Flawless

by Joshua Spanogle

  “Just the cars that follow us for more than a little while,” I instructed him. “Not everyone who’s behind us.”

  A black SUV swiveled in about thirty feet back, and Tim really seemed to be getting into it. “I think that one—” The SUV slotted into a parking space.

  “Okay, break-the-rules day is over. Turn around and put your seatbelt on.” The kid looked hurt. “You did a terrific job,” I said, insincerely.

  On the way to 280, I took a half-dozen more turns through the lot, ran a stop sign, and blew through a red light. The deep scowl on the kid’s face suggested he’d noticed my transgressions.

  Put the thing in perspective, and it all seems so goddamned silly. Giving a tail the slip? Right, McCormick. Go slip your tail, grab your gun, polish off your Scotch and your smoke, and solve the crime. But you don’t think about that when the cops-and-robbers crap becomes real. You don’t think about that when your erstwhile girlfriend—the woman you’re supposed to love more than yourself—just had a few tablespoons of clotted blood removed from the surface of her brain.

  I pressed the accelerator and swung onto the highway.

  Then, because I was in over my head, I made a call.

  “Brooke’s in the ICU,” I told Ravi.

  “You’re shitting me.” A sensitive healer’s response if I’ve ever heard one.

  “She was assaulted last night.”

  “Oh, shit…”

  “Went to neurosurg to evacuate an epidural hematoma. They said she’ll be fine.”

  “Jesus, McCormick. What the hell did you get yourself into?”

  I swung the car recklessly to the left lane, pushed it to eighty-five.

  “I need your help, Ravi.”

  He gave me a breathy “Dude…”

  “But this needs to be quiet, okay? Because—”

  “McCormick—”

  “—because Brooke’s kind of exposed now and there’s another person who’s in danger—”

  “McCormick!” Ravi barked. “Do you know the situation here?”

  “Yes, I know the situation: your bosses aren’t supporting us on this, blah blah. But what I’m about to tell you, you can take it to your bosses, you’ll just have to sit on it for a little while—”

  “No, no, McCormick. The situation here. Now. Did you impersonate a CDC official with some schoolteacher up in Napa?”

  “Uh…” I thought back to Ginny Plough, the principal at Tim’s school.

  “Stellar job, McCormick. Woman called CDC yesterday because that kid you went there to see didn’t show up at school. They told her you didn’t work there anymore. And guess what? She flipped. They flipped.”

  “Shit.”

  “They’re freaked that you used your old IDs and now this schoolteacher’s got it in people’s minds you’re some kind of perv. They’re saying the kid’s been abducted and that you came to his house a few days ago asking for him, lying that you were some sort of lawyer or something.”

  “This is not so good,” I said.

  “You’re damned right it’s not so good,” he yelped. “And my bosses know we’ve been working together, so they’re riding my ass about it. I got your stink all over me. The hell did you think you were doing?”

  “I needed to talk to the kid.”

  “Ah. Jesus Christ, McCormick—now you’re going to tell me you snatched him.”

  “Uh, Ravi?”

  “What?”

  “I do have Tim Kim with me. The kid.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Tim’s head swivel toward me. On the phone, there was a pause. Then: “Oh, no, no, no. You do not have him with you.”

  “But I didn’t pull him from school. The uncle did. It’s a long story—”

  “I’m sure it is. And I’m sure counsel at CDC will want to hear every bit of it.”

  “Did anyone bring the police into this?” My mouth was dry. “I mean, about this ‘abduction’?”

  “Of course they did. He’s a kid, goddamn it.”

  “There’s no AMBER Alert or anything, is there?”

  “Not yet. The word here is it doesn’t meet their criteria—they’re not sure who took him and they’re not sure how much danger the kid is in. But now I know you have him, I’ll issue my own fucking AMBER Alert, you goddamn—”

  “Calm down.” I slid the car to the right, to a slower lane of traffic. Last thing I needed was to get pulled over for doing ninety, then nabbed for abducting the kid.

  “You’re supposed to call CDC stat,” Ravi said. “I’m supposed to tell you that if I talk to you again, which I haven’t done, okay? I haven’t spoken with you.”

  I tried to think of a way to explain the Tim Kim situation, but failed. I decided to go from the beginning. “I know what’s doing this.”

  “I don’t care what’s doing this. No more cases of fibrosarc have popped up. With this whole thing with the kid, everybody’s backing away from it anyway. They’re backing away from you and whatever you’re doing. It’s poison. You’re poison.”

  “I’m trying to stop a—”

  “To stop what, dude? A cluster of cancer that no one thinks is a cluster? Next thing we know you’ll be saying you’ve found plague at a day-care center and you’re holding the kids hostage to—”

  “It’s centered on a cosmetics clinic in SF. Don’t know what the causative agent is, but we have location for all this—”

  “All this? There are no new cases, McCormick. None. Nada. The guy at Kaiser, that Yang person Brooke found, the Ming woman. That’s it. Three cases do not add up to a freakin’ nightmare.” He paused for breath. “We don’t even have the Kaiser guy anymore. The unlucky bastard got munched by a car late last night—”

  “What?”

  “Hit by a car in Oakland. Dead at the scene.”

  “Details.”

  “It was a hit-and-run. I called his house yesterday and his wife told me. I called Highland Hospital, they confirmed it. His blood alcohol level was .29. He stumbled into the street, bombed out of his skull. We probably drove the poor guy to drink—”

  “Shut up a second. Who else knew you were talking to him?”

  “Lots of folks. This wasn’t clandestine, McCormick. Not a lot of black ops here at the Department of Health. And unlike you, I try to go by the book—”

  “Well, don’t go by the damn book anymore. There’s someone feeding information from state. The Mings? This guy from Kaiser? Who else but me and you guys knew we were talking to them?”

  “San Francisco Public Health knew about the Mings.”

  “But not about the last guy. Come on, man. Work with me here.”

  He was swearing again. For a moment, I thought he was going to hang up on me.

  “Everyone we knew about is dead, Ravi. And there’s another case.”

  “And you were going to tell me this when?” His tone was shrill, but it had lost some of its venom. Maybe because of the realization there was a traitor in his midst or perhaps because I’d again raised the stakes. Ravi wanted fame so bad the poor bastard could taste it.

  I looked over at Tim, wished I could stuff his ears with some plugs. “I found a woman called Dorothy Zhang. Newscaster who disappeared months ago.”

  Silence on the phone and in the car, but I knew my audiences were interested now. I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered to Tim, “Your mom’s going to be fine.” The way he stared at me said I had all the credibility of a things-are-going-swell-in-Iraq pol.

  As for Ravi, the hook was set: high profile, one more case leading this to a tipping point, career advancement, the chance, if this worked out, to bust someone in his own backyard…

  “Dorothy Zhang gave those pictures to Paul Murphy,” I said, speaking quietly. “The people in the pics are all here in the Bay Area. They’re lying low because they don’t want to end up like the Mings. It is a cluster, Ravi. I’m sure of it.”

  “What’s being injected?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. Some cosmetic filler, so
unds like.”

  “Who’s doing it?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you.”

  “Oh, don’t call me. Call the cops.”

  “Right. And what do I tell them? This is Nate McCormick, ex-CDC, suspected child abductor—”

  Tim turned away, toward the window. I snapped on the radio, to some static-filled classic rock station, and kept the phone pressed tight to my ear. “I’ll call them,” Ravi said.

  “And what are you going to say?” I asked. “‘Hey, guys, there’s this clinic in the Richmond that’s doing some black-market crap that’s resulting in sarcoma and, oh, yeah, we don’t know where all the cases are because the patients are scared out of their wits and hiding and, oh, yeah, some of them have been murdered in some pretty yucky ways. Oh, and there’s a little complication that we might have of a mole somewhere here in the health department. And, by the way, the bad guys have taken that newscaster who vanished and could we please find her soon because the bad guys are going to be real pissed we talked to you and they’re going to—” Too late, I stopped, aware that Tim’s eyes were boring into me.

  Ravi stayed quiet for a second. “They have this Zhang woman?”

  “Yes. It’s why I have her son. She traded herself for the kid.” I yanked the line again, trying to get Ravi into my boat. “I thought this is what you wanted. Guts and glory and all.”

  Ravi swore, Ravi equivocated, Ravi gave me a cover-his-ass response. “I’ll get things together on this end.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not listening. No police. No public health.”

  “I’ll work around things on this end. I won’t say anything to anybody—”

  “Then what good are you going to be sitting in your office? I need you in the field, with me. Not planted behind your desk not talking to anyone. Meet me in the Richmond. Corner of Thirty-sixth and Clement. There’s a clinic where all this is happening—”

  “I can’t, man. I’ll back you up from here—”

  “There’s no ‘backing me up’ from there. The field, Ravi. You remember the field. Excitement, adrenaline, all that.” A note of begging crept into my voice. “I need some cred on this. I can’t use the damned CDC bit anymore, can I?”

  “McCormick, why are you doing this to me?”

  “And I need someone else. I don’t want to go in alone. I don’t know what I’m going to find.”

  There was a silence. For a moment, I thought I’d won him over. But as is often the case with me trying to figure people out, I was wrong. “No go, McCormick. This is a little too hot for Ravi.”

  “Fuck you, then,” I snarled.

  I hit End on the phone, cutting the line, letting Ravi run back into his exciting career. I glared at Tim, who hastily shifted his gaze back to the side window. I snapped off the radio.

  “Don’t say that word, Tim. It’s a bad word.” I came up fast on a station wagon, switched into the next lane just as the wagon switched, forcing me to hit the brakes. Under my breath, I whispered, “Fuck.”

  86

  THE SHOP DOROTHY HAD MENTIONED as the last location for the clinic, Spectacular Nails, was kitty-cornered across the street from me, sandwiched between a tiny Chinese grocer—tangerines, durian, and persimmons piled in open bins along the sidewalk—and a tiny restaurant with fogged front windows half obscuring the duck carcasses dangling there. Right next to me, the neon sign for a place called Razr Nails glowed garishly even in the daylight.

  I didn’t want to leave the kid alone in the car, but I couldn’t take him with me. I couldn’t drop him off with a friend, since my friends were either dead, in the hospital, or they were Ravi Singh, who would agree to take the boy about as readily as he’d agree to eat a plutonium sandwich. For now, I was stuck. And the kid was stuck with me.

  “You have your book,” I said to him. “Break that thing out and read. Stay in the car.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to talk to some people.”

  “Who?”

  “Some people who might know where your mom is.”

  “Shouldn’t I come?”

  “No. Where are you in the book? What’s happening?”

  “I’m at the part with the trolls. Where they’re arguing about eating all the dwarves and Bilbo and—”

  “That’s a good part. Finish it out. I’ll be back in three minutes.”

  As I exited the car, I peered into the weirdly named Razr Nails. I took a few deep breaths, a moment to dream up a game plan, a moment to wish that I were not going into this alone.

  In Razr’s ruthlessly lit space, a dozen women sat at manicure tables or with their feet in bubbling water baths, chatting, reading magazines. Careful, ladies, I thought. A few years before, there was an outbreak of mycobacterium in folks who’d gotten pedicures in the San Jose area. It seemed the salons in question didn’t really bother washing out the footbaths between patrons, which left the water swimming with the ironically named Mycobacterium fortuitum. A few unfortunate pedicure devotees shaved their legs before a visit to the salon, allowing the enterprising bug to set up shop in the tiny nicks and cuts. Days later, painful, small sores would pop up. Weeks later, the sores blossomed into large, tender boils.

  Good thing I was bent on going solo into a criminal cosmetics joint and not getting a pedicure. Safer that way.

  I took a few more breaths, glanced back at the car. Tim sat watching. I opened my palms into book halves and mimed like I was reading. I never was any good at charades, and the kid had no idea what I was doing. He stared at me without blinking.

  One last look up the street, one last chance to see Ravi tearing up the asphalt. Throngs of old ladies pushing shopping carts, but no ballistic Sikh.

  Alone, I picked my way across the street.

  Spectacular Nails had the same general layout as Razr Nails. Five footbaths, five manicure tables, enough fluorescent wattage to light a stadium. But whereas Razr buzzed with life and gossip, Spectacular was desolate. Not a single soul inside yammered on about life, love, the most effective clear polish.

  I entered, met by the sounds of some laid-back, flowery music flowing from a boom box behind the welcome counter. That was it for greeting; no person stepped forward to welcome me.

  I stood and waited. Evidently, it was self-serve all the way at Spectacular Nails. Spectacular. I walked toward a narrow hallway extending from the back of the salon. Halfway there, I was intercepted by a five-foot-tall woman with fake nails and fake boobs.

  “I can help you?” she wanted to know.

  “I need to talk to Wei-jan Fang.”

  She looked at me, baffled. “Wei-jan Fang,” I repeated. “Dr. Fang.”

  “There no doctor here. This nail salon.”

  I pointed to the closed door. “Is there a medical clinic back there? I need some medical treatment.”

  She shook her head vigorously.

  This is why I needed Ravi. To flash the badge, to bring down the full weight of public health. “Ma’am, I need to see what’s back there.”

  “You do not go back there.”

  Screw it, I decided, I’d already dug my grave. I yanked out the CDC creds, waving the plastic ID around to confuse her.

  “Health Inspector,” I snapped, moving toward the hallway.

  She scrambled after me, a look of horror on her face. “Where you go?”

  “Inspections.” I opened the first door in the hallway. A bathroom. The toilet was running.

  “No health there,” she said. The woman was on my heels like a rabid Chihuahua. “No health there, up here.” She jammed her hand toward the front of the shop.

  “There’s health everywhere, ma’am.”

  I tried the knob on the second door. Locked. “Closet,” she said.

  “Open it.”

  Keys jingling in shaky hands, she obeyed. A closet.

  Only one door left. I stepped to it. Again, locked.

  “Unlock the door, please.”

  “No health here,” she insisted.
“I not have key.”

  “Sure you do,” I said cheerfully.

  I heard the electronic ring signaling someone entering the salon. I swung around. A balding Asian man stopped when he spotted us.

  “We closed,” the woman shrilled.

  “Unlock the door,” I repeated.

  The man looked confused for a moment, then beat it out of the shop. “I not have key!”

  I was hot on the trail, I could feel it. Man coming to a nail salon? The nervous woman? Well, well, Dr. Fang, prepare to meet Dr. McCormick.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. I took a step back, put my shoulder down, and rammed.

  The cheap door popped through its lock, flying open like a cardboard set piece, startling the hell out of me. Momentum carried me into a dim, carpeted reception area, which gave way to a hallway flanked on either side by two closed doors. To my right, a few cheap plastic chairs surrounded a cheap plastic table.

  In two of the chairs sat two women—girls really—in skimpy lingerie. They leapt to their feet.

  There were no nurses buzzing around. No doctor’s office smell. Definitely not an illicit clinic. It was, however, an illicit something else.

  The girls looked like caged animals in a thunderstorm, their eyes roaming wildly from my face to the door to the woman screeching behind me. Two cigarettes burned in an ashtray on the table.

  “Hello,” I improvised brilliantly.

  One of the other doors opened, then shut instantly. I glanced back at the proprietor, who was now muttering something in a language choked with diphthongs.

  “Come here,” I said to her, as I walked back into the nail salon. “Where is the clinic?”

  “I no think about clinic.”

  I pulled out my cell phone. “Now listen to me very carefully. Unless you help me out here, I will call the police. You understand me? You help me out here?”

  She gaped at me, bewildered. “You want girl?”

  “No. I don’t want a girl. There was a medical clinic here, a while ago. The doctor did medicine back there.” I stabbed a finger toward the smashed door. “The doctor works on ladies’ faces.”

  “Ladies’ faces?” she echoed.