The Devil's Elixir

by Raymond Khoury

  “Voldemort? Oops. Forgot. Not supposed to say it, right?”

  The look again, only cranked up to eleven. Yes, this is our foreplay. Sad, but, hey, it works.

  “I’m serious. I think there’s something there. Maybe a gun.”

  I gave it another glance. It could be a gun. Then again, it could be pretty much anything you wanted it to be, given that the blob-like entity holding it was so far removed from what humans really look like, it made Picasso’s figures look like Normal Rockwell’s.

  “Kids play soldier and cowboy and alien hunter all the time; that’s what boys do. So even if it is him . . . maybe that’s just him and something from some cartoon show or a friend of his, who knows. Could be anything.”

  “So why was it on Michelle’s desk, among her papers, not on the kitchen wall or in his bedroom like the others?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that—or, rather, I had way too many answers to that. Also, my brain was pretty much maxed out by real life. The fanciful flights of Alex’s imagination, sweet and charming as they were, would have to wait.

  “I have no idea,” I simply replied, taking the drawings out of her hand and setting them down on the coffee table. I rolled over and crowded her against the back of the couch, and kissed her hungrily. Then I remembered where we were and pulled back. I stood up and held out my hand to her.

  “Why don’t we discuss this in my office?”

  As Tess followed Reilly into the bedroom, she couldn’t stop thinking about the drawing.

  Maybe Reilly was right. Maybe she was reading way too much into it.

  Problem was, the annoying little curiosity demon that lurked in the dark recesses of her mind was all restless and clamoring for her attention.

  The demon was still bouncing around inside her as she locked the door behind her and felt Reilly turn her around and pin her against the wall. It definitely wasn’t on her mind for the next hour or so, but after that, as she fell asleep in his arms, it was back, front and center, running amok and demanding an audience.

  28

  Farther up the coast, a very different kind of demon was hurtling across an entirely different landscape.

  Navarro was back at the secluded beachfront villa in Del Mar, sitting cross-legged on a polished teak deck beyond the pool house. The sea was a stone’s throw away directly in front of him and the low moon was bearing down on him like an interrogator’s spotlight as he just sat there, quiet and serene—on the outside, that is.

  Inside, things were radically different.

  He’d been at it for over an hour, sailing through tunnels of fire and abysses of endless darkness, diving and soaring and spinning through kaleidoscopes of color and fields of surreal visions from his past and his future.

  He’d done it before, of course.

  Many times.

  For those who weren’t accustomed to it or who didn’t know how to tame it, the brown, sludgy concoction he’d ingested could have disastrous consequences, both immediate—vomiting, pissing on themselves, an utter conviction that they were dying, screaming and begging to be saved from a terror that seems unending—and longer term. But not for Navarro. He knew what he was doing.

  He’d first taken this particular psychoactive brew in the highlands of Peru, long ago, and had been coached through its usage by a blind shaman. The lucidity it instilled in him was overwhelming at first, but he’d learned to focus it, and with each use it grew more effective.

  He pulled back from the edge and burst into a field of blinding white light, and felt incredibly clear-headed. His breathing slowed right down, calmed by the inner peace that bloomed from deep in his core, and he opened his eyes.

  Magnificent.

  He breathed in a big lungful of sea air and held it in for a long moment, relishing a newly awakened super-sensitivity to everything around him. The waves lapping against the shore, the crickets in the trees—he could even hear the crabs scuttling across the sand. And in his mind’s eye, he could now see things, ones he’d missed or hadn’t noticed, with exhilarating clarity.

  The drug had worked like magic. Just as he knew it would. He’d been taught by the best, ever since his lifetime fascination with what ethnopharmacologists called the “sacred spirit medicine” had started in his early teens.

  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.

  “Ok
ay,” 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.