The Vig

by John Lescroart

  “It’s a trap,” Gubicza said.

  “How can it be a trap? I didn’t make this up, remember. The bastard did kill my Poppy!”

  “I know.”

  “Well?”

  Fred was really hot for this. The lawyer spoke in a measured voice. “I think we can assume, Fred, that the D.A. isn’t suggesting a polygraph because they want to help your case.”

  “But it doesn’t matter! Once I—”

  “Please, let me finish. The offer is that you come down and go over the statement you’ve already made, and if the polygraph checks, they’ll proceed on the Medina angle.”

  “Right. That’s what I want.”

  “No, it’s not what you want.”

  “Manny …”

  “Fred, listen. They’re going to have to come up with at least a hearing anyway, and eventually an indictment. They’ve already got your statement. Medina did it and he’ll be punished for it.”

  “But they said they weren’t going to. I know they didn’t believe me. They were going to interview Medina and he’ll deny everything and they won’t have any evidence and they’ll drop it.”

  “They might try, but haven’t we been using the media to tell this story as much as anything else? Hasn’t that been working?”

  He heard the change in his ear; Treadwell had switched him from the speakerphone. “Look, Manny, this whole thing hinges on my credibility.” Treadwell was whispering insistently. “You think I’ll let them get me on Raines and Valenti. No way! If you know it’s a trap, you use it for your own ends. I know you think only a lawyer can be any good under questioning—”

  “That’s not true, Fred,” Manny lied.

  “—but all I do is tell them what happened again, and they’ll see it’s the truth. Think what the media could do with that! It’s perfect for us!”

  Manny punched his own speakerphone, putting Treadwell on it, and stood up. He paced behind his desk. “Fred, here’s a hard truth. In the legal world, to the extent that something is not completely controlled by you, it’s the enemy. This is not a friendly little parlor game. Lives are at stake. Yours, for example. Valenti, Raines, Medina. People cheat in these situations.”

  Manny didn’t think he had to point out that he and Fred were cheating from the git-go. That wasn’t the point. The point was to build your case from what you decide are the facts you’re going to use. They were doing that very well. He didn’t want Fred anywhere near a polygraph. Though the results of a lie-detector test were not admissible at trial, it could be a damaging tool, especially at the pre-hearing stage. He stopped at his window, looked down the street, across at the Pyramid. He walked over to his desk again. “I can’t let you do it, Fred.”

  “So we’re just going to pack it in, admit that we lied.”

  “It’s not that!”

  “It even seems like it’s that to me. Think what the D.A. will do with it.”

  “The D.A. will just continue plodding along.”

  “And drop Medina.”

  Gubicza hung his head, putting his weight on the back of his chair. “They will probably not pursue it with much vigor,” he admitted.

  “But Medina has to be punished.”

  “Fred, compare that good—Medina being punished—with the much greater good of you not going to jail for murder.” He hated to raise his voice, but it was happening. “If they trip you up on Raines and Valenti, not only do those two guys walk, it’s likely you go down. And once they’ve got you seated and hooked up to a polygraph, they might just ask you anything. And it might not be about Hector Medina and Poppy.”

  “So just make them promise they won’t.”

  Gubicza cleared his throat. “Make them promise they won’t,” he repeated.

  “Sure. Make that a condition.”

  “Don’t you think that request might be showing our hand just a little bit?”

  “How?” Warming to it now, Treadwell was making his case. “Look, they want to talk about Hector Medina, we say okay, but that’s all. They’ll understand that. I mean, we don’t want to muck around with the murder investigation. This is a separate issue. Tied in, maybe, but separate. We build my credibility, we get Hector, it’s perfect.”

  “Quit saying that, Fred. Nothing’s perfect.” He sat back down in his leather chair. “God, I hate this kind of Monday,” he said.

  * * *

  Fifteen blocks downtown Art Drysdale hung up his telephone and walked down to his boss’s office. He nodded to Dorothy, Locke’s secretary, and just kept going. Christopher Locke, the elected District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, was on the telephone himself, seated at his desk, and waved his old friend to sit down. Instead, Drysdale went back outside and helped himself to a cup of coffee.

  “How’s business?” he asked Dorothy, planting himself on a corner of her desk.

  Before she could answer, Locke called from the other room. “Art!”

  Drysdale shrugged. “We’ve got to do this more often,” he said to Dorothy, then whispered, “Do me a favor, love, and keep the phone quiet for about two minutes.” He went back through the doors, closing them behind him.

  “What?” Locke said. He was studying a file on his desk and didn’t look up.

  “That’s why they keep electing you,” Drysdale said. “The warm, charming exterior. The man behind the office.”

  Locke sighed, shaking his head, keeping it down. “What?” he repeated.

  “You owe me a buck,” Drysdale said.

  It took a second, but then Locke stopped reading and brought his eyes up to meet Drysdale’s. “Get out of here,” he said.

  “Swear to God.”

  “Gubicza agreed to it?”

  “With conditions.”

  “What? That we don’t ask any questions?”

  “Nothing about Raines and Valenti.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “I agreed, of course.”

  “So what are you gonna do?”

  “I said, and I quote, ‘On my mother’s grave I will never mention those names or anything about those cases.”’

  “So how are you going to bring them up.”

  Drysdale sipped at his coffee. “Well, I thought I’d have the polygraph set up downtown here. That way I’ll avoid the temptation to go stand on my mother’s grave, may she rest in peace. Which is where I said I wouldn’t bring up the murder raps.”

  Samson wasn’t really in Dido’s class, or Louis Baker’s. He had this sloppy way, heavy, not tight, with long dreadlocks none too clean, and didn’t put out the kind of vibe Dido had done, where when it wasn’t business he was okay. Dido could laugh and shoot a hoop or two. He bought Lace his shoes. Like that.

  And even Baker, you could talk to him. Stuff about the cut, this an’ that, the paint, the Mama. If Dido had to go, Lace could have maybe gone in with Louis—at least until Louis killed Dido. Then maybe not. But if Dido had just died, or moved on, ‘stead of Louis having done it …

  Yeah, but that hadn’t gone down at all. Now they was both of ‘em clear of the cut, and Samson was a whole different breed of badness moving in.

  Like here Monday not yet noon, cold as the landlord, Lace and Jumpup only sitting at the curb and he come by just to show ‘em and kick ‘em into the street. Now what’s that shit?

  “This my cut now,” he say, and they watch him walk, one end to the other, couple of his troops tagging.

  Where they—he and Jumpup—s’pose to go now?

  Nat Glitsky was seventy-two years old and spent most of his time now (since Emma had died) in the synagogue at Fulton and Arguello, which was where his son Abe had picked him up.

  They drove north up Park Presidio through the city and took Lombard over to Van Ness, then to Broadway through the tunnel and into North Beach. Nat had a fondness for big Italian lunches, and if his son was paying you couldn’t do better than Capp’s, which had been serving the same meals since he was dating Emma. It had been one of the few good restaurants he could take
her to that didn’t mind having a black woman eating with the whites. Hard to remember those times, especially now when there was every kind of humanity seated at the tables.

  Nat kept his yarmulke on but hung his jacket on the back of his chair. The waiter came and he said he’d have a Negroni—Campari, bitters and gin.

  “How can you drink that medicine?” Abe asked after he’d ordered his iced tea.

  Nat patted the hand of his only child. There certainly was a lot of Emma in him—she hadn’t much cared for Negronis either. He wondered if maybe it was something about being part or all black. Negroni. Would he try to develop a taste for a drink called a Hymonie or a Kiker?

  But his son was thrashing in deeper waters. All during the ride over here they’d been talking about Abe’s projected move to Los Angeles. Nat wasn’t for it. What was he going to do without his family around? But he didn’t bring that up yet. No sense in getting all riled up about a maybe. And Abe was still just talking—he hadn’t made up his mind. At least Nat didn’t think so. Not yet …

  And if Nat knew Abe, it wasn’t so much even the move to L.A. that he needed to talk about. That was just a decision and Abe had never had a problem with decisions. At least, not to talk to his father about. What Abe had trouble with sometimes was lining up the crosshairs so he could get his bead on the real issue. Well, everybody had that problem, Nat thought. Decisions tended to make themselves once you had everything else lined up. Most people just didn’t take the time, acted impulsively, made the wrong moves.

  Not Abe, though, not usually, anyway. Which was why they were sitting here now.

  Their drinks arrived and they clinked their glasses. “L’chaim.”

  Nat sipped, put the glass down and made a kissing sound two or three times, savoring the taste in his mouth. At least Abe looked well rested. And why not? He had Flo, the great kids, the important stuff worked out. But he listened while Abe kept repeating himself about his job this, the job that, nobody cared, some friend of his—Hardy—with a problem. Finally he held his hand up.

  “So what are you saying here?” he asked, then shrugged. “The job isn’t good? So change the job. You don’t have to do the same job somewhere else.”

  “But I’m a cop, Dad. It’s what I do.”

  “You do something else. You’re a man first. Am I right?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Of course I am. Now you listen to me. How old are you? Not a child, okay? So. You know a job. A job is the same I don’t care where you are. You telling me a cop in New York or Tel Aviv is different than a cop in San Francisco? Or Los Angeles? No. I don’t believe it. More, I know it. Look at me. I am—before I retire—by the grace of God I have a trade. I can fix things. First I’m a kid in Delaware—Delaware! I know you know this but listen. I’m fixing bicycles and sewing machines in Delaware. I go to school. I can do things with engines and now they start calling me an engineer and I get a job in California in a little shop. So the shop gets bigger and they sell it to somebody else. I don’t like how they do business. I move on. Another shop. Two, three. All the while I’m raising you and trying to keep your mother happy, which you and I know is some kind of full-time endeavor. And you know what I find? The job is a job. I don’t care if it’s old Mr. Levine’s shop on DuPont Street or Lockheed down in San Carlos. You do your job and you get paid so you can live your life. But your job is not your life.”

  Nat lifted his glass again, puckered, shook his finger at his son. “You should know this, Abraham. This is not nuclear physics we’re discussing here.”

  Abe grinned, tightening the scar through his lips. “Okay. What else am I gonna do?”

  “What do you wanna do?”

  “I want to be a cop.”

  “You can’t be a cop here in San Francisco?”

  “What have I been telling you?”

  “Tell the truth, I don’t know. Some people are making gold bricks. Some others taking the easy way. So what? What does that have to do with you?”

  “It affects how I do my job.”

  “Why is that? You tell me why that is.”

  “Come on, Dad. There’s all kinds of cooperation needed to finish a case, any case.”

  “Baloney. Excuse me, Abraham, but kosher baloney.”

  Abe shook his head. “You don’t know.”

  “I don’t know? You telling me I don’t know?” He reached over the small table and rested his hand over his son’s. “Look, twenty years ago, you’re in school, your mother’s starting to get sick, they hire a new supervisor they call a vice-president at the Ford Plant over to Fremont, you remember the place. So the new man tells me—I am quality control manager at this time—he tells me we have to cut costs, don’t spend so much time checking everything. I tell him cut costs doesn’t mean cut corners. He looks at me like I’m from Mars. We got to cut costs, he says. Bottom line. So. It’s my job. I can’t quit. I mean, I can, but is it worth it for the trouble to you and your mother? No, it’s not.”

  “And the moral is?”

  “The moral is, this man makes it hard to do my job. He cuts staff, hours, ups production schedules. Damn near impossible. We having the special?”

  The waiter was standing over them, taking their orders. The special started with soup and bread and proceeded through pasta, salad, a main course (baked fish today), ice cream (spumoni), and coffee.

  “So what happened?” Abe asked.

  “So eventually they shut down the plant.”

  Abe chewed bread for a minute. “Did I miss something?”

  “The point is, while there was a job to do, I kept doing it right. But there’s always something, everywhere you go.” He buttered some bread of his own. “All I’m saying is this … you want to be a cop, don’t kid yourself it’ll be different in L.A. You’re either supported or you’re not, but what does it matter? You’re raising your family, you’re doing something worthwhile.”

  “But—”

  “But what you don’t do,” Nat interrupted, “is you don’t do it half-assed.” He looked up at the waiter, who had brought the soup and a carafe of red wine. “Bring a glass for my son here, would you?” he said. “He’s taking a day off.”

  Now see?” Abe said, his spoonful of spumoni halfway to his mouth. “The very case I’ve been talking about.” He indicated a young burly man who was nodding his way across the room. Nat always said it could be a very small world sometimes.

  “You eat your ice cream. Have another cup of coffee. I think I’ll just go have a word with him.”

  Nat shrugged. “How could it hurt?”

  The man was talking to the waiter as Abe pulled out a chair and sat himself backward on it. “Don’t mind me,” he said. Then, to the waiter, “I’d like an herb tea, please. His tab. That right, Johnny?”

  “Sure, Sergeant.”

  Glitsky put on a smile and asked Johnny LaGuardia how he was doing. He was doing fine. He tucked his napkin in over his tie and rearranged the silverware a little in front of him. He kept his sports coat on, probably for the same reason Abe hadn’t taken his off. It was awkward, showing your piece in a public place.

  He’d been a very sweet-faced teenager, Abe supposed, but now, in his late twenties, there was starting to be a fleshiness under his cheeks and just a hint, a premonition, of jowls. His eyebrows were starting to meet over his fighter’s nose, and his thin forehead, under the still thick black hair, was shiny with oil. He’d shaved very close, and Abe could see the tiny capillaries through the stretched skin on his face, could smell the overstrong cologne. Johnny fiddled with his water glass now. He wore three heavy rings on his right hand.

  “I’m here with my father,” Abe said, motioning over to where Nat was.

  “That’s nice,” Johnny said. He looked over, creased his brow, came back to Abe. “He must of left.”

  Half-turning, Abe saw that he hadn’t. “Old guy with the skullcap on. That’s my dad.”

  He enjoyed watching Johnny having trouble doing the math. “Yeah,
well, it’s good to get out with the old man,” he said.

  The waiter brought Johnny a beer and Abe his herb tea. They both took small sips, Abe waiting it out. Finally, Johnny put the glass down. “So what’s going on?” he asked.

  “Your name came up the other day. Then I’m in here eating lunch and here you are and I think what a coincidence. I think maybe we can talk and it saves me two or three days of running around.”

  “How’d my name come up?”

  Abe pulled the chair right up against the table, lowering his voice. “That’s the thing, Johnny. Your name came up talking about prints we found at the scene of a murder.”

  Johnny shook his head. “Goddamn.”

  “What?”

  “Rusty Ingraham, right?” Johnny drank off half his beer, put it on the table, belched politely and said, “Shit, I knew it.”

  “Knew what, Johnny?”

  “You lose your temper, you get in trouble.”

  “Yeah, that happens a lot. You lose your temper with Rusty?”

  “Hey, I didn’t kill him.”

  “Nobody said you killed him.”

  “You think I killed him, you’re wrong. The girl neither.”

  “Read my lips, Johnny, we don’t think you killed them. We got another suspect in custody at County Hospital. We think he killed them, which is why he’s under arrest. But what I was curious about was your fingerprints. And you knew the girl was there?”

  “She was already dead.”

  “And Rusty? Was he already dead?”

  Johnny shook his head. “I never saw no Rusty. The girl was in the hall blocking the back of the place. I took a look at her and didn’t do, like, the inventory.”

  “You just took off?”

  “Hey, Sergeant, what am I gonna do? Call the cops? What do you think they do they find me with a couple stiffs?”