J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

He slips through the crowd, jogging into the street just ahead of me with a silly grin on his face, reaching for the door handle and slipping inside.

“That was anticlimactic,” he says. “It seems you don’t need a passport at all to get into Mexico. This guy on the bridge told me, it’s getting back that’s the problem.”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

He nods toward the van. “So they just drove straight through?”

“That could be typical. I don’t know. It’s not a chance I would have taken with all those guns, though. Either they’re the most cold-blooded risk takers in the world, or they know something we don’t.”

“Or the Feds just waved them through,” he says. “If what they told you is true, it’s not like they have a problem with the guns going south.”

I glance over at Jeff, whose walk across the bridge seems to have left him feeling refreshed, wondering whether he didn’t already know he could get across without a passport. A more cynical man might wonder if his little detour served no purpose but to insulate him from any consequences if my car had been searched and the weapons underneath discovered.

He sees me looking at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Now the hard part begins.”

Although the transition from Brownsville isn’t jarring-apart from the signs in Spanish and the different license plates, this city isn’t all that different from the one I’ve just left, equally shabby and run down, with a superficial lipstick for the sake of the tourists-there are a few buildings here and there you wouldn’t find across the river, including a stately mustard-colored place, pure Bourbon Street, with wrought-iron balconies and ornate windows shut away behind weathered shutters. A few street vendors are still working on the corners. Many of the shop fronts, however, are already hidden behind roll-down metal doors.

The white van makes a turn, travels a few blocks, then turns again. We follow them through a verdant city park, the slope dominated by a crazy sculpture that looks like two twists of red licorice rising out of the ground. They stop the van and get out.

“Here we go,” Jeff says.

I pass them and drive back onto the street, pulling into an empty space where we can watch through the back window. A minute later, a silver Toyota turns into the park and rolls up beside them. A tingle runs through me as Brandon Ford exits the passenger side, coming around to shake hands with the two men from the van. He slides open the van door, peers inside, then snaps it shut. The three of them exchange a few words between the vehicles; then Ford motions them toward the Toyota.

“They’re gonna leave the van here. Someone else is picking it up.”

“What do we do?” Jeff asks. “Stick with them or wait around?”

I tap the steering wheel, indecisive. Ford is why we’re here, but leaving the van’s cargo for pickup by the cartel would be an inexcusable breach. The handoff I’d envisioned, a classic guns-for-money trade going down somewhere secluded where we might have a shot at interdiction is clearly off the cards. I have to choose between Ford or the guns.

“I can’t let them have those guns,” I say.

Jeff, half turned in his seat, gets a constipated look. “Forget about the guns. We stick with Ford. That’s why we’re here.”

“I can’t do it. I thought I could.”

“Listen. We have to stick with Ford.”

“I hear you, but I’m not letting the cartel have those guns.”

We’re crossing all the lines. We’re doing things we’ve got no business doing, taking risks we’ve got no business taking.

“They’ll get more guns,” he says. “That’s not a real problem for them.”

His cheeks are flushed with color, his voice thin, reminding me of his emotional reaction earlier on the road. He has a stake in this, too. His attachment to Nesbitt is what’s driving him, not any loyalty to me. He wants Ford, simple as that.

“Yeah, they’ll get more guns,” I say, “but they won’t get them thanks to me.”

“So you’re gonna let him go?”

I nod, hardly believing it myself.

“It’s unacceptable.”

“Even so-”

“All right, listen. Here’s what we’ll do. You stick with Ford. Don’t let him out of your sight, no matter what. Leave me here and I’ll take care of the van.”

“Take care of it how?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll hot-wire it and catch up to you.”

The Toyota pulls out of the park, flashing past us down the street. Jeff pushes his door open, rushing to get out.

“Jeff-”

“Call me when you know where he’s going. I’ll catch up to you when I can.”

He slams the door, then beats his palm on the roof a few times until I finally get going. As I race to catch up with Ford, I see him in the rearview, running toward the van, moving like there’s a bomb to defuse and the timer’s ticking down.

The geography of the city is wholly unfamiliar to me, just a half-remembered jumble from those college visits, which means that after a couple of turns I’m lost, with nothing but the Toyota’s taillights to guide me. Even now, I couldn’t explain to Jeff by phone how to catch up to me, and maybe that’s for the best. If he keeps his word and takes care of the van, if he manages to hot-wire it or just flags down the policía to report a suspicious vehicle, then he’ll have justified my trust and ended his exposure to danger all at once.

Down darkening streets and brick-paved alleyways I follow Ford’s car from a safe distance, cutting through the heart of the city, past old, arcaded squares and glass-fronted, garishly painted storefronts with tatty striped awnings. Past bars and restaurants, farmácias and paleterías . They finally come to a stop halfway down a neon-lit side street, reversing into a curbside parking space and walking two by two to the mouth of a pedestrian alley.

I stop a block away, waiting for them to turn the corner before doubling back. Before locking the car behind me, I peel my jacket off and toss it onto the backseat. I free my shirttails and roll up my sleeves, trying to look as casual, as nondescript as I can.

By the time I reach the alley, picking my way along the congested sidewalk, Ford and his men are standing twenty yards away, killing time in front of a cantina entrance and checking their watches every couple of seconds. They seem to be waiting for someone.

I call Jeff from the end of the alley, reading the street markers phonetically.

“What are you doing?” I ask, unable to hear anything in the background.

He chuckles. “What do you think I’m doing, March? I’m driving.”

As I hang up, a knot of men approaches from the far side of the alley, moving with enough deliberation to part the crowds. The way they carry themselves, I don’t have to wait until they’re close enough to see the ink on their skin or the telltale bulges under their baggy shirts. They’re with the cartel, and on the streets of Matamoros they don’t have to hide it.

There might be ten or twelve of them-it’s hard to keep count-and in their midst walks an older man, more distinguished, with silver hair and a patrician bearing. He wears a guayabera the way American politicians wear plaid western wear, more as a symbol than an article of clothing, or the way a generalissimo might don mufti to travel incognito.

Ford advances to greet the man, making a little bow and waiting for the silver-haired man to offer his hand before extending his own.

“You made it,” the man says, or at least it appears that way from the movement of his lips. He shakes Ford’s hand in both of his, a gesture of warmth that, seen from a distance, conveys just the opposite.