The Devil's Elixir

I glanced in the mirror. “No, they’re too far back.”

“Okay, um,” he stammered, “let me—how do you wanna play this? We can set up a roadblock and—”

“No, it’d take too long,” I interjected. “I don’t want to risk losing these guys or scaring them off.”

“I hear you, but you can’t face off with them on your own either.”

“Agreed, but right now we need to figure out where I’m going.”

I caught a glimpse of the road signs flying past and they confirmed what Villaverde had told me at the onset, about the freeway ending and morphing into F Street. The SDPD’s headquarters was now only a few blocks away. I thought about sticking to the plan and pulling into the department’s parking lot and sneaking around to surprise my guys while they waited for me to leave again, but the thought of making my move with armed backup on a crowded downtown street wasn’t working for me, not with these trigger-happy cyborgs. It didn’t look like I was going to have much of a choice in the matter anyway as I was about to run out of freeway. I was desperate to avoid getting into slower city streets and traffic lights—too many pedestrians and fewer options—but the only off-ramp was onto the San Diego Freeway, heading north.

I glanced at my GPS screen. The freeway ran north for a mile or so, then banked left and went west briefly, toward the airport, before turning north again. I couldn’t risk taking it, not after having driven all that way south from Villaverde’s office. It would make me look like I was doing a weird big loop, which might tip off my guys and make them bail. So I just sailed by the off-ramp and motored ahead.

The maroon sedan stayed with me.

“I’m about to hit F Street,” I informed Villaverde, still playing out the notion of somehow faking them out and doubling back to ambush them while they waited for me to resurface. It was taking root nicely. I quickly explained my idea to him and asked him to think of somewhere away from the crowds where I could face off with them without worrying about collateral damage.

I was now on F, a wide, one-way street that cut across the downtown area east to west, and I could almost hear Villaverde’s mind whirring away as he processed my request.

“There’s the Coast Guard facility on Harbor Drive,” he finally said. “I can call ahead and make sure the guard at the gate lets you through and get some of the guys ready to back you up.”

“No. No Coast Guard or Navy, nothing like that. It might spook them.” I was worried my stalkers might not want to lie in wait for me outside a military base, not in these terror-alert-heightened times, and I really didn’t want to lose them. “Come on, David,” I pressed him. “I’m running out of road.”

“Hang on.” He went silent for another moment, then said, “Okay, how about the Tenth Avenue Terminal area, down at the harbor? There’s container yards and warehouses and storage tanks, that kind of thing. What do you think?”

It seemed like a decent option. “Does it make sense that I would have left the freeway where I did if I was originally going there?”

Villaverde thought about it for a second, then said, “I wouldn’t have necessarily come off the fifteen, but yeah, why not? You’re not way off base. Besides, you’re a visitor here, you’re not expected to know the ideal route to take.”

I didn’t like hearing that. Plus, I wasn’t sure what they were thinking, or expecting. But the downtown area didn’t look like it was going to offer me what I was looking for, and the harbor sounded better.

Also, Villaverde’s suggestion of the gate at the Coast Guard facility gave me an idea.

“Is there a bonded warehouse facility there with a security gate?”

“Yep, I know where it is.”

I glanced at the street signs on the next corner. “Okay, I’m just crossing Thirteenth. I need you to guide me to the terminal. And see if you can call the gate and let them know I’m heading their way.”

Villaverde got to it and told me to take the next left. I tensed up with expectation and turned the wheel while eyeing my rearview mirror.

Sure enough, the maroon sedan turned in behind me.

18

As he sat on a tattered and cracked leather couch across a stained coffee table from Eli Walker, El Brujo felt the rumbling of an oncoming storm echoing through his veins.

He tried to stay positive as his eyes wandered around the spartan interior of the gang’s clubhouse and the five other bike brothers who were sitting around the room while his ears and his mind remained locked on the phone conversation their leader, the club’s president, was having. The man had, Navarro reminded himself, come through for him before. Several times, in fact. They’d done good business together years earlier—back in the days when Walker and the rest of the narco world knew him as Raoul Navarro, back when he was scheming and scything his way up the kingpin ladder of power and notoriety—and they’d done business of a different kind, also without a hitch, in the last few months. There was no reason to expect Walker to fail—again—this time, but somehow, Navarro couldn’t help but feel the man was going to let him down.

The clubhouse was next door to the club’s business front, the shop where Walker and his boys built, sold, and serviced motorcycles of all kinds. Navarro knew these guys had a nice little business going, what with the garage out front gleaming with rich lacquer and expensive chrome. He knew how passionate bikers felt about their rides, especially out here in California, and he knew how much some people were prepared to pay for the outrageous custom bikes people like Walker created for them. Only last week, he’d read about a Hollywood screenwriter whose stolen bike had just been recovered in the Philippines, of all places. It was worth close to a hundred thousand dollars. Navarro knew that a lot of what he saw out front were also worth big bucks, and given that the bikes’ main cost component was labor and that the markups on what went into them were huge, it was an ideal setup through which Walker and his gang could launder the money the gang made from trafficking and selling drugs and guns and the rest of their illegal enterprises.

The clubhouse itself was not to Navarro’s liking. It reeked of cheapness, what with all the mismatched furniture and tattered walls, to say nothing of the overflowing ashtrays and the stink of stale beer. It was the first time he’d actually been there—Navarro had steered clear of the United States until his rebirth—and he found it odd that for people who were clearly generating a serious amount of cash, Walker and his gang were living like slobs. Navarro understood that it was part of who these guys were, part of their ethos, of the only life they knew, but it was the opposite of what he was used to, the banditos back home who sought to surround themselves with luxury and project wealth and status as soon as they could afford it—wealth that they inevitably lost, wealth that possibly contributed to their downfall. Maybe these guys had it right, living less ostentatiously. Maybe it kept them off the ATF’s radar. Either way, it didn’t matter, he thought. Not if they can deliver what he needed from them.

He’d know soon enough.

He glanced at Walker and saw the big man grunt into his phone, and their eyes met. Walker’s expression was still locked somewhere between stone-faced and grave as he fingered his furry goatee with his meaty, calloused fingers and gave Navarro a slight nod of reassurance. Navarro returned the nod, cool and supportive, but in truth, he’d already lost a big chunk of whatever respect he’d ever had for the biker’s abilities from the moment Walker hadn’t recognized him when he’d shown up there with his two aides in tow. Navarro was fully aware that this was an unfair judgment on the big man. The plastic surgeon had done such a great job on Navarro’s face that the narco’s own mother, had she ever stuck around to see her son after giving birth to him, wouldn’t have recognized him. No one did, which was the whole point of going through the long and painful process in the first place. Still, in some perverse way, he’d expected more from Walker. He’d wanted him to recognize him. That would have been a strong testimony to the sharpness of the man’s mind. But Walker, like the handful of people from Navarro’s past that he’d shown himself to, hadn’t caught on to the deception, and given that his stock had been plummeting ever since that first failure at the woman’s house, it didn’t bode well for the biker.

Navarro hoped the big man wouldn’t sink any further.

“All right, good work,” he heard Walker say. “Stay on his ass and keep me posted.”

Walker hung up and looked across at him.