The Vig

by John Lescroart

  “It isn’t funny,” Batiste said. “The room is floating in chicken shit.”

  “You don’t think it’s funny?” Abe said. Then, at Frank’s scowl. “No, sir, me neither. That sure isn’t funny.”

  “Rigby doesn’t think it’s funny.”

  Glitsky bobbed his head. “I picked that up. I’m a trained investigator.”

  “Abe, your ass is in a major sling if you did this. I mean it.”

  Glitsky rolled his eyes and came back to his lieutenant. “Frank, what in the world makes you think I had anything to do with this? There’s a hundred-odd people in this department.”

  “Yeah, how many of them are applying to L.A.—?”

  “Thinking of applying—”

  “Okay. But who just happened to use the phrase ‘chicken shit’ the day before this—this fiasco?”

  “I think I used ‘horse shit,’ Frank.”

  “Horse shit, chicken shit, same difference.”

  Abe was fighting back his laughter now, wanting to get into the difference with Frank, but feeling it wasn’t really a good time, maybe never would be a good time. Instead he said, “If somebody’d trotted a horse in there—”

  But Batiste had had enough. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  Back at Glitsky’s desk, Marcel Lanier was waiting. “So the judge says ‘Farmer Brown, you are charged with the most heinous of crimes, the crime of bestiality, of having sexual intercourse with animals …”’

  “Not now, Marcel,” Abe said.

  But Lanier continued. “‘Specifically, you are charged with carnal knowledge of horses, cows, sheep, dogs, cats, chickens.’ Just then Farmer Brown holds up his hand and says, ‘What kind of pervert do you think I am, Your Honor? Chickens? Yuck.”’

  Glitsky found the paper he’d been looking for, making sure of what he had written under “Reason for Leaving Present Employment.” He wondered if it was strong enough.

  Hardy had fond feelings for the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. When his father returned from the Pacific Theater after World War II he had spent his first night back in the States in a VIP room the hotel had reserved for returning POWs. Later he and Hardy’s mother had the honeymoon suite; it was possible that Hardy had been conceived there.

  But the great hotel, a block north of Union Square in the heart of downtown, had not so much fallen upon hard times as it has been victimized by the boom times.

  The San Francisco Hardy’s father had returned to had been The City That Knew How. It had a vital port, a refreshing year-round climate, great food, neighborhoods, a tiny downtown with an accessible feel. In fact, it had much of what corporate America wanted. Men who had been in the war and passed through the city on their way home were now running businesses and did not see why they had to slave away, freeze in the winter, sweat the summers out in Cleveland or Detroit or Omaha when they could have a corner building on Russian Hill.

  And these men, the first generation, knew what they had and did not much want to mess with it. San Francisco’s lack of a skyline was part of its charm. The city did not need big buildings to make a big statement. If you wanted to take a moment to look around at this twinkling clear gem of a city spreading before you, you could go to the Redwood Room high atop the Fairmont Hotel. You could hit the Top of the Mark, or Coit Tower. Or, downtown, you could go to the Starlight Room of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Forty years ago.

  Hardy sat there now, at the bar. It was just after eleven in the morning, and he looked through the streaked windows to the other Francis across the way—the Saint Francis Hotel, which dwarfed the Drake. A few blocks further north, the BankAmerica building threw its fifty-six stories’ worth of shade around the surrounding ten blocks of downtown; the Transamerica Pyramid, the Embarcadero Center Towers—in their fashion as symbolic, Hardy thought, as the spires of medieval cathedrals. Just a different god.

  Hardy took his coffee and walked across the faded rug of the nearly empty Starlight Room. Except for due south, which afforded a view of the shipyards and Hunters Point, every direction was blocked by high-rises.

  Hardy had danced up here with Jane, had stood with his arm around her at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down all around them at their city. It had been a genteel place, a spot to touch base or regroup, out of step with the hipness of the rest of the city. Even then it had been, from Hardy’s and Jane’s perspective, where “old people” of forty or fifty drank Happy Hour doubles and danced to a combo, not a rock band.

  Now Hardy felt like one of the old people himself. A voice behind him said, “They gotta get to these windows.”

  Hardy spun around, jittery. For a moment he had almost forgotten he was being hunted. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said, “there’s not much to see anymore.”

  Hector Medina was a short, squat man with a square face and thinning hair. He wore a brown business suit and black shoes, which were not shined. He showed Hardy his security-cop’s badge and they went back to the bar, where Hardy had his coffee refilled and Medina ordered a glass of plain water, no ice, no lime.

  “This must be my week for cops,” he said. “Memory lane.”

  “I’m not on the force anymore,” Hardy said. “The message I left …”

  “Yeah I got it. Ex-cop, cop. I’m an ex-cop. I still feel like a cop.”

  “You’re chief of security here, aren’t you?”

  Medina coughed. “Yeah. Some Japanese tour lady loses her purse and I get to investigate and find it under her bed. A farmer from Kansas finds out the hooker he picked up is a guy and has a fit. Tough cases.” He sipped at his water. “Shit, what am I talking about? It’s a good job. But don’t mistake it for real police work.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So how can I help you?”

  Hardy wasn’t sure how Medina could help him. It wasn’t entirely clear to him why he’d even come down here, but it was better than sitting at Frannie’s with a loaded gun and a head full of questions. He’d thought he might as well get some of them answered. “It’s about Rusty Ingraham.”

  Medina picked up his glass again, then put it down. “You know, I had a feeling.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You know Clarence Raines?”

  The name sounded familiar but Hardy shook his head.

  “The department is fucking him over. Him and his partner.”

  “Is he one of the guys they’re bringing up—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Those guys. So Clarence came to see me to ask about …”

  “… because something like this happened to you?”

  “Something exactly like this. Except they didn’t wind up killing their suspect, what’s his name, Treadwell. They should have. At least my guy couldn’t talk.”

  “So what’d you tell Clarence?”

  “My advice? I told him, him and his partner both, to go into business.”

  Hardy didn’t get that.

  “Business, you know. Sporting goods, insurance, something out of the line, ‘cause their police careers are over right now. Once you’re charged …” He finished his water.

  “That’s what happened to you?”

  “Ingraham,” Medina said.

  “He brought the charges?”

  “No, no. He’s too clean for that. Too hands-off. He just pointed the finger and sicced the dogs on me.”

  “But you got off.”

  “‘Cause the D.A. knew a good cop when he saw one. He knew the asshole I killed was a dirtbag. Scum of the earth.”

  “Who’d tried to kill you anyway, right?”

  Medina looked over Hardy’s shoulder, silent. Then, “There was a gun in his hand. It never went to trial.”

  Hardy fiddled with his coffee cup. A man could say a lot saying nothing, admitting nothing. Hardy might never know the story, but it was becoming clear to him that maybe Ingraham had been onto something with Medina—the accusation might not have been all air.

  “So you wouldn’t say Ingraham and you were close?”

  Medina grunte
d, smiled. “You could say I’d like to kill the son of a bitch, frankly.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  Medina blinked, his look going over Hardy’s shoulder, then back. He seemed to settle back on his stool, as though some tension he had been holding in a long time was finally releasing its grip. “My luck keeps holding,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I haven’t seen Ingraham or talked to him in maybe five years, and last week I called him up and this week he’s killed. Somebody will probably cheek his phone records, put it together and want to talk to me about it.”

  “You called him up?”

  Medina sighed. “Clarence coming to see me, talking about his situation, it got me stirred up.”

  “So what did you say to him?”

  Again that gutteral grunt. “That’s what’s funny. I didn’t say a damn thing. I heard his voice and realized I didn’t want to prove it, that’s all. It was over. If I want to do something, I’ll work with Clarence’s hand. Mine’s folded.”

  Medina lifted the glass to his mouth, saw it was empty and still tried to suck the last drops from it. “I gotta get back to work. Nice talking to you.”

  He got to the elevator button, pushed it, then walked back to Hardy. “If I wanted to kill Ingraham, and believe me, I thought about it, I would’ve done it seven years ago when it would’ve done some good, and there wouldn’t have been any evidence there, either.”

  The elevator door opened and Medina turned a half-step toward it.

  “Nobody says you killed Ingraham,” Hardy said.

  “Somebody will,” Medina said. “You watch. You get accused once, you’re in the loop.”

  Medina made it to the elevator as the doors were closing. If he was putting on an act, it was damn convincing.

  Hardy, checking in with Glitsky from the pay phone by the men’s room, heard, “No body yet, Diz.”

  “It’s out in the bay somewhere, Abe. He must have fallen or been thrown overboard and the tide took him out.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that strong. The tide, I mean.”

  “How about if you guys check that?” Hardy heard a crunching in the phone. Glitsky was chewing ice again. “You know, your teeth are all going to crack and fall out.”

  “We dragged the canal, Diz. We can’t drag the whole bay.”

  “Isn’t the blood type enough?”

  Glitsky had told him that the second bloodstain, from the bed out the door to the pool by the rail, was B negative, fairly rare. Ingraham’s old records confirmed that had been his type.

  Ice crunched in the phone’s earpiece. “Means somebody with B negative bled. Doesn’t mean Ingraham died.” Crunch crunch. “Necessarily.”

  “Sure, Abe. Probably somebody just had a nosebleed. The bullet hole in the bed must have been there before.”

  “Hey, we’re going on somebody was shot, probably Ingraham. But we have a real live dead person, Diz. Maxine Weir. And her husband’s got means, motive and no alibi for opportunity.”

  Hardy was losing his patience. “I’m telling you, Abe, Louis Baker did this. He killed them both—”

  “Why would he kill the girl?”

  “She was there. I don’t know.”

  “You just said it. You don’t know. Look, to make you happy I’ll go see Baker today.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But no promises. The man is out on parole. He checked in with his parole officer. He is following the rules. I have no reason to think he even saw Rusty Ingraham, much less killed him. I’m sorry if you’re paranoid about it—”

  “This is not paranoia, Abe. Don’t you think Rusty getting it the day Baker gets loose is a pretty big coincidence?”

  “Coincidences happen, and I hate to keep reminding you, but Rusty isn’t officially dead.” Glitsky’s voice changed. It was starting to get him wound up. “And dig it, Diz, I do have a murder victim here—Maxine—who you don’t care about but I’m supposed to. Plus I got a full caseload, like four other current homicides, to say nothing about a file full of oldies but goodies still outstanding. I’m doing you a favor—a favor, you understand?—to even see Louis Baker. Technically, it’s a pure hassle of a guy on parole, but I’m gonna do it ‘cause you’re not always as full of it as you are right now.”

  Hardy figured he’d pushed hard enough. “Okay, Abe, okay.”

  “You want to do something worthwhile with your time, find me a body, or give me a reason we haven’t found one, something to make me believe Rusty’s dead. Then you’ve got me on your side.”

  “All right, I’ll do that.”

  He could hear Glitsky’s breathing slow down. “All right,” his friend said, “you do that.”

  7

  The dreams had been bad, and Louis Baker hadn’t slept until nearly dawn.

  In the dreams there was a bright light beckoning to him, but then there was always the yard bell waking him just before he could get to the light. Sometimes, though, before the bell, there would be some other people close around him, pushing up against him, not exactly going for the light themselves, really unaware of it, but getting in his way enough so he’d have to break through them, smashing faces, stomping on their bodies if he had to.

  A couple of times he had woken up on the floor, drenched in sweat, still flailing at the people in his way.

  The Mama wasn’t around as he came down the stairs. The house looked different, and it took him a while to realize it was the windows. There were things he still had to do, but he was glad he’d done the windows up first. Where you lived had to be right. Especially now, after those cell years. Now it was Mama’s place still, but he could feel it starting to be his turf. He didn’t want to sink into it yet. There was a lot to get straight, but the light through the windows felt like it gave him a start.

  He stood at the kitchen sink, barefoot and bare-chested, his prison pants tied with a rope around his waist. He let the water run until it got hot. His hands rested on the cracked tile of the drain, and the porcelain was streaked brown and red with rust. He stared out through the window at the warm day. It must be late morning already, early afternoon, no bell to get you up whether you slept or not.

  He arched his back, rotating his stiff neck to get the kinks out. Steam rose and clouded the window in front of him as he filled a juice glass with the hot water and went to sit down at Mama’s table. He dropped two teaspoons of Nescafé into the glass and stirred it with the handle of the spoon.

  He had not yet done any inside painting, but he had pulled down the wallpaper where it had been peeling loose. Just came in yesterday after the boys had gone back to working the cut. He’d been pissed off, trying to decide how to handle Dido, and the hanging strips of dirty paper had pissed him off more and he’d ripped them down. Now the kitchen’s walls looked unfinished, but that was all right. Unfinished was all right. Unfinished meant you had started something, not let it go on its own.

  A knock at the front door. Louis Baker got up with his juice glass and went to answer it. The front room, too, was lighter with the glass in the windows, although Mama kept the blinds drawn in here all day anyway.

  The Man, he come in a lot of styles, Baker thought. This one, he be some kind of man of color, knows who he is. Something in Baker knew immediately what version of the Man he was dealing with—turnkeys got you good at that. The mean ones who wait ‘til you were turned and sap the back of your legs. The others, doing their jobs. Some, scared all the time, having to keep the upper hand, dangerous. Most on the take one way or the other.

  This one here, Baker sensed was doing his job. Street clothes, but Baker knew who he was. He didn’t have to look at the badge the Man held out. Man could’ve said he was reading the meter, Baker knew the Man when he saw him.

  Baker brought him back in the kitchen, sat at his chair with his back to the wall, motioned the Man to sit. He waited.

  “We got a problem, Louis.”

  He waited.

  “A dead man
over at China Basin.”

  Baker felt his legs go mushy. He was glad he was sitting down. How could they have put him there already?

  “I don’t know nobody in China Basin.”

  The Man smiled. Not a smile that made you like him, with the scar running through his lips top to bottom. Baker thought about his bad dreams. The people around him, keeping him from the light. They, some of ‘em, smiled like this Man.

  “You do, Louis, or you did.”

  “No, man, I don’t. I been, you know, in the joint. I’m just out now two days. I don’t see nobody. I just been livin’ here, cleanin’ it up.”

  “Cleanin’ it up?”

  Louis pointed around. “The place, you know. Put up windows. Some paint.”

  The Man half turned on his chair, came back to him. “You remember your trial, Louis? When you swore you’d kill the two guys who were putting you away?”

  “Yeah, I did that. A mistake.”

  “It was more a mistake actually to do it.” Digging.

  “What you sayin’?” He almost said, out of habit, I didn’t kill Ingraham, but then the Man would say, How’d you know I was talking about Ingraham? It could have been Hardy. Better find out what the Man knows before you open your mouth, tell him something else. To the Man, denying and admitting were two sides to the same coin—both told him you knew something, did something.

  “I’m saying it looks like Rusty Ingraham got shot dead two nights ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “So where were you?”

  “I just tole you, I got off the bus. I came home.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  Louis scratched at his bare chest. “Why don’t you ask around?”

  The Man slammed his hand on the table, some coffee spilling over the sides of the glass onto Baker’s hands. The time it took to recover and look up, the Man had his piece out on the table, leveled at his chest. “You want to play games with me, I’m good at games.”

  “I ain’t playing no games.”

  “Let’s play who killed Rusty Ingraham.”

  He let his eyes rest on the gun a minute. “I ain’t playing no games,” Baker repeated. “You taking me in or we talking here?” Might as well get to it, he thought. They either made him there or they didn’t. If they did, thought they did, he was going back in.