The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

  It was in one of these neighborhoods that Russell parked his SUV, near Rincon Park, in which Shaw could see the Cupid’s Span sculpture, a huge bow facing downward with an arrow buried in the ground. Supposedly this was a nod toward San Francisco’s reputation as the City of Eros, or something like that. Shaw wasn’t sure he got it, and the sculpture now brought to mind not art but Earnest La Fleur’s sharp-tipped greeting in Sausalito.

  The brothers climbed from the vehicle and walked half a block to an ancient three-story red-brick building. Above the arched doorway was etched in sandstone: haywood brothers warehousing & storage.

  “Optimistic,” Shaw said.

  Russell looked at him with a frown of curiosity. Shaw nodded at the lintel over the door.

  “Warehousing and storage. Their business plan was set in stone. Literally. Never thought they might have to diversify.”

  “Hmm.”

  Russell was simply not going to fall victim to humor.

  They walked into the scuffed lobby with checkerboard tile for flooring. The walls were yellow stucco and the crown molding featured grizzly bears, the state animal of California.

  Which, of course, put Shaw in mind of the statuette his father had given his brother, following the incident on the avalanche field so many years ago.

  The Reclusive One . . .

  A double door at the back of the lobby was chained and padlocked. To the right was a glass door on which a stenciled sign read: manager.

  Inside, a round man in a white short-sleeved shirt sat hunched over a computer. Shaw noted that when he and Russell entered, the man’s right hand had strayed toward a drawer before assessing there wasn’t much threat these two presented. The Embarcadero was not completely tamed.

  “Help you?”

  They had a cover story, which was similar to the fiction they’d spun upon first meeting Eleanor Nadler, Amos Gahl’s mother. They were brothers researching their late aunt’s life—she was a well-known professor at Cal—for a self-published book. It would be a Christmas present for their mother—the woman’s sister.

  “Mom’ll love it,” Shaw said.

  The manager said, “Women do seem to like that family stuff, don’t they? More’n us guys, I’d say.”

  Russell said with a faint, utterly uncharacteristic laugh. “You got that right.” He really was quite the actor.

  “We found a reference to the warehouse here in one of her diaries,” Shaw told him. “We’re curious what the connection was. Has this always been a working warehouse?”

  “Not a working anything now. We’re closed up.” He nodded at the computer. “I’m making appointments for prospective buyers. The partnership owns it is putting it up on the block. This neighborhood is changing, you can see. Going to be condos and retail, probably.”

  The air was close, the temperature hot in the office—a renegade boiler, it seemed—and the man mopped his brow with a Kleenex, which he’d taken from his pocket, unfolded, used and then replaced.

  “Only thing is, unless your aunt was connected with the government somehow, I doubt she would’ve had much to do with the place.”

  Shaw said, “Yessir, she did some government work.”

  “On occasion,” Russell said, looking toward the door that seemed to lead to the warehouse proper. “What was stored here?”

  The manager continued, “You know the earthquake, nineteen oh-six?”

  The brothers nodded. The estimated 7.8- or 7.9-level event had destroyed about eighty percent of the city, killing three thousand.

  “The quake was bad enough but it was the fires that did the most damage. Stop me if I’m telling you something you already know.”

  “Please.” Shaw gestured with his hand for the man to continue. He seemed happy for the visitors. Shaw noted it was not an appointment calendar but a game of solitaire that was on his computer.

  “The fire chief was killed in the initial quake and no one knew back then how to fight blazes that big, you know, ruptured gas lines and all. They dynamited buildings to make firebreaks but didn’t do it right. That just started more fires. Worst part was that insurance companies wouldn’t write earthquake policies but they would for fire damage. So people started setting fire to their own houses for the coverage—and most of them were wood. You can imagine.

  “Anyway, there was fire in the Embarcadero, a lot of buildings went, but not these blocks, so the government workers loaded up all the official documents and records and drove them down here for safekeeping. Drove hell for leather, with the blaze right on their heels. The city and state removed a lot of the crap over the next decade. Went to the new city hall and the state and federal buildings. But they still left the warehouse half full. Millions of documents.”

  Shaw regarded Russell. “So, that’s what she was doing, I’ll bet. Researching something in the archives.”

  Shaw assessed that their acting was acceptable. Not Broadway, but superior community theater. To the manager: “She was a history prof.”

  “Was she now?”

  “Can we show you a picture of her?” Russell asked.

  He frowned. “Would this’ve been in the last two years? That’s as long as I’ve been here.”

  “Lot longer than that.”

  “Well, I took over from a guy’d been at this desk for twenty years. Jimmy Spilt. I know, the name’s a burden.”

  “You in touch with him?” Shaw asked.

  “On and off.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Barney Mellon.”

  Russell shook his hand. “I’m Peter and this’s Joe.”

  Shaw gripped Barney’s palm too.

  “Say, Barney, any chance we could send Mr. Spilt a picture? See if he recognizes her?”

  Russell added, “Tall order, but we’d appreciate it.”

  “You boys sure must love your mom.”

  “That’s the truth,” Shaw said.

  Russell asked for Barney’s phone number and sent the picture, which was of Irena Braxton.

  Colter Shaw didn’t have enough information to assess the odds of success. The best he could come up with was: Long shot, but let’s hope.

  Barney sent the photo off to the oddly surnamed former manager and it was no more than thirty seconds later that his mobile hummed. He regarded the screen and answered. “Heya, Jimmy, how’s it hanging? . . . You still getting out to the mountains? Uh-huh . . . Heard it was bad, lost twenty thousand acres . . . Now, about that picture . . . These two fellows are here, doing something up nice for their mother.” He listened for some moments, nodding broadly. “Sure, I’ll let ’em know. So, what’re you doing on Wednesday? . . . Good, good . . .” A fierce grin was on his face. He sat back, made the used Kleenex reappear and mopped his brow.

  Russell and Shaw shared a glance. Russell’s eyes dipped to the drawer, then the phone in the man’s hand. Shaw gave a slight nod.

  Russell stepped forward fast and clamped a hand on the drawer, an instant before the manager got to it. Simultaneously Shaw plucked the phone from his hand and disconnected.

  Barney’s chair rolled four feet and hit the wall. “Please, don’t hurt me!”

  Russell opened the drawer and removed the little .25 semiauto, ejected the round in the chamber and pushed out the bullets from the mag one by one. He pocketed them.

  “What’d he tell you?” Russell asked bluntly.

  When Barney didn’t answer, Russell drew his own weapon.

  Barney eyed the SIG and, vacillating between fear and rage, said breathlessly, “You didn’t goddamn tell me your aunt was a psychopath. Now, what the hell do you really want?”

  45

  So,” Shaw said, “Spilt recognized the picture.”

  “Of course he did. Wouldn’t you remember somebody who handcuffs you, drags you through the archives and threatens to shoot you if you don
’t cooperate?”

  “What was she looking for?” Russell said.

  “I don’t know. How would I know?”

  Shaw said, “Call him back.”

  “What?”

  “Call Spilt back.” Shaw nodded impatiently, and Barney did as told.

  Shaw took the phone from him.

  “Barney,” came the urgent voice on the other end. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “Jimmy,” Shaw snapped. “Listen to me. Barney’s okay. So far.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” the manager gasped.

  Russell touched his own ear, and Shaw too heard the siren in the distance.

  Goddamn it.

  “Jimmy, I need you to do two things.”

  “The fuck’re you? You the nephew of that bitch who—”

  Shaw put the phone on speaker and glanced at the manager. “Two things, Jimmy, if you want your friend to be okay.”

  Barney called, “Please, Jimmy. Do whatever he asks.”

  “Okay, okay,” came the voice.

  “First, we’re going to hang up and you call nine-one-one back and tell them it was a mistake. Somebody was playing a joke on you. Or something. Be credible. Then call me back.”

  Russell was on his phone. He lifted it toward Shaw.

  “And, Jimmy,” Shaw said, “we’ve got a scanner here, police scanner. We’ll know if you don’t do it. And that means you can say goodbye to Barney, and we’ll come visit you too.”

  “Jesus, no, no, no! I’ll do it. I’ll do it!”

  “Call. The. Police.” Shaw disconnected.

  What Russell was displaying probably wasn’t a scanner app. More likely, Shaw guessed, he’d be speaking with Karin, but she would be patched into the city’s emergency frequencies.

  Fifteen, twenty seconds later the sirens stopped and Russell, listening into his mobile, nodded.

  Just after that, Barney’s phone hummed.

  Shaw glanced at it and answered, punching the speaker button once more. “Okay, Jimmy, good job. The second thing you need to do. Answer some questions. Then we’ll leave you and your buddy alone. Are we happy with that?”

  “Yes, yes, anything.”

  “Tell us exactly what happened that day our aunt came to the warehouse.”

  “The hell are you?”

  Barney cried, “Jesus, Jimmy! Answer the man’s question. He’s got a gun. Are you fucking crazy?”

  “All right, all right. It was some weekday morning, I was the only one working. You know for the past fifty years the place’s just been a repository. Nobody brings stuff in or takes it out. Your aunt comes in and asks for some records. I tell her it’s not like a library. Only polite. I was real polite to her. Before I can release anything, I need a form filled out at city hall. She says she doesn’t have time. And she’s with this guy who’s acting weird, twitchy, you know. They both scared me.”

  “Did he look like a rat?” Shaw asked.

  “Yeah, kinda.”

  Russell: “What did she want?”

  “Judicial records, she said. Judges’ files. I tell her again I can’t do anything without the form from city hall or the state, filled out proper. I tell her to leave and that’s when she pulls a gun. The guy with her puts handcuffs on me.

  “I tell them I don’t know where judicial files’d be. She asks me how they’re organized and I tell her by year. She says that’s good enough. So, we go in the back and, and I point them to the year she wants, nineteen oh-six. And they both start going through everything, throwing stuff all over the floor. This goes on for an hour, maybe less but it seemed like an hour. Then she finds something and is like, ‘Goddamn. At last,’ or something.

  “They look at me like they’re deciding to kill me, not to kill me . . . Jesus. I’m begging them. She says, ‘We were never here.’ I just nod. I can’t even speak. Then they leave.”

  “What was it she found?” Shaw took over the questioning.

  “I have no idea. I didn’t ask. They were ready to shoot me!”

  “Was it a single sheet of paper or a bound document?”

  “One page.”

  “Judicial records. So, a court decision?”

  “No, we don’t have those. They’re published anyway. They could’ve found those in a law library or online. She wanted correspondence, notes, anything in judges’ individual files.”

  “You call the police?” Russell asked.

  “Of course not. They knew where I worked. They might come back.”

  Shaw said, “Listen, Jimmy. Just forget we talked to you.”

  “You fucking bet I’ll forget.”

  Shaw disconnected and set Barney’s phone on the desk.

  Russell held up the peashooter of a gun. He hit a button and pulled the slide off. “This’ll be in one trashcan outside, the magazine in another.”

  Shaw was amused. Maybe this was playbook procedure in some circles. Ebbitt Droon had done the same thing with Shaw’s weapons in Silicon Valley not three weeks ago.

  As the brothers walked to the door Shaw looked back.

  Barney held up his hands, as if he were a surrendering soldier. “I get it. I get it. Just like your aunt—you were never here.”

  46

  The new safe house wasn’t bad; it certainly was in a better neighborhood than the one in the Mission.

  Located in picturesque Pacific Heights, in the northern part of the city, the two-bedroom suite was in a sandstone apartment building whose front windows offered views of the Bay, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito, where some of the faint, distant greenery might have been Earnest La Fleur’s yard.

  The building was three stories high and represented classic 1960s architectural style, no frills, functional, uninspired.

  The suite featured three escape routes—front stairs, back stairs and windows overlooking the roof of the one-story bicycle shop next door. Neither Shaw nor his brother had studied parkour—the leaping, sprinting and diving art of urban gymnastics—but they practiced tumbling and how to land safely when jumping from heights. Shaw was inspecting this particular exit now: out the open window he could look down and see tarred roof about eight feet below.

  The safe house complied with Ashton’s rule: Never be without an escape plan. (The accompanying dictum, Never be without access to a weapon, was taken care of, given the firepower the brothers carried.)

  “Here,” Shaw said, handing his brother a box of nine-millimeter ammunition.

  Russell glanced down.

  They were safety slugs, specially made to penetrate flesh but not exit and continue their path, injuring bystanders. The bullets would go through a piece of Sheetrock, if you missed your human target, but they lost deadly muzzle velocity soon after. In a setting like this new structure, where innocents might be just feet away behind walls and doors, they were a necessity.

  Russell, though, looked at the ammo with a frown. Maybe he was thinking he was a good enough shot that he wouldn’t miss and endanger anyone else. Maybe he found it helpful to shoot through walls and doors sometimes, in spite of Ashton’s proscription:

  Never fire a weapon when you don’t have clear sight of your target . . .

  “We have to,” Shaw said.

  “Not a firing solution I’m comfortable with. That’s not standard procedure.”

  And his brother did not reload.

  “Up to you.” Shaw himself ejected the rounds and replaced them with the blue-tipped bullets. He was thinking: The brothers had worked well together on the investigation so far—especially their choreographed performances at the warehouse. Now tension seemed to have returned.

  You don’t want to be doing this, do you?

  Just, we should get it done . . .

  Shaw wondered if the resentment about Shaw’s tacit accusation regarding Russell’s role in Ashton’
s death was surfacing.

  And, if so, where would it lead?

  Shaw opened his backpack and emptied the BlackBridge courier bag’s contents onto the table. Once again he and Russell divided it up and flipped through the documents, now knowing that the Endgame Sanction was judicial in nature and from 1906.

  “Got it,” Shaw said. “I saw it before but didn’t think anything of it.”

  He set the aging sheet of paper on the table.

  So here it was: the Endgame Sanction.

  In the matter of the Voting Tally in the Twelfth Congressional District, regarding Proposition 06, being a referendum put before the People of the State, I, the Right Honorable Selmer P. Clarke, Superior Court, do find as a matter of fact the following:

  The initial ballot results as reported were in error. The correct vote tally was 1,244 in favor of the Proposition, 1,043 against.

  Accordingly, I order that the Vote Tally as amended to reflect the yea and nay ballots set forth herein, be entered into the record in the State Assembly and Senate, effective as of this date, April 17, 1906.

  An elaborate signature was beneath the text.

  Russell picked up the sheet and turned it over. The back was empty. He then held it up to the light to look for hidden, or obscured, messages.

  “Nothing.” Russell rubbed the back. “It’s an original, not a copy.” A typewriter had been used to produce the document and you could just feel indentations from the keys.

  Shaw read it once more. “I don’t see how ‘sanction’ fits.”

  “La Fleur said it might be just a code. Maybe Helms and Devereux didn’t want anyone to use the words ‘tally’ or ‘ruling’ in public. They wanted to keep this secret.”

  Shaw shook his head. “Devereux is desperate to find it.” He recalled that La Fleur said if the Sanction were found the consequences would be disastrous.

  Russell asked, “What’s Proposition Oh-Six?”

  Shaw booted up his computer and logged on through an encrypted server. He Googled the question. There was nothing in Wikipedia but he found a reference in an archive of California State constitutional and legislative measures. “It was a referendum in nineteen oh-six to amend the state constitution.” He turned the Dell so both he and Russell could read. They scrolled through paragraph after paragraph of legalese, having to do with taxation, immigration and trade mostly.