The Vig

by John Lescroart

  Behind Hardy the Third Street Bridge rumbled as traffic passed. Somewhere ahead of him was another bridge. Ingraham had told him that his was the fourth mooring down from Third, between the bridges.

  Hardy walked into the wind, his head tucked, the gun pointing at the ground.

  The first mooring—little more than some tires on a pontoon against the canal’s edge and a box for connecting electricity—was empty. A Chinese couple approached, walking quickly, hand in hand. They nodded as they came abreast of Hardy. If they noticed the gun they didn’t show it.

  The second mooring, perhaps sixty feet along, held a tug, which looked deserted. Next was a blue-water cruiser, a beauty which Hardy guessed was a thirty-two-footer, named Atlantis.

  He wasn’t sure he’d want to name a boat after something that had gone down into the ocean.

  Ingraham had called his home a barge. It was a fair description—a large, flat, covered box that squatted against the pontoon’s tires, its roof at about the height of Hardy’s knees.

  Getting there finally, seeing that the electrical wires were hooked up, suddenly the whole thing seemed crazy again. He was just being paranoid. He looked at his watch. 8:40.

  Rusty should be up by now anyway.

  Hardy leaned down. “Rusty?”

  A foghorn bellowed from somewhere.

  “Hey, Rusty!”

  Hardy put the gun in his pocket and vaulted onto the barge’s deck. Three weathered director’s chairs were arranged in the area in front of the doorway. Green plants and a tomato bush that needed picking livened up the foredeck.

  A two-pound salmon sinker nailed to the center of the door was a knocker. Hardy picked it up and let it drop, and the door swung open. There was no movement from inside, no sound but the lapping canal and the traffic, now invisible back through the fog. The wood was splintered at the jamb.

  Hardy put his hands in his pocket, feeling the gun there, taking it back out. He ducked his head going through the door, descending three wooden steps to the floor-level inside.

  A line of narrow windows high on the walls probably provided light normally, but curtains had been pulled across them on both sides. The room was cold, colder than it was outside.

  In the dim light from the open doorway, nothing seemed out of place. There was a telephone on a low table in front of a stylish low couch. Hardy picked up the receiver, heard a dial tone, put it back down.

  Then he saw the pole lamp lying on the floor on the other side of the room. He reached up and pulled back the curtain for a little more light. The lamp’s globe was broken into five or six pieces scattered around the floor.

  At the junction of the rear and side walls a swinging half-door led to the galley. Another door in the center of the rear wall was ajar. Hardy kicked at it gently. It opened halfway, then caught on something. A wide line of black something ran from under the door to the wall.

  Hardy stepped over it, pushing his way through. His stomach rose as though he were seasick, and he leaned against the wall.

  What was blocking the door was a woman’s arm. Naked, she was stretched out as though reaching for something, as though she’d been crawling—trying to get out? There was something around her neck-something strange, metallic—holding her head up at an unnatural angle. Hardy realized it was a neck brace. Hardy looked back to the stateroom.

  It was painted in blood.

  There was a sound like something dropping on the front deck and he dropped to one knee, steadying the gun with both hands and aiming for the hall doorway.

  “This is the police,” he heard. “Throw out your weapon and come out with your hands up.”

  3

  Like the other housing projects in San Francisco, Holly Park had at one time been a nice place to live. The two-story units were light and airy. The paint and trim had been fresh. Residents who did not keep their yards up to neighborhood standards could, in theory, be fined, although such infractions were rare due to the pride people took in their homes.

  In 1951 seedlings had been planted to shade and gentrify the place—eucalyptus, cypress, magnolia. Within the square block that bounded Holly Park there were three communal gardens and a children’s playground with swing sets and monkey bars and slides. Curtains hung behind shining windows. In the four grassy spaces between buildings, now each a barren no-man’s-land called a cut and “owned” by a crack dealer, people had hung laundry and fixed bicycles.

  One hundred eighty-six people over eighteen claimed residence in Holly Park. There were one hundred seventeen children and juveniles. Every known resident was black. One hundred fifty-nine of the adults had police records. Of the juveniles between twelve and eighteen, sixty-eight percent had acquired rap sheets, most for vandalism, shoplifting, possession of dope, several for mugging, burglary and rape, and three for murder.

  There were four nuclear families—a man, his legal wife and their children—in Holly Park. The rest was a fluid mass of women with children.

  Because Holly Park was provided by the city and county for indigent relief, by definition every resident was on welfare, but twenty-two women and thirty men held “regular” jobs. The official reported per capita income of all the adults in Holly Park was $2,953.13, far below the poverty level.

  Income from the sale of rock cocaine was estimated by the San Francisco Police Department to be between $1.5 and $3 million per year, broken down to about $50 to $75 per hour per cut, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  So far this year—and it was September—ninety-six percent of the residents of Holly Park over the age of seven had been victims, perpetrators or eyewitnesses to a violent crime.

  Police response time to an emergency in Holly Park averaged twenty-one minutes. By contrast, in the posh neighborhood of St. Francis Wood, it averaged three and a half minutes, and Police Chief Rigby was upset about how long it took.

  Some people believed that the solution to the drug and crime problems in the projects was to put a wall around them and let the residents kill each other off.

  There are all kinds of walls.

  Louis Baker was cold.

  He opened his eyes, awake now, unsure of where he was. It was dark in the room, but a slice of gray light made its way through where the plywood sagged off the window. The box spring he had slept on had a familiar smell. He sat up, pulling the old army blanket around his massive bare shoulders.

  At least it not be the joint, he thought. Praise God.

  He stood up, shivering in his bare feet, and put on the suit pants they had given him when they let him out the day before. He crossed to the crack at the window and looked down into one of the cuts.

  Pretty much the same. Gray building, gray fog, the constant wind. No trees, no grass, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Now it was Rap, already coming up from three, four places. That was cool. Faces changed, music changed, even people sometimes. But it was the same turf, his old turf. Territory, turf. You controlled it you could be happy. The constant.

  He pulled the blanket up closer and put his eye to the crack, checking down the cut. Kids standing around. Some business maybe going down.

  His Mama called out from down below. “You movin’, child? You up?”

  She was not his mother but he called her Mama. He was not even sure they were related. She had just always been around, always been Mama.

  “Comin’ down,” he said.

  Mama dressed exactly the same. There was no fashion here in Holly Park. There were no politics. Nothing external was going to change things here. Louis knew that. It was all inside, as it had been for him.

  Mama was large. She sat sipping instant coffee at her Formica table. Her hair was held by pins and covered, mostly, with a bandanna. She wore a plaid flannel shirt, untucked, over a pair of faded blue jeans that was tearing at the seams by her generous hips.

  Louis kissed her, spooned some coffee crystals into a mug, poured boiling water over it and sat down across from her.

  �
��It’s good to be home.”

  “What you be doing now?”

  Louis shrugged, blowing on his cup. “Get a job. Something. Got to work.”

  “An’ be careful, right?”

  He reached over and touched her face. “Don’t you worry, Mama. Nothin’ else, I learned careful.”

  But he wondered then, for a second, if it was true. When they let him out, he had not given a thought to careful. But seeing Ingraham just when he got out had brought it all back. Back on the streets, he best be careful every minute.

  He saw Ingraham again—taking care of business before he had even come down here to Mama’s—and his blood ran hot. The rage was still there. Beatin’ it was the thing.

  He gripped at his mug with both hands, bringing it to his mouth.

  But that had been old business. Finished now, he hoped. He wouldn’t have any cause to think about it again. It was settled.

  “‘Cause out there, you know …” Mama motioned to the back door.

  Louis followed her glance, then scanned the kitchen. Over the stove the paint was peeling in wide sheets. A poster of Muhammad Ali was taped up next to a religious calendar—he noted the suffering Christ.

  Mama kept the place pretty clean, but she was old. What was the point of putting in a window over the sink? The plywood wouldn’t break—it kept out the wind. It made the kitchen dark, but dark was safer. The whole house was dark.

  “I know ‘bout out there, Mama. Here’s what I do, so you don’t worry. I go see the man, he set me up or not. Come back here and start setting up.”

  “Set up what?”

  He stood up, leaning over to kiss her. “The house, Mama. We gonna clean house.”

  “Hardy in chains,” Glitsky said. “I like it.”

  “It is a good time,” Hardy agreed. He had stood up when Glitsky entered the living room, and now one of the patrolmen was unlocking the cuffs. “Damn, those things work good.” He opened and closed his fingers, rubbing his wrists, trying to get the circulation going. “If this affects my dart game, I’m suing the city.”

  Glitsky, ignoring Hardy, asked Patrolman Thomas if he could stand outside and direct the homicide-scene team below as it arrived.

  When he went outside the other patrolman, Ling, said, “The body’s in there.”

  Glitsky nodded. “What are you doing here?” he asked Hardy.

  “Long story.”

  “With a loaded gun?”

  “Makes it longer.” He shrugged. “It’s registered. I’ve got a permit.”

  Ling spoke up. Glitsky realized he was the shortest cop he’d ever seen. When he had come up there’d been a minimum height requirement of 5′8″, but some court had ruled that since many Asians were under this height, the rule unfairly discriminated against a class of people and therefore had to go.

  Ling was about 5′5″, but since he had been the one left below to handle Hardy if he got feisty, Glitsky assumed he could take care of himself.

  “Can I see the gun?” he asked.

  Ling handed over Hardy’s weapon. He checked the cylinder and clucked disapprovingly. “It’s loaded,” he said to Hardy.

  “It works better when it’s loaded.”

  Glitsky flipped open the cylinder and let the bullets fall, one by one, into the palm of his hand. He put them into the pocket of his blue parka and smelled the weapon. “It hasn’t been fired.”

  “No, sir,” Ling said. “I realize that.”

  “Come on, Abe,” Hardy said. “I didn’t shoot anybody.”

  “My friend here has a rich fantasy life,” Glitsky said. He handed the gun back to Ling. “You think this is Dodge City or what? You can pick it up back at the Hall.”

  “Abe, it’s a legal weapon.”

  “And this is a murder scene, Diz. It can’t hurt to check the paper on it.”

  Hardy turned to Ling. “And what brought you guys out here?”

  “The couple who lives on the next boat over were going out for a jog and passed you walking around with a gun in your hand. They saw you come in here, and they went back to their boat and reported it.”

  “The only two good citizens in San Francisco and I run into them on their morning jog.”

  “Good citizens abound in our fair city,” Glitsky said.

  “They are Chinese,” Ling said, as if that explained it.

  “All right. Let’s go see the body.”

  “I hope you’ve had your breakfast,” Hardy said.

  From identification found in the purse by the bedside, the woman was tentatively identified as Maxine Weir, thirty-three years old. Her address was 964 Bush Street.

  From the trail of blood, she had been shot the first time as she exited the bathroom after taking a shower. That first shot went through the towel that had been wrapped around her.

  There was a splatter of blood on the wall by the door to the bathroom, as though she had either been spun around by the shot or had put her hand to the wound and then to the wall to steady herself.

  It was impossible to determine the order of the remaining shots. One had entered high on the right breast and did not appear to exit, probably hitting the clavicle and ricocheting downward. A second had passed through the side of her abdomen and out her back. Another had hit her in the right thigh. She had clearly gone down by the bathroom and lay still-perhaps pretending to be dead—for a few minutes. A pool had formed there. Then she had crawled across the room and into the hallway, where she had died and where Hardy had found her.

  Glitsky came away from the body with a glazed, guarded look. He had told Ling to wait in the living room to send in the techs. Hardy sat on an upholstered chair in the corner, elbows on knees, his hands folded.

  “What about the bed?” he asked.

  “I’m getting there.”

  A second trail of blood began on the bed, which was still made up. Someone had been lying on top of its covers when they’d been shot. The trail crossed the room like a thin strip of syrup to the back door. Glitsky opened the door.

  There was a walkway about four feet wide that must have been used mostly for storage. Paint cans, cardboard boxes, a bicycle, other garage stuff filled the space on Glitsky’s left, by the piling. The right side had been AstroTurfed. A large pot-style barbecue squatted by the other back door, which led to the galley. Paraphernalia for outdoor cooking hung on the wall by that door.

  The blood drew a line in the middle of this area, swerved over the AstroTurf, paused and pooled at the railing, disappearing over the side of the barge.

  Glitsky came back inside, shivering even in his parka. Hardy was standing now by the bed.

  “The walking dead,” Glitsky said.

  “Look at this.” Hardy knew enough not to touch anything. He had been a good cop once.

  There was a small hole in the center of a splotch of blood on the bed, at about shoulder level if the victim’s head had been on the pillow.

  “Rusty was first, I guess,” Hardy said. “He was sleeping, maybe. Lying down. She was in the shower, heard the shot, came out and got hers.”

  Glitsky jammed his hands further into his pockets. “What the hell are you talking about? Rusty who?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  Hardy let out a breath. “Ingraham. Rusty Ingraham. He lives, lived here. Louis Baker shot him.”

  Glitsky was looking somewhere over Hardy’s shoulder, not focusing, putting it together. “Louis Baker.”

  “And I’m next.”

  “I’ll have a cheeseburger with everything, to go.”

  The young man punched his register. “Would you like onions and pickles?”

  Glitsky nodded. “Everything please.”

  “Will that be here or to go?”

  “To go, please.”

  “That’ll be one cheeseburger to go.” He pushed some more buttons, waited until the machine stopped whirring, then looked up with relief. “That’s two-sixty-seven.”

  Hardy, having just endured the same lit
any over a much more difficult order of two fish sandwiches, fries and a Diet Coke, rolled his eyes. “Do you want that here or to go, Abe?” he asked when the boy went to retrieve the order.

  Glitsky kept his face straight.

  They sat at a tiny yellow table on a stretch of sidewalk midway between the Third Street Bridge and the Southern Pacific Station. Every few minutes a train’s whistle would sound, shrill and distant.

  It was early afternoon. The fog had burned off completely and it was getting warm. They had stayed at Rusty Ingraham’s barge through the morning, waiting while the techs photographed and collected and dusted, while the deputy M.E. had examined and moved Maxine Weir’s body, while they had begun preparations to drag the canal.

  Hardy opened his bag. “After all that, I get onion rings. Did I say fries or what?”

  Glitsky chomped into his burger. “Twice, I think, maybe three times.”

  “Rocket scientist,” Hardy said.

  “No dumber than walking around with a loaded weapon out in the open. You should’ve called me first.”

  “And you would’ve come, right?” He had already told Abe why he was at the barge, about his telephone arrangement with Rusty.

  Abe chewed some more. “Probably not.”

  “No probably about it.”

  Glitsky reached over and grabbed Hardy’s drink. “You mind?” He sipped through the straw. “Louis Baker, huh?”

  Hardy grabbed the cup back. “Louis Baker scares me, Abe. No kidding.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. I think I’d be nervous myself. Baker know where you live? You moved since you were a D.A., right?”

  “So did Rusty.”

  Glitsky chewed and swallowed. “So how’d he find him?”

  “Maybe he’s listed. He’s a working—he was a working attorney.”

  “Quit talking about him in the past tense, would you?”

  “He’s dead, Abe. You know it and I know it.”