The Vig

by John Lescroart

  “I don’t know it. Maxine Weir is dead. Otherwise, we’re dragging the canal, checking the blood type on the bed, see if we can match it to Rusty, see if we can find him. I’ll let you know when I think he’s dead.”

  “He’s dead,” Hardy said.

  Glitsky shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “So what am I gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. About what?”

  “About Louis fucking Baker, is what.”

  “Don’t get all excited, Diz. We finish our lunch here and I locate Louis and drive down and have a talk with him.”

  “And what if he’s sitting outside my house, or even in it, with a gun?”

  Glitsky said, straight-faced, “That’d be in violation of his parole.” The inspector finished his burger, took Hardy’s cup back and had a last loud slurp of Hardy’s drink through the straw. “Just don’t you do anything, Diz. We frown on private citizens shooting one another.”

  “Yeah. Well, I frown on being shot at. I see him around my house, I’m going to shoot first.”

  Glitsky leaned across the table. “Do me a favor. Let him get a shot off. Make sure he’s armed.”

  “The rules, huh?”

  Glitsky nodded. “The rules, that’s right.” He stood up.

  “I don’t think Louis told Maxine about the rules,” Hardy said. “Or Rusty either.”

  Glitsky picked up Hardy’s cup and dumped some ice in his mouth. He chewed a minute. “Guess he forgot,” he said. “Other things on his mind.”

  “When can I get my gun back?” Hardy said.

  4

  “You have to remember, Sergeant, that everyone we deal with is a convicted felon. Not some, not most-all.”

  The supervisor was a plain woman with a no-nonsense attitude that somehow managed to convey warmth. Perhaps it was the Oliver Peoples glasses-tiny little lenses magnifying robin’s-egg eyes. The name on the little strip by her door said Ms. Hammond, and Glitsky liked her right away. She had the back-corner office in the Ferry Building, with a view over the water to Treasure Island, up to the Bay Bridge, out to Alcatraz. People paid three grand a month for one-room apartments with that view. It might be one of the perks of the job—he knew she didn’t make that much.

  Her office was clean and functional, brightened by the view and a small forest scattered in pots. Twenty-one parole officers reported to her.

  “Well, what I meant was—”

  “No. It’s all right. It’s just helpful to remember where these people are coming from. What they face outside.”

  “Well, it’s possible our man—Louis Baker—was outside about an hour before he killed somebody.”

  Ms. Hammond sighed heavily, nodding. “Yes. That happens, too, I’m afraid.” She scooted her chair across the floor from her pitted green desk to a battered green file cabinet. After a minute looking at something, she sighed again. “You want to see Al Nolan.”

  “Is that bad news?”

  She looked at her watch. “It’s two-thirty. If he took a normal lunch at noon, he might be back.”

  Glitsky wondered if the entire bureaucracy was sinking, every department bogged down in bad faith and bullshit. But Ms. Hammond faced him, shrugging. Shrugs and sighs. She probably didn’t know she did it. “Some of them need more supervising than others. Let me show you the way.”

  She led him down a long corridor that reminded him of the Hall, into a large room that was subdivided into cubicles.

  Al Nolan, a white male in his late twenties, was opening a Wendy’s bag and putting the contents on his desk. He wore a bowling shirt with the name Ralph stitched over the right pocket. His long brown hair didn’t look too clean and was pulled back into a ponytail. “Al,” Ms. Hammond said, “this is Inspector Sergeant Abe Glitsky …”

  Nolan held up a hand. “Hey, it’s my lunch hour. You mind?”

  Glitsky heard Ms. Hammond’s intake of breath. “Lunch is supposed to start from twelve to one-thirty, somewhere in there, Al.”

  “Well, at noon I had to take my car down to the garage, and the guy didn’t have a clue what was wrong, so I had to leave it and take the bus back. You know the buses.” He, too, shrugged.

  “You know, Al, that sounds to me like two and a half hours of your own time.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get to eat yet.”

  Glitsky butted in. “They paying you for this?” Turning to Ms. Hammond. “Excuse me.”

  “Hey, what? I’m not supposed to eat? We’re entitled to lunch.”

  Ms. Hammond, getting impatient, said, “And what do you suppose the state of California gets to ask of you in exchange?”

  Nolan chewed a few fries. “In exchange for what?”

  “In exchange for your lunch break?”

  “Hey, I do as much work as anybody here. More than some.”

  Glitsky just waited.

  Ms. Hammond smiled. The warmth was gone. “You know, Al, that’s just not true.” She laid a hand on Glitsky’s arm. “Mr. Nolan is on the state’s time now, Sergeant. If his eating bothers you, he’ll throw his”—she paused—“afternoon snack away.” She turned and was gone.

  Nolan rolled his eyes. “Her time of the month,” he said, and gestured for Glitsky to pull up a chair. “Who we talking about now?”

  Glitsky was tempted to get into it. This attitude was making him crazy. He wondered if Ms. Hammond’s sweet grandmother nature wasn’t really to blame, and everyone on the top ought to start right now being a hard-ass of the first order, whip things back into shape. Kick ass and take names. Fire people like Al Nolan. Then he remembered—nobody ever got fired from a government job. Kill your neighbors, come to work drunk, miss thirty days in a row calling in sick … hey, it robbed a person of dignity to take their job away.

  Glitsky found himself sighing. “Louis Baker,” he said. “We’re talking about Louis Baker.”

  “Yeah, I just saw him this morning. Seemed okay, a pretty nice guy.”

  “Well, we think maybe he killed somebody last night.”

  Nolan took a bite of burger. “No shit? Well, these guys can be very cool about things.”

  “About killing people, you mean.”

  “Whatever. You know, they don’t talk to us. They just check in, lie about having a job or an offer, then split.”

  “Did Louis Baker say he had a job?”

  “Now you mention it, no.” He seemed to ponder that a moment. “Well, he’s only been out a day. Hasn’t learned the ropes yet.”

  Glitsky leaned forward. “So what did you talk about?”

  “Mostly the Giants, I guess.”

  Glitsky could have guessed, too. The Giants were in the thick of the pennant race.

  “I think they’ll stay in the city.”

  “Who?”

  “Who we talking about, man? The Giants. I mean, a pennant is what we need. No way are they gonna let ‘em go to San Jose if we get another pennant. The team is happening. Who’d Baker kill?”

  “We don’t know if he killed anybody. He’s a suspect is all.”

  “He probably did.”

  “Why do you say that? You just said he was a nice guy.”

  Nolan shrugged. Glitsky wondered if people here all had shoulder and back problems from the shrugging. “So he’s a nice guy. That just means he’s got manners. I mean, everybody says Ted Bundy was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, and how many people did he ace, twenty, thirty?”

  “So you figure Baker killed somebody. Why? Did he say anything to you about last night?”

  “These guys kill each other.”

  “The victim wasn’t black, Mr. Nolan.”

  “No shit. I just assumed.”

  “Caucasian woman.”

  “Well, maybe he was just unloading after all that time in.” Nolan looked at Glitsky man-to-man. “You know.” He pointed at his crotch. “No conjugal visits at the Q. Lot of guys get out and that’s the first thing they do.”

  Glitsky, suddenly very weary, shook his head. “No, it wasn’t th
at.”

  Nolan, thoughtful, chewing. “Well, they kill white guys too.”

  It was still early afternoon, balmy with a light breeze. Glitsky had the windows down on both sides of the Plymouth. Driving down Mission, he had intended to get on the freeway and head south to Holly Park and see if he could get a few words with Louis Baker.

  But Al Nolan had gotten inside of him—young, hip, pony-tailed Al Nolan with his “Ralph” fifties-style bowling shirt, probably seriously thought he did a real job. And real clever to boot. Above it all with that glib shit that all these cons were just passing time before they went back. Jive about the Giants. For a minute Glitsky thought about bringing Al to the Hall and booking him for obstructing a homicide investigation. See how funny he thought that was.

  He drummed his fingers on the dash. Then there was Marcel Lanier and the other cops in homicide with their damn golf clubs. What was the use?

  He tried to get his mind kick-started back on Louis Baker. About why was he going down now to see Louis Baker. Sure, Hardy had his reasons. But for him, wasn’t it the same reason Al Nolan had for assuming Baker was guilty—because he was a black ex-con?

  There wasn’t any hard evidence making him a suspect. There was Hardy’s suspicion, and Hardy’s fear. But Hardy, all white, points the finger at Baker, all black, and Abe Glitsky—half and half—jumps on the white wagon with both feet. Well, shit, why is that, Abe?

  Look at the facts. Okay, so Hardy is your friend, and an ex-cop. Ex-cops also kill people. And Hardy was apprehended—let’s not forget that, apprehended—there at the scene with a loaded weapon. Sure, he had his stated reasons, but why didn’t Glitsky suspect him? Well, he knew Hardy. Also, Hardy’s gun hadn’t been fired. Still …

  He pulled over and glanced at the yellow pad full of notes next to him on the seat.

  Start at the beginning, Abe. Like you’ve done a hundred times before. Look at the victim. There aren’t two victims, not yet. In spite of what Hardy might think, or say … There is one known victim. Her name is Maxine Weir and she lived at 964 Bush Street.

  Louis Baker and Holly Park could wait. Let’s see who the facts point to.

  He put the car back in gear, passed the freeway entrance and turned up Van Ness toward Bush Street.

  Hardy didn’t even feel safe at the Hall of Justice.

  He’d been there since before noon, trying to get his gun back. He had called Moses McGuire at home and asked him to trade shifts at the Shamrock. He had looked in at Judge Andy Fowler’s—Jane’s father—courtroom, but they had been in recess and the judge was not in his chambers.

  They were being pissy about the gun. Glitsky was not above giving his friend a little object lesson in the letter of the law, and he had taken the weapon downtown so that Hardy could sign for its proper return, so the registration could be validated. Thank you, Abe.

  But the gun had not even been logged in yet, and no one seemed in a hurry to get it done so Hardy could retrieve it.

  Finally, realizing he probably wasn’t going to have much luck, he took the elevator upstairs to the third floor, where the assistant D.A.s had their offices.

  He found himself breathing more easily as he walked the long halls, hoping to recognize someone and give himself an excuse to stay inside and off the street. Up here, almost everyone wore a coat and tie or a uniform and most were white. Hardy did not suppose Louis Baker would get up in costume to blow him away. Downstairs, every black man Hardy saw had been turning before his eyes into Louis Baker, walking around free as a breeze, carrying a bullet with Hardy’s name on it. If he felt that way in the Hall of Justice, where they had metal detectors at all entrances, Hardy did not want to think about what he would feel like outside.

  There were about one hundred assistant district attorneys in San Francisco. Almost all of them—except a few political appointees who worked for the man himself, District Attorney Christopher Locke—plied their trade, two to a room, in ten-by-twelve offices equipped with two desks and whatever files, bookcases, posters, plants, mementos, and bits of evidence might have accumulated in the course of two busy people working on too many cases with not enough time.

  There were no names on doors, no indication of rank or personality. Most of the doors into the hallway were closed, and a significant number of rooms with open doors were empty. Hardy did not remember if it had been like that when he had worked here. Probably, since nothing else seemed to have changed very much.

  He passed the case-file library and leaned across the counter, looking in at the banks of color-tagged folders.

  “What you want, Hardy?”

  It was still Touva—a tiny round woman with Brillo hair who had already been an institution when Hardy started out. She forgot nothing and filed-with a fanatical precision—if nothing else went right in a case, you could at least always get your files when you needed them. She looked at Hardy impatiently, by all signs unaware that he had not worked there in almost a decade.

  “How you been, Touva?”

  “I been busy, of course. You got a case number, Hardy? I got no time to chat.”

  “No case.”

  “Okay, then. Later.”

  Dismissed, he kept walking. A couple of faces looked familiar to him, but he was surprised that he saw no one he actually knew to talk to. Had it been that long? He felt like he’d gone back to his old high school.

  Finally he stopped near a doorway where a studious young man was sitting in a chair studying blowups of photographs that Hardy did not want to look at too carefully. He had seen enough of that stuff firsthand this morning. He had already decided who he had to talk to.

  “I’m trying to find Art Drysdale’s office,” he said.

  The kid tore himself away. “Probably a good idea anyway,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, sorry. Talking to myself. Probably a good idea to get away from this for a minute. Drysdale, you said?”

  They walked back past the file library. Drysdale’s office was two doors beyond it on the other side of the hall. As Hardy knocked, the kid, into his work, was already halfway back to his room.

  “It’s open.”

  Drysdale was turned away from the door, his feet propped up on the windowsill, talking on the telephone. There was no one at the other desk. Hardy moved some folders from a chair to the floor and sat to wait.

  “No,” he was saying. “No, we don’t know that.”

  He listened. Hardy noticed his knuckles white on the receiver.

  “You want my opinion, it’s not even likely. I think it’s a big mistake.”

  He said “uh huh” and “right” a few times, loosening his collar with one hand, the knuckles on the other one staying white. “All right. It’s your decision.” A beat, then loudly. “‘Course I’ll do it. It’s what we do, isn’t it? But it sucks, Chris. Sir. It really sucks.” He slammed the phone down. “Son of a bitch.”

  He swiveled in his chair. “Yeah?” he began. Then, recognizing Hardy, “Hey!” He stood up, extended a hand. “Here’s a sight for sore eyes. What brings you downtown?”

  Pushing sixty, Drysdale still looked like he could put on a uniform and be right at home on the ballfield. Before turning to law he had been a star for USC and then played three years of pro ball, including forty-two games as a utility infielder in 1964 for the San Francisco Giants. A framed newspaper article on the wall of his office was headlined “Drysdale No Relation to Dodger Don,” which was an important point to make in a town that hated the Bums. Don Drysdale, the Dodger pitcher, had a last name in common with Art, but no genes.

  Art had been with the D.A.’s office for over thirty years. At one time or another he’d been in charge of Misdemeanors, Vice, White Collar and Homicide, and now served as a kind of minister without portfolio, unofficially doing much of the work that the citizens elected Christopher Locke to do.

  Drysdale himself wasn’t the District Attorney because his pragmatic view of life was out of sync with the political structure in San Fran
cisco. He did not favor affirmative action in the District Attorney’s office, and he had once been foolish enough to make the point to a group of reporters and editors who had been doing profiles on potential candidates for public office.

  “If you were elected D.A.—”

  “But I’m not running for D.A., or anything else.”

  The early denial being part of every campaign, that didn’t slow anybody down. “If you were the D.A., what percentage of new hires would be—substitute one—gay, Black, Hispanic, female?”

  Drysdale’s answer, now famous in the lore of the city, was “If they could do the job, I’d hire chimpanzees. If they can’t, they’re worthless to me.”

  Of course, the media played this to mean that Drysdale thought women, gays, and other minorities of all stripes were worthless. He had followed his aphorism with the more balanced statement that some jobs—airline pilot, brain surgeon, prosecuting attorney—ought to be filled by qualified candidates, not by quota, but San Francisco reporters know news when they hear it, and calling chimpanzees smarter than minorities was good copy, even if that wasn’t what he said, much less meant.

  Now it was old news either way. Art Drysdale didn’t worry about it. He coached his inner-city baseball team that had finished second the previous year in the city’s Police Athletic League playoffs, went home to his wife, who had her own design firm, and otherwise counseled the young female, gay, Black, Hispanic, Caucasian, or (he sometimes felt) simian attorneys who weren’t succeeding in putting bad people behind bars, which was their job. He was the most popular man in the office.

  “So to what do we owe this surprise, Diz?”

  “I think the big surprise is hearing you yell at someone.”

  Drysdale waved it off. “Aw, that’s just Locke. Sometimes the old seniority isn’t the blessing it’s cracked up to be.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Somebody’s got to investigate a couple of cops.”

  “That’s ugly.”

  “Yeah. Plus it’s nothing we’d ever charge on our own. But we’re showing our continued sensitivity to the plight of harassed gays by the fascist police force. Subtle stuff like that.”