The Dirty Secrets Club (27 page)

Jo looked at him. He seemed so thirsty.

"Can you figure it out? Can you please tell me what she was up to?" He reached down to a briefcase on the floor. He took out a baseball and set it on the table. "Tell me where the hell she got that."

It was old, and in good shape, a Willie Mays autographed ball. He shook his head. His face soured.

"She didn't buy baseball memorabilia. She got ahold of this under the table, as part of some absurd game. So tell me, what was she doing?"

Jo held his gaze, seeing anger and hurt. "Are you a member of the club?"

"I wish. Maybe then I could have stopped her."

For a moment he looked young, and almost lost. She wondered whether he felt betrayed that Callie would do this, or rejected because she hadn't included him.

"Were you two still involved?" she said.

"Fucking, you mean."

Blank face, Beckett. Don't rise to the bait. "Is that how you thought of it?"

"It's how she described it. It's what she liked to do to me." His lips drew tight. "I think she's still doing it to me. She's doing it to all of us."

Jo had rarely seen such a heroic—and failed—effort to hide hunger, and hatred, and longing. Harding was a man on the verge.

"You wish you could have Callie right now, more than anything, don't you?" she said.

His lips went white. His eyes cooled to the temperature of sleet. He balled a fist and pressed it against his mouth.

Jo looked away, giving him a moment, and turned a page in Callie's notebook.

Access: iPod submenu. Password: Platinum.

J
o closed the front door and dropped her keys on the hallway table.

In the kitchen she opened the patio doors and let cool air and the scent of lilac flow in. She hooked Callie's iPod into her computer and brought its menu up on her screen.

She found the prosecutor's unofficial files deep in the Extras submenu, under "Stuff." It was password protected. She entered
Platinum.

She found herself on the game board.

She was staring at records of a dozen members of the Dirty Secrets Club. Their bona fides were here. CVs had been scanned in and uploaded. All their personal information was here, all their disgusting habits, all the details and proof of authorship.

"I'll be damned," she said.

File number one was a city councilman, confessing to bid-rigging on seismic refit construction projects. File number two was a celebrity legal pundit, previously a Las Vegas cop, bragging about taking payoffs from casinos. Call the photos supporting his resume
Swimming in a Fountain of Hookers.
File number three was a federal lobbyist, claiming he'd slept with twenty-three senators and congresswomen. And they'd
liked
it. His file was subtitled
Deuce Bigelow.

File number four was Scott Southern.

Jo took her laptop and the iPod outside and sat under the magnolia tree, to smell fresh air. She felt boggled by the free-for-all of smarm and chutzpah.

There was enough material on here to blackmail all these people.

Was that Callie's secret? The club's cell structure supposedly ensured that only a few people would know your secrets. Nobody was supposed to have access to everything. And yet Callie was collecting as much slime as she could.

Orderly, ambitious Callie had gathered files on members of the club as if she were her own private Stasi. What was she up to?

Was she planning to win the club's sub-rosa competitions by sabotaging the other members? Was she going to blackmail them? Or was there an elite level beyond Black Diamond, where the inner circle meted out rewards?

Did Geli Meyer find out about this supersecret stash? Was that why she ended up nearly dead?

Jo kept looking through the files. There were photos, even a video. She pushed Play. As if she were working a puzzle, she saw a piece turn in front of her and click into place.

"Shit," she said.

Xochi Zapata knocked again on the door of the hotel room. Still no answer. She double-checked the number she'd written down—1768. That was this room, high on the upper floors of the Marriott. The tipster who called the television station had given it to her.

In frustration, she went to the railing and looked down. Seventeen stories below, the hotel was bustling. The hotel was built around a huge atrium. Scenic glass-enclosed elevators ferried the swanky clientele up and down. On the ground floor, a hundred people were eating in the restaurant. Halloween pumpkins tastefully decorated the scene.

She got on the phone. Her cameraman was downstairs, searching for the tipster. The van was parked outside in a no-parking zone.

"Forget it, Bobby. Nobody's here. Some jackass jerked our chain."

"Crap. Then let's split. The van's gonna get dinged if we don't move it."

Down the hall, a door opened. Xochi turned. An older couple came out of their room, dressed for walking.

"I'm coming down," she said.

She felt stupid. Such a hot tip—counterfeit pharmaceuticals, imported from Asia and sold under faked labels to drugstore chains that didn't check their provenance—it was a dream story. Men and women in the prime of life poisoned by adulterated drugs, that was better than fake Calvin Klein jeans. That was a local Emmy, maybe even a ticket to a network job. She snapped her phone shut and followed the older couple to the elevator.

But this trip was all for nothing. "Stupid," she said beneath her breath.

She waited behind the walkers for the elevator to arrive. They were poring over a guidebook. The woman took the man's hand, squeezed it, and laughed lightly. They were sweet.

No, she decided, she hadn't been stupid to bite on the lure—to get the big stories you had to take chances. The elevator was coming down toward them. It glinted with sunlight as it descended. A maid pushed her cleaning cart past. Behind the maid another door clicked, a fire door. Xochi glanced around. A man was strolling along the hallway, hands in the pockets of his jacket.

She tried not to snort. A Members Only jacket—how long had those been out of style?

Jo paused the video. She stared at her computer screen.

A dare gone wrong, Xochi had suggested. Holy Christ,
gone wrong
didn't begin to cover it. She felt queasy. And this story had evidently leaked. Word had gotten back to Skunk, and obviously to somebody else—to the man behind him.

She called the television station. "Jo Beckett for Xochi Zapata. It's urgent."

Zapata was out. They couldn't put her through.

"Have her call me."

Jo hung up and redialed Amy Tang.

The

man in the Members Only jacket walked along the hallway toward the elevators. He was small and hunched, with gray-streaked hair. His eyes darted at Xochi and away.

With a
ding
, the elevator arrived. The older couple stepped in. Xochi followed. The doors started to close.

"Oh, my glasses," the woman said. "Henry. Hold that door."

The man grabbed the doors before they could close. They labored open again and the couple got out.

"Sorry, sweetheart," the woman said as they trundled back toward their room. "Don't know where I left my mind this morning."

Xochi watched them go. The man in the Members Only jacket was standing right outside.

"Hold that," he said.

She pushed the Open Door button. He just stood there, staring at her. She felt a frisson of excitement.

"Are you the one I'm looking for?" she said.

Amy Tang's cell phone clicked straight to voice mail. Jo hung up, redialed Tang's direct line at the police station, heard nothing but ringing.

She peered at her computer screen. She had paused the video, but even frozen and silent, the image seemed to keen.

Crossed the wrong guy,
Scott Southern had written. And now that guy was crossing off the Dirty Secrets Club in revenge. Xochi needed to know that he would be coming after her.

She ought to be aware of it already. Didn't she realize that she would be a target? Jo thought back to their meeting at the Aquatic Park. Xochi's conflicting impulses toward secrecy and exhibitionism.

Did she unconsciously want Jo to take it public? Was she deliberately exposing herself to danger?

Wait. Jo had Callie's files at her fingertips. She hung up and scrolled through them, picking her way down the menu until she found Xo-chi's name. Her bona fides.
Your News Live.
And yes—a cell phone number. She called.

Xochi pressed her thumb against the Open Door button. Mr. Members Only glanced along the hallway first in one direction and then the other.

"I'm the one who called. Let go of the button," he said.

She did. He stood there. Her phone rang, but she left it.

"Are you getting in?" she said.

He looked at her.

As he pulled his hands from his pockets she knew this was wrong. She knew by his face and the smell that suddenly filled the air. Fear came as an instant and all-encompassing shriek inside her mind.

It was too late to run. He was blocking her exit. The elevator doors were sliding closed. She backed up against the glass wall of the car. Close, fuck it,
close
now—

The man had a lighter in his right hand. He flicked it and touched the flame to the gasoline-soaked rag that was stuffed in the mouth of the bottle. It was filled with clear liquid and she knew it wasn't water.

The flame lit orange. "I'm the one. Sorry, sweetheart."

He flung the bottle through the doors as they closed.

25

S
tanding near the sculpture of dancing nymphs in the lobby of the Marriott, Bobby waited impatiently for Susan to come downstairs. He refused to call her Xochi. As long as she called him Bobby the Cameraman, he would continue to call her plain Susan Daly.

He didn't know whether he looked at the elevator because he was in a hurry to move the van out of the no parking zone, or whether his eye was drawn upward by the flash. But training and a photographer's instinct led him to raise his camera and start shooting. Reflexively he focused the lens. It zoomed on the elevator and his brain stuttered. He tried to process what he was seeing, but his mind rejected it.

He felt like he was melting, heard a noise pour out of his own throat. It was an incoherent moan. He kept filming. The glass-enclosed elevator descended toward him, and with every floor the horror inside grew brighter and more ferocious. It reached the ground. He stood petrified, staring through the lens at Susan. Her face was pressed against the glass, mouth open in agony. The flames filled the elevator. It was a holocaust, red and frenzied. The door opened and he heard screams. Flames erupted into the lobby. The next thing he remembered, he was on his knees, emptying his stomach onto the marble floor.

Jo walked along Post Street toward Union Square with a sense of deja vu. Police cars, a fire engine, an ambulance, and a television news van surrounded the Marriott. Her hands were tingling with dread. The wind funneled down the street. The hotel's doormen looked spooked and pale. She walked into the lobby and saw Officer Pablo Cruz ushering looky lous away from the elevator bank. The whole gang was here.

The hotel atrium soared all the way to the roof. She got halfway across the marble floor and saw the sooty windows of the scenic elevator. The glass had cracked. Jo smelled smoke, and the unique, ineradicable smell of burnt human flesh.

She stopped. Her throat clamped shut and she fought to keep from gagging.

Officer Cruz appeared at her elbow. "Doc?"

She stared at the elevator. "Zapata's dead?"

"Yes." His voice was gentle. "You okay?"

He was a solid blue presence. She looked at his Aztec face. "Hardly." Her field of vision seemed inordinately bright. "Are you?"

He nodded. His jaw was tight.

"Nobody's going to claim this was suicide, are they?" she said.

"No."

"Who murdered her?"

"White man. Five seven, early forties, greasy hair with gray streaks. Red jacket."

"His name's Skunk."

"Two witnesses saw him." Cruz indicated a man and a woman in their seventies, sitting on a sofa in front of a large fireplace. The woman dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. The man rested his hand on her knee, comforting her.

"Lieutenant Tang?" Jo said.

He pointed toward the front desk. "Talking to the victim's cameraman."

Tang looked like a bite-size storm cloud, in a black V-neck sweater and black slacks, black hair spiked in all directions. Her arms were crossed. Jo walked over. The cameraman was talking in halting bursts.

"... Anonymous tipster called the station with a story about counterfeit prescription drugs," he said. "It was a lead on a big story."

The man was scratching at his arms like he wanted to scrape off his top layer of skin. Maybe gouge out his eyes, too, to purge the memory of what he'd seen.