Flawless

by Joshua Spanogle

  “Where’s Dorothy Zhang?”

  Fang focused on me with a little difficulty. “You’re here for her?” He sounded surprised.

  “Where is she?”

  “That’s what all this is about? Come on. You boys want more than that.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, “we want more than that. Where is she?”

  “Got me. I didn’t even know they had her.”

  “Who has her?”

  Fang smiled, showing us a mouthful of crooked teeth. “The same people who are going to be here…”—he looked at his watch—“in maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “Dorothy Zhang is an afterthought now,” Fang told us.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “What’s going to happen to her?”

  Something glimmered in the glazed eyes. “She got to you, didn’t she?”

  I rolled a stool in front of Fang’s chair and sat. “You’re here because you want to talk. We’re here because we want to talk.”

  “Sure, but first I want to talk about me. You guys really don’t have a clue who you’re dealing with, do you?”

  “I have some idea.”

  “Then, you know I have some problems, right? You know I’m as good as dead,” he said flatly. “Unless I get your help.”

  “What do you need?” I asked, wary.

  “I need protection,” Fang said, his eyes bright now. “I need you to call the FBI or the cops or whoever you’re working with and get me and my family some protection.”

  “We can’t just—”

  “You’re the CDC guy. He’s the state guy. Make it happen.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Make it work like that,” he said. He poured a cup, spilled fluid over the lip.

  “What is Beautiful Essence?” I asked.

  “Beautiful Essence…” He let the ugly phrase roll in his mouth. “…that’s my baby.”

  “What is it?”

  “They’re coming, Dr. McCormick. No time for—”

  “Where does it come from? Who supplies you with it?”

  “Dunno. I’m just a poor little guy who can’t get the government to help—”

  “Who attacked Brooke Michaels?” He gave no response. “Who killed Paul Murphy?”

  His eyes cut to me, then away, and I knew he knew the name. “Who killed Paul Murphy?” I repeated. I felt fury rising and I imagined myself grabbing the lapels of his white coat, beating the bastard into a mash of contusions and lacerations. I was furious for what he had done to Dorothy, for squirting poison into her skin. For doing it over and over and over to anyone foolish enough to walk through his door. I jerked away, slammed the bottle of whiskey with my hand, knocking it to the floor.

  Fang looked down at the shattered glass, grinned. “Doc, you owe me a hundred bucks of Scotch.”

  I stepped away before I did something really stupid. Like slamming a fist into his skull, popping a vessel in his dura and giving him a hematoma, doing to him what they did to Brooke.

  “We get a deal together, I’ll lead you to the promised land, Dr. McCormick,” Fang said. He reached into his white coat and produced a key.

  “We’re not making any deals.” Ravi was twitchy, opening and closing his big hands, staring hard at the man in the chair.

  Fang cocked his head, a drunk smile twisting his lips. “Then I guess we’re not talking.” He dropped the key back into his pocket and pushed himself out of the chair.

  In a single motion, Ravi was in front of him, shoving him back down. “We’re talking,” he said. “No more games, you son of a bitch—”

  Fang found this funny. “You like the rough stuff, huh, Dr. Singh? You wait around here, you’re going to see a lot of rough stuff, a lot—”

  The sound of Ravi’s palm striking Fang’s face took me by surprise. “What the hell are you doing?” I yelped.

  “We don’t have time for this!” he shouted. “We have, what, Nate? A few minutes left? We got almost a dozen people out there with their faces exploding. Your girlfriend is in the ICU and—” He cut himself off and swung back to Fang. “Who’s sick?”

  “Ouch,” Fang said, rubbing his face, forcing himself to laugh. “That’s good. That was a good one.”

  “Who’s sick?”

  “You want to hit me again? Come on, Doctor, see if you have it in you.”

  “Ravi—” I put out my hand.

  But his fist was already moving through the air. It cracked loudly in the middle of Fang’s pasty face.

  “Stop it!” I shouted. I grabbed him.

  “Yes!” Fang shouted. “Again, Dr. Singh!”

  The Sikh struggled against me for a second, then relaxed. I let go of his arm.

  “Hit me!” Fang yelled.

  Ravi shook his hand ruefully, then shook his head. “You crazy asshole,” he told the panting man in the chair.

  I rolled the stool over to Fang and sat. Twin streams of blood trailed from his nostrils.

  “I think he broke my nose,” Fang said.

  I reached to his face, touched the swelling nose. He winced. The blood had slowed, but still oozed. I grabbed some gauze from the instrument tray and handed it to him.

  “We’ll get you to the ED,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  I watched him for a moment, watched him wipe his lip, then push the gauze into his nostrils.

  “What is Beautiful Essence?” I asked. “Does it have anything to do with the company Paul Murphy worked for—a company called Tetra Biologics?”

  Wei-jan Fang’s eyes hardened; his voice was thick from the cotton-stuffed nose. “I can’t talk about that unless we have a deal.”

  I was about to lie regarding the protection—screw the asshole—but I never got the chance.

  Somewhere in the front of the building, an electronic bell chimed.

  90

  WEI-JAN FANG’S BLOODIED FACE TWISTED. “Get out of here,” he whispered.

  I jumped from the stool and dropped back to the doorway, cut a quick look down the hallway. I couldn’t see into the salon.

  Fang had pushed himself out of the chair and wobbled toward me. “Get out,” he repeated, covering me with boozy breath. He tried to push past me.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  “They’re going to kill you. You get that?” He shoved me against the wall and stumbled down the hall.

  “The key!” I said.

  Fang waved me off and pushed through the back door to the alley. Next thing I knew, Ravi was blowing past me, moving quickly after the doctor.

  I grabbed the Sikh’s arm. “Wait,” I said.

  Ravi stopped running. “What? We gotta get out of here, McCormick. Are you nuts?”

  “There was one chime.”

  “So?”

  “So they wouldn’t have sent only one guy, right? And no one’s coming into the clinic. It’s probably a customer who came and left when she saw no one was here.”

  “McCormick—”

  “We need what’s in that freezer.”

  Ravi didn’t move.

  “Call the cops,” I said.

  “I thought—”

  But I was already gone. I jogged down the hallway to the door we’d broken through. I put my eye to the peephole and saw a fish-eye picture of the nail salon. The view wasn’t perfect—the sight lines gave me only half the salon—but I saw no one.

  “If they came in and left, why only one chime?” It was Ravi, whispering at my back.

  “I thought I told you to call the police. We must have missed the other chime. I don’t know, man. No one’s there.”

  Ravi pressed his face to the door, his eye to the peephole. I scooped up the fire extinguisher and walked toward the makeshift lab.

  I maneuvered the freezer away from the wall to give myself room to swing. Then I hoisted the fire extinguisher to my shoulder and cracked it downward into the small padlock. There red metal bit into the fixture, but the lock held.

  Ravi was behind me now, standing in the entra
nce to the room, cutting his eyes back and forth from me to the nail salon’s door. “There’s no time,” he hissed.

  Again, I hoisted the extinguisher. Again I slammed. Still, the lock didn’t break.

  “McCormick—”

  I pulled the extinguisher back, glanced at Ravi. His eyes were fixed on something in the hallway.

  “—they’re here,” he said. “The door—”

  Without warning, Ravi ripped the fire extinguisher from my hands. I watched him gallop for the door, the metal cylinder in his hands like a red battering ram.

  The door inched, then swung open.

  91

  RAVI SHIFTED HIS MOMENTUM AND slammed into the wall next to the door. The fire extinguisher popped from his hands and clanged to the floor.

  For a moment, there was silence. Then I yelled, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “You said it was break-the-rules-day,” Tim Kim whined. His voice was only a little unsteady, and I wasn’t sure he’d grasped just how close he’d come to being flattened by a raging Sikh.

  Ravi rubbed his shoulder. “Goddamn,” he said. “Goddamn.”

  “I wanted to find you,” Tim said. “I had to pee. I went to the bathroom.” He stuck a finger back toward an opened door in the nail salon.

  I ran a hand through my hair. “You okay?” I asked Tim.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Come here, Tim. Ravi—are you hurt?”

  “Broken clavicle. Dislocated shoulder. Other than that, I’m friggin’ perfect.” He was glowering at the kid.

  “Take him out the back,” I said. “Tim, you go with Ravi.”

  “I want to stay with you,” Tim said.

  “You can’t stay with me. I need to do something first.”

  How long did Fang say before the bad guys came? Fifteen minutes? How many of those minutes had passed?

  “Get Tim back to your car,” I said to Ravi. “I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  “I’m staying with you!” Tim insisted. His face was pink now, crumpled with anxiety. I didn’t blame the kid for not wanting to climb into a car with the guy who’d nearly crushed him and, now, looked as if he wished he had.

  “Ravi, take him out.”

  Ravi reached down for Tim’s arm, but the kid scampered away. Another one of those precious minutes was dissolving while My Two Dads fumbled through Basic Childcare.

  “Okay, okay. Tim, fine, you can stay with me. Ravi, get out of here. Call the police.”

  “I thought we didn’t want the police—”

  “Now I want them. If someone’s coming, I want them.”

  I didn’t have to say that I’d rather be locked in a cell getting my one phone call than have my tongue cut out. Ravi got it. “Call from a pay phone so they don’t ID the call,” I shouted after him. To Tim, I said, “You stay in the hall, hear me? Break-the-rules-day is over.”

  He nodded. From his wide-eyed face, I couldn’t tell if he was scared out of his wits or thinking this was some fun game. Scared, hopefully. They tell me kids keenly sense what the adults around are feeling and take cues from them. And I was scared out of my mind.

  I dragged the fire extinguisher back into the closet with the locked freezer. “Tim, stay out there.” I heard nothing, but wanted to make sure he hadn’t run off. “You hear me, young man?” I sounded like my father.

  “Yeah,” came the small voice.

  How many minutes left? Five? Fewer?

  I wailed on the lock a few times, but its moorings on the lock held. “Tim, you still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay there.”

  I uncapped the top to the insulated tub of liquid nitrogen. There was no ladle, so I picked up the entire thing and brought it to the freezer. Slowly, I drizzled the cold liquid—about minus 200 degrees Celsius or minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit—over the small padlock, and the liquid immediately boiled to a gas when it hit the metal and the floor. After ten seconds, I was sure the lock was near minus 200.

  “Tim, you stay right where you are. There’s gas in here.”

  The tensile strength of steel is about 500 millipascals if memory from physics class served me. Supercooling the metal makes it brittle, greatly reducing its tensile strength. Using liquid nitrogen is one way thieves break through those “theft-resistant” bike locks.

  Quickly, I put down the tub and picked up the fire extinguisher again. Raising it above my head, I brought it crashing down on the lock. With a clink, the metal finally split.

  I took one of the broken cardboard boxes and fanned it a few times over the floor to disperse the gas. Then, with the room relatively free of nitrogen, I dropped to one knee in front of the freezer. I pulled at the door. Cold air flowed out like breath.

  It was empty.

  “Goddamn,” I breathed.

  To the trash can on the opposite side of the room. I began pulling material from it, tossing it on the floor, hoping the clinic workers were conscientious about keeping their sharps out of the general trash.

  “Wow. You beat up that refrigerator.” Tim was in the doorway.

  “It was giving me backtalk. Hey, what’s that in your hand?”

  Tim regarded the piece of plastic and metal held tightly in his fingers. “It’s a knife,” he reported.

  “It’s a scalpel. Put it down. It’s dangerous.”

  At the bottom of the can, a number of things had sifted through the paper and other light material: pipette tips, small plastic tubes with green screw tops, slightly larger plastic tubes with orange screw tops. Labels had once been affixed to the tubes with the orange caps, but had since been removed.

  I glanced at Tim, saw that he still held the scalpel. “What did I say? Put your knife down.”

  “But I need it.”

  “You don’t need it.”

  “Bilbo had Sting. His sword. You’re the one who likes Bilbo.”

  I didn’t have time for this, but I also didn’t need to be worrying about an armed eight-year-old. “You don’t need it,” I told him. “Bilbo didn’t really need it. His best weapon was his wits. Use your wits. They’re much better than a scalpel.”

  This argument—dubious as it was—seemed to suffice, and Tim set the scalpel on the floor.

  I plunged my arms deeper into the trash can, pulled out all the tubes I could get my hands on. A few fell on the floor.

  “You’re losing them,” Tim observed.

  “Don’t worry about it. You hear anything outside?”

  “No.”

  “No sirens?”

  “I hear sirens.” He was on his knees, chasing the tubes I’d spilled.

  “That’s something, isn’t it?” I snapped. Did I have to spell everything out for the kid? “Let’s go.”

  A siren wailed somewhere in the distance.

  “Let’s go,” I said again. Tim was peering into a Styrofoam box. “Leave that.”

  “I found things,” he said.

  “Come on,” I said, in a softer voice. Maybe a kinder, gentler cajoling would work. It didn’t. I reached down to grab the kid’s arm and wrench him out of here. “What are you looking at?”

  He held up his hands. In his left was a crumpled piece of paper. In his right was a plastic tube with an attached flip-top. The tube was unlike the ones I’d pulled from the trash. It contained a pink, indistinct mass.

  I took the tube. It was cool to the touch.

  Tim held the paper to me. A bill of lading. He pointed to the recipient’s name: Dragon East Importers.

  “That’s Uncle Tony,” he informed me, smoothing out the paper carefully.

  I snatched it and scanned.

  “Dragon East Importers” was neatly handwritten in the “To:” line. The name and the logo of the shipping company, Cellegix Solutions, occupied the upper left-hand corner, along with an address and phone number. There was a lot number for the item shipped, but no description.

  The sirens were getting louder. A couple blocks away at most.

  I shoved the bill i
nto my pocket along with the tubes I’d collected and the one Tim had found. I grabbed the boy’s hand.

  And then I froze.

  The electronic chime sounded. Then it sounded again.

  This time, there was no doubt that more than one person had entered.

  92

  I YANKED TIM FROM THE closet. His body felt light and doll-like. He squeaked in protest. “Not now,” I snarled.

  Down the hall, I heard the door to the clinic slam open. Nasal shouts in a language I couldn’t understand. Tim squirmed wildly against my arm as I dragged him through the back door.

  The alleyway. To the left, a large SUV lumbered toward us. To the right, a black sedan had jammed into reverse, tires squealing, making tiny jerks and adjustments as the driver tried to keep the nose of the vehicle from swinging him into a spin.

  I tightened my hold on Tim and ran toward the sedan.

  The driver slapped the brakes. “Get in!” Ravi shouted.

  I threw Tim into the front seat and stole a look behind us. Two men had appeared in the alley.

  “Go, go!” I screamed.

  Ravi did, the Acura heaving forward. Tim was in a ball in the footwell; I kneeled on the seat above him.

  Behind us, the two men hopped into the SUV. The sirens were very close now, their whine coming from the other side of the block, coming from behind us.

  The SUV lurched. A siren’s blare ricocheted off the buildings flanking the alley. I glanced forward, saw the cross street rushing toward us. Then, something I’d never heard before except in movies and on TV: an explosion. A big one.

  “Jesus!” Ravi yelled. As we spun out onto the street, I wheeled, saw black smoke belch into the alley.

  “What happened?” Ravi pushed the car faster.

  “They blew up the clinic.” The SUV turned behind us, following. “Damn it. Faster, Ravi!” I shouted. Below me, Tim had his arms over his head, and I tried to do my best to avoid stomping him.

  Ravi raced through a red light, then another. The SUV blew the lights easily, getting closer with each one. Behind it, I caught a glimpse of flashing lights. “Turn!” I shouted.

  Ravi turned down an alley and gunned the engine, laid on the horn as we flew past guys unloading produce from a truck. I looked out the back window, saw the SUV shoot past the alley entrance, the SFPD in hot pursuit.