The Dirty Secrets Club (25 page)

"Think about your seventy-five K. That should incentivize you. It's not just a target list, it's your next vintage Cadillac."

"Right. It just gives me indigestion, that's all."

"This woman, the Spider—she always shows up?" Perry said. "Then give her a reason to do that."

J
o woke with an old ache. Sun and the foghorn were tangling again, and she opened her eyes to see the white ceiling, the red comforter ruched around her, orange pillows heaped by her knees, the bed warm and piled with everything except her man.
Shit.
The clock said six forty a.m. October 31st. Halloween. She rolled over, and felt a full-on tactile memory of Gabe Quintana holding her against him.

Flustered, she threw off the covers and got up. This wasn't the right time. Thinking about Quintana this morning could only lead to grief. She jumped in the shower. When she got out she pulled on a pair of jeans and a white long-sleeved T-shirt. Opened the shutters and saw dawn creeping up the walls of the houses on the street. The day was gold and blue. Next door at Ferd's, the door to the balcony was open and the curtains were fluttering in and out. She turned away, but motion on the balcony caught her eye.

Ferd's monkey was perched on the head of one of the Roman statues. He was hunched like a Notre Dame gargoyle, tearing into an orange. His little fingers peeled it with the precision of a neurosurgeon. A neurosurgeon on crystal meth.

Ferd rushed out, tying a bathrobe around himself. "Mr. Peebles, how did you open the door?" His face was covered with shaving cream and his glasses were sliding down his nose. He grabbed the monkey. "You gave me a fright. Don't do that."

Stepping gingerly across the cold balcony, as if hopping across hot coals, Ferd dashed back inside and closed the door.

Jo made coffee and checked her e-mail and phone messages. Mom; Tina; her older sister, Momo; Dad; Rafe—a full house of relatives, all her parents and siblings, were checking in one way or the other. She e-mailed them all back, refilled her coffee mug, and phoned Amy Tang.

"Updates?" Jo said.

"Dr. David Yoshida died of a barbiturate overdose."

"What about his son?"

"Fentanyl. Two days earlier."

Fentanyl was a synthetic opiate, available by prescription, more powerful than heroin. "Was he a known user?"

"Not heroin, but other drugs. He was in rehab a couple years ago. The family thought he was clean," she said. "We're looking into the circumstances."

"I presume they're suspicious. We know Skunk threatened Scott Southern's little boy."

"If they carried out a threat against Yoshida's son—Christ, that's cold."

"This whole thing is cold."

Tang began tapping her pencil on a desk. "That woman you met at the Aquatic Park yesterday—"

"Xochi Zapata. She should be warned."

"I'm going to pay her a visit," Tang said.

"If she sees you, she'll lawyer up or run. Let me go. She may run anyway, but it's worth a try. I'll give her your card. Fair enough?"

"Tape the interview."

Jo turned her coffee mug on the table. "I'll call you."

She said good-bye, continued turning her mug, and checked the clock. Lawyers got into the office early in Santa Barbara. She needed an attorney who would tell her straight whether what she wanted to do was within bounds. And who could help her dance along the boundary line if she needed to. She picked up the phone again.

Jesse Blackburn sounded surprised to hear from her. "Jo. What's up?"

"Calling in the favor you owe me. Got a question about disclosure and professional confidentiality."

"Fire away."

Jesse was a friend from her undergrad days at UCLA. He was a sharp stick, clearheaded and very smart. The previous year he had drawn on her expertise in forensic psychiatry for help with a case he was trying. Now it was turnabout time.

"I'm working on a psychological autopsy."

She sketched the case for him. He said, "Weird."

"Here's the thing. When I interview people I always put it on the record. Interviews support my report, which might be used as evidence in court."

"But this time's different?"

"I need information and I won't get it unless it stays off the record."

"You want to withhold information from the authorities? Where do you want to draw the line?"

"I want to protect the source's identity. Don't know about the information. I'll follow Tarasoff guidelines, obviously."

When a patient threatens someone's life, clinicians have a duty to warn the intended victim, even when doing so violates privilege. Although this wasn't a doctor-patient scenario, Jo would never withhold such information.

"What have you promised the police?" Jesse said.

"That I'll get to the bottom of Callie Harding's death."

"Are you lying to anybody?"

"Not today."

He laughed. "You say the cops gave you the green light to scrounge any information you need. Take the whole field. Grab anything. Sounds like you're trying to stop something worse from happening."

"You just hit the nail on the head."

"Go for it. No qualms."

She exhaled. "Thanks."

"But that's not all that's bothering you."

"No. Could the police force me to disclose the identity of my source?"

"Yes. This doesn't fall within doctor-patient privilege, Jo."

"You're saying I'll be climbing without a rope."

"Bottom line, yes. That's a risk both for you and your source. Disclose it to her."

Jesse knew a lot about risk. He'd been a world-class swimmer until the day he witnessed a crime. The people behind it tried to kill him, and he now practiced law from a wheelchair.

She rubbed her forehead. "Knew I could count on you to splash a cold bucket of reality in my face."

"You take reality well, Jo. You just wanted me to confirm what you already suspected. Good luck."

She said good-bye. Finished her coffee. Called the television station and was put through.

"Xochi. I'll make you a deal."

Jo paced along the waterfront at the Aquatic Park. The sky was as blue as a fresh bruise. She was wearing a peacoat, a red scarf, and her Doc Martens to keep the wind out. She had her stainless-steel Java Jones coffee mug in one hand and in the other a takeout cup, which she handed to Xochi Zapata.

Zapata shook her head. "Scott, dead—it's crazy." Her face soured. "And a megastory. Jesus."

Zapata was wearing a faded gray sweat suit and old running shoes. A Giants baseball cap was pulled low over her forehead. Her brown hair flailed in the wind. Without makeup, her skin was blotchy. She looked like a wraith of herself.

"I know you're feeling awfully alone. You don't have to," Jo said.

"I can't go to the cops about this—that's what you have to understand. I need you to keep this stuff quiet."

"I promise. Unless you tell me you're going to commit murder," Jo said.

"Truly?"

"Truly."

Zapata's shoulders dropped. It was a gesture of surrender.

"Tell me about the Dirty Secrets Club," Jo said.

She stared at her coffee. "Like I said yesterday, it's a confessional. A way to come clean."

Jo looked at Zapata's sweatshirt. It was unzipped to show her cleavage. She suspected that
making a clean breast of things
had psychological implications for this woman. She sensed in Zapata a mania for confession. It seemed part of a cycle—misbehavior, shame, confession, relief, followed by a compulsion to misbehave again. Zapata's black diamond pendant glittered in the sunlight.

"That's not the club's sole purpose," Jo said. "You don't sit in a circle seeking moral absolution from your friends."

"No." Zapata's face blotched even more. "Some people brag about the things they've done. For them it's an ego trip. And for some people it's a game."

"Exactly what kind of game? Do you have rules? Competitions? Prizes?"

Cupping her coffee, Zapata shrugged. "Sure. Prizes for the best secret, dirtiest secret, biggest risk taken. Things like that. Harmless stuff."

Jo nodded at the black diamond pendant. "How do you get one of those?"

Zapata raised her cup to her lips but didn't drink. It looked as though she couldn't swallow. Her face crumpled like a piece of paper.

"What if I'm next?" she choked.

"Why would you think that?"

"Maki." She wiped her bitten thumbnail against the corner of her eye. "I tapped him into the club. What if that makes me next in line?"

"I don't know. How did you bring him into the club?" Jo said.

"I interviewed him for a package—a report—about counterfeit designer-label clothing. I met both him and his lover."

"And you invited him to join the club?"

"They were fire and ice, always either snapping or cooing at each other. Maki seemed very cool, so I sounded him out. Told him about my wild youth, and he totally dug it. Eventually I said if he wanted to meet some people I could introduce him."

"You could tell he had something he wanted to unload?"

"Yeah." She looked at Jo. "How did his boat catch fire? Do you know?"

"No."

"What a terrible way to die. Burning—I can't think of anything more hideous." She wiped her eyes again.

Jo gave her a moment. "Yesterday, you insisted that the club was supposed to be fail-safe. Why?"

"Because we only get together in twos or threes, ever. And there's no record of who all the members are. None of us knows the whole roster. It's like a daisy chain—you never meet more than three members of the club. That way confidentiality is supposed to be protected."

Neither of them needed to say the obvious: The club's cell structure was shot full of holes.

Jo drank her coffee. "Your wild youth?"

Zapata tilted her head back. "You have to understand. Before I got into journalism I did things. On film."

"You weren't always a revolutionary warrior queen?"

"Zapata's my ex-husband's name. And Xochi's catchier than Susan. Come on, you understand about the impression a name makes, right,
Doctor?"

"Point taken."

"Besides, the skin flicks aren't what worries me. Big whoop, everybody does titty flicks. This was something different." She took a breath.

"I'm listening."

"These weren't garden-variety adult movies. They were a niche product."

Jo raised an eyebrow, curious.

Zapata's smile seemed ironic. "Put it this way—I was a religious extremist."

"Excuse me?"

"It was nun-porn. We all dressed up as religious figures."

"You're joking."

Her expression became matter-of-fact. "No, really. There's a defined market for these films. With quite a devoted fan base."

"Really."

"It's a fusion genre. Bondage, Catholicism, nuns, and priests. We filmed at an old place in the San Fernando Valley." The blotches reddened her neck again. As if wanting to minimize her decadence, she said, "I wore a black rubber Catwoman mask."

"So your face wasn't shown?"

"I wasn't known for my face."

"Right." Jo focused on her coffee so she wouldn't react.

"Over the mask I wore a nun's veil. And four-inch spike heels. And a rosary for a G-string."

Jo considered herself unshockable. And she was inured to California's psychic exhibitionism. People here came with ready-to-spill emotional disclosures, like a prepackaged Caesar salad mix. Lettuce, croutons, a corset fetish, Parmesan cheese. But Xochi Zapata's full-frontal confession to kinky-porn stardom made her blush.

"Unfortunately, some of the flicks became cult classics," Zapata said. "
Baptism by Flier,
where the guy's a pilot.
Holy Orders,
where Our Lady of Pain disciplines the College of Cardinals, and I mean until they lick her Jimmy Choos. The big hit was
Holy Cum-munion."

Jo snorted her coffee out her nose.

Zapata had the good grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah, it's legendary."

Jo wiped her face. "Sorry."

"There's an underground of obsessive fans who keep the films alive. They'd love to find out my true identity."

Jo scrounged a tissue from her pocket. She'd never breached professional demeanor so ludicrously. "The fans don't know?"

"I always wore the mask. It was my signature gimmick."

"That's the secret that got you into the club?" Jo said.

"Now you understand why it has to stay off the record."

Jo remembered Zapata's earlier insistence that applicants to the club had to provide evidence of the things they'd done. In her head, she heard a cheesy 1970s
wah-wah
soundtrack. The melody, horribly, was Schubert's Ave Maria.