The Devil's Elixir ts-3

by Raymond Khoury

  Tess couldn’t wait to get him there. She was hoping the animals and the shows would take his mind off what had happened and help him find his smile again, even if it was just for a little while.

  A smile that bringing up the drawing probably wouldn’t inspire. Tess couldn’t get the damn thing off her mind, and she felt bad for obsessing about it. She couldn’t help it. And as she turned away, her gaze drifted across to the small dining table by the windows and a bunch of drawings Alex had done the day before.

  She had an idea. One she knew she ought to resist, but couldn’t.

  She went into her bedroom and retrieved the drawing she’d brought back from Michelle’s house, then went back into the living room and chose two of the new drawings from the table. She then slid the older one under the two new ones and joined Alex in his room.

  She sat on the bed close to him and held up the drawings.

  “These are great, Alex. I love them. You did these with Jules, right?”

  He nodded but didn’t look up, his attention lasered on the alien battle he was orchestrating.

  She looked at the first drawing. It showed a jelly-bean-shaped figure and a big marine creature, either a dolphin or a whale. SeaWorld, obviously. The figure had brown hair and was holding a small stick figure, similar to the drawing she was curious about.

  “Is that you and the dolphin at SeaWorld?”

  Alex didn’t respond.

  “Alex, tell me—is this you and one of the dolphins?”

  This time, Alex flicked a quick, disinterested glance at the drawing, then he shook his head.

  Tess felt deflated. “It’s not you?”

  Alex shook his head again. Then, without looking at her, he said, “It’s not a dolphin. It’s Shamu.”

  She felt a twinge of excitement. “Ah, so it’s you and a whale.”

  He nodded.

  The next drawing showed Alex with his take on leaping dolphins. He was still lost in his fantasy world, and Tess was finding it hard to engage him. She felt guilty about trying to draw him out of it, especially given what she was about to foist on him. But she also felt she had to do it. The little curio-demon was insisting on it.

  “Alex, I found another drawing at your house yesterday and I wanted to ask you about it. Can I ask you about it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “It’s this one,” she pressed on, holding it out.

  “It’s one of yours, isn’t it, Alex? I mean, that’s you, right? With Ben in your hand?”

  This time, he glanced furtively at it. Tess was ready for it, studying his face, trying to read his reaction when he saw it.

  The unease flashed through the instant he looked over.

  Still, she couldn’t stop herself.

  “So if this is you, who’s that with you?” She pointed at the mystery figure.

  Alex didn’t reply.

  “Alex, who is that? I’d really like to know.”

  He didn’t turn.

  “Alex?”

  Nothing.

  Tess decided she had to try something else. “Alex, tell me something. Did your mommy ever ask you about it, too?”

  This time, she got a reaction. A slow, hesitant nod.

  “So what did you tell her?”

  Grudgingly, without looking at Tess, he said, “We talked about it a little.”

  “And what did you talk about?”

  “Mommy also wanted to know who it was.”

  “So what did you tell her?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  He seemed to be telling the truth.

  “That’s all you told your mommy? That you don’t know?”

  “Yes,” he insisted, softly. “That’s what I told them.”

  Them. Not her.

  “ ‘Them’? Who else did you talk to about the drawing, Alex?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Alex? You said you told your mommy and someone else that you didn’t know. Who was it? Who else did you talk to about it?”

  He hesitated, then he said, “Dean.”

  Tess felt the back of her neck sizzle. “Who’s Dean, Alex?”

  Alex frowned, then he said, “Mommy’s friend.”

  Tess felt lost. Reilly had told her about Tom, but nothing about a Dean. “Where did you see Dean, Alex?”

  “At his office. He has a fish tank. He let me feed the fish.”

  Tess was floundering.

  “Why was Mommy asking you about this drawing, Alex? What’s special about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Tess’s mind was shooting off in all kinds of directions, none of them clear. She decided to revert to her original question one last time and pointed at the jelly-bean figure with the toy in its hand. “But that’s you, right?”

  Alex slid a sideways glance at the drawing and, reluctantly, nodded.

  “Okay, so . . . who’s that?” she insisted softly, pointing at the other one. “Tell me what you told Dean, Alex. I’d really like to know. Who is that?”

  Alex didn’t reply at first, and without looking at her, he said, “No one.”

  Tess could see that he was holding back. She could also see that he was scared to tell her who he’d drawn.

  Which confirmed what she’d suspected. This was important.

  The question was, who was Dean and why did Michelle take Alex to see him?

  She didn’t want to press Alex any harder, already feeling bad about what she’d asked. But she didn’t know who else to ask. She didn’t know who Michelle’s friends were, if she had any family she was close to, and even if she did, she didn’t know if Michelle would have talked about it with them.

  There was only one place for her to start finding out.

  “Alex, what school do you go to?”

  31

  We needed to find Guru.

  Problem was, it looked like he didn’t want to be found.

  Between Karen and ATF records, we had a decent, if incomplete, bio on the man. Pennebaker and Walker—Guru and Wook—were both local boys who ended up together at Camp Pendleton, where they joined the 1st Marine Division. They both saw active duty in 2003 and 2004 in Iraq, first against the Iraqi Republican Guard, then against the far more combative and deadly insurgents, a mutually loathing mishmash of local militiamen and foreign mercenaries whose only bond was their common hatred of the American and British troops there. Most significantly, Pennebaker and Walker fought side by side in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury, a down-and-dirty weeklong street fight that left a heavy mark on all its participants. They managed to make it back home to California with all their limbs intact and with solid service records, but by all accounts, they left Iraq as changed and disillusioned men. Angry, bitter men, according to Karen. They resigned their commissions and bailed on the Marines as soon as they landed on home soil and moved back to San Diego County. Soon after that, they formed the Babylon Eagles. Interestingly, it seemed that Pennebaker was the one who had coined the club’s name.

  A couple of their war buddies joined them. So did Pennebaker’s younger brother, Marty, who’d been floating around aimlessly and barely scraping by. The two missing faces in the photo gallery at the clubhouse—those were the Pennebaker brothers. Then, about a year into the club’s life, a scuffle with a rival biker gang left Marty bleeding to death on the street. Pennebaker went ballistic. He found the guy who killed his brother and beat him to a pulp. He then did something unexpected and turned himself in.

  At the trial, two things worked in his favor. The biker he’d killed was a scumbag who had a rap sheet as long as his arm. Also, Pennebaker’s story resonated with the jury at a time when there was a general feeling that our government wasn’t really looking after the returning veterans with the care they deserved. Guru was given a seven-year sentence for manslaughter. He ended up serving only four of them at Ironwood, getting out early on good behavior. That was about fifteen months ago.

  Then he disappeared.

  The ATF didn’t have a take on th
at. According to Karen, he came out of prison with a new mind-set and didn’t want to have anything to do with the club anymore. He saw Walker one time—Karen didn’t see him—then he was gone.

  No records. Nothing. The man had gone totally off-grid.

  I was now twice as interested in finding him. He could potentially help us track down our Mexican bad guy by telling us who he and Walker used to ride shotgun for. Beyond that, the “dropping out” business got my curiosity pinging. He disappears and all kinds of bad stuff starts happening to his ex-bike brothers. Could be a coincidence. They did happen—occasionally.

  I couldn’t know until we found him.

  32

  As he took the I-95 up to Mamaroneck, narcotics detective Andy Perrini wondered why Octavio Guerra was so keen to locate the archaeologist who’d turned to writing hokey novels. Obviously there was an angle—the Mexican fixer always had an angle—but Perrini had several of his own irons in the fire right now, so he had decided to not try to second-guess his paymaster on this occasion.

  He already knew Tess Chaykin’s address; it was in the file he’d prepared for Guerra a few weeks back. The house belonged to Tess’s mother, Eileen, though the widowed Mrs. Chaykin appeared to no longer live there. He hadn’t been asked to discover where she was, and if Perrini had one rule when he was working for someone else, it was always to do the bare minimum necessary, unless extra effort somehow meant he could skim a bit more wedge off the deal.

  Chaykin’s boyfriend, an FBI agent assigned to the CounterTerrorism Task Force who had been the primary subject of his report, had moved in a couple of years ago and the pair of them were now playing house with Chaykin’s teenage daughter, Kim. Perrini cringed at the thought of having to live with someone else’s kid. But even worse than that was the thought of having to combine family responsibilities with pleasure. He always kept the two strictly compartmentalized. Rachel and the boys in Greenpoint, and Louise in the apartment on Second Avenue, which he paid for with what he euphemistically called his nontaxable income.

  Perrini turned onto Mamaroneck Avenue just after two P.M. and flicked on his GPS’s soporific female voice for the final part of the journey.

  He’d read up on Mamaroneck before he’d set out. The whole civic setup seemed to be unnecessarily complex, with both a village and a town using the same name, but only part of the Village of Mamaroneck was in the Town of Mamaroneck, although all of the Village of Larchmont was considered part of the Town of Mamaroneck. The town’s website even had a page to help you determine whether you lived there or not. Apparently “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” had been written and first performed in the town, which seemed to be its proudest moment. All of this reminded Perrini of why he generally never ventured north of Mount Vernon.

  He arrived at his destination and immediately wiped the GPS’s memory. He drove along the tree-lined street just within the speed limit and took a good look at the target house and at those on either side. Over the years he’d learned to take in a huge amount of information with only the smallest of glances. As he turned off the street and started to circle back, he already knew that Tess’s house had no car parked outside, that the mailbox hadn’t been emptied in a couple of days, and that the drapes had been left half open in that ridiculous way that people think sends a signal to passers-by that they’re at home when they’re really out of town. The feature of the property in which he was most interested was plainly accessible from one side but shielded from the other by a large rhododendron bush. And it was of the perfect type, though he was, of course, prepared for every eventuality.

  The neighbors to the left had two boys who were still too young for summer camp—a fact he’d gleaned from the two boy’s bikes of different sizes left casually on the grass—but appeared to be out at present. The neighbors on the other side appeared to be retired, which he deduced both from the immaculate garden and the selection of walking sticks leaning against the inside of the porch. The gleaming Lexus in the driveway told him that at least one of them was home. Which suited Perrini perfectly.

  Now back where he started, Perrini pulled in about a hundred yards short of the Chaykin house and parked behind a blue Prius. He then called Chaykin’s home number again—he’d programmed it into the throwaway he’d bought with cash a few hours earlier. He let it ring for the maximum time allowed by the network, then re-pocketed the phone once the line had gone dead. It was just as he had called it.

  No one home.

  He fished out a clipboard and a Phillips screwdriver from the stakeout detritus on the backseat and loosened the laces on one of his patent leather shoes, then he climbed out of the car and set off. He walked casually down the street, straightening his tie and sweeping his fingers through his mane of onyx-black hair, a feature that had served him well over the years with both female interview subjects and the still-delectable Louise, who’d been barely twenty when they’d first hooked up.

  As he approached the front of Chaykin’s property he looked down, noticed his shoelace was undone, and knelt beside the rhododendron bush as if to retie it. He laid down the clipboard, took out the Phillips head, and quickly loosened the screws holding the street number to the gatepost on the near side of Chaykin’s driveway. When he had them sufficiently free of the wood, he angled the Phillips head down behind the screw heads, pried off the faux-iron plaque, and quickly put it and the screws in his pocket. Then he tied his shoelace, picked up his clipboard, and continued on his way.

  He walked confidently across the driveway of the retired couple, past their immaculate Lexus, and rang the doorbell, holding his clipboard in that officious manner that filled most ordinary citizens with preprogrammed discomfort.

  A woman in her sixties opened the door, wearing a well-cut pantsuit and a string of real pearls. A ripple of satisfaction ran through Perrini’s chest. This was almost going to be too easy.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” Perrini said in the tone he normally reserved for Rachel’s mother and the precinct captain’s wife. “I’m from the Fire Prevention Office down on Weaver Street. We’re currently going around making sure everyone has their house number clearly displayed from the street, as stipulated by town law.”

  The woman immediately looked over Perrini’s shoulder at the painted china disc stuck to her low picket fence. It was still there. She swung her eyes back to Perrini with a quizzical look.

  He smiled.

  “You are of course within regulations yourself, ma’am. And a very pretty sign, I might add. Looks lovely against your mimosa.”

  It was the woman’s turn to smile.

  Perrini cast his eyes onto his clipboard, on which rather incongruously sat that week’s roster for the Ninth Precinct’s narcotics squad.

  “No, ma’am. I am inquiring with regard to the house number of your neighbor”—Perrini tapped his clipboard with a pencil—“a Tess Chaykin?” He gestured over to the gate post from which he had only just removed the number and gave her an apologetic wince. “No number visible.”

  The woman gave her pearls a small, anxious tug. Clearly, the thought of anyone on her street being in contravention of town laws was somewhat troubling.

  Perrini had to suppress his smirk.

  “We’ve already written to Miss Chaykin regarding this matter, but so far we haven’t heard back. Now, we don’t like to fine people unless we absolutely have to. Maybe Miss Chaykin is away for the summer and there’s no one to check her mail?”

  The woman nodded. “She’s out of town. But her boyfriend’s here,” she added, with a pointed little grimace of disapproval to go with boyfriend, of course, “though I haven’t seen him since Saturday morning. Maybe he hasn’t been opening her mail?”

  Guerra had told Perrini that Sean Reilly was in San Diego, so no surprise there.

  “Is there any way you could reach her?” said Perrini, in such a way as not to suggest the slightest note of aggression. “I can hold off on the fine, but I can’t do it forever.”

  “Well, I’m n
ot sure I can,” she said, apologetically. “She’s in Arizona with her daughter. They’re out at her aunt’s place. Can’t it wait till she gets back? I think she’s only there for a couple of weeks.”

  And with that Perrini had got exactly what he’d come for, so he decided to ease off and leave the Town of Mamaroneck’s laws where he’d found them. He held up the pencil, then wrote a meaningless scribble on the top sheet of the clipboard. “I think I can hold off till then. I’ll make a note to come around again in a couple of weeks. Thank you so much for your time.”

  The woman smiled at him and retreated into her house.

  Perrini went back to his car and called Guerra’s secure line from his own cell phone. He knew Guerra wouldn’t answer unless the Mexican fixer’s firewall could identify exactly who was calling and authorize the call.

  Guerra picked up immediately.

  “Did you find her?”

  Guerra’s military-like bluntness always grated on Perrini, though he knew that the man had at one point been a full colonel in the Mexican army, before he had retired under something of a cloud.

  “She’s not here. She’s in Arizona, at her aunt’s place.”

  Guerra paused for a second, then he said, “I need confirmation that she’s there. Call me when you have it.” Then the line went dead.

  Perrini had to admire Guerra’s brutal efficiency, if nothing else.

  He pulled out of the side street and headed back to the city. As he turned onto the thruway, he called Lina Dawetta, a clerk at the Ninth Precinct with whom he had his own brutally effective relationship. She did whatever he asked her to, in order for him not to report her cocaine habit to her boss—a habit he had done everything to encourage and now fed.

  He knew she wouldn’t cross him. The last person to do that had been dragged out of the East River with half a face. And that backstabbing scumbag had been a cop.

  “I need something,” he told her, before telling her what it was and agreeing on a time and place to meet.

  33