The Dirty Secrets Club (17 page)

Jo caught her breath. The bay was dolphin-blue in the afternoon light. Sailboats were out. Against the backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge they looked like white blossoms blown across the water by the breeze.

The driver of the Audi came walking across the lawn. She was wearing a calf-length suede coat over black leather boots. The coat flared in the breeze. Beneath it she had on an ivory-colored suit. Jo half turned away and tried to look inconspicuous. The woman's skirt was short. Her hair was caramel-streaked. Her shades were bigger than Jo's windshield. She looked like she'd stepped straight from
Glamour
magazine. She had a Jack Russell terrier on a leash, bouncing in front of her like a lottery ball in the drum.

She slowed and looked around. Checked her watch. Looked some more, impatient.

Oh, brother.

Jo knew she shouldn't have hijacked the parking spot. Hello, karma. Good to see you. Go ahead, kick me in the butt.

She walked over. When the woman spotted her coming, her mouth puckered.

"Do you have an issue? You already stole the parking spot. Why don't you leave it at that? Because I am not a person you want to pick a fight with," she said.

"I think we're here for the same meeting," Jo said.

"You're the third person?" The woman's expression shifted from annoyance to curiosity. She raised an eyebrow. "Well, you're certainly the eager beaver."

"Jo Beckett, M.D."

They shook, and Jo reached into her wallet for a business card. The woman waved her off, as if shooing a fly.

"We don't do that," she said. "You're an M.D? Are you one of David's finds?"

"David Yoshida?" Jo shook her head. Caution was jousting with curiosity. "I'm on staff at UCSF, but no. He was cardiothoracic surgery; I'm in psychiatry."

Behind her sunglasses, the woman was elaborately made-up. She was a walking advertisement for the leather industry and the L'Oreal Group. She looked like a million bucks. She also looked familiar. Even more than that, she sounded familiar. And she acted like she expected people to notice.

They did. Joggers gave her long glances as they passed. The Jack Russell vibrated around her feet.

"A damned shame about David." She removed the shades. Her gaze was acute. "We don't have any psychiatrists. This could be interesting."

She looked Jo up and down. The eagerness in her eyes was unsettling. Then she checked her watch again and glanced around the Aquatic Park.

She was waiting for Callie, Jo was sure of it. She didn't know.

She tugged on the dog's leash. "Let's stroll."

Jo hesitated, ambivalent. This woman thought she was here to join the Dirty Secrets Club.

One hard-and-fast rule Jo played by: Don't lie. She never misrepresented herself to worm information from people. But if she explained why she was here, the meeting would be over in nothing flat. The demons and cherubs of her conscience perched on her shoulder, pitchforks and angel wings fluttering.

"Let's walk toward Fort Mason," Jo said.

The Jack Russell ping-ponged around the woman's feet. She made a ticking sound. "Cosette. Come."

"David Yoshida didn't send me," Jo said. "I'm here because of Callie Harding."

"She's not usually late. Maybe she's stuck in traffic." The woman scrutinized Jo. "You're not exactly what I was expecting. But Callie likes to play things close to the vest. And we'll find out if you have what we want soon enough."

"What do you want?" Jo said.

"She didn't tell you?" She pulled on the dog's leash, frowning. "Do you have a CV?"

"Not with me."

"That's probably prudent. Before anything else, you need to understand that this isn't for everybody."

"I'm sure."

"Do you? Do you realize who I am?"

Her eyes were hazel. Her identity wouldn't come to Jo.

"I'm not going to lie. I should, but I don't."

An unamused smile. "So dishonesty isn't your sin. That's okay. We have enough members who've borne false witness. We can use a new twist." The woman tossed her leonine hair and lifted her chin. "Xochi Zapata."

So-shee,
she pronounced it. Maybe for Xochitlan, or Xochiquet-zal, though she didn't look like an Aztec princess. Didn't look like she'd ridden out of the desert to fight
yanquis,
either. She looked like a white-bread suburban Anglo. Albeit a pageant-contestant Anglo, buffed by the gleam machine.

She was XZ. And Jo realized where she'd seen her: on a billboard on a Muni bus, posing with other members of the team.

"Your News Live,
right? You're the business reporter," Jo said. "The fast-food expose."

" 'Swimming on a Sea of Grease.' That's it."

Jo remembered now. McDonald's made you fat. She also recalled an interview conducted aboard a CEO's private jet on a flight to Aspen. Zapata reported Silicon Valley stories and attended festivals of capitalism around the globe.

"Can I tell you who I am and why I'm here?" Jo said.

"We'll get to that." Zapata looked annoyed at the interruption. "My point is, our club isn't simply confidential. It's exclusive. So before anything else, we need to know if you have the stuff it takes to be a member."

"What's that?"

Jo heard the faux innocence in her own voice. She was going to need to wash out her conscience with soap. But she wasn't about to stop listening.

"You tell me," Zapata said. "What would you bring to the party?"

My
grandma left me a collection of Tokugawa-era museum-quality samurai pieces. I eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts a dozen at a go.

"I'm a consulting forensic psychiatrist for the City of San Francisco, UCSF Medical Center, and the San Francisco Police Department. I can supply you with references and a list of my publications."

"Honey, that's great, but it's hardly sexy."

"I solved the Jeffrey Nagel hanging. That was thought to be a case of sex."

"Your bona fides can't relate to your patients or your caseload. The secret has to be yours. And it has to be dirty." She scrutinized Jo again. "Though trust is an issue. We wouldn't accept someone who divulged her patients' secrets. You might divulge ours as well."

"I would never violate doctor-patient privilege."

"Good. We count on our members not to speak about the club to outsiders." She smiled knowingly. "We're not the White House. We don't tolerate leaks."

"I can keep quiet. I keep secrets locked up tighter than the grave."

"Excellent." Zapata tossed her hair again. "To be blunt, we need to see that you've got some heat. Frankly, I don't know if you have the prestige. If Callie's nominating you, that's definitely in your favor. But you understand, you'd come in at the lowest level."

"Which is?"

"Basic membership. Fun, camaraderie, plenty of excitement." She smirked. "The frisson will be there. But rising to more exclusive levels would have to wait."

"Understood. How will it work?" Jo said.

The wind blew back the collar of Zapata's suede coat. She was wearing a necklace on which hung a black diamond.

"You provide your resume. Give us both halves, and girl, it had better be convincing. Your prestige and your dirt." Zapata's hazel eyes were intense. "We need hard evidence. Whatever secret you're keeping, you need to provide evidence that it actually occurred. And you need to provide proof that you're the one who did it. You can't claim credit for other people's shame. That's tacky."

"I didn't know," Jo said.

"Oh, yeah. It's far too easy to claim credit for an act. Proving your involvement—your authorship, call it—is a lot harder."

Authorship. These people thought of bad deeds as creative acts.

"But to be frank, you might be sharp and ambitious, but I'm not convinced that you're enough of a power player for us. Not yet, anyhow." She glanced across the park at Jo's truck. "Generally we don't talk to folks who drive beat-up pickups, except when they come to the house with a mower in the back."

Zapata looked again at her watch, ran her hand over the band, seemingly annoyed. "Where is Callie?"

Jo stopped. Holding back any longer would be both untenable and cruel. "She's not coming."

"Excuse me?"

"She's dead."

Zapata's head snapped back as if she'd been hit. "Dead?"

"Last night. The wreck at the Stockton Street Bridge. I'm afraid Callie was the driver of the car that went through the railing."

Zapata stepped back, almost physically rejecting the news. "Jesus.

Oh, no." She put her manicured hands to her face. The Jack Russell ran around her legs, tangling her in the leash. Then her eyes sharpened.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm a forensic psychiatrist. I—"

"I heard that. What the hell are you doing here?"

"I'm performing a psychological autopsy on Callie."

Zapata's hand went to her forehead. "You're from the police. Oh, my God—"

"No." Jo thought madly. She needed to keep her from bolting. "You're part of the black diamond group. You, Callie, David Yoshida—"

"How do you know about that?"

"You and Callie were supposed to meet here with another person—S.S."

Panic lit her hazel eyes. "Jesus Christ." She backed away, looking around frantically. "You can't talk about this."

"I'm sorry, but you can't—"

"You're a therapist—you can't talk about what people tell you."

"That's only when—"

"Ten seconds ago you bragged you'd never violate doctor-patient privilege. Try it now and I'll take you down. I told you, you do
not
want to pick a fight with me." She turned, took two steps, and turned back, pointing a finger. "I can crush you under a blizzard of destructive publicity. I'll get the medical licensing board to investigate you. You'll be reduced to cleaning toilets in some dirty psych ward. You'll wish you shoveled dog shit for a living."

Jo tried to slough off the image and the insult. Zapata was white with anger, but blinking and breathing rapidly.

"You're frightened," Jo said.

Zapata glared, shook her head, and ran her manicured fingernails into her hair. She couldn't have drawn more attention to herself if she'd hoisted her shirt and flashed the tourists at the cable car stop.

"You're scared to death," Jo said.

Doe caught in the high beams. Zapata hesitated for another second, as if fearing to twitch, and then rushed forward and grabbed Jo's arm.

"I saw the raw feed, the footage from our camera crew at the crash site. It was horrible. For christsake, what happened?" Her hand was cold. "You performed the autopsy—did somebody kill her?"

"The medical examiner performed the autopsy. I'm looking at Callie's mental state." She held Zapata's gaze. "Do you think somebody killed her?"

She looked like she was about to cry. "Tell me. Off the record. In confidence."

Jo balked. "I'm gathering information to prepare a report. I can't promise confidentiality."

"If I were your patient you could."

"You're not."

"I'll hire you."

"No."

Zapata looked like she was crawling with bugs and wanted to tear open her own flesh with her long nails to get rid of them. She gripped Jo's arm.

"Then join us. I'll approve your application to join the club."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's great. Lots of benefits. It's exciting. Sexy. Come on, you'd love it. You were already asking about it—"

"You're bribing me? No."

"And later there'll be prizes—cars, trips, recognition. As long as you don't tell anybody about it."

Jo felt torn. She was obligated to write a report for the police department. She wasn't obligated to divulge every scrap of information she obtained. And Amy Tang had given her an explicit mandate to dispense with protocol. Just get to the bottom of the psychic well.

"Why don't you tell me what's scaring you so bad?" Jo said.

Joggers were passing. On the park lawn, a kid was flying an orange kite. Jo nodded at the seats high up in the amphitheater and took Zapata's arm.

"Come on."

She led Zapata up the stairs to the top row, well away from anybody else. The wind was cooling, the amphitheater in shade from the pine forest on the crest of the hill at Fort Mason.

"How did they find out about us?" Zapata said.

"They?"

"How did
you
find out about us?"

"Xochi, that's irrelevant now."

"It's
secret,
don't you get it? They're killing us, aren't they?"

Jo couldn't tell what the woman wanted more—to suck up information or to unload whatever she was holding in. Jo went quiet, and like a client in therapy, like a journalist, Zapata filled the silence.