The Devil's Elixir

21

I got back to the street outside the bonded warehouse to find a black-and-white pulled up where I’d left Flamehead. One of the Harbor Patrol uniforms was talking to Terry while the other was busy on his radio. Within seconds, another cruiser swerved in and discharged two more officers. I gave them all a quick description of Soulpatch, and one of them radioed it in and asked for an immediate BOLO to be sent out. The uniforms then jumped back into their cars and tore off to look for him just as an ambulance screamed in.

Flamehead wasn’t doing well. He was still lying in the middle of the road, sprawled on his belly. I couldn’t see much blood under him, but although he was conscious, he was just staring vacantly at the asphalt and barely responsive. I stood back with Terry and watched as the paramedics went to work on him, hard and fast.

I was livid with myself. I’d started off with two potential living, breathing leads into finding out who had targeted Michelle and why, and I was down to one half-dead extra from a Mad Max movie who didn’t look like he was going to be doing any talking anytime soon.

I put my BlackBerry back together and watched as one of the paramedics checked his blood pressure while the other used some trauma shears to cut through Flamehead’s Windbreaker and T-shirt to reveal an oval entry wound in his right upper back.

“BP’s one hundred over palp,” one of them announced.

“I’ve got one GSW through the lung. Let’s roll him over.”

They moved together expertly like they’d done this a thousand times before and used the shears again to cut through the front of his shirt. There was a two-and-a-half-inch sucking-air chest wound just below his right nipple.

The lead paramedic, a striking brunette with steel-blue eyes, a lush mane of wavy hair that she wore tied back, and the name Abisaab embroidered across her chest, examined him with agile, calm hands, then told her colleague, “He’s hypoxic, his oh-two sat is eighty-nine percent and it looks like the bullet punctured his lung. I think he has a pneumo. Get the mask.”

They quickly strapped a high-flow, non-rebreather oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, then ran a couple of IV lines into his forearm as my phone’s software finally finished its interminable reboot. I felt my spirits sagging as I dialed Villaverde to bring him up to speed.

I heard the other paramedic, a short, muscular Latino by the name of Luengo, say, “Systolic’s down to eighty,” sounding more alarmed than before, then Abisaab said, “I’ve got frothy blood coming out of the wound, we need to seal it now,” and within seconds they were at full throttle, taping a seal tightly across the wound while keeping one side open. When they were done, Luengo broke away and prepped the gurney.

“Guys, I need an update,” I told them.

Abisaab replied without taking her eyes off Flamehead. “His lung’s down and he’s very hypoxic and tachycardic. He can hardly breathe. We need to get him back to the ER to put in a chest tube.”

I asked, “What are we looking at here?”

She got my drift and turned to face me, and her eyebrows rose up with a doubtful look, but she didn’t say anything—standard procedure given that the victim was still conscious and quite possibly hearing everything going on around him.

I stepped back to give them some room and gave Villaverde her read. I heard him blow out a frustrated sigh, then he said, “There’s not much more you can do out there. Why don’t you head on back up to Broadway and look at some faces?”

Villaverde was right. It was pretty obvious that even if Flamehead made it, I wouldn’t be able to go near him for days. Which infuriated me to no end. For some reason that I still couldn’t figure out, these goons were tailing me, and I didn’t fancy sitting around looking over my shoulder while waiting for this bastard to get his vocal cords back. I needed to find out who these guys were.

I watched as Abisaab and Luengo lifted him onto the collapsible gurney, then strapped him in.

“I need to check his pockets,” I told them as I moved in.

Abisaab stayed on task. “We’ve got to go.”

“I’ll be quick,” I insisted, my fingers already rifling through his pockets.

“Sir—”

“Just give me a second!”

He had nothing on him—no wallet, no ID. Not that I expected to find anything, but sometimes you get lucky. He did have a cell phone, though, a cheap prepaid, which I pocketed.

I stepped back to let them take him away, and as they did, I noticed something on Luengo’s arm. The bottom of what seemed like an elaborate tattoo, just peeking out from under the edge of his sleeve.

An idea slapped me.

“Hang on, hang on.” I rushed right back up to them and pushed through to get to Flamehead.

“We have to move him now,” Abisaab objected.

“I know, just—” I moved the cut fabric of his T-shirt aside, one side, then the other. I couldn’t see anything. I turned to Abisaab and said, “Give me your scissors.”

“What?”

“Your scissors. Give them to me.”

“We have to move him, agent,” she insisted, her eyes drilling into me.

“So stop wasting his time and give me the goddamn scissors.”

Abisaab looked at me and must have read the utter seriousness on my face as she shook her head and rummaged in her medical kit before handing them to me grudgingly, like I’d just snapped the neck of her pet cat.

I went to work on the rest of Flamehead’s jacket, using the scissors to cut lengthways up the sleeve that was closest to me.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

I kept going. “You’re wasting his time, not mine, you hear me? His time.”

I pulled the sleeve apart carefully, exposing his forearm, then the rest of his arm all the way up to his shoulder. His skin was bare.

I scurried around to Flamehead’s other side and did the same to his left arm, working carefully around the IV lines that were plugged into it. There was nothing on the forearm, but as I peeled back the rest, I saw the tattoo on his shoulder.

I peeled the fabric away to get a clear view of it. It depicted an eagle holding two crossed M16s in its claws, positioned like crossbones under a skull. Curiously, the eagle was wearing sunglasses and a bandana, and its wings were drawn like they were made of flames.

I stared at the shades and the bandana.

Maybe. Just maybe this would be something.

I pulled out my phone and took two quick snaps of the tattoo, checked to see that they were clear, then glanced up at Abisaab.

“He’s all yours,” I said, giving her a contrite look. “I’m sorry, it’s important.” It didn’t seem to soften the brunt of her uncompromising glare much, but she managed to grace me with a small nod.

I was already dialing Villaverde as they wheeled him away.

“I got a tat off the guy’s shoulder,” I told him. “The guy could be a vet, but it could also be a club patch.”

“Send it over,” he said. “I’ll shoot it across to ATF.”

I was stoked. If this was a club patch, the guys at ATF were bound to have some record of them, and we’d soon know who they were.

I emailed it to him and sprinted back to my car, feeling a small tug of hope.