The Dirty Secrets Club

by Meg Gardiner

He mouthed words at Jo again, and kept flicking the lighter. She watched his lips. She wasn't a lip-reader, but there was no mistaking what he was trying to tell her.

  Unequivocal death.

  "You want me to black-tag you?" she said.

  He flicked the lighter.

  She reached down and took it from him. She flicked it, saw the flame brighten into a clean hot spire of light. She saw it reflected yellow in Pray's eyes.

  She held it over his chest. "Pray, you son of a bitch."

  She clicked it off and put it in her pocket. "Pray for the people who are dead because of you." She turned to go. "And I don't have the names. I never did. The only person who might have known is dead. Skunk burned her to death. You can think about that on death row."

  The firefighters gaped at her. Jo walked past them.

  "Leave him," she said. "He's a yellow tag. The little girl needs us."

  Down the hall, Gabe was bent over Sophie. Jo walked over to him, knelt at his side, and put a hand on his arm. His muscles were rigid. She saw him blink away tears and grit his teeth.

  "Gabe, let's get her out of here."

  He scooped Sophie into his arms and charged up the stairs, with Jo right behind him. He hit the ground floor and kept going, out the door and through the gate in the chain-link fence where the lock had been cut open. She walked out into a night of blue spinning lights and biting air. She called to the firefighters.

  "Do you have medical equipment in your truck?"

  "Yeah."

  Jo put her hand on Gabe's arm and guided him to the curb. "Set her on the grass."

  He lay Sophie down and knelt beside her, but his hands were shaking. He pressed his fingers against her wounds and looked at the night with empty desperation.

  Jo leaned close. "Stand down, Sergeant."

  The firefighters hustled over with a first-aid kit. They brought blankets and an IV. Jo pulled Gabe's hand off Sophie's wound and set it tight against Sophie's good hand.

  "Hold on to her," she said.

  He held on while Jo and the firefighters went to work. He held on until Jo told him, "She's a red tag, Gabe. She needs treatment, but she's going to make it."

  He looked at her, and bent over to kiss his daughter's face, over and over.

  Jo stood up. She breathed, looked at the stars, listened to the night and the broken city struggling to awaken.

  Jo stood at the cash register in the hospital cafeteria. The coffee cup

  in her hand was hot. She was thirsty. The power was back on, and the cashier wanted money.

  "I don't have money," she said.

  The cashier chewed gum, staring her up and down.

  "Not because I'm a zombie." She reached into her pocket. "I need this coffee. I'll give you my cell phone if you let me take this coffee."

  "A dollar fifty," the cashier said.

  A hand reached around her and put down a dollar bill and two quarters. "That coffee's strong, but not strong enough to reanimate you."

  Amy Tang gave Jo a tart look that Jo guessed was her version of a grin. Behind it, Tang's eyes looked sleepless. And bright.

  "How's your city, Amy?"

  "Needs patching, but it's alive."

  "Rough night?"

  "Not nearly as rough as it could have been. Things held." They walked out of the cafeteria. "How about you?"

  "Had rougher. But not many."

  Tang took a cigarette from a pack and tapped it into her hand. "Leo Fonsecca's dead. They found his body at the bottom of a stairwell in the courthouse. Garroted."

  "Oh no." The news seemed to empty her out. "I was afraid of something like that. Pray took Fonsecca's phone and used it to send me a text message. He lured me out into the streets."

  "Yeah. He was in Skunk's Cadillac by then. He waited for you to leave and go to the police station."

  They walked along the first-floor corridor toward the doors. The hospital had a buzz, the feeling of teeth set on edge, nerves revving in the red zone on the tachometer. But everybody was on the downslope of an adrenaline jag. Things had held. November first was a sunny day.

  "I don't understand why they didn't—" Tang stopped herself. "Sorry."

  "Why they didn't murder me in my house? I think they wanted to make it look like an accident. Give themselves more time to get away before suspicion fell on them."

  Jo pulled the lid off her coffee and took a long swallow. It was horrible. It had been brewing since the Nixon administration. She drank the whole thing greedily.

  They reached the lobby. The sun shone through the doors.

  "My forty-eight hours were up last night," Jo said.

  "I didn't actually expect you to collar the perp, but thanks. Though police apprehension techniques don't generally involve dropping a refrigerator on suspects. Paperwork's a bitch."

  The automatic doors opened. They strolled outside. The sun was gold between the skyscrapers of the Financial District.

  Jo took a deep breath. The city smelled like it always did. Dust, exhaust, salt water, energy. Tang lit her cigarette and inhaled.

  "Before the quake hit I was going through Callie's files. I found Maki's secret," she said. "A few years ago, he had a stable of runway models. One of them developed bulimia and a serious meth habit. She died." She exhaled. "Her brother was William Willets. He met Maki at her funeral and they became lovers. Willets always credited Maki with helping him through his grief."

  "But?" Jo said.

  "Maki admitted to the Dirty Secrets Club that he was the one who introduced the girl to meth. To keep her weight down. He drove her to her death."

  "And he rode that secret to a membership in the club? Callous."

  "That information must have got leaked, and Skunk revealed it to Willets."

  "I think he did. That's why the murder-suicide on the boat. They must have fought about it, to the death."

  "Yeah."

  Jo tossed her empty coffee cup in a trash can. "That's not all. I think Willets was a member of the club, too. He was the one who garroted Pray."

  "No way."

  "Take another look at the video of the attack. The guy who looked like the cokehead Gatsby character. At one point Xochi says, 'Will you.' I thought it was a request, but now I think she was calling his name."

  "Jesus."

  "Last night, Pray was ranting about Xochi and the 'weedy faggot' who attacked him. I think he learned who it was. He could have seen Willets's face in a hundred paparazzi photos with Maki."

  "I'll look at the video."

  "Do you think Skunk went out with them on the boat the night they died? Or met them via a motorboat?"

  "And poured gasoline on the deck saying 'Pray'? That's my guess. The burning boat became a flare, a signal to others in the club what would happen to them if they didn't turn over the names of the people who attacked his boss."

  Morning traffic was light. Life was rolling forward, as it always did.

  "Some club," Jo said. "All fun and games until somebody loses an eye."

  "That line going in your report?"

  "I haven't submitted my psychological autopsy report. I haven't determined the manner of Callie Harding's death yet."

  Tang was squinting like she had sand in her eyes. Her black T-shirt was tired. Her black boots were dirty. She would have looked like she'd lost Fight Night at the biker bar, if she hadn't had the face of a cuddly toy.

  She took out her PDA. "We got the CCTV footage from the camera in the stairwell at the Stockton Street Tunnel."

  She found the video. It was only fifty-five seconds of footage, but it was enough. Jo watched with increasing surprise and understanding.

  She gave back the PDA. "Can you make me a copy?"

  "Of course. There's more, too. Forensic techs recovered a cell phone from Stockton Street. And a weapon from Skunk's Cadillac."

  "Fingerprints?"

  "And phone records. What do you think?"

  "That we need to go upstairs and talk to Angelika Meyer."

  "
My thoughts exactly."

  Halfway to the elevator, they saw Gabe coming down the hall. Sophie was walking at his side. She was wearing a pair of scrubs sized XXX-small, rolled up so she didn't step on them. Her bandaged arm was in a sling. She looked pale even though her zombie makeup had been washed off, Jo guessed by a brusque and relieved father. She was holding a brand-new Bratz.

  Jo smiled. "Don't scare your dad with that."

  "Dad got it for me."

  "She can have anything she wants," Gabe said. "For the next week. Don't start pricing cars." He looked at Jo. "And you should get yourself some coffee. Your throat's hoarse."

  Sophie said, "That's because she sang for so long."

  "What?"

  "In the crawl space. Jo sang the whole time. TV songs. It kept us awake."

  Gabe gazed at Jo. His eyes were dark, the storms veiled. "It's what the best people do when they need to keep your spirits up. It's a classic."

  He was trying to maintain his composure. Jo put her hand around his wrist. He pulled her close, laid his cheek against hers, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again.

  Jo whispered in his ear. "Soon."

  He nodded, put his hand to the corners of his eyes, and walked with Sophie toward the morning.

  Geli Meyer was sitting up in bed drinking orange juice. She put down her glass when Jo and Amy came through the door.

  Tang approached the bed. "Good to see you looking well, Geli. Listen closely. Your father is in custody, and he's never getting out of prison again. He's going to be charged with capital murder for killing Leo Fonsecca."

  Meyer went as still as a stone.

  "We found your cell phone in a storm drain on Stockton Street near the crash site. It was ejected from Callie's BMW in the wreck. And we got your call records."

  Meyer reached for the phone. "I want a lawyer."

  "Go ahead. Call the entire law faculty at Hastings. We also found a handgun in Levon Skutlek's Cadillac. A .32 caliber HK semiautomatic pistol. It's registered to the late David Yoshida Jr. It has your fingerprints on it."

  Meyer had one hand on the phone, but she didn't dial.

  "Skunk got it from Callie's BMW after the wreck, didn't he? He took it out of your hand."

  Meyer held on to the phone.

  "Here's the lowdown," Tang said. "You can go to prison for conspiracy, for murder, for felony murder for your part in furthering Perry Ames's escape plan and vendetta. Or you can talk." She smiled. "You can talk to Dr. Beckett. She'd love to shrink your head."

  Meyer let go of the phone.

  "You don't understand. You couldn't." Meyer was sunk in the bed, arms crossed. The yellow sunlight coming through the window striped her face with bars.

  Jo sat quietly by the bedside. "He's your father. I understand your loyalty to him. I don't understand why you got involved with Dr. Yoshida's son."

  "The Dirty Secrets Club hurt us. They broke up our family. After they attacked Perry, one of them called the police. Perry was arrested for illegal gambling and that fraud and extortion garbage. As if the DSC didn't extort more money from all its members than he ever did."

  Jo glanced at Tang. Tang gave the look back.

  "What about David Yoshida Jr.?" Jo said.

  "He didn't do anything he didn't want to. He was a rich boy with an addictive personality. He took the fentanyl willingly."

  "The first dose? Or the next two?"

  Meyer looked at her with fierce eyes. "They took my dad away from me. From me. They ruined Perry's life. Why should I feel sorry for Dr. Yoshida? His son was a skel." She wiped her nose. "NHL No Humans Involved. David Jr. was a drug addict who didn't care if he lived or died. He'd been hurting his father for years. He wanted to hurt his father. I just helped him get his wish."

  Tang leaned against the door, saying nothing.

  Jo wove her fingers together. "The night of the wreck."

  "What about it?"

  "Callie offered you a ride home?"

  "I asked her for a ride. It was almost one a.m." She seemed to relax. Her eyes were intense.

  She wanted to confess. She wanted to enjoy telling the secret. She was lording it over Jo and Amy, as if dispensing power and favors.

  "Callie never suspected. She was such a hardcase, so clever, and she never once suspected. Not even up to the second I showed her the HK."

  "So you pulled the gun and demanded information about Pray's attackers."

  "Their names. I told Callie to drive and not to stop. I took her phone. Held the gun on her. She didn't want to talk. But I knew I could make her."

  "While she was driving, you made some phone calls yourself," Jo said.

  Meyer didn't disagree. They had her phone records. Jo didn't reveal what she knew must have happened: While Meyer was dialing, Callie was able to write Pray on her wrist, and later get her lipstick and write Dirty on her thigh.

  "Callie wasn't running from anybody that night, was she? Nobody was chasing her," Jo said.

  "I got her to run," Meyer said.

  Jo wanted her to say it. She knew what the video footage from the bridge showed, but wanted Meyer to explain it.

  "What did you tell her in the car?"

  "I told her about Perry. I made her understand. About the extortion, the robbery, how the Dirty Secrets Club destroyed his life. I told her about the injustice." Her eyes were agitated. "If he has to stay in prison he'll kill himself. That's what I told her, how bad it is for him. He begged me to help him, because nobody else will. And without justice, he'll kill himself."

  "Is that what he told you? If you didn't help him, he'd kill himself?"

  "Yes. Jesus Christ. Aren't you listening? That's how bad it is."

  Jo leaned on her knees. Pray had manipulated her into helping him by threatening suicide. The man was a sociopath.

  "Callie wasn't running from something when she passed Officer Cruz's patrol car, was she? She was running toward the Stockton Street Bridge. Because time was running out," Jo said.

  Meyer's face turned sly.

  "We saw the CCTV footage from the bridge," Jo said. "We know Skunk was there."

  That's what the stairwell cameras showed. Skunk on the bridge, pacing back and forth immediately before the crash.

  "Callie went nuts," Meyer said.

  "Why?"

  "Because she thought she needed to get there in a hurry."

  "Why was that?"

  "Because she was too stubborn to tell me what I needed to know."

  "What did you threaten her with?" Jo said.

  "Nothing real. I told her Skunk was there with some other members of the club, and was going to do something."

  "What kind of something?"

  "Get one of the DSC members to kill somebody."

  "Who?"

  "Toss Scott Southern's kid off the bridge."

  Jo's heart shrank, but she kept her voice even. "But you made all that up."

  "It was easy. She panicked. She totally freaked. I found her notes on the Dirty Secrets Club. I found out about Xochi Zapata and Scott Southern. And I knew Callie was all twisted up over this dare thing. She was obsessed. She liked to punish people." Meyer shook her head and laughed. "She believed every bit of it."

  "And Callie couldn't disprove anything you were saying, because you'd isolated her in the car and taken her phone."

  Tang said, "So Callie floored it, hell for leather, thinking that this grand plan of hers, the Dirty Secrets Club, which was supposed to bring people to justice, was instead going to get innocent people killed?"

  Meyer nodded.

  "And it backfired," Jo said. "You got nothing."

  "Not nothing—I got Southern's and Zapata's names, and gave them to Skunk."

  "But you wanted the name of the person who ordered Xochi and William Willets to attack your father, and you didn't get that." The passion in Meyer's eyes began to dim. "Instead Callie drove straight down Stockton Street. Do you remember the rest?"

  "She begged the cop for help. But it was too l
ate. I was on the phone with Skunk. I told her he was gonna have the club people carry out the dare and throw the kid over."

  "And she floored it."

  "Like a maniac."

  "Stop it. That's what you said to me, Geli. You wanted me to stop the Dirty Secrets Club. But you're the one who's been stopped." Jo leaned back. "And now three innocent people are dead. You're going to go to prison. And you'll never see your father again."

  Meyer looked at her for a moment. When she started screaming, Jo didn't think she'd ever stop.

  The sun stayed out for the rest of the week. When Jo walked into Java Jones Friday morning, the city was running at 90 percent. There were still pockets without electricity and gas, dozens of buildings condemned or uninhabitable. But things were going ahead. The 49ers were playing a home game on Sunday. They'd already passed out black armbands in memory of Scott Southern.

  Tina looked particularly puckish behind the counter. When Jo walked in she smiled. "Americano for my lovely sister." The music was lush and sweeping, a piano concerto to break the heart, apparently, because halfway through pouring Jo's coffee Tina had to stop, listen, and regain her composure.

  She put Jo's mug on the counter. "Rachmaninoff. You should be crying, too."

  "Not today, sis."

  Jo carried her coffee to the table by the window where Amy Tang was having her breakfast. She sat down and handed her a copy of her preliminary report.

  "You can check for corrections, but the gist is there," she said.

  "Bottom line?"

  "The crash of Callie Harding's BMW was deliberate."

  Tang leaned back. "What convinces you?"

  "That during the race across town in the BMW, Callie wrote Pray on her wrist and Dirty on her thigh, as clues."

  "Clues about?" Tang said.

  "About what was behind her death."

  "She knew she was going to die? She killed herself?"

  "She became willing to sacrifice herself," Jo said. "Callie wrote clues on her own body, to let the police know what was going on. That meant she didn't think she would be alive to tell the police. She had to get the information to them somehow. She may have hoped to live, but she was willing to die to stop what she thought was a murder at the bridge."

  And maybe she thought it was the only way she could redeem herself for the mess she had unleashed.