The Dirty Secrets Club (38 page)

"On the roof. To see what's going on."

She pressed her hand against the recessed frame of the window, stood up on the sill, balanced carefully, and reached up for the edge of the roof.

She counted to three, wedged her foot against the top sash of the window, and boosted herself up. She swung a leg over the eaves and pushed her way onto the roof.

The view up here was the best on the street. She could see over rooftops and all the way from the Golden Gate to the Bay Bridge.

"Oh, man."

The entire bay was dark.

Pray pushed open the doors of the courthouse and headed down the steps into the darkened plaza. The Civic Center was as lightless as postwar Berlin. The city looked eerie, with dark blue dusk suspended in the western sky, all the streetlights off, trams stopped randomly in intersections, powerless without the electric grid. Only the streets were lit—by car headlights. Traffic was snarled. All the traffic lights were out, and drivers were inching their way into a jumble. Pedestrians were ghostly black silhouettes.

He walked away from the courthouse. Half a block up the street he turned the corner, headed up Van Ness, and knew he was away. He shot a look back. The city streets were full of people, all of them worried about themselves. Nobody was charging after him.

He picked up his pace, striding confidently along the avenue. He inhaled the cold air. Gasoline exhaust, city grime, dog shit. What a wondrous perfume. He lifted his face. It was the smell of freedom.

This was an unbelievable opportunity. O Fortuna, smiling on him. He didn't know how long the blackout would last, but every minute the city remained cut off was a minute he could use to get what he needed—and to get away.

He took his voice synthesizer and slid the phone SIM card from inside it. Then he took the cell phone from his pocket. Finally, he had a phone he could keep, not one he had to borrow and return to lawyers or kitchen staff at the prison. He had taken the phone off Gray Man before he dumped his body at the bottom of the stairwell. He loved modern technology.

He looked around. It had been more than a year since he'd walked free along a city street. He felt elated, euphoric, and ready to eat the world.

He had to hurry. The lights would be coming back on again. Unless the state was a colossal disaster zone, unless the governor called out the National Guard to impose a curfew. Unless thousands were dead—in which case he could steal an ID. But this didn't look like a mass-graves disaster. He didn't think he'd get quite that lucky. But he knew there was going to be so much confusion tonight he could become almost anybody, do almost anything.

He had to contact Skunk.

Skunk had the names. It was beyond vital that he get them. First, because he was going to torture these people. Of course he was. Justice
would
be served. Second, he needed the names because his attackers knew what had become of his money.

It had been a bad idea from the beginning, doing business with them. He should have known he couldn't trust the Dirty Secrets Club. The rich and infamous, selfish bastards interested only in playing games. Setting up an executive poker game. Sure. Ha-ha. They sent dishonorable people to the meet. He could tell it in their jumpiness and paranoia, especially the porn chick in the rubber mask.

He should have seen the robbery coming.

That's what he told himself now, but it was too late to go back.

Too late to tell himself he should have gotten their names back then, so he wouldn't have to track them down now.

The goons who attacked him, of course, weren't the ones running the show. Those people hid behind the veneer of fancy businesses and shell corporations. They were the type who passed for normal society.

They were the type who invested money, even stolen gambling money—in businesses, start-ups, the stock market, real estate. They weren't the type who would keep briefcases full of cash lying around. They'd put it into bonds or money market funds or a cash account. But they'd be concerned about liquidity. That meant they would have instant access to the money he was owed.

And they would definitely have the funds, and the ability to make an overnight electronic funds transfer to an account Perry designated. Especially if he took their families hostage and started injecting them with fentanyl, or holding a kid's face underwater in a bathtub.

They had no idea how much time he had spent thinking of ways to even the scales. Turnabout? Not even close. They had taken his money, his voice, his freedom. He would make them pay everything.

Then he would fly away.

He powered up Gray Man's phone. He knew there was almost no chance of a voice call getting through in the wake of a big earthquake, but a text might make it. He squeezed the phone in his hand and waited.

He kept walking along a street full of honking cars and rushing people. Only those going by foot were getting anywhere. Geli would never make it out under these conditions. A shame, in a way. She was so devoted, she would do anything for him. Luckily, that meant she knew what to do if she was compromised. She'd take care of herself, to protect him.

The phone vibrated.

He looked, and smiled. It was a name and an address.

Very, very good.

So that's who she was.
Johanna Beckett, M.D.

He strode up the dark and disorganized street, sending a text message as he went.
Johanna.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.

The entire Bay Area was blacked out.

Jo's chest tightened. The Bay Bridge was invisible. Coit Tower, usually brightly lit at the top of Telegraph Hill, was a dark shadow, like a burned-out flare. Headlights marked San Francisco's streets, thin streams of light that ran like ribbons on the roads down the hill, but there were no house lights, no streetlights. The city looked as if a shroud had fallen over it.

And beyond, all around the vast shores of the bay, everything was simply black. Lights usually ringed the bay like a bowl of gold, but the enormous harbor was an empty sink of darkness. Dark water, dark land, dark sky, all blending into one. The Berkeley hills had winked out. A few pockets of light were giving off a glow far to the south, toward San Jose, but they were like a faint promise, a pocket of the twenty-first century amid a land abruptly plunged back to pre-Columbian days. A hundred miles of shoreline, how many megawatts, now black. This was the closest she'd ever get to seeing this land the way Francis Drake did when he sailed into the bay in 1579.

She heard horns carried on the night air. She didn't hear the ringing of the cable car tracks, a constant companion, she realized, until it was gone. It was as if the city had snapped, sinews torn.

More sirens. Several miles to the west, in a dense low-rise neighborhood of what were inevitably wooden Victorian apartment buildings, she saw the roiling orange light of a fire.

They were down but not out. The area had taken a solid blow, but at least for now they were holding together. But in medical terms, it was going to be like they'd suffered a stroke. Synapses were disrupted. Wires literally down. Communication, movement, all that would be fouled up. She didn't know for how long, but the fact that every place from Sausalito to Oakland was also dark told her the lights weren't going to flip back on in the next few minutes.

From her bedroom, Sophie called, "Jo? What do you see?"

"The lights are out, but California's still standing. We're going to be okay."

She should have felt reassured. Instead she felt uneasy.

She climbed back down and shut the window. Sophie looked at her with a strange admiration.

"How'd you do that?" she said.

"Lots of practice, from rock climbing."

"Can I go up, too?"

"Not to the roof. Maybe to my climbing gym."

"Really?"

Jo took her hand and headed back downstairs. "Really. But I should tell you, some people think I'm crazy."

"All zombies are crazy, right?"

Jo smiled. "Kid, I think we're going to get along great."

They headed into the kitchen. The radio was buzzing. "We have reports of several buildings down in the marina. No confirmation, but listeners are calling in a twelve-car pileup on the approach to the Bay Bridge." Papers rustled. "And we've just received a press release from the SFPD, urging people to stay off the streets. Please don't travel unless absolutely necessary, folks. The city needs to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles."

She felt a draft. She turned the flashlight around the room. The French doors to the patio were open. She pulled them shut. They wouldn't close.

The door frame was—damn, it had shifted in the quake. She pulled harder. The wood stuck. She braced one foot against the wall and hauled. The wood squeaked, and she managed to close the doors enough to stop the draft.

But not enough to lock them. The frame was only a couple of millimeters off, but the lock wouldn't line up.

She was going to need to take them off the hinges and plane them to fit. And she didn't have a carpenter's plane.

"Come on. We're going to my neighbor's," she said.

Skunk sat behind the wheel of the Cadillac at a strip mall on Van Ness. The lights were out, the stores were dark, and people were still going in and out—through the doors. He couldn't believe it. Nobody had smashed any windows. Nothing had been set fire to. Nobody was running out of Circuit City with television sets. What was wrong with these people?

A fire engine roared past on the street, lights and siren screaming.

He looked at the video store. His fingertips itched. He could use the season three
Sopranos
box set. And some microwave popcorn.

His phone beeped.

He looked at the message. Forgot everything else.

Your gal, Johanna Beckett, M.D.

"Got you, Spider."

It was about time. He scrolled through the rest of the message.

No
firearms. Must appear accidental.

Huh? Perry, what the fuck?

Need time to get what they owe me. And to get away. City is crazy—"accident" means cops won't look for us.

Skunk read the rest, dropped the phone on the bench seat, and started the engine. The Caddy purred heavily to life. He pulled out onto the dark lunatic street. Another fire engine went roaring by. His mind was roaring, too. Accident, fine, he could handle that. He screeched up the road, turning over the final phrase from the message in his mouth. It was a new one, high-powered even for Perry. Equivocal death.

Didn't matter. It meant the Spider was going down.

When Jo stepped outside the air felt colder. In the beam from her flashlight she could see Sophie's breath frosting the air.

"We'll get my neighbor and his buddies to come over and help me muscle the doors into shape," she said.

Or maybe Ferd and his World of Warcraft crew could bring a lock and chain to secure it. Or they could guard her house. She took Sophie's small hand and led her next door.

At Ferd's, jack-o'-lanterns provided ruddy light. The front door was open. Jo knocked, called hello, and went in. She heard conversation in the back of the house.

"This is spooky," Sophie said.

Jo had never been inside Ferd's home. The front hall was hardwood, varnished, and creaky. Lit only by low-burning candles, the light faded and the ceiling was lost in darkness. It did feel spooky. She held tight to the little girl's hand. Sophie's palm, so chilly when they were trick-or-treating, now felt clammy.

"Ferd?" she called.

At the end of the hall he appeared in the doorway. "Jo!"

He clapped his hands and trundled down the hall toward them. "You're here. This is wonderful."

He was wearing improvised medieval gear and carrying a plastic sword. He seemed to have antlers.

He touched his chest. "I'm a Blood Elf. And look at you two. You came as the Undead. Thank you."

"This is Sophie Quintana," Jo said.

"I'm a Bratz zombie."

Jo handed him her bowl of artichoke dip. He pulled the cling wrap off the top and scooped a glop onto his index finger.

He made a
yum
sound. "This way. Oh, thank God. Hardly anybody's able to make it. The city's had a system crash. They're going to have to do a hard restart to get it back up and running."

In the kitchen they found three people standing around a cauldron of popcorn. Candles and a hurricane lantern provided the light. The costumes gradually came into focus. There were fewer Klingons than she had expected, and more women. In fact, now that she was here, there were twice as many women as she had expected.

Mr. Peebles was perched on the kitchen table. He was wearing a harness, like a human toddler. Or a small prisoner. He was also wearing a tiny Blood Elf outfit. Even from across the room he still smelled like a bottle of Forest Fresh shampoo.

He turned his head sharply to stare at Jo. His eyes were shiny black buttons. Disturbingly, she couldn't tell whether he was thinking
Run. It's the duct tape lady
, or
Drain cleaner in her coffee.