He opened her purse and shook out the contents. He pushed the pepper spray out of reach. There were no other weapons.
He shuffled through three driver’s licenses, same picture, different names. One read “Consuela Ramirez.”
“Which is real?”
“Sophia Ionescu.”
“That’s Romanian?”
She nodded.
Shaw asked, “¿Y si te hubiera preguntado algo en español?”
“I speak Spanish too.”
He took a picture of the Sophia license and sent it to Mack. Less than thirty seconds later:
That’s her. Two arrests for prostitution in California. One in Florida.
“You didn’t answer my question. Is this something you do? A franchise?”
“A guy wanted to take you down. Get you in the system. He had this idea. He knew what you did for a living so he checked for people around here who’d posted rewards for missing kids or wives. He gave me the numbers and I called them up. Maria Vasquez told me you’d saved her daughter. You were so nice, you didn’t even take the reward. This guy told me to pretend to be the girl’s godmother. I do some acting too.” Sophia said this with a wisp of pride.
“Yeah, you’d get an Oscar. Who hired you?”
“This guy I have dates with.”
A phrase he figured meant something different from “This guy I date.”
Shaw said, “That’s half an answer.”
“Ian. Ian Helm. Or Helms. Maybe an ‘s.’ I don’t know. He’s rich, has some consulting company, he says.”
Well. Interesting, but not utterly surprising, news.
“What’d he pay?”
“Ten thousand.”
“You get along with him? Helms?”
“We fuck.”
“Would you testify against him?”
Sophia laughed at Shaw’s naivete.
He considered the issue but decided that this wasn’t the way to go. Even if the woman cooperated, what could Helms be busted for? Nothing serious. Shaw didn’t want to swipe at the men. He wanted to take the entire BlackBridge operation down permanently and send Helms to prison for decades.
Shaw leaned close, staring. He saw uneasiness cloud her eyes. He was using Russell’s approach. “Is there any risk to Maria or Tessy?”
“No, no. We just wanted information.”
“Because if there is . . .” He tapped her authentic driver’s license.
“No, I swear. I told Ian no way would I help if anybody’d get hurt. I don’t get involved in anything like that. I’m a three-G-a-night girl.”
Offered, he guessed, as proof of her moral caliber.
“Give me your number. Your real one. And keep the phone alive. I may need to be in touch with you. If it goes out of service, a friend of mine comes to pay a visit at Eight Five Four Sumner Street. Or wherever you’ve moved. I will find you. You’re in our system now.”
Which meant nothing but sounded good, and certainly unnerved her.
“Jesus.”
Shaw raised an eyebrow.
A tight-lipped nod, still looking victimized. She recited her cell number and Shaw memorized it.
“How much was the necklace?”
A shrug. “Fifty-nine ninety-nine. It’s not a real diamond.”
She looked at the pepper spray.
Shaw laughed and ushered her out the door.
63
The Alvarez Street safe house once again.
Karin and Ty were handling cleanup. The Filipino BNGs’ pickup truck and the weapons were gone. The injured men, now practicing vows of silence, were in the hospital. Adelle was on her way to Vegas. And somewhere in Oakland a perfectly fine Chevrolet Impala, if somewhat bloodstained, was soon to become a two-ton block of scrap.
He wondered if Karin was having any luck finding the identity of Blond, with the task force in San Leandro.
Once they knew who he was, they could deep-background him and, ideally, find out where he’d been recently, whom he associated with, where he lived, what division of BlackBridge he worked for, which gang in Hunters Point he had a connection to.
And who SP was, and why he or she had been targeted for death.
Once those unknowns were brought to light, they would have a chance to save the family.
The time was 1:10 p.m. The kill order would go into effect in less than six hours.
His phone hummed with a text from Professor Steven Field.
It’s on the news.
He flipped to a live TV streaming app on his phone and turned the unit horizontal.
The woman newscaster looked calm and in control and did a fine job reading the words that scrolled up on the teleprompter, but Shaw could see that she was having a bit of trouble understanding the concept. Then again, who wouldn’t?
“. . . government document from more than a hundred years ago has been discovered in San Francisco. It’s a voting tally of a recount in a statewide referendum in nineteen oh-six where the citizens of the state voted to allow . . .” A dramatic pause. “. . . corporations to run for public office. Officials say that the tally was lost among hundreds of thousands of documents that went missing after the earthquake that year, which destroyed three-quarters of the city. It’s believed that the judge certifying the recount was killed in the disaster, which is why no one learned of it at the time.”
Well. That didn’t take long. Shaw supposed this was no surprise. Devereux had waited years to find his magic document. He’d move as quickly as possible to use his ring of power.
“Joining us now is University of Utah business law professor, C. Edward Hobbs. Welcome, Dr. Hobbs. Explain how this amendment could become law after more than a hundred years.”
“Hello. Thank you for having me. There’s no time limit on amendments going into effect once they’ve been approved. No statute of limitations, you might say. A proposition for an amendment doesn’t need to be signed by the governor; it’s not like a bill. Once a majority of the people have voted in favor, it becomes law.”
“So it’s true then. This amendment will allow corporations to run for office?”
“Yes. And, we should say, not just run in an election. A corporation could be appointed to a position too. Judges, sheriffs, regulatory board presidents.”
“Will it be challenged?”
“No doubt it will. The tally itself will have to be authenticated. I’m sure there are experts doing that right now. But we have to remember there’s been a groundswell of support lately to expand the rights of corporations. Look at ‘Citizens United’—the 2010 case that extended the First Amendment right of free speech to corporations.
“The majority of Americans support that. And many professors and politicians I’ve spoken with consider the movement a good one—good for the country, good for democracy. If a corporation holds office, the authority is decentralized. There’ll be an automatic system of checks and balances with the shareholders, the board and the CEO. Remember that the greatest innovations in the past century have come from corporate research. Corporations represent the best brain trusts in the world.”
The shill—on Devereux’s payroll, of course—gave no mention of the man’s troubling policies described in the documents that Shaw and Russell had found in the courier bag, undermining human rights.
“So Facebook or Apple or Amazon could one day be governor of California.”
“In theory, yes.”
“But a corporation couldn’t run for president of the United States?”
“No, the U.S. Constitution is clear on that. The amendment doesn’t apply to federal elections or appointments either. Only state and local. But this is an important precedent. In law, we say, as California goes, so goes the nation . . .”
Shaw shut the broadcast off. He glanced around the safe house. In a windowless corner sat a brown Nau
gahyde armchair facing the bay window that overlooked the street. This would have been where his father sat—his back was never exposed to door or window. Beside the chair was a scuffed and unsteady side table. Shaw walked to the chair and sat in it. He ran his hand over the arms, torn and scuffed. His father had been in San Francisco, just before he returned to the Compound, and not long after that he’d died. Maybe it was here that he’d sat as he assembled the clues that would lead someone—his son, as it turned out—to continue the quest to bring down BlackBridge Corporate Solutions, if he couldn’t finish the job.
Maybe it was in this chair that he’d written the letter and circled the eighteen magic locations on the map that he’d hidden on Echo Ridge.
It was then that his phone hummed with a text from Russell.
Karin: Negative on San Leandro lead to Blond identity. If we don’t find something in a few hours, the family’s gone.
64
At three that afternoon, Shaw’s iPhone trilled. He answered, “Hello?”
“Is this Colter Shaw?” The woman’s voice was low, matter-of-fact.
“That’s right.”
“I was just speaking to your brother, Russell. I’m Julia Callahan. I’m with Systems Support in Bayshore Heights. He called me earlier about an analysis of an old cassette audiotape.”
“I was with him then. You work with Russell, right? He never said exactly.”
“My company does contract work for his organization. He told me to call you ASAP.”
“Russell said you were going to do a deeper analysis. You find something else on the tape?”
“I did. They were smart, whoever made it. The first run through the analyzer showed only music tracks. But the more I listened to it I decided there was a pattern of sounds within the static between the tracks.” Her voice was excited.
“Static?”
“Which wasn’t static at all. I isolated it and slowed it down. Way down.”
“What was on it?”
“A man’s voice, reciting account numbers, routing instructions to offshore corporations and banks, wire transfers to individuals. The man specifically mentioned that the purpose of the transfers was to evade taxes. And some payments were made to outside contractors. And by contractors, it sounded like he meant . . . well . . .”
“Hitmen?”
“That was my impression. I’m just an audio analyst. But we work with companies that do security consulting, so I’ve got experience in the subject. He also mentioned some names. Braxton, Droon—I think that’s a name. And the company they worked for, BlackBridge. And something called UIP was mentioned a half-dozen times. He gave sources for what he called ‘product.’”
“Drugs.”
“I figured.”
Shaw asked, “So you’ve extracted what was said?”
“Yes, it’s a separate recording. An MP3 file.”
“Good. I need to get a copy. I can use it as leverage in an operation Russell and I are running.”
“Give me an email address and I’ll upload it.”
Shaw said, “No. We need to keep it off the internet. Can you get me a physical copy? Maybe on a thumb drive?”
“I can.”
“We only have a few hours. Bayshore’s south of the city?”
“That’s right.”
“You know San Bruno state park?”
“Sure. I jog there some.”
Shaw asked, “Is there a deserted place we can meet?”
“The south entrance, off McGuire Road. Nobody ever uses it.”
“A half hour?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be on a motorcycle. Black leather jacket.”
“I’ve got a Toyota Camry. Blue.”
“I’ll bring the original tape.”
“Good. I can do some deeper analysis.”
Shaw paused. He whispered, “Evidence against them . . . So Ashton was right after all.”
“What was that?”
“Oh. Just thinking out loud. I’ll see you soon.”
65
Many years ago, San Bruno, south of San Francisco, was an Ohlone village.
The Ohlones lived in scores of indigenous settlements from San Francisco down to Big Sur in precolonial America. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they were hunters, fishers and gatherers, and did some farming too. They were the first people in America to learn how to make bitter acorns into food. The Ohlone practiced the Kuksu religion, heavy into rites and rituals, usually practiced in secretive underground chambers.
Life was fine among these people until the conquistadores arrived and, with the Franciscans, set to work “missionizing” the tribes, moving them off their lands and forcing conversion to Christianity. The population was reduced by three-quarters on account of European diseases, against which the Ohlone had no natural immunity. The coup de grâce for the tribes, however, was not the missions, the Spanish or bacteria, but the state of California itself, whose first governor, Peter Burnett, said, in an address to the legislature in 1851, he would wage a war of extermination against the native people “until the Indian race becomes extinct.” He pursued that policy to grim effect, though several Ohlone tribes still existed in the Central Coastal region.
Shaw knew this because he had some Ohlone blood in his veins, through Mary Dove, who’d taught him about their distant ancestry. San Bruno park, which had been in the heart of their territory, was a sample of what their home had been like two hundred and fifty years ago, before the gold, silver and silicon rushes: Lush and rich and verdant, covered with undulating hills.
It was into a small parking lot here that Colter Shaw now steered his Yamaha. He traversed the smooth asphalt, stopping in the center. He looked with some envy at nearby hiking trails, which would make for an exhilarating dirt bike ride.
That diversion would, of course, have to wait.
The place was not quite deserted. On one side of the small parking lot was a commercial van—a plumbing company. The driver, in overalls, was eating a sandwich and sipping from a very large soda cup. Also present was a California State Parks service pickup, its driver—in an oversize Smokey-the-Bear hat—making a call and referring to a clipboard. No joggers or hikers or sightseers were present. The gray sky shed mist and teased with the promise of rain.
A blue Toyota sedan pulled into the lot and edged slowly toward him. The car stopped and the door opened.
Shaw nodded to the woman in black leggings and sweater and a navy-blue windbreaker. “Julia?”
“Colter.”
He joined her. “You weren’t followed?”
“No. I’m sure. You?”
“I have an anti-tailing device.”
She frowned. “What’s that?”
He nodded to the Yamaha.
“In your motorcycle?” she asked.
“It is my motorcycle. You drive on the lane stripes seven miles over the limit and nobody can follow.”
“I might try that someday.”
“You ride?”
“No. But I always wanted to. I’d need somebody to teach me how. You have to take a test, don’t you? To get a license.”
“Piece of cake. You’ll pass with flying colors.”
She pursed her lips. “What are flying colors exactly? I’m always curious where expressions come from.”
Shaw didn’t know and he told her so.
She pulled a hair elastic off her wrist and tied her tangle of dark-blond hair up into a ponytail, centered high on the back of her head. “Where’s Russell?”
“He’s back at the safe house. Following up on some other leads for our operation.” He looked her over, frowning. “You’re not armed, are you?”
“Me?” She gave a laugh as if this were an absurd idea. “I work for a tech company. We don’t carry guns. Why?”
Shaw nodded at the sta
te park pickup. “Government property. Weapons aren’t allowed.”
“Are you armed?”
Shaw shrugged. “I am but I’ve had plenty of practice keeping mine out of sight.”
The parks department truck’s engine fired up and the unsmiling driver touched the brim of his hat as he pulled past them. Shaw nodded in reply. The truck vanished up a dirt trail into the woods.
She said, “I’ve got a thumb drive but I also ran a transcription program. It printed out everything. I got about a hundred pages.” She retrieved a large white envelope from the front seat of her car.
“Excellent.”
“I might pick up something more from the original. Second generation there’s always some fallout. I was thinking . . .” Her voice faded, then she gasped, looking past Shaw.
The front door of the plumbing van was swinging open and the driver, a pale-faced man, climbed out. Blond as the dead man in the alley. He was huge, dressed in black tactical gear and was holding a pistol.
Then the side panel slid open and two others stepped to the ground: Ebbitt Droon, armed as well, and—looking every inch the harmless grandmother—Irena Braxton.
When they were out, standing on the ground, another figure emerged and joined them.
The head of BlackBridge, Ian Helms, stared his way. In a voice that was a rich, resonant baritone—as one might expect, coming from such a handsome leading man—he said, “Well, Colter Shaw.”
66
Arms crossed, studying Shaw, Helms said, “Would’ve been in your best interest not to outsmart my friend.”
Shaw supposed Helms was referring to Sophia/Connie and his dodging the bust at the Pacific Heights safe house.
I was worried. All those drugs . . . I did it for the children . . .
At least there he wouldn’t be facing that fate they now had planned for him here in the park.
Droon took over. “Okay, Shaw, pull your shirt up. Slow, don’tcha know?”
The Final Twist Page 26