about Englewood, then. Those were his men, I assume?”

“Mr. Nesbitt met with him once, and I escorted him. I don’t know what they talked about, but afterward Mr. Nesbitt said to watch out for him, that he was a mercenary and men like him were the problem.”

“The problem with what?”

He shrugs. “He didn’t elaborate. I think the two of them were in competition. When Mr. Nesbitt retired from the CIA, he started his own company. Englewood’s consortium wanted to shut him down, discredit him.”

“So you believed him when he said he worked for the CIA.”

“You know he did.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Oh,” he says, confused again. “Only, the way he talked about you when he gave me the envelope, I was pretty sure you knew each other. He actually said that, I think. That he knew you from the old days and you were one of the good guys.”

“He said he knew me? Maybe from around town?” I wrack my brain, but I can’t think of any professional encounters we might have had. Until now, though I’ve heard rumors about goings-on in the intelligence community, I don’t recall ever running across these people in person. At the time of Nesbitt’s shooting, when the conspiracy theories started to get some coverage, the idea that Houston was home to a club of ex-spooks seemed as quaint as it did unlikely. “I think he must have been mistaken.”

“I don’t know,” Jeff says. “He was a pretty sharp guy. Maybe you’re the one who’s mistaken. If he didn’t know, I doubt he would have told me you could be trusted.”

“What about the thugs tonight? Have you run into them before?”

“Not until this,” he says. “You hadn’t shown up at the range for a while, so I decided to catch up with you. I was outside during your meeting with Englewood, and that’s when the Hummers rolled up. One of them got out and put something on your car, under the bumper-” I spring out of my chair, but he calms me with a smile. “Don’t worry, it’s not there anymore. After they pulled out, I moved it to another car. That’s why the second Hummer wasn’t on the scene. It was following the wrong signal.”

When they pulled alongside me and shot out the window, Jeff was taken by surprise. Trailing in his own car, he hung back as far as he could, then passed us by once I’d skidded down the embankment. He parked and doubled back, not sure how exactly to help. “I figured we were headed for the O.K. Corral.” Then inspiration struck. He saw that the Hummer’s keys were in the ignition and decided to take it.

“I wasn’t thinking too far ahead,” he says. “It didn’t occur to me they’d think I was you. I just thought that without their ride, they’d be sitting ducks when the cops arrived.”

“They would’ve been,” I say, “assuming I’d made the call.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Why do you think? That would have been game over for me. We’ve had a shakeup in my shop, and I’m precariously placed at the moment. This would have been just the excuse they needed to clip my wings down to the nub.”

“Well,” he says, “what do we do now?”

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, his eyes full of trust and expectation. And I look back, seeing him in a new light entirely. The feat of tactical mimicry he’d pulled off on the range, the mature cynicism that comes from battlefield experience (something I admire because, despite my hitch in the Army, I never had any), the bravery he showed tonight-all of that goes transparent, revealing the youth and uncertainty underneath. Like a spy in a Le Carré novel, he’s been out in the cold and now he’s looking to me for instructions, as if I have the power to bring him back into the light.

“You’ve got to stay out of this,” I say. “I appreciate what you did tonight, but if you keep going down this path”-I wave my hand to encompass the surreal surroundings-“I’m afraid you’ll get into some serious trouble.”

“I’m already in. There’s no going back for me. I’ve been in this for months, keeping my head down and my eyes open, biding my time until I can hit back where it hurts.”

“You can’t, Jeff. It’s not your job. You’ve got to leave this to the police.”

“ The police are who killed him .”