The Dirty Secrets Club (35 page)

And with a little
click,
Jo remembered Leo Fonsecca telling her Angelika Meyer was a street fighter, not a wilting flower. She had worked in the criminal justice system during college. She was tough.

Jo felt herself turning cool. "He's in prison."

Meyer's eyes looked feverish.

"Pray's in prison, isn't he? He's a convict," Jo said.

Meyer's lips drew back. She looked wounded and savage. "Now you understand. How could he hurt anybody when he's locked in San Quentin?"

33

T
he stench of gasoline was wafting down the hall. The alarm was still ringing. Jo stared at Geli Meyer. Her palms felt hot.

Meyer's eyes heated. "Pray couldn't attack anybody. He's been in Quentin the entire time. He has no contact with the outside world except for his lawyers and ..." She stopped.

"And Skunk. And you," Jo said.

A convict. It began to make sense.

"He can't even find out who it was that injured him. Who'd help him do that? The cops? The district attorney? He's nothing but a con. Nobody cares about injustices inflicted on a con."

"Why's he in prison?" Jo said.

"Ask your precious Dirty Secrets Club. Those A-list dickheads screwed him over. Playing their games, like he was just a video game character to them." Meyer straightened under the blanket. "But he's working it through. He's doing righteous time. All he cares about is finding the people who tore up his life."

Jo heard what Meyer was saying, but her mind was racing. It made sense to her now. This was why Pray was using Skunk as his sock puppet. He couldn't reach people personally. He had to send a messenger. A stinking rodent to pour out the message.

"He's completely alone, in an awful situation. Can you imagine what prison is like?" Meyer said.

It was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Depravity, despair, far more danger than outside the walls.

"I worked at San Quentin. I know what it's like," Jo said.

The elevator
dinged
and a fire crew arrived. Their blue uniforms and yellow turnout coats looked like a walking wall of reassurance.

"What's his name?" Jo said.

Meyer resisted for a few more seconds. Quietly, she said, "Perry Ames."

"Did you meet him when you volunteered at San Quentin?"

Meyer shook her head, smirking, as if to say
You still don't get it.

A fierce anger spiraled through Jo. Stupid, stupid girl. Meyer kept Pray's photo in her wallet. Jo bet she looked at it every night before she went to bed. Thumbed it lovingly and lay down to dream of him.

"How would you describe your relationship with him?" Jo said.

"I'm his advocate."

Jo exhaled. Did Meyer have any idea how damning that description could prove against her in court?

Things began falling into place in Jo's mind. Not only the reason Pray sent Skunk—and maybe Meyer—to be his troops in the field, but the reason he had been manipulating the Dirty Secrets Club into committing suicide. It was a hands-off method because he couldn't physically lay hands on them.

She suspected it was more than that. She suspected that Pray didn't want his goons to kill people—that he got satisfaction from threatening people with such utter ruin that they chose instead to violently destroy themselves.

Meyer looked feverish. She was sunk in the blanket, as though she'd heated herself up to defend Perry Ames and would burn herself out to protect him. She was undoubtedly trying to protect herself now, but all her emotional capital was invested in the man they called Pray.

The fire alarm shut off. Silence filled the ICU. Jo heard footsteps and hard breathing. Amy Tang appeared, looking whipped. She shook her head. They hadn't caught Skunk.

Jo stood up, crossed the room, and handed her Meyer's snapshot of Pray. "Catch your breath. You've got some phone calls to make."

Tang held on to it. "Holy—"

Jo pulled her around the corner, out of Meyer's earshot, and gave her a thirty-second rundown.

"A convict. This is fucked," Tang said.

"This is good. He's directing Skunk. We can contact San Quentin and sever his lines of communication. We can shut him down."

Tang nodded, eyes darting, thinking. "But Skunk's still out there."

"Maybe we can use Pray to trace him. Amy, find out how Pray's contacting him, and send a message telling Skunk to be somewhere at five p.m. You can trap him."

Tang's eyes brightened. Briefly, Jo saw her smile.

They headed back around the corner to the waiting area and saw the motherly nurse wheeling Meyer back through the door to her room. Jo followed. From the wheelchair, Meyer glared sullenly at Jo.

"You still don't understand. Perry depends on me. I
have
to help him."

"Get some rest. You'll need your strength when the police question you," Jo said.

"That's not going to happen."

"Geli, it's over. Perry's going to be shut down. And you're not getting away. The photo connects you to him. It connects him to all the deaths of the Dirty Secrets Club. It's all over. You're cooked."

"They can't make me testify."

"Groupies don't get immunity, hon."

Meyer's face crinkled with disgust. It was an unconscious, visceral reaction, and Jo realized she'd got it completely wrong. Meyer wasn't Pray's groupie. She wasn't his lover.

Jo pushed her hair off her face. Something still wasn't making sense. Why did Skunk firebomb the room next to Meyer's? She looked around the room. Monitors, bedpan, messy bed. There was a second, empty wheelchair near the door. Where had that come from?

A sharp realization cut through her. Skunk hadn't come here to kill Geli. He had come to snatch her. Not to rescue her—to keep the police from finding out what she knew.

Fear spilled over her. She turned. "Geli, who is he?"

Geli was playing with something under the blanket. The nurse was setting up her oxygen cannulas again, adjusting the flow, getting ready to settle her back in bed.

"Oh, shit," Jo said.

Geli looked at her. "I'll never testify against him. He's my father."

Geli took hold of the oxygen line. Her other hand came out from under the blanket. She was holding a lighter.

With a rattle of keys, the bailiff opened the door to the holding cell. The bailiff, a bulky black man in Sheriff's Department green, gestured to Pray.

"You're up. Let's go."

Perry Ames stood, smoothed his cheap blue tie, and put the voice synthesizer to his throat. "Please don't shackle my hands to my feet. If you do, I won't be able to raise the voice-synth to my neck. I won't be able to talk."

He saw the usual reaction to the robotic buzz of the electro-larynx. The bailiff fought a shiver of aversion.

"Hands front," the man said.

Pray put the synthesizer in his pocket. The SIM card was safely back inside the little device. He held out his hands.

The bailiff cuffed him. "It's okay. Word from the prosecutor, we'll uncuff you before you enter the courtroom." He led him out. "Testifying against a bunch of lowlife fraudsters, you have to look reputable."

Lowlife fraudsters, yes, but they'd ripped people off by using stolen credit cards and shipped goods across state lines. That made it a federal beef. Perry nodded dutifully and let the bailiff lead him down the hall. Testifying, oh my, yes. In exchange for a reduction in his sentence and early parole. He kept his face blank and walked toward the courtroom, here at the U.S. Federal Courthouse, at the San Francisco Civic Center.

Jo sat in the St. Francis Hospital cafeteria, nursing a cup of coffee the size of a fifty-five-gallon drum. The cafeteria decor was Halloween in excelsis, strewn with pumpkins and fake cobwebs. Behind the counter, Dracula and Marge Simpson were serving meatloaf.

Amy Tang walked in, looking like a gnome who'd spent a hard day in a salt mine. She walked over, plopped down at the table, and nodded at the coffee.

"Any good?"

"You like forty weight?"

Tang smirked, excused herself, and came back with an even bigger cup. "They've transferred Angelika Meyer to the psych ward. She's under suicide watch and under guard." She took a long swallow of the coffee, eyeing Jo. "You're fast on your feet."

Jo shrugged.

"Any slower, Meyer would have toasted herself, the nurse, and you. That oxygen line would have burned like a bastard."

"Fight or flight," Jo said. "When you have to jump, do it."

"Yeah, but you hit her in the skull with a bedpan."

"It was close at hand." She took another swallow of her coffee. "Learn anything more?"

Tang took out her tiny notebook. "Perry Ames, serving eight years for fraud and extortion. He ran an illegal gambling racket. High stakes. Gave the high rollers a line of credit and when they couldn't pay up, took repayment by having them run his expenses through their businesses. We're talking cars, airline tickets, everything. The victims defaulted on their debts, of course, and went out of business." She closed the notebook. "His sentence has six years to run."

"What about the earlier crime?"

"The attack on him? There's no legal record on that. Just rumor. Or as Geli Meyer would have it, legend."

"How has he been contacting her? Convicts have to make collect phone calls."

"And we've contacted the prison. They'll be sure to search Ames's cell for a contraband phone. It's possible he's been borrowing one from somebody on staff. A cook, a janitor. Or from his lawyer. Did Meyer tell you her theory that Pray can't be hurting people because he's locked up?"

"Cognitive dissonance. It may get to her in the end. Maybe she'll tell us more."

"She's still pretty weak." Tang looked up. "What do you think happened the night Callie Harding died?"

"Not sure. Trying to get my thoughts to make some kind of sense."

Jo reached into her satchel for the anonymous note welcoming her to the Dirty Secrets Club. She handed it to Tang. The policewoman stared at it, and stared some more, surprise turning to concern. She glanced up sharply.

"This wasn't sent to your house, was it?"

"UCSF. My home phone and address are unlisted."

Tang nodded. "That's good. You think Pray sent it?"

"Or the Dirty Secrets Club, playing one of their games with me."

Tang held on to the Baggie and framed her words with care. "I take it they don't have incriminating evidence of this allegation."

"My husband died"—blank, swarming heat surrounded her— "in the crash of an air ambulance. The note is meant to break me down."

"Assholes."

"Let's hope that's all it is."

"I'll check the note for fingerprints and the envelope for DNA." She glanced at Jo, and her face seemed drawn. Her eyes filled with compassion. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

She set the Baggie down. It slid across the table. As it came toward Jo, the light seemed to twist, the tabletop shiver. She put her hands flat against the wood. The building creaked. Tang looked at the ceiling.

"What was that?" she said.

Jo looked around. Everybody else in the cafeteria was looking around. She and Tang glanced at the lunch line. The heat lamps were swaying.

"Aftershock," Tang said.

"Or precursor."

It was done. Conversation started again. People went back to their food.

Tang stood up. "Let's book. These jack-o'-lanterns give me the willies."

The jack-o'-lanterns all had perky smiling faces. "It was just a three pointer."

"No, it's these freakin' gourds. Stringy guts and those giant seeds. Make my skin crawl."

"Happy Halloween."

"And later tonight all the little hoodlums start throwing eggs."

Jo cast her a sideways glance. "Eggs scare you?"

"Revolting things. All that viscous yellow ooze . . . and they have no holes, you notice? They're unnatural." She mock-shuddered. "Worst holiday of the year."

Jo tried not to smile.

Tang picked up the anonymous note. "Don't let this get to you. These dickheads are finished. Meyer's going to be arrested as soon as she's strong enough. There's an arrest warrant out on Levon Skutlek, our friend Skunk. And Pray's safely behind bars." She put the note in her pocket. "As for the Dirty Secrets Club, they're a bunch of poseurs. The district attorney's going to move on any prosecutions they

can. And if they don't, I will. Go home, Jo. Write up your report. We've broken this." "Thanks, Amy."

Outside the hospital, Jo slung her satchel over her shoulder. The sun was brilliant, the breeze fresh. So why did she feel as though a heavy shadow was trailing her?

J
o headed for home through the late-afternoon sunlight. People on

the street seemed to bustle, as if they were hurrying to finish their business and get to the serious work of trick-or-treating, dressing up, maybe hitting the street parties in the Castro. A gigantic drag queen, tall as an Ent, came out of a dry cleaner wearing white platform go-go boots and a Borat-style mankini. Jo didn't know whether he was in costume or daywear.