The Final Twist, Jeffery Deaver [philippa perry book TXT] 📗

Braxton and Droon joined him, rather than he them, which meant he was a BlackBridge client and, given the wheels, a valued one.

Shaw recalled what the woman had told her lieutenant earlier, in the Stanford library.

We have that meeting tomorrow. I want to tell him something. Something concrete . . .

That something would have been what they’d tortured out of Colter Shaw—the location of Gahl’s evidence. Shaw guessed that where they now were was an example of the UIP. He thought of the unfortunate addicts on the street they’d just walked around, and all the clearing going on before them. The man in the Rolls was probably a developer who’d bought the land for a song.

Braxton and Droon would now have to share that Shaw had not, in fact, led them to the evidence, which would implicate Mr. Rolls too.

How chilly would the meeting be?

The body language suggested that the BlackBridge duo felt something other than respect for a wealthy client. Shaw was looking at two very intimidated people, and to see Irena Braxton this way—an ice queen, if ever there was one—was oddly unsettling. As the chubby man spoke with them, unsmiling and gesticulating with his stubby hands often and broadly, she nodded and gave a polite, attentive frown, like a schoolgirl who’d flubbed a homework assignment. This attitude was, Shaw had no doubt, wholly alien to the woman.

But after what seemed to be her breathless reassurance, the client calmed. He gave them a smile of the sort you might affect when you hand a dollar to a homeless man, and his hands began to fidget less.

They were moving on to other business. Droon unfolded a map and held it up against the side of their SUV. Why not the hood? Shaw wondered. Oh, because the client was too short to see the map there. Everyone consulted the fluttering sheet.

“Who uses a paper map instead of a computer or tablet?” Russell asked.

Shaw nodded at the rhetorical question. Someone who doesn’t want electronic evidence, that’s who. You can set fire to paper and it’s gone forever, unlike digital data, which will last as long as bones from the Jurassic era. Russell produced a range-finder telescope. He looked, then handed it to Shaw.

After five minutes of discussion, the fat man pointed to several locations on the map and Droon marked them with a Sharpie. Then heads nodded and hands were shaken. Braxton and Droon remained where they were while the client stepped to the door of his Rolls. The driver swung the back passenger door open once more. Shaw got a look at two tanned legs, protruding from a short red skirt. Also: impressively high heels, which he thought odd for a woman to wear in the company of a short man like this, who, given the vehicle and his clothing had a surplus of ego. But, of course, there was no accounting for taste . . . or desire.

Before he got into the Rolls he turned and, no longer smiling, fired off more words, accentuated by the curious, jittery hand gestures. Braxton and Droon responded with scolded-dog nods. The man climbed into his sumptuous vehicle. The driver too, and the car sagged under his weight. The car rocked away over the packed construction site dirt.

29

Standing beside their SUV, Irena Braxton lifted a phone from her purse and made another call.

The vibrant handbag was similar to one of Margot’s, Shaw recalled from their time together. Hers had been made by indigenous people in South America. It wasn’t inexpensive but much of the purchase price went to a nonprofit organization that opposed the burning of the Amazon rain forest. Had Braxton, a known killer, bought hers from the same seller and for the same purpose? In his rewards business, Shaw had learned that the values and priorities people embraced were infinitely contradictory and enigmatic.

She replaced the phone and she and Droon fell silent. Less than a minute later a white van, with no markings on the side, pulled up. Out climbed two men, both white, both in good shape. Their outfits were similar: dark gray slacks and jackets, zippered up. One was tall and bareheaded, with a crew cut, the other short and crowned with a black baseball cap. They were unsmiling and cautious, but didn’t scan the surroundings, perhaps assuming if Braxton and Droon were here, the place was safe. Their right hands, though, stayed gyroscopically close to their right hips, where their guns would reside.

They joined Braxton and Droon, who opened the map he’d had moments before and spread it out on the hood of the Escalade. The discussion among them was brief and ended with a nod from the two newcomers, one of whom kept the map. Then Braxton and Droon climbed back into the SUV. The vehicle left.

The brothers, however, remained. The BlackBridge ops were waiting for something and Shaw and Russell wanted to see what it might be.

The answer arrived about five minutes later: two slim men, in shorts and T-shirts, one of them loud red, the other white. The shirts were untucked—a likely indication of concealed weapons. They had light blue vinyl shoulder bags slung over their shoulders. Their heads were shaved and their complexions dark. The TL was the home to several pan-Asian gangs, most notably the notorious Filipino Bahala Na Gang, more ruthless than the Mafia or the Mexican cartels, Shaw had heard. The BNG’s heyday was the end of the last century but many of the murderous crew still were active up and down the West Coast. San Francisco was their primary turf.

“Cutouts,” Russell said. “The white-van men. They’re insulating the man in the Rolls and Braxton and Droon. The actors never know who they’re ultimately acting for. This is pro.”

Among the men on the ground a discussion ensued. One of the van men pulled open the side door and took out two clear plastic bags, appearing to weigh two pounds each—maybe a kilo.