The Dirty Secrets Club (14 page)

How did the guy get his name? Who had told him? The club promised impenetrable secrecy, but somebody had talked. And now the whole lousy story was close to coming out.

He ignored the scornful ringtone, hanging on to his last moments of quiet. Once he opened the door, all the noise in the world would howl down on him.

He was twenty-nine. He was paid four million dollars a year to catch a football for the 'Niners. Another six on top of that in annual endorsements for Adidas, the Outback Steakhouse, and Mattel.

A week ago he was on top of everything—the NFL, his game, a skyscraper rooftop with Callie. Today he'd been supposed to meet with her, to find out if his spectacular dare had earned him entry to the top level of the club, where the big payoff was supposed to be. The breath went out of him, like he'd been punched. Callie, Christ. The thought of earning a black diamond didn't excite him anymore.

And now this.

He felt like he was sinking in tar. He had a beautiful woman at home, hurt and frightened. Cadillac Man had mailed her an anonymous note.
Your husband has a dirty secret.
He knew it was really a threat: Do what the man wanted, or the rest would come out. How had the guy found out?

The trees rustled. Beyond the Roman rotunda, the surface of the lagoon shivered under the breeze. The white Cadillac pulled in, disco thumping from its speakers, and parked next to him.

Cadillac Man, the slick of grease who called himself Skunk, was behind the wheel. He got out, walked over and stood in front of the Range Rover. He looked like a skunk, with his oily gray-streaked hair and his dumb suspicious eyes.

The tar felt thick and clinging. Scott got out. The wind was brisk, funneling through the Golden Gate headlands and across the bay.

A smile curdled on Skunk's little mouth. "I lost two hundred bucks on your team this weekend."

Scott felt perplexed. "Is this about money?"

"I wish. Let's walk," the man said.

"No. Tell me what you want."

Skunk looked around. "Want these people to hear it?"

The wind went further out of Scott's sails. He followed Skunk through the gate into the grounds.

Skunk looked five foot seven, maybe a hundred forty-five pounds. Scott was six three, two fifteen, all speed and muscle. He could snatch a football from the air amid a tangle of defenders, cradle it like a baby, grind and spin it into the end zone. He could have straight-armed this rodent, knocked him flat with a couple of broken ribs. But that would get him nothing. Skunk wasn't the only one involved. Put him down, somebody else was behind him.

And it didn't matter how well Scott could keep from fumbling a football, how strong and nimble he was, how determined to win. This was about his failures. All at once he felt incredibly small.

"I told you, I can't give you what you want," he said. "I don't have the information. I don't know who does."

"And I told you—find out."

Ahead, through the trees, the rotunda shone in the sun. Columns were topped with gods and angels. Somebody had once called this place a beaux arts hallucination. It was like the Roman Forum had been transported to the present day and set down in a woodsy park.

Skunk leaned toward him. "I said,
find out.
Like I told you on the phone, the prosecutor's dead. You want to be dead, too?"

Scott didn't respond.

"How did it work?" Skunk said. "Did she come to you, or was it the other way around? You got dirty with her, told her all those secrets you never wanted anybody to know?"

Despite the wind, the air felt suffocating. The noise of traffic was like the onrushing sense of destruction he had felt since this nightmare began.

"Here's the deal," Skunk said. "You get the names we need today, or your secret won't be a secret anymore."

"I can't. There has to be some alternative. Money? I can pay you whatever you want."

"If I wanted money I'd tell you to drop a pass or two against the Rams next weekend."

Scott fought the constricting feeling around his chest. "I can do that."

Skunk slid his little hands into the pockets of his Members Only jacket. "I bet you would. You'd throw the Super Bowl to keep this stuff secret."

He would. And he felt the tar seeping higher, the weight pressing on his chest. The sky no longer looked blue to him, but flat gray. Jesus.

Skunk would tell. He would tell the world and he would enjoy it. He would smile at the sight of Scott Southern being torn to shreds in the media.

"It was consensual," Scott said. "It wasn't a crime."

Skunk slowly turned his head. For a moment Scott thought the look on the man's face was disbelief.

"Honestly. Nobody broke the law," Scott said.

Skunk laughed. "Incredible."

With dismay, Scott understood. Skunk knew he was telling the truth. But Skunk couldn't believe Scott still thought he could talk him into keeping quiet. He couldn't believe Scott thought remorse and anguish could buy him anything but destruction.

"How old was the girl?" Skunk said.

"She wasn't a minor. She was nineteen, and she never objected." Not in so many words.

And he had been a senior at USC. How could they blame him? He'd just been a kid in college.

But he knew how, because he blamed himself. For eight years he'd suppressed it, or confessed it in secret, and tried to expunge the guilt. Last week he'd taken a whipping with a riding crop to obliterate it. And now Skunk was slapping him with it in his own way. Laughing, the bastard.

It had been crowded at the party. The frat house was always crowded at parties. A face appeared in his mind, incredibly vivid, as it did every night when he slept. Melody, with strawberry-blond hair, with a take-me smile and a tipsy giggle. Her parents were friends with his. She was a sophomore.

"You thought quick that day, I'll give you that," Skunk said. "What I don't get is, how come you ever told? Anybody?"

In a dark corner of the room Melody had wound her hair around her fingers, listening to him intently. The Foos were on the stereo. She was sucking on an ice cube. Her lips were cherry-red.

He kissed her, sucked the ice cube from her mouth, and said, "Let's get an ice bucket and go upstairs."

Yeah, he was drunk, and he'd smoked a joint. Just to even out, after the coke and the tequila. Just to get his mind smooth for a while. It was a nerve-racking time, the NFL draft only a few days away. He was going to go in the first round, his agent said. His coach and parents and teammates all said. And his future was going to be golden, all sunshine, like Melody's hot little smile.

The breath left his lungs as though he'd been tackled from behind.

These days he didn't do dope, didn't do coke, didn't even drink. He was so clean and so sober that you could scrub him against a brick wall and scrape off graffiti. He feared that if he took a drink or a toke, he'd let down his guard and spill everything. He almost had spilled things by getting the
bad
tattoo—but he could chalk that up to jock style. Still, maybe if he was drunk he wouldn't see Melody in the bed, looking at him as he put on his jeans to answer the knock on the door. As he said, "The other guys like ice, too."

Now he put a hand across his eyes. "Oh, God."

Skunk smirked. "You never had to tell a soul. That's the thing that blows my mind. You were home free. But you told Callie Harding, didn't you?"

That night, Melody had looked at him, confused, when he let the other guys in.

He said, "It's okay, right?" He smiled. She smiled, maybe not so brightly.

"Scott..." She looked at his frat brothers. "If I—will you be back?"

"Of course I'll be back." They weren't going to hurt her. It was a
party.
He went and sat under a tree and smoked another joint and chilled out in the quiet night.

They didn't gangbang her. She just. . . let them take turns. She was kind of like a doll. Everybody got to play.

He was still sitting under the tree when Brady found him. "She's gone nuts," he said. Scott found her in the bathroom, huddled by the toilet, shaking and mumbling to herself.

Brady wanted to call 911.

"No," Scott said. "I'll call my agent."

It seemed like the smart thing to do, and his agent assured him it was the right thing, too. He got her to a private clinic. Paid all her medical bills, paid her to keep quiet.

And everything had seemed okay. But even then, Scott knew it was his fault. And if he got blamed for it, his season, his career in football, would be over.

Now his chest wouldn't expand. He couldn't breathe.

Melody dropped out of school. The next year, her parents admitted her to a private psychiatric clinic. Scott's own parents told him about her folks' anguish. His agent told him to stop feeling guilty. Said, she's unstable, always has been, not your fault. But the shrinks said she had post-traumatic stress. Her mind essentially shattered. And then . . .

Skunk put a hand on his arm. "How does the club work? Who do you contact?"

Scott shook his head. If he told this greasy little man, Skunk would just go on to torment somebody else, the next person in line.

But the truth was, even if Scott gave Skunk a name, even if he gave him the entire phone book, Skunk wouldn't go away. He'd keep coming back for another bite, because that's how blackmail worked.

Not for the first time, Scott regretted the day he ever met David Yoshida. Cardiac surgeon, 49ers fan, friend of the team's owner, got to meet the players at a postgame party.

Now Yoshida was dead. Callie was dead. Because somebody had talked.

The club was supposed to be secret, absolutely confidential. And he knew, deep down, that it never had been. And that's why he had joined it—for the risk. Didn't they all want the risk?

He stared through the Roman rotunda at the hills of the city. What the hell had he been thinking, telling a lawyer? A
prosecutor
, for the love of God? Blond, cool, judgmental Callie. The punisher. He had loved confessing to her. What kind of a game had he been playing?

He laughed.

"What's so funny?" Skunk said.

Games. All his life he'd been playing games. And now he was about to lose. His vision swam.

Skunk grabbed his arm. "Hey."

He didn't pull away. Laughter heaved from the bottom of his chest.

He had gone deep, and fumbled. Melody, oh, Melody—

Skunk shook his head. "You're fucking nuts, man. You get the names today, or everything comes out. All of it." He shoved Scott away. "You'd better pray."

Scott wiped his eyes. "Didn't you hear what I said? I can't help you."

"You have a pool at your house?" Skunk said.

Scott looked at him. A cold hand gripped his stomach. "No."

"Course, pools aren't the only places accidents happen. It's a nightmare for parents, keeping their kids safe from everything that could take 'em away forever." Skunk snapped his fingers. "Like that."

Sweat broke out on his forehead. "Are you threatening—"

"That poor Dr. Yoshida, for instance. His son died of a drug overdose. Tragic."

"You son of a bitch."

"I saw a picture in the
Chronicle
last season, you holding your little boy after the conference final. Can he swim?"

Scott felt a ripping sensation in his chest. All the strength left his feet, his legs, his arms.

An insane thought seized him.

The lagoon was right there. Who would see? Grab Skunk. Haul him to the water by the back of his saggy-ass jeans, dunk his head, and drown him.

The little smile vanished from Skunk's face. "Don't even think about it. I'm just mentioning possibilities. But if something happened to me, those possibilities would get a lot less theoretical. You know?"

Scott could barely see. "Touch my family, you'll die."

"Somebody's gonna die. The prosecutor wasn't the last, bet your bottom dollar." His small eyes were recessed and glossy. "But it ain't gonna be me. You think hard whether you want it to be somebody you love."

The wind stung Scott's eyes. He said nothing.

Skunk turned to go. "The names. By four o'clock."

J
o and Amy Tang walked across the plaza, heading for the entrance

to the U.S. Attorney's Office. It was in an architecturally dead white concrete building, recently upgraded with steel bollards to block car bombs. Tang put away her phone.

"Leo Fonsecca's giving us fifteen minutes," Tang said. "Be ready to talk fast."

Jo followed her inside. "The city seems to be holding together after the quake."

"We're only hearing about minor damage. Unreinforced masonry falling off a few old buildings. Car alarms going off. No injuries reported."

Jo looked around the echoing lobby. The building seemed fine. Tang pushed the call button for the elevator.

Jo hooked a thumb at the stairs. "We can walk up."