The Devil's Elixir ts-3

by Raymond Khoury

  It was a fascination that had served him well.

  For like all kids, Raoul Navarro grew up believing that magic existed. The difference was, he never stopped believing in it.

  He grew up in Real de Catorce, a village of steep cobblestone streets and rundown Spanish colonial houses that sat perched on the side of a mountain in the one of the highest plateaus of Mexico. Built up and then abandoned after a silver-mining rush a century ago, Real’s saving grace was as the gateway to the Wirikuta desert, the Huichol Indians’ sacred peyote harvesting ground. It was a place where a penniless kid like Navarro could scrape together a few dollars by finding the elusive little peyote buttons that hid under mesquite bushes and selling them to primeros—tourists who were seeking their first peyote high. He wasn’t, however, content with just selling it. He was curious about what the peyote actually did, and he didn’t have to wait too long to find out. It wasn’t long after his thirteenth birthday that he was blindfolded by a Huichol shaman and led into the desert, and became a primero himself.

  The experience was life-changing.

  It taught him that the spirits were everywhere, watching his every move, and he decided he wanted to learn their ways.

  He hung out with the shamans and taught himself to read, eventually devouring everything he could get his hands on, from the works of Carlos Castaneda to the writings of the great psychopharmacolo-gists and ethnobotanists. But as the real world proved to be a heartless, unforgiving place, he embraced the inevitable career option of so many of his peers and got sucked into the violent climb up the drug-trafficking totem pole—and found out he liked it. He didn’t only like it—he had a talent for it. And so, as his power and his wealth grew, he was able to indulge his fascination even more.

  With his growing resources, he traveled across Mexico and then farther south, into the jungles and rainforests of Guatemala, Brazil, and Peru, where he befriended anthropologists and sought out isolated peoples that devoted as much time and energy to understanding the invisible realms of gods and spirits and the time-bending pathways to our pasts and futures as we devoted to figuring out the mysteries of global warming and nanotechnology.

  Always seeking to open channels to new dimensions of consciousness and reach new heights of enlightenment, he spent a lot of time and money endearing himself to and worming his way into the trust of secretive tribal healers and shamans. Under their guidance, he experimented with all kinds of psychoactive substances and entheogens—mostly plant-derived concoctions that played a pivotal role in the religious practices of the tribal cultures he was exploring. He started with more easily accessible, local mind-altering substances like psilocybin mushrooms and Salvia divinorum, under the guidance of Mazatec shamans in the isolated cloud forests of the Sierra Mazateca, then he moved on to more obscure, and more intense, hallucinogens like ayahuasca, the vine of the soul; iboga, the sacred visionary root; borrachero; and others that few outsiders had ever been offered. He even went as far as Africa, venturing deep into Gabon and Cameroon to take part in Bwiti ngenza ceremonies, where he learned to communicate with his ancestral spirits. But he was starting out from a dark place. His soul was already enthralled by the violence it had tasted, and as these drugs altered his consciousness and gradually disintegrated his ego, he found himself venturing into the more sinister depths of his subconscious and finding things there that most people wouldn’t want to look at.

  But then, Navarro wasn’t most people.

  With each new experience, he was dragged further down by the demons that skulked in the abysses of his astral realms. But he couldn’t stop, and he grew more fascinated by the doors each journey opened up in his mind and by the psychospiritual epiphanies they triggered.

  Epiphanies that sometimes went beyond the spiritual.

  Epiphanies that helped him navigate dangerous real-world situations and rise among the ranks of narco kingpins with remarkable ease.

  Epiphanies that earned him the nickname El Brujo.

  The sorcerer.

  And it was one of these epiphanies that had steered him onto a new course, a new sense of purpose. It was the root of what was now driving him on.

  Navarro had long known that the game was changing. For anyone who took the time to notice, the drug world was constantly evolving. He knew that the current staple of the trade, cocaine, was on its way out. The future, he knew, was in a new type of experience, one that didn’t require cumbersome needles or flames or snorting, one that anyone could access by popping a pill that was no bigger than an aspirin. This was the great appeal of synthetic drugs and amphetamines, regardless of how destructive they were.

  If Navarro was out to shape the future, nothing was going to stand in his way.

  He emerged from his trip with his imagination and his powers of perception greatly enhanced. Observations and obscure details were shooting out of previously ignored corners in his mind and bursting into focus.

  One of them rose above all the others.

  He focused on it, cajoled and nurtured it until it shone with pleasing clarity.

  He went inside and hit the shower, cleansing his body, allowing the water to wash away the sweat and usher him back into the world others called real. Then he dried himself off, slipped on his nightclothes, and checked Reilly’s file.

  It was all there.

  He picked up his phone and called Octavio Guerra. The man who supplied him with his bodyguards. The man who got him all the background information on the Americans that Navarro was interested in. The fixer who usually got him anything he needed. And although it was late, he knew Guerra would pick up his call at any time, day or night.

  “The FBI agent, Reilly. His file says he has a woman, in New York. Tess Chaykin.” He paused, then told Guerra, “Find her.”

  TUESDAY

  29

  It was under another impeccable blue sky that I drove to La Mesa to interview Karen Walker.

  We arranged to see her there, at the local police department’s brand-new digs on University Avenue, since it was closer to the Eagles’ clubhouse and to where she lived. My thinking was that given what she’d just been through, it would be more courteous than to have her drive all the way out to Villaverde’s federal offices out by Montgomery Field. To her credit, she arrived on time, and although she looked shaken up and on edge, she seemed to be holding up reasonably well. She didn’t bring a lawyer with her either.

  I greeted her along with Villaverde and Jesse Munro, who’d driven down from LA that morning. After I’d left him, Villaverde had called Corliss to fill him in on yesterday’s developments, and Corliss had offered to send Munro so we’d have direct access to DEA resources now that the investigation was ramping up. The four of us were in a conference room on the second floor, which I figured would be more conducive than one of the smaller, and windowless, interview rooms downstairs, where the club’s prospects were to be questioned.

  ATF records showed that she and Walker got married in 2003, shortly before Walker had been shipped out to Iraq. They had two kids, an eight-year-old boy and a girl of three. Karen ran a nail bar in La Mesa. She also had a prison record, a brief stint for aggravated assault, which didn’t really mesh with the more composed woman before me, but then again, maybe there was something to be said for prisoner rehabilitation.

  We’d barely sat down when she asked about Scrape and whether or not we’d found him. The deputy’s murder had been on the news, but we hadn’t released details of why he was there to the press. Karen had put two and two together given the location of the shooting, and I decided telling her something the press hadn’t been privy to would help establish some kind of rapport between us.

  “They have him,” I told her. “They shot the deputy and took him with them. We don’t know where they are and we don’t have any leads on that either.”

  Her eyes darted around each of us. They were brimming with confusion and unease. I could see fear there, too.

  “You don’t have anything?”

  �
�That’s why you’re here, Mrs. Walker—”

  “Karen,” she interrupted brusquely, without a smile.

  I took a breath and nodded. “Okay, Karen. Here’s the situation. Your husband and his buddies were doing some work for someone. I’m not talking about building custom rides here. I’m talking about armed kidnappings that go back several months. I’m talking about shoot-outs that have left several people dead. But that’s not why we’re here right now. We’re not here to try to tie you to any of those events. We’re here because of what happened at the clubhouse. We’re here because we need to find the guys responsible and take them off the streets. Okay?”

  I waited for her to give me a little nod, then pressed on.

  “Now, you saw what these people are capable of. We don’t know who they are or what they’re after, but it looks like whatever it is, it’s still in play. Which means that as long as they’re out there, anyone who was close to the club is potentially at risk. And that means you, Karen. More than anyone.”

  I paused, letting my warning sink in. For the record, I wasn’t pulling her chain. I genuinely did feel that she was at risk. But whether I really cared or not right now, given what her husband’s gang had done to Michelle and all the others—that was open to debate. Maybe deep down, I wasn’t as ambivalent about her as I thought. She didn’t inspire a gut dislike inside me, and yet, although I didn’t know how much she knew about her husband’s activities, I assumed she knew enough. But I also knew from experience that partners of violent criminals are often also victims in their own way.

  “We need to know who the Eagles were working for and what they were doing,” I added.

  Her gaze bounced around us again, like she was being pulled in opposite directions. I knew she was uncomfortable just being inside this building. I’d seen her sheet, and she’d spent some time behind bars. She was no fan of law enforcement. She pulled out a pack of Winstons from her handbag, fished out a cigarette, and held it tightly between her fingers, then started tapping it against the table. She wore big silver rings on strong, well-manicured fingers. I also noticed she had tattoos on her wrists, though I couldn’t see how far up they went.

  “You do want us to nail whoever did this to your husband, don’t you, Karen?” I pressed.

  “Of course I do,” she shot back.

  “Then help us.”

  The tapping intensified, then she blew out a long, frustrated breath and looked away before letting her gaze settle back on me.

  “I want immunity.”

  “Immunity? From what?” I asked.

  “From prosecution. Look, I’m not new at this, okay? Assuming I did know something and I tell you about it, I’m an accessory. At best. And while I really want you to get the sick fucks that did that to Wook, doing time isn’t high on my bucket list.”

  She stopped there and just stared at me, then at the others, then back at me. She was trying to project indifference and defiance, but I had been around enough people in her situation to know that behind the tough biker-chick façade, she was shaking. Still, what she was asking for made sense, from her point of view. And as pissed off as I was about what her husband and his gang had done, I couldn’t be sure she knew every detail about what they were up to, nor that we’d ever be able to successfully prosecute her even if she did. More to the point, there was a strong chance she could help us figure out who was behind it all, and right now, ending this black run and getting my hands on whoever had sent the bikers after Michelle was worth making a deal that kept Karen Walker’s tattooed wrists out of prison.

  I slid a glance at Villaverde. Given her record, we’d anticipated her demand. We’d also agreed that we couldn’t afford to refuse it.

  “Okay,” I told her.

  Her face flooded with surprise, like she was not sure how to take that. “What, just like that? You don’t have that authority. Don’t you need to get it approved by the DA or something?”

  “It’s already done. We’ve already discussed it with the San Diego County DA’s Office. They’re on board. LA County won’t be a problem either.” I indicated Munro with a nod, and he gave her a small confirmation nod back. “The paperwork’s being done as we speak.” I leaned in. “This isn’t about you, Karen. You have my word as a federal agent that nothing you say in here will be used against you in any way. But if we’re going to get these guys, we need to act fast. They could be making a run for it. So if you know anything, now’s the time to speak up.”

  I saw her jaw muscles clench, and she resumed the tapping while debating what to do.

  “How long for that piece of paper to get here?” she asked.

  “Not long, but it might be more time than we have.”

  She exhaled again, her eyes narrowing. Then she sat back, threw a glance out the window for a long second, and turned to face us again. She nodded to herself, short quick nods, like she was convincing herself that she was making the right move.

  “They were working for some Mexican scumbag,” she told us. “I don’t know his name. Wook just called him ‘the wetback.’ ”

  I felt my synapses perk up. We were rolling.

  “What were they doing for him?”

  “It started about six, seven months ago or so. He hired them to grab a couple of guys.”

  “The scientists up by Santa Barbara?” Munro asked.

  She nodded. “I didn’t hear anything else about that for a while. Which was good, given how badly it had turned out. Then a few weeks ago, he came back with some other jobs. More grabs.”

  “Who was it this time?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. The first one wasn’t a local job either.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Up the coast. Somewhere around San Francisco, I think. Look, Wook didn’t tell me everything. Sometimes he didn’t tell me anything at all, not up front anyway. I’d hear about them because things got ugly and he’d get all worked up about that.”

  I wondered what Wook did when he got all worked up about something.

  “You don’t know anything else about who they went after?” I pressed.

  “No,” she insisted. “Only that it was another brainbox. Then a few days ago, they went after someone else and it all went bad again.”

  I felt my face flare up and my muscles stiffen. She was talking about Michelle. “Who did they go after?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But from what I heard, I think it was a woman.”

  I was studying every pore in her face looking for a tell about how much of this was true, but I couldn’t say for sure, either way. More importantly, I didn’t need to hear the rest of that story, not right now anyway, so I asked her the more pertinent question.

  “This Mexican. What else do you know about him?”

  She opened out her palms, and her voice ebbed. “Nothing. Wook didn’t tell me anything else, I swear.”

  Something still didn’t compute. “So your husband and his boys, they just met him six, seven months ago? And just like that, they agree to do some pretty high-risk stuff for him? Doesn’t seem like the wise course of action, does it?”

  “Wook said they’d worked together before. Years ago.”

  “Where?”

  She sighed, like she was annoyed at herself at having to give it all up. “A few years ago, Wook and the boys used to run shipment security on this side of the border for a Mexican drug baron. This new guy was one of the head honcho’s lieutenants. Wook didn’t remember him, but he said the guy knew stuff, stuff that only someone who was there would have remembered.”

  “Like what?”

  She stared at me for a moment, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “The Mexican suspected one of his crew was working for a rival cartel. Plotting to take over their turf. Wook was there that day. So was Guru.”

  “ Guru?”

  “Gary. Gary Pennebaker. He and Wook founded the Eagles when they got back from Iraq.”

  I thought back to the two faces on the clubhouse wall that w
eren’t among the dead.

  “Anyway, they’re there and the Mexican starts cutting the guy up to get him to talk. I don’t know the details, but it was bad. Hannibal Lecter bad. Wook said the guy was a real sicko. And Guru and Wook are watching this, and Guru pukes his guts out in front of everybody. Wook couldn’t stop laughing.” Her expression darkened with what I read as embarrassment, that this upstanding citizen was her man. “Anyway, this new guy, he was there that day. He was one of the head honcho’s enforcers. Wook said the way he described it to him, he had to be there. Which was enough to get them started.”

  She’d already told us she didn’t know the new Mexican’s name. “Did Wook mention the honcho’s name to you?”

  She shook her head ruefully. “No.”

  “What about Pennebaker? Where is he? How come he wasn’t at the clubhouse?”

  Villaverde was already deep into the ATF file on the Eagles. “It says here he left the club after a stint in prison?”

  He looked up at Karen for confirmation.

  “That’s right.”

  I was buzzed. This Guru could be the key to ID’ing our bad guy. If he was still alive.

  “Where can we find him?”

  She just shrugged and said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  30

  Tess felt restless as she stood by the door to Alex’s room and watched him play with his figurines on the floor by his bed.

  They’d already been down to the breakfast buffet, and they were now back in the suite, waiting for Jules, who was on her way. Alex had spent most of the day before indoors, and Tess felt they ought to take him out for some much-needed distraction. Jules had suggested they take him to Balboa Park, which was nearby. There was plenty there to keep him entertained: one of the world’s greatest zoos, the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, and a whole lot more. The idea had excited Alex who had, predictably, chosen the zoo.