J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

“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 MPs 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.