The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

  Ship horn 1: This matches the tone of the Marin Express, ferry with service from Pier 41 in the Embarcadero to Sausalito, approximately one mile away.

  Ship horn 2: This matches the Alcatraz Cruiser, a ship operated by Bay Cruise Tours, approximately one mile away.

  Ship horn 3. This matches the tone of the Sea Maid III, operated by Cruise Tours Unlimited, docked at Eureka Promenade, approximately 300+ feet away.

  Cable car bells, from opposite directions, probably the north terminus of the Powell/Mason line to the east, and Powell/Hyde line to the west. Powell/Mason is closer.

  Correlating these data, I think the location is the southwest Fisherman’s Wharf area, likely Ghirardelli Square.

  “Whoever did it is good,” Russell said.

  Shaw was looking around. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He climbed out of the vehicle and approached the guitarist. He pulled a twenty from his pocket and dropped it into the guitar case.

  “Hey, man, thanks.” His eyes were wide.

  “Got a question.”

  “Sure.” Maybe hoping: Was he free to sign a multimillion-dollar recording contract?

  “Do you know this girl? She’s gone missing. I’m helping her mother try to find her.”

  “Oh, yeah. Tessy. Jesus. Missing?”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “I just got back from Portland. Before that. A week maybe.”

  “You know her well?”

  “No. Talked about music some. Mostly just to divide up the corners, you know. So we didn’t sing over each other. This sucks. I hope she’s okay.”

  “You ever know if she had trouble with anyone?”

  “Never saw it. Guys’d flirt. You know. She could handle it.”

  “Was she ever with a man named Roman?” Shaw described him.

  “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

  Shaw thanked him. He studied the block, turning in a slow circle. His eyes came to rest on a gift shop, specializing in saltwater taffy and objets d’art based on cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

  He caught his brother’s eye and nodded at the store. Russell joined him.

  “Video?” his brother asked.

  “It’s right in the line of sight. Hope so.”

  The two men greeted the manager of the store, dressed for some reason like a clerk in an Old West general store. Straw hat, candy-striped shirt, suspenders and a sleeve garter. When they explained why they were here, he said, “Oh, no. Terrible.” He added that he knew Tessy. She occasionally would come into the store and exchange the tip coins she’d received from performing for bills.

  He handed over the counter to another worker, and the men followed him into the back room.

  He logged on to a cloud server and typed in the date and time from the call Tessy had made to her mother. Scrubbing back and forth . . . Finally, in fast motion, Tessy walked into view, removed her guitar from the case, which she opened for the tips, and then slung the instrument over her neck. She was in a red blouse and a black gypsy skirt. Her dark hair was loose.

  She began to sing, smiling to passersby. The chord changes seemed efficient. No fancy jazz riffs. He’d heard that a guitar had never been intended as a lead instrument, but a rhythm one. That came from his distant past, from Margot, who’d been a source of much of his popular cultural knowledge. The woman had then added, “But tell that to Jimi Hendrix.”

  Shaw’s own personal favorite guitarist was the Australian Tommy Emmanuel, who seemed to pry an entire orchestra from his git-fiddle.

  Shaw was amused that her guitar was a Yamaha, the same brand as his motorbike. He supposed they were the same company—though that was about as diversified a manufacturing operation as you would find.

  “Can you scrub to where she leaves?”

  The man did. They saw her put her guitar away and pull a phone from her pocket. She made a brief call—probably the one to her mother. She then picked up the guitar case, slung a purse over her shoulder and started up the street away from the store. She walked to the corner and turned right.

  “You catch that?” Shaw asked.

  “The van,” Russell said.

  A gray minivan, which had been parked on the same side of the street as Tessy was on, pulled into traffic as she walked by and proceeded slowly, as if following her. It made the same turn she did.

  “Christ, you think they did . . . I mean, did something to her?” The manager’s face radiated concern.

  “Scrub back to where it arrives.”

  That was about twenty minutes before she left.

  “Let it play in normal time.”

  Yes, it was suspicious. After the van parked, no one got out. And no one got in; it wasn’t there to pick someone up. Then the passenger side doors opened and two men got out. They were Anglo, pale with thick black hair—one’s was slicked back, the other’s was a disorderly mop. They were in dress shirts and slacks. The one from the front seat removed a phone from his pocket and took a picture of the square, then fiddled with the screen.

  “He’s sending the picture.”

  A moment later, after what seemed to be a text exchange, Slick put the phone away. He lit a cigarette and the two climbed back into the van.

  “We should call the police.”

  Russell said, “We will. Any way we can get a copy of that vid?”

  “Sure.” He rummaged in the desk and found an SD card. “From the time she arrived?”

  “If you would, yes.”

  He typed some commands and within a minute the video, in the form of an MP4 file, was on the card.

  Shaw said, “We’ll pay you for it.”

  “No, no. Just get it to the police right away. God, I hope she’s okay.”

  Shaw described Tessy’s ex, Roman. “Was she ever in here with somebody who looked like him?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  They thanked him. He handed them a business card. “Please let me know what happens.”

  Russell said they would and the men returned to the SUV.

  As his brother fired up the big vehicle, Shaw sent a text to Mack, with the priority code, requesting information on a vehicle. He’d memorized the van’s California license tag.

  “Let’s look at the cross street.” Russell pulled into traffic and, following the same route as the gray van, turned the corner. The street was not much more than an alley—it was lined by the backs of buildings and loading docks, no storefronts or residences.

  “Couldn’t’ve picked a better place for a snatch,” Russell said, “if we’d planned it out ahead of time.”

  32

  Shaw’s phone hummed with a text.

  Gray van is registered to a California corporation, Specialty Services, LLC. No physical address. P.O. box. Specialty Services is owned by an offshore. Have lawyers in St. Kitts and Sacramento looking into ultimate ownership.

  Shaw read this to his brother, as he piloted the SUV to Burlingame.

  “Doesn’t look good. Police? This isn’t a BlackBridge thing.”

  “They’re undocumented. Tessy and her mother. They’ll be deported. Or Maria will be, by herself, if I can’t find Tessy. Anyway, the police won’t get on board with what we have.”

  He couldn’t tell his brother’s reaction.

  After fifteen minutes of silence, Russell asked, “It’s like PI work then?”

  “The rewards? Pretty much. Looking for escapees, suspects. Some private. Like Tessy.”

  “You do BEA?”

  “No.” Bond enforcement agents pursued bail skippers and FTAs—“failures to appear” at hearings or trials. The criminals whom bond agents pursued were invariably punks and drunks and could usually be located with minimal mental effort—in places like their girlfriends’ or parents’ basements or in the same bar where they got wasted the night they committed the cri
me they’d been hauled to jail for in the first place. He explained this.

  “You want a better quality perp.”

  “A more challenging perp.”

  More silence.

  “What’re the rewards like?”

  “You mean, amounts?”

  Russell nodded.

  “From a couple of thousand. To twenty million or so.”

  “Million?”

  “Not my kind of work, generally. It’s a State Department reward. The way those work is somebody in the bad guy’s organization gets location information to the CIA. Then it’s time for SEAL Team Six.”

  “Who’s the twenty million?”

  “Guy named Idrees Ayubi . . . He’s a . . .” Shaw’s voice faded as he saw his brother nodding knowingly. Given his profession, it wasn’t surprising that he’d know the name of the terrorist with the highest bounty offered by the U.S. government.

  After some silence Shaw said, “But it’s not about the money. What I like about a reward is it’s a flag. It means there’s a problem that nobody’s been able to solve. Never be bored.”

  “Was that one of Ash’s? I don’t remember it.”

  “No.”

  The boys had once asked their father—whom Russell dubbed the King of Never—why he phrased his rules beginning with the negative. The man’s answer: “Gets your attention better.”

  Russell fell silent once again. Shaw wondered if he was still angry at the suggestion that he was running away from confronting the BNGs.

  “A cult? Tom Pepper was saying?”

  “Last week. Washington State.”

  “Somebody posted a reward to get a follower out of the place?”

  Shaw explained that, no, he had learned about the cult on a reward job and he’d been troubled by the cult leaders’ sadistic and predatory behavior. “I went in undercover, found a lot of vulnerable people—there were a hundred members altogether. I did what I could to save some of them. Made some enemies.”

  Shaw now realized two things: One, he was rambling, and he was doing it for the purpose of encouraging his brother to engage, to dive beneath the surface of their cocktail-party small talk.

  And, two, Russell was simply filling the thorny pits of silence; he evidently had little interest in Shaw’s narrative.

  Finally Shaw said, “Something on your mind?” He didn’t think he’d ever asked his brother this question.

  Russell hesitated then said, “An assignment I have to get to.”

  “Here?”

  “No. Can’t say where.”

  “You don’t want to be doing this, do you?” Shaw asked. He gestured toward the pleasant street they were coursing along in Burlingame but meant the pursuit of BlackBridge.

  “Just, we should get it done.”

  Another voice ended the conversation: the woman within the GPS announced that their destination was on the left.

  * * *

  —

  Ma’am, I wonder if you’d be willing to help us out,” Shaw said.

  The woman in the doorway was early seventies, he estimated. She looked at them with a smile but with still eyes, as one will do with doorbell ringers who seem polite but are wholly unexpected. She’d be wondering about this pair in particular, who bore a very slight resemblance to each other. She wore an apron, not the sort serious chefs donned like body armor, but light blue, with frills and lace, insubstantial. A garment from a bygone era.

  “My husband will be back soon.”

  Offered as a reason that she might be less helpful to them now, being only half the complement. And spoken too as a shield. Reinforcements would arrive momentarily.

  Her name, they’d learned thanks to Mack’s research, was Eleanor.

  Shaw introduced himself and Russell and then said, “My brother and I are looking into some family history.”

  This was indisputable. Not the whole truth, but how often is that really necessary?

  “We were going through some old family papers and found out our father had some interest in this house or whoever lived here.”

  Russell qualified, “A long time ago.”

  “Well, this’s my husband’s family’s house. He’s lived here thirty years. Who’s your father? Oh, you said ‘had.’ Does that mean he’s not with us any longer?”

  “No, he’s not,” Shaw told her.

  “I’m sorry.” Her face exuded genuine sorrow. This was a woman who had experienced loss herself.

  “What was your father’s name?”

  “Ashton Shaw.”

  A squint, and faint lines appeared in the powdery face. “I don’t think I know the name. Maybe Mort does. You have a picture? Maybe it’ll jog my memory?” She was more comfortable now, since the men weren’t trying to talk their way inside and sell her insurance or aluminum siding.

  Shaw was irritated with himself for not thinking to bring a picture of their father. He was surprised when Russell produced a small photo—and not on his camera but from the location where family pictures used to be kept: his wallet. Shaw was stung even deeper at the thought that he had accused his older brother—even if silently—of killing a man whose picture he carried around with him after all these years.

  Glancing down at the faded rectangle, he was more surprised yet to find that the shot was not of Ashton alone, but of the three Shaw men: father and sons. Ashton was behind, the boys in front. Shaw was about twelve. They were rigged for rappelling in the high country.

  He turned back to Eleanor, expecting her to say, My, I can see the resemblance, or something similar.

  Instead she was frozen, gaping at the picture.

  “Ma’am?” Russell asked.

  “I do know him.”

  Shaw’s pulse picked up. “How?”

  “Years ago, ages. He was older than in your picture and his hair was wilder. And whiter. But I remember him clearly. It was at the funeral. He was looking very distraught. Well, we all were, of course. But he seemed especially troubled. We thought that was odd since no one in the family had a clue who he was.”

  Shaw: “Whose funeral was it?”

  “My son. Amos.”

  “Amos Gahl?”

  “That’s right. I’m Eleanor Nadler now. I remarried after my first husband passed.”

  She tilted her head and looked each of them over, and it was a coy, conspiratorial gaze. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll make some coffee. And you boys can tell me why you’re really here.”

  33

  The house smelled of mothballs, which, Shaw supposed, most people associate with grandparents’ homes and old clothing in odd cuts and colors stored away forever.

  Shaw’s thought, though, was of snakes: during one particularly dry, infestive year, Ashton and the children had ringed the cabin and gardens with pungent spheres of naphthalene to ward off persistent rattlers searching for water and mice.

  Eleanor nodded to a floral couch, and the Shaw brothers sat. She disappeared into the kitchen. Given his childhood, Shaw had no reference point for television sitcoms but he and Margot had occasionally lain on inflatable mattresses during one of her archeological digs and, on a tablet or computer, watched the shows her parents and grandparents had loved. Surreal to have just made love to a sultry woman, in the wilderness of Arizona, your pistol handy in case of coyotes, and be watching The Andy Griffith Show (funny) or Bewitched (not his style).

  This home was immaculate, well dusted, pastel. There were many objects sitting on many surfaces. China figurines were outnumbered only by family photographs.

  Five minutes later the woman returned with a silver tray on which sat three delicate porcelain cups, filled with black coffee, on saucers. A sugar bowl and pitcher filled with viscous cream, not milk, sat beside them. Also, three spoons and three napkins folded into triangles. She passed out one cup each to Shaw and Russell and took on
e for herself. The brothers doctored with cream. The coffee was rich. African. Kenyan, Shaw was pretty sure.

  In her soft voice she said, “I have a feeling that this isn’t about 23andMe genealogy, is it?”

  “No, Ms. Nadler—?” Russell began.

  “Eleanor,” she corrected. “I have a feeling we have something important in common. First names seem appropriate.”

  “Eleanor,” Shaw said, sipping again and putting the cup down. The clink seemed loud. “We’re here looking into how our father died.” He had to say the next part. “We think he was killed under circumstances similar to your son’s death.”

  “It was no accident,” she muttered. “I know that.”

  Russell said, “Not long before he died, our father was in touch with some coworkers who knew Amos.”

  “At BlackBridge.” Her lips tightened.

  A nod. “They think Amos smuggled some evidence out of the company. Evidence of crimes they’d committed.”

  Shaw went on to explain about the Urban Improvement Plan and other illegal activities that the company was involved in: the stock manipulation, the kickbacks, the phony earthquake inspections.

  She didn’t know UIP or other specifics—Shaw supposed her son intentionally didn’t tell her too much, to protect her—but she said, “There was always something wrong about that place. He was never comfortable there.” Her eyes strayed to a picture on the wall. It depicted Gahl in his early twenties. He was in a soccer kit. Curly dark hair, a lean face. “He was such a good boy. Smart. Good-looking . . . Oh, he was a catch. I’d thought he’d bring home the most beautiful girl in college.” A laugh. “He brought home some beautiful boys . . . That was the way he went. Fine with me.” A sigh. “My son was happy. He loved academia.”

  “Where did he teach?” Russell asked.

  “San Francisco State. He was happy there.” Her face tightened. “Then he joined that company. It wasn’t a good place. It was dark. But he got tempted. Where else could somebody with a history degree make the kind of money they paid him?”