Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

He handed over the counter to another worker, and the men followed him into the back room.

He logged on to a cloud server and typed in the date and time from the call Tessy had made to her mother. Scrubbing back and forth... Finally, in fast motion, Tessy walked into view, removed her guitar from the case, which she opened for the tips, and then slung the instrument over her neck. She was in a red blouse and a black gypsy skirt. Her dark hair was loose.

She began to sing, smiling to passersby. The chord changes seemed efficient. No fancy jazz riffs. He’d heard that a guitar had never been intended as a lead instrument, but a rhythm one. That came from his distant past, from Margot, who’d been a source of much of his popular cultural knowledge. The woman had then added, “But tell that to Jimi Hendrix.”

Shaw’s own personal favorite guitarist was the Australian Tommy Emmanuel, who seemed to pry an entire orchestra from his git-fiddle.

Shaw was amused that her guitar was a Yamaha, the same brand as his motorbike. He supposed they were the same company — though that was about as diversified a manufacturing operation as you would find.

“Can you scrub to where she leaves?”

The man did. They saw her put her guitar away and pull a phone from her pocket. She made a brief call — probably the one to her mother. She then picked up the guitar case, slung a purse over her shoulder and started up the street away from the store. She walked to the corner and turned right.

“You catch that?” Shaw asked.

“The van,” Russell said.

A gray minivan, which had been parked on the same side of the street as Tessy was on, pulled into traffic as she walked by and proceeded slowly, as if following her. It made the same turn she did.

“Christ, you think they did... I mean, did something to her?” The manager’s face radiated concern.

“Scrub back to where it arrives.”

That was about twenty minutes before she left.

“Let it play in normal time.”

Yes, it was suspicious. After the van parked, no one got out. And no one got in; it wasn’t there to pick someone up. Then the passenger side doors opened and two men got out. They were Anglo, pale with thick black hair — one’s was slicked back, the other’s was a disorderly mop. They were in dress shirts and slacks. The one from the front seat removed a phone from his pocket and took a picture of the square, then fiddled with the screen.

“He’s sending the picture.”

A moment later, after what seemed to be a text exchange, Slick put the phone away. He lit a cigarette and the two climbed back into the van.

“We should call the police.”

Russell said, “We will. Any way we can get a copy of that vid?”

“Sure.” He rummaged in the desk and found an SD card. “From the time she arrived?”

“If you would, yes.”

He typed some commands and within a minute the video, in the form of an MP4 file, was on the card.

Shaw said, “We’ll pay you for it.”

“No, no. Just get it to the police right away. God, I hope she’s okay.”

Shaw described Tessy’s ex, Roman. “Was she ever in here with somebody who looked like him?”

“Not that I remember.”

They thanked him. He handed them a business card. “Please let me know what happens.”

Russell said they would and the men returned to the SUV.

As his brother fired up the big vehicle, Shaw sent a text to Mack, with the priority code, requesting information on a vehicle. He’d memorized the van’s California license tag.

“Let’s look at the cross street.” Russell pulled into traffic and, following the same route as the gray van, turned the corner. The street was not much more than an alley — it was lined by the backs of buildings and loading docks, no storefronts or residences.

“Couldn’t’ve picked a better place for a snatch,” Russell said, “if we’d planned it out ahead of time.”

Shaw’s phone hummed with a text.

Gray van is registered to a California corporation, Specialty Services, LLC. No physical address. P.O. box. Specialty Services is owned by an offshore. Have lawyers in St. Kitts and Sacramento looking into ultimate ownership.

Shaw read this to his brother, as he piloted the SUV to Burlingame.

“Doesn’t look good. Police? This isn’t a BlackBridge thing.”

“They’re undocumented. Tessy and her mother. They’ll be deported. Or Maria will be, by herself, if I can’t find Tessy. Anyway, the police won’t get on board with what we have.”

He couldn’t tell his brother’s reaction.

After fifteen minutes of silence, Russell asked, “It’s like PI work then?”

“The rewards? Pretty much. Looking for escapees, suspects. Some private. Like Tessy.”

“You do BEA?”

“No.” Bond enforcement agents pursued bail skippers and FTAs — “failures to appear” at hearings or trials. The criminals whom bond agents pursued were invariably punks and drunks and could usually be located with minimal mental effort — in places like their girlfriends’ or parents’ basements or in the same bar where they got wasted the night they committed the crime they’d been hauled to jail for in the first place. He explained this.

“You want a better quality perp.”

“A more challenging perp.”

More silence.

“What’re the rewards like?”

“You mean, amounts?”

Russell nodded.

“From a couple of thousand. To twenty million or so.”

“Million?”

“Not my kind of work, generally. It’s a State Department reward. The way those work is somebody in the bad guy’s organization gets location information to the CIA. Then it’s time for SEAL Team Six.”

“Who’s the twenty million?”

“Guy named Idrees Ayubi... He’s a...” Shaw’s voice faded as he saw his brother nodding knowingly. Given his profession, it wasn’t surprising that he’d know the name of the terrorist with the highest bounty offered by the U.S. government.

After some silence Shaw said, “But it’s not about the money. What I like about a reward is it’s a flag. It means there’s a problem that nobody’s been able to solve. Never be bored.”

“Was that one of Ash’s? I don’t remember it.”

“No.”

The boys had once asked their father — whom Russell dubbed the King of Never — why he phrased his rules beginning with the negative. The man’s answer: “Gets your attention better.”

Russell fell silent once again. Shaw wondered if he was still angry at the suggestion that he was running away from confronting the BNGs.

“A cult? Tom Pepper was saying?”

“Last week. Washington State.”

“Somebody posted a reward to get a follower out of the place?”

Shaw explained that, no, he had learned about the cult on a reward job and he’d been troubled by the cult leaders’ sadistic and predatory behavior. “I went in undercover, found a lot of vulnerable people — there were a hundred members altogether. I did what I could to save some of them. Made some enemies.”

Shaw now realized two things: One, he was rambling, and he was doing it for the purpose of encouraging his brother to engage, to dive beneath the surface of their cocktail-party small talk.

And, two, Russell was simply filling the thorny pits of silence; he evidently had little interest in Shaw’s narrative.

Finally Shaw said, “Something on your mind?” He didn’t think he’d ever asked his brother this question.

Russell hesitated then said, “An assignment I have to get to.”

“Here?”

“No. Can’t say where.”

“You don’t want to be doing this, do you?” Shaw asked. He gestured toward the pleasant street they were coursing along in Burlingame but meant the pursuit of BlackBridge.