Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

Shaw took this in, nodding, having no idea what the point of the lecture might be.

“In other words, for framing, I can do some things to protect it but your basic plastic won’t keep it from disintegrating. That would require a complete acid reduction or removal process.”

“How long would I have?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m in a hurry, so if you just mounted it in a normal frame, how long until it disintegrated?”

The young man’s face screwed up, as he prepared to deliver the bad news. A breath. “Your best-case scenario? I’d give it two hundred years.”

Which, Shaw supposed, in the world of antiquarian documents, might be like a doctor looking up from an MRI scan and saying, “You’ll be dead by Tuesday.”

“I’ll go with the plastic.”

“Ah. Well. The customer is always right.”

Though what he was really saying was: It’s your funeral.

At 9:15 that evening, Colter Shaw braked the Yamaha to a stop.

He was in the heart of Haight-Ashbury. It was ironic in the extreme that the area, named after two ardent nineteenth-century capitalists, was the birthplace of the Diggers, one of the most successful socialist movements in the history of the country. It was also where hippies first appeared and was ground zero for the Summer of Love in 1967.

A Whole Foods was not far away but the street where Shaw parked didn’t reflect such recent aesthetic and economic enlightenment. Metal shutters as thick with layers of paint as a Leonardo da Vinci canvas were ratcheted down, protecting a tattoo parlor, a nail salon, a bodega and, of all things, what seemed to be an old-fashioned cobbler. A sepia painting of a woman’s buttonhook boot was above the door.

Shaw parked and chained. Then stood and looked up at a huge red-brick building, which was old, and at the painted metal sign on the front, which was new.

The club was housed in a three-story former factory, constructed of smudged and soiled red brick, in whose walls were set windows that were painted over. As the name explained, it had in the early twentieth century been a steel-fabricating operation.

The only clues as to what was occurring inside were the line of people outside waiting admittance, and the resonating bass beats that assaulted anyone within fifty feet of the building. Colter Shaw looked the place over clinically and decided: pure hell.

In the days when he might have clubbed he was working out for the wrestling team at the University of Michigan, studying for classes, and engaging in orienteering competitions in the Upper Peninsula or camping with one of several equally outdoor-minded girlfriends.

He zipped his leather jacket up, then walked past the crowd to the front door, where a skinny man, lanky and sporting a mop of unruly red hair, sat on a stool.

Some in the queue of about thirty or forty also studied him, with glares. They were mostly in their twenties. The dress code was jeans or cargo pants, sweats, tank tops, faded loafers and boots. Impressive beards, though, unlike Russell’s, they were overly topiaried. Tattoo artists had made thousands of dollars inking and modifying this crowd. Shaw sensed bathing was not a priority.

He said to the bouncer, “I need to find somebody in there.”

“You gotta wait. We’re at capacity.”

Shaw laughed.

The skinny guy looked at him quizzically.

“No. You’re over capacity. How many fire doors you have?”

Exits are vital to survivalists, fire exits in particular. The odds of having to escape from murderers, terrorists, kidnappers or black bears were infinitely small. Fleeing a tall wave of speedy, thousand-degree flames, however, was well within the realm of possibility.

“The hell are you?”

“I won’t be long.” Shaw started inside. The man who was next in line for entrance shouted, “There’s a line here! No budging!” He lunged and went for Shaw’s arm. Shaw stopped and stared. The man froze.

Shaw frowned. “Did you really say ‘budging’?” He turned to the man’s girlfriend. “Did he really say ‘budging’? Are we in the high school lunch line?”

Blushing, the man grimaced and backed off. His girlfriend muttered to him acerbically, “Told you not to be an asshole.”

The bouncer took over the defense of the castle. “You can’t come in. I told you.” He stood up. He wore an expandable baton on his hip. Shaw had been whipped by one. They really hurt.

He looked over the man. “I’m going inside to get my niece and then we’re going to leave. She’s sixteen.”

The bouncer paused. His eyes swept the sidewalk. “She’s what? ”

The man, trying not to look stricken, glanced inside. Then back to Shaw. “All right. Go in. Get her. Just make it fast.”

Shaw strode into the packed, sweaty crowd. He wasn’t exactly sure what the point of the place was. There was a disc jockey and some people were dancing, or gyrating, on a large hardwood floor. Many sat on mismatched chairs and couches or were perched on stairways or wooden crates. They were shouting and drinking and vaping and smoking pot. Some were passed out. A few had thrown up; he navigated carefully.

No, this wasn’t just hell, Shaw thought. It was Dante’s Ninth Level — an appropriate metaphor, considering that a man named Dante Mladic was the owner of the club.

He made a circuit of the mad place, making his way through the sweating bodies, avoiding jostling, avoiding several drunk women and one man who came on to him.

Then, in the back, he noted two doors.

It was the one on the right he wanted because a guard sat on the chair just beside it. He was lean and about thirty, with curly blond hair and razor-sharp features — his nose, cheekbones, his chin. He was hunched over, reading something on his phone.

Shaw staggered up and tried the door. It was open, but instantly the man was on his feet, pushing it closed. “What’re you doing?”

“Bathroom.” Shaw’s speech was slurred. He thought he was doing a pretty good job. The rewards business from time to time required a bit of acting.

“S’over there.” The big man gestured with a thumb.

“No, it’s broken. Something’s broken. A pipe.”

“Get the fuck out of here. I’ll have you thrown out.” The Balkan accent was faint.

“Bathroom,” Shaw said again and walked to the second door, and stepped into a business office, which was empty and dark.

“The fuck,” the man said and followed him in.

“Bathroom.” Shaw kept with his preferred line of dialogue.

When the guard’s fist drove forward toward Shaw’s solar plexus, he easily sidestepped and dropped his center of gravity. He executed a fair wrestling takedown, his right arm going between the man’s legs and around to his spine. In college his coach had said, “Can’t be shy in this sport. You queasy about going for the jewels, take up fencing.”

Shaw leveraged up and, gripping the man’s collar with his left hand, he took him off the floor entirely and dropped him hard on the oak. Factories made very hard floors and his head banged with a sound you could hear over the music.

Still he needed to debilitate the man, so he dropped his fist into his gut. Hard but nothing broke.

He got out of the way in time to avoid the vomiting.

It was one hundred percent certain that Colter Shaw had just committed an unprovoked assault (the fear of an attack) and battery (an unwanted touching and, in this case, head banging and gut punching).

The question remained: Was it justifiable?

He believed it was.

Shaw was here because Mack McKenzie had finally traced the gray van into which Tessy Vasquez had possibly disappeared near Ghirardelli Square. Through several layers of offshore corporations, she’d learned that it was ultimately owned by a company controlled by Mladic, a San Francisco club owner. And suspected drug dealer and sex trafficker.