J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

“Because someone put it into his head that he was going to be assassinated. And he was convinced it was the police who would carry it out.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Even so,” she says, “look what happened.”

“I have looked. I watched the video over and over.”

“Whatever you think really happened, Andy believed his life was in danger. So did Brandon. He told me someone was gunning for all of us. All I know is that Andy was murdered, and then when Brandon tried to take over, he was murdered, too. At least that’s what I was told.”

Before his death, Nesbitt entered into a negotiation with a contact at the FBI, essentially offering to hand his network over in return for protection and a financial consideration. Hilda waited two weeks after the shooting to get in touch with the contact herself to renew the offer. She handed over herself, Brandon, and the anonymous insider in Matamoros, who was known only by the code name Nesbitt had given him: INFERNO. She kept the rest of Nesbitt’s operation, including the men in her files, out of the spotlight.

“Your people have a lot of faith in you,” Hilda says, turning to Bea. “They told me we’d be in good hands, that your record with drug intelligence operations was unparalleled. You were an iconoclast, a rule breaker. I liked the sound of you right away.”

“Great.”

“If I had realized what Brandon was up to, honey, I would have warned you. I guess he saw the opportunity to expand his role, so he took it.”

Bea clears her throat. “He told you about. . us ?”

“Eventually. I suspect what attracted you to each other was what you both have in common: ambition. You could use each other and neither one of you really minded. It would have been better, though, for all of us, if your bosses had put somebody less ambitious in charge. Somebody who could’ve shot Brandon’s ideas down instead of falling for them.”

“Who told you March’s headless victim was Brandon?” Bea asks.

“One of them,” Hilda says, nodding toward the stack of dossiers. “He called me in a panic, sounded very convincing. I actually cried-which I didn’t do for Andy. He told me Brandon was dead and that the rest of them were going to disappear. They didn’t need my help, which I thought was strange and a little ungrateful, but then I’d been guilty of leaving the boys in limbo since Andy’s death. Of course, we were all in limbo after that.”

“So you called Bea to warn her-?”

“I called her because Inferno, the insider, had stupidly vouched for Brandon to the cartel. If they were watching the investigation, and it came out that Brandon wasn’t really who he’d said, if you made his real name public along with his military record. . well, let’s just say that Mr. Inferno would have found himself in some hot water. I owed it to him to prevent that, if I could.”

“And then you disappeared yourself.”

“Partly,” she says, glancing across the room. “I am on my way. If you had shown up here a week from now, you would have found the place vacated. I’d tell you where I’m headed, but. . You understand.”

“We already found your bag of passports,” Bea says.

“Those are old lives,” Hilda replies. “I’m moving on to something new.”

“You’re not going anywhere, not anymore.”

“You can’t arrest me, dear. I haven’t done anything. And besides, if you did slap me in cuffs, there are parts of my story I don’t think you’d want your superiors to hear.”

To my surprise, Bea doesn’t respond to this. She buries her face in her hands, shaking her head. She is ambitious, and Hilda is right. A story like this would end her professional rise, if not her entire career. Losing some expense money, even such a big chunk of it, hardly compares to jeopardizing a major intelligence asset like Inferno.

“Whatever anxiety Bea might have,” I say, “the fact is, I didn’t track you down for a history lesson. I’m looking for a murderer. I want to know who took the skin off my John Doe’s hands and cut his head off, and I want to know where I can find the men in your files-your ‘boys.’ They killed a good cop, and tried to kill me, too.”

“And what, I’m supposed to do your job for you?” There’s a flash of anger in her eyes, the first I’ve seen, a glimpse of the cornered animal behind her innocuous act. “I’ve already told you more than you could ever have figured out on your own. This is not something you can drag into a courtroom, Detective. This is not something you could ever document, let alone prosecute. And even if you could, before you got that far, there are people who would stop you. That’s not a threat. It’s a simple fact.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I can’t let you walk out of here without giving me more. Where do I find Brandon Ford, for example?”

“How would I know? I think we’re both aware of the fact he’s switched allegiances. You should go and ask your new friend, Mr. Englewood.”

“Not good enough.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Tell me about this courier business. He was traveling down to Matamoros, you said? Where’d he stay down there? What kind of transport? Where did he like to stop for gas? There are all kinds of things I bet you could tell me, and we have plenty of time.”

“In return for what? You’ll let me go?”

“Possibly.”

“If I give you what you’re asking, then I can walk out of here. That’s what I’m asking.”

“You’re not walking out of here,” Bea says.

“Hold on a second,” I tell her. “I think Hilda wants to help us out. There must be some kind of agreement we can come to, right?”

The two women glare at me, then at each other. After a while, Bea nods. Hilda shifts in her chair, draping one arm over its back.

“All right, then,” she says. “Where was I?”

As the days pass and Wanda Mosser’s confidence in her grip on Homicide increases, the question of my work status remains ambiguous. My legal counselor subscribes to the “no news is good news” school, insisting that if Internal Affairs had anything concrete, they would be acting on it. What’s going on, he explains, is that the department is holding its breath. If I had shot the man only once or twice, if I had shot him with my own side arm, then I would be back on the job already, a hero who put down his partner’s killer, even if it was too late to save his life. But because I used another weapon, a cut-down assault rifle converted illegally for automatic fire, and because I riddled his body with bullets, a total of sixteen entry wounds, there was enormous political risk in signing off on the shooting.

“All it would take is one cry of police brutality,” he says, “one outraged demagogue to lash out at the department. There could be bad publicity, lawsuits, even protests at city hall. So they’re gonna do nothing until they’re sure it won’t backfire.”

This is Bascombe’s opinion, too, which he gives in a late-night phone call prompted by the discovery that his newest detective, Cavallo, is for some reason making international phone calls to the jefatura of the Argentine Federal Police. I’m tempted to keep everything from him, remembering that we haven’t always seen eye to eye. But the bond of trust that’s developed between us recently outweighs any conflict from the past.