“Absolutely not.”
“Good. Are we thinking modern day?”
“No. Nineteen twenties.”
“Pen and ink?”
“And typewriter.”
Kincaid didn’t hesitate. “In the Bay Area, there’s only one place a forger would go for supplies. Davis and Sons Rare Books and Antiquities.”
“Thanks, Parker. Helpful.”
“You ever get reward assignments in Northern Virginia?”
“Haven’t yet. My sister lives in Maryland. I’ve been meaning to visit. I’ve got your number.”
“Tell someone good luck.”
The men had disconnected and Shaw had headed up to North Beach to the bookstore.
There, he had paid to have the original voting tally, with the sketch on the back, mounted in the cheap plastic frame.
He had bought a few other things too—out of the case he’d studied when he first arrived.
Among his purchases was a ninety-year-old Underwood No. 5 typewriter, the most common of the era. It was a high-standing classic, the workhorse of secretaries and reporters throughout the first half of the twentieth century. He also selected a notebook that dated to the 1920s, containing blank sheets similar in color and weight to the paper of the original tally, and pen-point nibs and holders. Most important, he was able to purchase a bottle of actual ink that was nearly one hundred years old. That had been his biggest concern. Shaw, though, had been surprised to find that there was quite the market among collectors for unopened ink bottles from the past.
No accounting for passions and hobbies . . .
Back in the safe house, he’d saturated the ribbon of the typewriter with the old ink, cranked in a piece of paper he’d cut from the notebook and typed out a voting tally certification identical to the original.
He’d examined it carefully. Nope. Didn’t work; the ink wasn’t as consistently dark as the original. He prepped the typewriter again. This one was better, but he still wasn’t satisfied. Now it was consistent, but too dark for a document that age.
The third one hit the mark. He let it dry then assembled a nib and holder to practice the signature of the Right Honorable Selmer P. Clarke—a wonderful name for a judge. He did what all professional forgers do when faking signatures: not attempt to actually sign the document, mimicking the original signatory, but to turn the page upside down and “draw” the signature, as if he were sketching a landscape or portrait.
After a dozen attempts he was confident, and he inked the man’s scrawl onto the phony tally.
He heated the document briefly in the oven to make sure the ink was dry and to give the sheet additional distress and patina of age.
He took apart the frame, extracted the real tally, which went into the lining of his backpack. He drew another sketch on the back of the forgery and mounted that one into the frame, sketch side out. Onto the wall it went.
Shaw had then called Devereux and they met about his proposition to buy his family’s safety with the “evidence” against BlackBridge and Banyan Tree. He’d arranged the get-together to give Droon or another op the chance to put a tracker on his bike (not guessing they would take the more sophisticated approach of the RFID dust), which led them back to Pacific Heights. At the safe house he’d purposefully left the window open, knowing that a surveillance outfit from BlackBridge was now eavesdropping. Shaw had made a pre-arranged call to Victoria Lesston and purposely sat near the open window to explain about the tally being hidden in the frame on the wall. He was pretty sure that the woman in the hall, dressed like a maid, was the op whose job it was to steal the document when her partners created a distraction by trying to blow the door off Russell’s SUV.
Shaw knew the document examiners in Sacramento would find his creation to be fake but he wanted some insurance. He had contacted Professor Steven Field and told him of his plan.
The professor had laughed. “Well, aren’t you your father’s sons?”
“When the story breaks that it’s fake I want a nail in the coffin—some expert to say that the tally was just a pipe dream. It’d be next to impossible for there really to’ve been one.”
Field knew just whom to call. He got in touch with a colleague, Professor Anthony Rice, who had known Ashton Shaw too. He was more than happy to back up the story. Rice put out a tweet on the topic—that it was almost certain that there was no real voting tally. Media networks picked it up and invited the articulate, airtime-ready professor to be interviewed on the topic.
The entire world would get the word the tally was a myth.
Shaw now said to La Fleur, “You told us that when Amos found out that the tally was real, he was going to destroy it.”
La Fleur nodded. “I know it would’ve been tough for him. He was a historian. Against his training to destroy an original document.”
Never deny history . . .
One of Ashton’s rules.
Shaw told La Fleur this.
“Good advice.”
Shaw said, “Hitler’s and Goebbels’s and Himmler’s writings were despicable but we don’t burn them. That’s different, though, from the Nuremberg Laws—nineteen thirty-five. Took away citizenship of Jews in Nazi Germany and became the justification for the death camps. What if there was the same voting tally controversy then? The law was passed but the tally went missing, and you found it. You could submit it and have the law go into effect, or you could burn it. What’s your moral duty?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
La Fleur frowned. His fingers drummed.
Shaw dug into his backpack and extracted the original tally. He handed it to La Fleur, who gazed at the document. “Heh. Short, isn’t it? Doesn’t seem so scary up close.” He looked up. “You ever read Lord of the Rings?”
Shaw nodded.
La Fleur mused, “This is the ring of power.” Then he lit up his bong, took a hit and laughed, as the smoke floated. “I’m an old man. I can be as goddamn melodramatic as I want.”
Shaw rose and walked to La Fleur’s fireplace. He opened the grate. He took the tally and placed it inside. “You want to do the honors?” Shaw asked, picking up a cigarette lighter and handing it to the man.
“Me?”
“BlackBridge killed your friend for this. Tortured him.”
The man thought briefly. “And they killed your father. Let’s both do it.” He produced another lighter.
Shaw debated. It seemed sentimental, contrary to his theory of navigating your way through life by calculation and analysis. But then he recalled the day young Colter had saved the woman in the avalanche and his father had given him and his siblings their respective statuettes.
Never deny the power of ritual . . .
The men crouched before the pungent fireplace. Two clicks of two lighters, and they each touched the blue flame to opposite corners of the tally. They sat back and watched the document ignite and curl under the bright orange blaze, sending embers flitting upward into the flue like bugs curiously repelled by, rather than drawn to, a bright lamp on a gentle summer’s dusk.
78
While San Francisco is home to more than forty geographic elevations, the A-list celebrities are the famed Seven Hills, just like in Rome. They are Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, Rincon Hill, Twin Peaks, Mount Davidson, Lone Mountain, and the most luxurious, Nob Hill.
The name derives from nabob, the term referring to a rich and conspicuous businessman, and it was applied to this summit because it was here that the Big Four—the tycoons involved in the creation of the Central Pacific Railroad—had mansions: Leland Stanford, Collis Potter Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker. The men modestly referred to themselves as “the Associates.”
Colter Shaw was now enjoying the unstoppable sun and the cool air in this lofty neighborhood, sitting in a rooftop bar and café. The vi
ew was fabulous. When the June gloom descends, or the autumn rainy season brings downpours for weeks upon end, San Francisco can be unbearably glum. But on days like this, the sun fully unfurled, the I-left-my-heart town can turn the wordless into Beat-era poets, the tone-deaf into chanteurs.
Shaw was sipping an Anchor Steam, the essential San Francisco beer. In his travels, which took him far afield, he always tended to pick local brews and this was one of his favorites.
Much of his day had been taken up with interviews with the San Francisco FBI agents who were running the BlackBridge case. All of the agents in the Bay Area field offices had been vetted and were clean. Ashton Shaw’s concerns had proven to be a bit excessive in that while there was some SFPD corruption, only five patrolmen and brass were in BlackBridge’s pocket, out of thousands of officers.
Shaw was sipping the beer and, mostly from curiosity, perusing a menu that was heavy with tourist fare—though of the Nob Hill variety: Manchego cheese, serrano ham, bruschetta, lobster rolls. Also a kids’ menu, evidence that trust-fund youngsters enjoyed the same chow as their common counterparts did: cheese sticks, pizza, and potatoes and onion rings that had met their crispy fate in boiling oil.
He was not here for the food, though. He and Victoria would meet later and go to a back alley in Chinatown. He hoped he could find one of the places where, years ago, Ashton Shaw had had meetings over lunch with local Chinese businessmen, art dealers and professors. Occasionally Ash would bring along one or more of the children. Even Dorion too, at the time younger than three years old. His sister had eaten her noodles by hand, one at a time. Young Colter had been mesmerized by the quiet, observant Chinese men who treated Ashton with respect and seemed subtly impressed with the man’s ability to discuss Asian philosophy and politics and wield chopsticks as if he’d been weaned from bottle to the lacquered rods at a single-digit age.
The memory faded, and it was on his third sip of Anchor Steam that he noted he was being watched.
A large man, Anglo, in a dark suit and slightly less dark shirt, was standing immobile near the hostess station outside and had been there for more time than seemed normal. Tables were available but he simply stood in one spot, with arms crossed. Through sunglasses he was eyeing the patio, but mostly he was eyeing Colter Shaw.
Shaw’s right hand set the bottle down and continued casually to the napkin in his lap and thereafter to the grip of the Glock 42 in the holster, tucked in the waistband of his black jeans and hidden by the shirt, which was roughly the same shade as that of the behemoth man’s at the hostess station.
Well, there’s the minder.
But where is the mindee?
The answer arrived a moment later like a foraging pigeon.
“No need for that,” came the man’s voice behind him. It had a delicate English lilt.
Shaw turned.
At a nearby table Jonathan Stuart Devereux lifted a glass of wine Shaw’s way. Apparently he’d been observing Shaw observe the admirable scenery—and the substantial bodyguard.
“He’s safe.” As if talking about a dog. Then: “Join me, join me.”
Shaw dropped his own menu on the table. He swiveled his chair, the metal legs gritting unpleasantly on the concrete floor. He easily lifted the heavy piece of furniture and plopped it down across from Devereux. The man was in a garish light blue suit—no stripes today—and pink shirt. The groping octopus of a handkerchief was cream-colored today. The shoes were polished to black mirrors.
“You followed me,” Shaw said. “Not easy to miss a Rolls. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Devereux looked over his guest from behind those large, rectangular TV-screen glasses. Today the frames were baby blue. “Ah, but why here, Mr. Shaw? My word.”
“The view. The beer.”
“Don’t have the soup, whatever you’re leaning toward. Fair warning. It’s watery and the onions grew from cans.”
The man looked around, his hands gesturing before him, fingers bending and straightening, palms up, palms down. The digits adjusted his busy handkerchief. Why this look? What impression was he trying to convey? The word dandy came to mind.
The melodious voice, with its suave over-the-Pond modulation, offered, “Quite the adventure you’ve had in this town, haven’t you, Shaw? You were born here.”
This was not a question.
“Technically Berkeley.”
“Cal. That’s what the University of California at Berkeley is called. Yes. Berkeley’s the town, Cal is the school. Your mother was a professor, a physician, but you were born off campus. Not at the medical center where she taught. She did quite the work as a principal investigator too, now, didn’t she?”
Again, this was certain information that Devereux had found and kept, like acorns buried by fat-cheeked squirrels in late summer. Meant of course to intimidate.
“Quite the adventure,” the man repeated, his voice now an ominous whisper.
“What can I do for you, Devereux?”
His hands became spirited once more and he muttered angrily, “I had such a fine plan. Such a pure design. We’d find the voting certificate, my companies would run for office, we’d win, of course. And then, bang.” A palm struck the tabletop and drew attention. “Onward to the new world.”
Shaw thought once more of the protests in Berkeley.
Corporate Sellouts—No!
Devereux took a sip of yellow wine. “Oaky chardonnay. The sort that makes you shiver. The vintners in California need to work on that. But it’s the best they have here.”
Devereux would be a man who had to order from the right side of the menu.
“If you hadn’t followed me here,” Shaw said blandly, “you could’ve gone someplace with a better list.”
Devereux’s eyes strayed to a nearby table: two attractive women in business attire—white suit, lime-green dress, both form-fitting. He pushed the lenses higher, the better to study them. Which he did for a moment.
Shaw said, “I saw your political plans once Banyan Tree got into office. It was in Amos Gahl’s courier bag. Deregulation was the theme. Environment, banking, healthcare and insurance. Cutting social programs to the bone. Private police. I smelled human rights issues.”
Devereux turned away from visually molesting the two women diners.
“Ah, we could argue till the early hours, couldn’t we? I could respond that deregulation leads to corporate success, which leads to more employment and a better economy. One could also contend that corporations are far more efficient and ethical than a mere mortal politician: a company would never be caught with its fly open. But you would come up with a counterargument. I would counter-counter. It would become oh-so tedious . . .” Another sip of the wine he was going to finish despite himself. “It would have been a noble experiment . . . But let’s not quibble. Do you ride the cable cars?”
“I have.”
“You know what the engineer’s called.”
Shaw answered, “A gripman.” He seemed disappointed that Shaw had known. “And they have to be replaced every three days. The grips, not the men.” A chuckle.
Shaw had another hit of beer. The leisurely tip of the bottle, accompanied by a glance into Devereux’s eyes, was meant also to convey impatience.
The billionaire’s face flared with anger. He leaned forward. In a low voice he drew the words out. “Something very wrong went down here, Shaw. I’m not sure what or how. But you were at the epicenter.”
This was Devereux’s show. There was nothing to do but listen.
“There’s no record that we could find of any industrialist or financier in the nineteen twenties interested in a voting tally about Proposition Oh-Six.”
“Is that right?” Shaw frowned in confusion.
“Oh, yes it is.” Hands zipping here, hands zipping there. “And, from what I heard, the forgery was rather clumsily done. Not clumsy in t
he sense of technique or penmanship. It got the judge’s handwriting down perfectly.”
“You checked that too, did you?”
“I mean clumsy in terms of the materials, the supplies. One would think that a millionaire in the nineteen twenties would have hired a forger who’d use inks and paper that dated to nineteen oh-six. Easily come by back then.”
“One would think.”
Devereux extracted a monogrammed handkerchief. He patted his bald brow. “Of course, we’re not here to debate. The people involved, all those many years ago, they know the truth.” He couldn’t resist adding, with a sardonic grin, “If they existed.”
Shaw remained silent.
“A forgery it’s been declared and that’s tainted the whole barrel of apples. The army I had marshalled in Sacramento—quite the array—were enough to stop a court challenge. But now they’ve got cold feet. All those liberal, human-rights pundits and professors railing against capitalism . . . Yes, if we’d struck fast, we could’ve pushed it through and made sure it stuck. But t’was not to be.” Hands jittering in the air. The waitress thought it was a summons. “No, no, no,” he said darkly, and she retreated.
“So, it’s fallen out the way it has.” Then his fake thin-lipped smile vanished. “BlackBridge is gone. But I am CEO of one of the wealthiest corporations on the face of the earth, aren’t I?”
“I suppose so. Hadn’t actually heard of you until a few days ago.”
His fingers froze briefly. With a smile on his moonish face, he said, “The voting tally, BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions . . . You’ve crossed me, Shaw. And that means your family has crossed me as well. Bad thing to do.”
“I think it’s time to say goodbye, Devereux.”
The Final Twist Page 31
