Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) (15 page)

“It looks that way from where I’m sitting.”

“Well, you still have a job, don’t you?” He gets out of the car and shuts the door, then leans back through the open window. “If she wasn’t looking out for you, I’m not sure you’d even have that.”

“Thanks, Stephen.”

He taps the roof. “Just don’t make it a habit.”

As a testament to
how well our conversation went, before I’m home Wilcox calls me with the name of a contact—an ex-intelligence man—who proved immensely informative during the investigation of Nesbitt’s death. “His name is Englewood and he’s the real deal.” Apparently the club of retirees Nesbitt had chaired appointed this Englewood as an informal liaison, empowering him to give the detectives the lay of the land, answering questions with surprising candor, though always off the record. Wilcox only met him once, but kept the man’s card. He rattles a phone number off while I copy it into the open Filofax on my lap, trying not to steer into one of the parked cars on my right.

I dial while idling in my own driveway, mentally preparing myself for some song and dance. Just because he’s helped the police once doesn’t mean there’s a permanent shingle out on his stoop.

“This is Tom,” a voice says.

“Tom Englewood?” I introduce myself, mention the fact that I’m a homicide detective, and launch into a vague soliloquy about lingering questions surrounding the Nesbitt shooting. He cuts me off midsentence, leaving me to expect the worst.

“Tell you what,” he says. “You know the Downing Street Pub? I’m usually there between ten and eleven, enjoying an evening cigar. Why don’t you drop by this evening and we’ll have ourselves a little chat.”

“I’ll see you then.”

———

In the first ten minutes, Tom Englewood reveals himself as a former Northeasterner, an Ivy Leaguer who during the course of a rich and varied life sloughed off his regional identity, trading it for what I can only describe as Latin elegance. Engine-turned cuff links sparkle at his wrists, and his watch has a skeleton face that reveals the jeweled movement inside. A puff of silk erupts from the breast pocket of his glen plaid suit jacket, with a sterling clip holding his silk-weave tie in place. He wears his hair slicked back and keeps a tightly trimmed mustache.

He holds down his side of the table like it belongs to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a brass plaque on the edge with his name on it. When he offers me a cigar, he clips the cap himself before passing it over, like he doesn’t trust anyone else to do the job right.

Before I can ask any questions, he starts lecturing me on the virtues of American bourbons, switching in midstream (after catching my glance at the band on the cigar in my hand) to a denunciation of anyone who says the best Honduran cigars don’t equal or better the much-vaunted Cubans. During the 1980s, he says, he spent a lot of time down in Honduras (
wink
,
nod
) and during the cigar craze of the nineties considered going back to get something going on the cigar front—easy enough to do, he hints, with contacts like his.

“Mr. Englewood,” I say.

“Please. It’s Tom.” He makes a flourish with his cigar hand, leaving a trail of smoke in the air, granting the favor of his first name with
noblesse oblige
. “I know you didn’t come out tonight to hear my theories on life. You said you have questions about Andy Nesbitt, is that right?”

“There seems to be some confusion about whether he really worked for the
CIA
or not.”

Englewood gives me a big smile. “Uh-
huh
.”

“Where do you come down on that question?”

“I knew Andy really well,” he says, “but only after I settled down here. That doesn’t mean much, of course. My own work was more of an analytical nature—I was a big-picture guy—whereas he always claimed to have been operational. Wherever he got his experience, I can tell you he was good at putting together networks and producing high-grade intelligence product.”

“He continued to do that kind of work, you mean? After retirement?”

“None of us retires. Not if we can help it.”

There are two paths, Englewood explains, which he dubs the High Road and the Low Road. Returning to the private sector, a former intelligence officer can sell his services to the government, either through an existing private security company or by creating his own. Since 9/11, there are plenty of opportunities for ex-officers with Middle East experience. “And even if they
don’t
have it, there are ways and means.” This kind of work, suckling at the government teat, whether directly through the intelligence community or indirectly via government contractors, is considered the High Road.

“And the Low Road?”

“Corporate money,” he says. “A lot of us in H-Town, we’re Low Roaders, I guess you could say. The energy companies do business all over the world, so wherever you happen to have contacts, there’s usually somebody you can provide with some added value. Think about it: you could spend your whole career with Langley, sweating it out at some station in Africa, a thankless backwater where you could always be kidnapped and shot just for being seen at the embassy, without any of the compensating charms. . . .” He chuckles at the thought of said charms, but doesn’t elaborate. “And when you retire, there’s a Houston oil maverick looking to drill wells off the coast of your old stomping ground, and only you can tell him which palms to grease. It’s a beautiful thing.”

All this is interesting, but it’s not what I came for. “What about Nesbitt? Which road was he on?”

“Oh, I would have had him pegged as a High Roader. You know about his newsletter? You don’t?” He raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Nesbitt compiled an intelligence report specifically for policy makers, drug enforcement administrators. That was his bailiwick, international criminal organizations, particularly the Latin American ones.”

“The cartels?”

He nods. “The way he described it—and obviously I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, considering our government’s denial of the whole thing—his career had two phases: there was Cold War Andy and then Drug War Andy. He’d cut his teeth doing the usual cloak-and-dagger, so he seemed like a good candidate for Colombia in ’91. The idea was to help the military set up networks for gathering intel on the drug lords. Shut down the problem at its source. The results, unfortunately, were mixed, but Andy came away a believer.”

“So he would have been interested in what’s going on with the Mexican cartels?”

“Very.” I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. An impish light shines in his eyes.

“Is there something more?”

“Funny,” he says. “I get the impression
you
have something more to say. I’ve been pretty candid, haven’t I? Maybe it’s time for you to show your hand.”

With a man like Tom Englewood, it’s hard to know how much information to share. As forthcoming as he seems, he could simply be priming the pump, feeding me just enough background to win my trust in an effort to discover how much I really know. If I tell him about the operation Bea inherited, he might be able to confirm that it was set up by Nesbitt. From what he’s saying, the Gulf Cartel op sounds like the kind of thing Nesbitt did for a living. On the other hand, he might respond by clamming up, filing away the information for future use.

“You’re wondering how much you should say. That’s smart. But remember, it was you who called me.”

“All right, then. If I were to say that, before he died, Nesbitt was running an undercover operation inside one of the major Mexican cartels, how would you respond?”

He calls a waitress over and orders a single malt, glancing my way to see whether I’ll have anything. The butt end of his cigar drops into the ashtray and he reaches into his jacket for another, withdrawing it from a hallmarked silver case. It’s his last, so he offers it to me first.

“No thanks,” I say. “I’m still waiting for your answer.”

“I’m thinking.” He clips the cigar and toasts the tip with a torch lighter before putting it to his lips for a few puffs. “The thing is, I know a little bit about your situation. After you called, I made a couple of enquiries. You aren’t assigned to the Nesbitt investigation. In fact, that investigation is closed.”

“I didn’t say I was.”

“No, you didn’t. So what I’m wondering is, why do you care? You’re not interested in drug enforcement, and as far as I know, as bad as things are south of the border, the drug war hasn’t made its way up here yet.” He cuts off my objection with a wave of the cigar. “Oh, I know, I know. The drugs are here. But no one’s assassinating prosecutors or snuffing police detectives.”

“I have a victim in the morgue,” I say. “He’s been decapitated and, before he died, he was de-gloved. You know what that means?”

His eyes narrow. “Oh, I know what it means. And I have an idea the sort of people who’d do something like that.”

“So you understand my interest.”

“Maybe. But you’re not planning to slap the cuffs on some low-level cartel enforcers. You have a different idea in mind.”

“I want to know whether Nesbitt had an operation going, that’s all.”

“Of course he did.”

“He did? You know that for a fact?”

“I don’t know anything for a fact. Let me put it this way: I was under the impression that’s what he was up to, or something like it. Andy had a theory. In the 1830s, the Texans set off a chain of events that led to a U.S. invasion of Mexico a decade later. A lot of people in the American government didn’t want that to happen, but the Texans led out and sucked the rest of the nation in.”

“More or less,” I say.

“Right. I’m not intending this as a history lesson. It’s just a point Nesbitt used to make. The reason Latin America in general and Mexico in particular are so unstable is that we’ve ignored them. We turned our attention to the other side of the world and left our backyard to fend for itself. A familiar complaint.

“Andy’s theory was, only a disaster could focus our attention on doing something. Only a disaster could shake us out of the complacent notion that we can just wall ourselves off from the problem. What he wanted for Mexico was what we’d already given to Baghdad and Kabul.”

“Regime change?”

He smiles. “Stability. When the border became such a contentious issue after 9/11, Andy started telling people the border would never be secure until the nation of Mexico was, and that wouldn’t happen without some kind of intervention. Cooperation simply wasn’t enough. The question was, what would have to happen before Americans would support such a move?”

“You mean, before they’d support an invasion of Mexico? That’s insane.”

“Not an invasion. What he had in mind was something similar to what he’d worked on in Colombia, only with a more effective U.S. component. And anyway, it’s not
that
insane. We’ve invaded Mexico before, and not just when Santa Anna was in charge. Remember Black Jack Pershing?”

“What does all this have to do with the drug cartels?”

He gives a theatrical shrug. “You tell me. You’re the detective. We put pressure on the Mexicans to crack down on the cartels, so they started waging war, which sent the borderlands into a death spiral. Now the headlines are full of the excesses and Americans are shocked,
shocked
at what’s happening on our doorstep. Someone has to
do
something.”

“That’s a very cynical point of view.”

“What can I say? My profession doesn’t breed many idealists. What I’m telling you is this: Andy tried to convince anyone in power who’d listen that the cartels were running wild and the Mexican government was out of its depth. If you were one of the people paying top dollar for his intel reports, that was the message he hammered into you day in and day out. So, no, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that Andy had a line into the cartels.”

The cigar in my hand has burned down to my fingers and my throat burns from sucking it down. The column of white ash suggests that Englewood has good taste in smokes, but I feel compromised somehow in partaking of his largess. When he signals the waitress again, I scoot my chair back.

“You’ve had enough?” he asks.

“The night he was shot, Nesbitt seemed to believe those cops were planning to kill him.”

“They
did
kill him.”

“Right, but he thought it was a hit. He thought
HPD
pulled him over with the express intention of punching his ticket. What would have made him so paranoid?”

“Your colleagues asked me the same question. I’ll tell you what I told them: I have no idea. In most parts of the world, though, when you do the kind of work we did, it’s not so strange to assume that when the police pull you over, they intend something more sinister than to write up a traffic citation.”

“Is that the kind of thing you worry about?” I ask.

“Me?” He knocks back the last of his scotch. “No, I don’t. But like I told you, my line was analysis. I never got my hands dirty. Andy did. Always assuming he never worked for the
CIA
at all. Naturally, I take the official denials at face value.”

“Naturally.”

I put a few dollars on the table despite Englewood’s objection. I believe in paying my own way. He leans forward a little, the mischievous glint back in his eyes.

“I forgot to mention something,” he says. “You and I, we have a mutual acquaintance. I thought I’d heard your name somewhere before.”

“Oh really?” I ask, thinking he means Wilcox, though why Wilcox would have mentioned my name to him—

“Reginald Keller,” he says. “I think you guys called him Big Reg.”

At the sound of the name, my whole body tenses.

“How do you know Keller?” I ask.

“Before his troubles, he was involved in a little business venture. I was one of the investors. So was Andy, if I’m not mistaken. I guess you could say that when you brought Keller down, you cost us all a pretty penny.” He reaches for the money on the table and pockets it. “I’ll consider this as repayment.”

“It’s supposed to be for the tip.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says. “I always leave a big tip.”

As I leave, I can hear him laughing under his breath. I push through the doorway, out into the balmy night, a few cars racing down Kirby with their stereos thumping. I go to my car, fumble through my pockets for the keys, then slump down behind the wheel. Everything he told me about Nesbitt is forgotten. The spooks and the cartels, the interventions and the border wars. All of it erased by the sound of that name.