J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

“You know how to use one of these, obviously.”

He nods.

“And you know when not to? I mean, you’re not going to do anything crazy. If this thing goes pear-shaped, then you do something about it. But not until.”

“I hear you.”

“Am I making a terrible mistake here?” I ask.

He looks me in the eye. “No, you’re not.”

“I can trust you?”

“If you have to ask, it’s too late.”

“All right, then. They’ll have to pull up at the entrance there to load up, so take the keys and maneuver around for a clear field of fire. Ford will go inside himself, and he’ll have at least one man staying with the vehicle to keep an eye on the guns they’ve already picked up. That’s who you need to watch. If Ford comes out and I don’t, then I’ve scrubbed it. Don’t do anything.”

“Check,” he says.

“If the opportunity presents itself, I’ll take him. Otherwise, we’ll let him walk and try to keep an eye on him.”

“I understand,” he says. “Now get in there before he shows up.”

At the far end of the corridor, a gaunt man in Wranglers and a tightly tucked shirt stands with his back turned, one hand pressed against his ear.

“That’s him,” Dearborn says in a stage whisper.

As we approach, the man turns. “Uh-huh,” he’s saying in a cellphone, “that’s fine. Like I said, I’m already here waiting. So long as you brought the money, there ain’t no problem.” He gives us both a nervous once-over, putting a finger over his lips for silence. “Well, I wish you’d hurry up, then. I’m ready to get this done with as much as you are. Fine, I will.”

He ends the call and curses under his breath.

“This is the detective I was telling you about,” Dearborn says, “and we’ve already discussed the conditions. You don’t need to worry about any legal entanglements.”

The man in Wranglers puts his phone away, wipes his hand on his jeans, and offers it to me to shake. “That’s good to hear, because I tell you, this is not what I signed up for. If I’d ha’ known the kind of business Ford was up to, I woulda told him to take a hike.”

As implausible as this sounds, I’m not surprised he feels the need to justify himself. Even with assurances against prosecution, you can never be too careful.

“So he’s on the way?” I ask.

“That’s what he tells me. I done been here a whole hour.”

“And this is your lockup?” I point to the sliding door next to us, with its padlock hanging loose on the hinge.

“This one,” he says, hiking the door up, “and I got another one across the hall there. Inside I got a couple of safes, too. This is more secure than it might look to you.”

To prove the point, he flips the lights on and walks us down a row of black gun safes, lined up like so many filing cabinets. At the back of the unit he’s stored a couple of motorcycles lengthwise, one of them under a tarp and the other bare.

“What’s in there?” I ask, indicating a waist-high old-fashioned icebox against the opposite wall. It looks like a white metal casket, to be honest, the lid secured in the middle with another padlock.

“That’s where they are. They’re in padded cases, packed up real nice, so I couldn’t put them all in the safe.”

“Let’s take a look.”

Wrangler makes a show of checking his watch, only opening up the lid when he realizes I won’t be deterred. Inside, packed five across and two deep, there are ten matching black Cordura cases, the kind that zip around and have pouches on the front for spare magazines. I slide one out and open it up to find a pristine M4 carbine with a collapsable stock and a gaping mag well.

“You have magazines for them?”

“Just the rifles,” he says.

“What about ammunition?”

He shakes his head. “I have some.223 in one of the safes, but he didn’t ask for nothing but the rifles. Mags and ammo you can pick up anywhere.”

I let him lock the lid down while I take a look around the unit. There’s nowhere inside to conceal myself. If I hide behind the door, then I have no choice but to act when it opens, no matter how many men are on the other side, or what they’re armed with. Dearborn sees me making mental calculations, his forehead glistening with sweat.

“You said one of the other units is yours, too?” I ask.

“That one there.” Wrangler points to the unit directly opposite.

“If I wait in there, you’ll have to leave the lock off, and Ford might notice. Not to mention, I won’t be able to see what’s going on until I throw open the door.”

“I could leave it open and tell ’em I’ve got some other things to load myself.”

I shake my head. “They’ll search it.”

Dearborn goes into the corridor. “What about me?”

For a moment I’m not sure what to do. So I follow him into the hall, glancing left and right. The side we came from leads straight to the entrance, a pair of glass doors that open wide to accommodate loading. The other end of the corridor stops in a T, with smaller entrances on either side of the short hallway, and two doors in the back wall. Stepping closer, I see that one is a men’s restroom and the other is for women.

“That’ll work,” I say. “Take the women’s side in case somebody needs to go.”

Dearborn heads to the ladies’, his heels clicking on the glossy concrete floor. I turn to his friend. “I’ll be in there. If anything happens, you just hit the deck.”

“If anything happens?” His voice cracks. “Something is gonna happen-”

“Just stay calm and keep out of the way.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. At the far end of the corridor, through the glass doors, I see something flash by. A white van pulling up.

“Gotta go.”

I run to the T-intersection, pushing through the door to the women’s restroom. It’s a nicer facility than I would have expected at one of these places, a sink and a couple of stalls and the scent of ammonia on the stifling hot air. There’s a plastic wedge on the linoleum floor, the kind the cleaners use to prop open the door. I bend down for it, thinking I might wedge the door open slightly, but first I switch off the lights. In the dark I see a beam of light shining under the door. Kneeling, I find about an inch of clearance between the bottom of the door and the ground.

“Are you okay back there?” I ask.

From inside the farthest stall, Dearborn coughs. “Tell me when it’s safe to come out.”

I push my jacket back, hitching the fabric behind the holster, then ease my Browning free. Dropping the safety, I press the slide far enough back to touch the chambered round through the ejection port. Then I put the safety back on and drop to my knees, pressing my cheek against the floor, trying not to think about the sanitary implications.

Down the length of the corridor I see two shadows. As they approach, I can hear their footsteps faintly, and the farther they get from the backlighting of the entrance, the more I can make out.

“What’s going on out there?” Dearborn whispers.

“Quiet.”

I was crouched like this behind the tree the night they ran me off the road, biding time until they spotted me. Now the advantage is on my side. They’re just a few steps away from the point where my floor-level view will cut them off at the head. That’s when I get my glimpse: Brandon Ford, his face framed by longish black curls, both hands in the pockets of a light windbreaker-worn for concealment in this heat, just like my jacket. The man next to him is one of the paramilitaries from the files, though I can’t put a name to him. His left side is dragged down by the weight of a green canvas shopping bag, presumably containing the money.

Then their faces disappear above the horizon, followed by their chests and waists, until all I can see is two pairs of legs cut off above the knee and the bottom of the drooping bag. Wrangler steps out of the storage unit to meet them.