The Final Twist
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #3
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53913-1
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Final Twist». Краткое содержание книги:
Following the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw plays cat and mouse with the company’s sadistic enforcers, as he speeds from one gritty neighborhood in the City by the Bay to another. Suddenly, the job takes on a frightening urgency: Only by finding the courier bag can he expose the company and stop the murder of an entire family — slated to die in forty-eight hours.
With the help of an unexpected figure from his past, and with the enforcers closing the net, Shaw narrows in on the truth — and learns that the courier bag contains something unexpected: a secret that could only be described as catastrophic.
Now, sipping more beer, he heard the buzzer.
“Yes?”
“It’s me,” came the sullen voice through the intercom.
When she arrived at the door upstairs, he checked her eye movement once more, hand on the gun.
She was alone now too.
He let her in and told her to stop. His voice was abrupt. “Hands.”
“Come on,” she whined.
“Up.”
She grudgingly complied and he frisked her. She was clean. “Sit down.” Pointing to the couch.
The woman complied. He pulled up a chair across from her.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t call Maria?”
“You said you wouldn’t.” As if he’d cheated at checkers.
“Is this something you do? In addition to tricks? Planting drugs and getting people busted?”
He suspected she was a call girl.
She tried to look offended but it didn’t work, and that answered his question. Shaw was continually amused at how the guilty can look so indignant when they get caught.
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.”