The Vig

by John Lescroart

The eyes half close, call it a nod.

  “The car you guys drove in—you remember what color it was?”

  It come down to this shit? What kind of games these honkies playing?

  He opened his eyes again. Everything foggy. His lung hurting, his throat sore. Hardy, though, focused, right in his face.

  Louis took in a labored breath. What the hell? Nothing to lose. “Blue,” he said.

  And it brought on a cough again.

  The Man saying, “Come on, let’s go.”

  Then they gone.

  It might have been a lucky guess …

  You could throw darts and reach this Zenlike stage of pure contemplation, or you could sit with a bunch of regulars at the bar of the Shamrock and drink four Irish whiskeys. Poured by Lynne and then Moses, call it the equivalent of six.

  When Hardy had come in at six-thirty things hadn’t yet picked up. Lynne Leish was still tending, working overtime because of Hardy’s vacation, and he’d taken what he hoped was some good-natured abuse about his lifestyle, time off, pursuit of his other interests.

  Then Moses McGuire coming on seven to two, taking ten with Hardy in a different vein.

  The two guys, best friends, co-owners of the bar, shared a postage-stamp table back over by the dartboards. Hardy was working on his first Irish, Moses as always went with his single malt, The MaCallan.

  “So do I have to ask?”

  Hardy again remembered pulling Moses, his legs shot up, out from enemy fire, picking up some lead in his own shoulder in the process. Moses hiring him when he’d changed careers after the death of his son.

  “I’m not playing any games with her, if that’s what you mean.”

  “If I thought that, your face would already be broken.”

  Moses had no fear of a fist in the face. You run an Irish bar, even if you’re a Ph.D. in philosophy, as Moses was, it comes with the territory. His own nose, he said, liked to get rearranged once a year whether it needed it or not.

  “I don’t know. Something’s happening. I don’t think she knows exactly either. She call you?”

  “No. I called her. Goes four or five days I don’t hear from her and I start to worry.”

  The Mose had raised his sister from the time she was ten. Hardy knew Moses only cared deeply about ten things in the universe, and eight of them were Frannie.

  “So what’d she say?”

  “That you were hiding out there a while.” Moses leaned forward, elbows on the tiny table. “But I don’t know, something about the tone.”

  Hardy finished his drink, deciding the night wouldn’t be one of pure reason, and signaled Lynne to bring over another round. He put his index finger in the new drink, stirring.

  “Anyway,” Moses said, “it came out.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know, Diz. She’s my baby. I still have a hard time thinking of her as all grown up, which I also know she is.” The lines deepened around his already sunken eyes. With his black beard shot now with gray, Moses was Hardy’s vision of God before he got real old. He shrugged. “It just worries me. I don’t want to get her hurt any more.”

  “I’m not gonna hurt her, Mose. Whatever comes down, that’s not happening.”

  “I mean, I think she probably wants what she had with Eddie—plans and family stuff. A man comes home every night.”

  “Maybe she wants that. I don’t think she’s very sure what she wants.”

  “She wants the baby. I think she wants a father for the baby.”

  “Eddie was the father, Mose. Nothing is changing that.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Hardy knew. He sipped some whiskey. “She’ll likely let me know when she figures it out.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I figure it out. And then it moves ahead, or it doesn’t, right? Nothing got planned here, Mose. It just happened. It’s real good, but Frannie doesn’t know where she wants to take it, and I’m not sure either. I don’t know where Jane fits in. I’m a mess. What can I tell you?”

  Moses tipped his glass up. It was getting on to seven and he knew Lynne wanted to go home. “You can tell me when you’re coming back to work,” he said. Then, standing, starting for the bar, “I liked you better when you weren’t dating …”

  Now, three hours later, well into a pretty serious right-brain workout, Hardy tapped the bar gently with another empty glass. He sat at the front now, near the window, and Moses would come down and sit on his stool behind the bar whenever there was a lull.

  “It probably was just a lucky guess.”

  “Yeah, I guess there aren’t that many colors to choose from.”

  Moses hit him again, lots of ice, half a shot. Nurse ‘em.

  “Hardy,” he said, leaning over, talking quietly, “you and I know for a fact that there’s only three colors anybody ever mentions. Watch this.”

  Moses walked the length of the bar, maybe a dozen customers on stools, drinking, talking, making the moves. He put a fresh napkin and a pencil in front of each one. “Kind patrons,” he said, loud, the gregarious bartender, “listen up a second. Free-drink contest.” As always, it got their attention. “Quick, don’t think, write down the first color comes to your mind. Quick!” He was already picking up the first napkins.

  “Who wins the drink?”

  “Hold on, hold on.”

  He was back down by Hardy. “Okay, you be the impartial judge.”

  “McGuire, what’s the contest? Who gets the drink? Anything we want?”

  “Seven blues, four greens, two reds,” Hardy said.

  Moses held his hands up. “Sorry,” he announced, “nobody wins, but thanks for playing.”

  “That’s not a fair contest,” one of the women complained. “What were we going for?”

  “Anything but blue, red, or green would have gotten the drink,” Moses said.

  As the mumbling died down, a couple of people saying they were going to pick yellow, Moses told Hardy you occasionally did get a yellow.

  “Well, that was sure a good time,” Hardy said, “but the point?”

  “The point is your man Baker had a good chance of saying blue even if he’d never seen your friend’s car.”

  “But it was blue.”

  “And if it was …?”

  “Then Rusty Was lying to me about it being stolen.”

  Someone called for a drink and Moses went down to pour.

  Why would someone you hadn’t seen in years appear out of the—pardon the word—blue and tell you a lie? Hardy was getting muscle fatigue of the right brain. He pushed his glass to the back edge of the bar.

  Wait a minute, he told himself. What if he somehow got his car that afternoon? He got on the bus across the street from here, then went downtown, stopping to order a handgun he’d have to wait three days for.

  The computer said the car was still missing. But then the computer lagged several days behind. If it still had Louis Baker in San Quentin, it wouldn’t have the car returned either. Maybe he’d check again tomorrow.

  Moses was on the stool in front of him again. Hardy raised his eyes. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  “Treat it carefully. It’s in a strange place.”

  Hardy pulled his glass up, cradling it between his hands. “Rusty’s got a monster vig payment, right?”

  Moses nodded.

  “Okay, he comes into a lot of this insurance money, he knows Louis Baker is getting out of jail and has threatened to kill him. Maybe he even starts fantasizing maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Louis did kill him—that would at least get him out from under the vig—”

  “So he sets himself up to get killed? Get serious.”

  Hardy shook his head. “He sets himself up to look like he’s been killed. The whole thing’s a scam. He just wants to look dead, get the loan sharks off him.”

  “Why doesn’t he move, disappear?”

  “Because you don’t move away from mob money. They find you, I don’t care w
here. It’s an honor thing. But if you’re dead …”

  “If you’re dead they don’t look …”

  “Right. Give me some coffee, would you? And get rid of this.”

  Hardy watched Moses move, filling a few other drink orders at the bar as he passed, pouring his coffee. Hardy got his darts out from his jacket pocket and opened the leather case on the bar. He rubbed his fingers over the worn velvet inside.

  One other thing the Shamrock did right was make great coffee. Ninety percent of it was served in what they called Irish coffee, which made Hardy puke. Three good liquids combined to make one bad drink. But when you wanted a cup of coffee, the straight stuff couldn’t be beat.

  “I don’t know, Diz, there’s lots of holes. Why’d he come see you?”

  “Because I tie Baker to him. If I’m not in it, who finds out about Baker?”

  “Weren’t his prints at Rusty’s place? That ties him to it.”

  “I don’t know, Mose. It’s not as good as me, an ex-D.A., making sure everybody knows Baker had a motive, was fresh out of jail, you name it. Plus, because I’m running now too, I try like hell to get Baker put away, and did it, too, didn’t I?”

  “He was coming after you.”

  “I’m not saying he wasn’t. Look, if Rusty’s going to get out from under his vig, he’s got to be dead, not MIA. I’m his corroboration. Without the threat, he’d just be a missing person, wouldn’t he? Now, with me helping him, he’s presumed dead.”

  “His blood was on the bed, Diz. And why did he buy a gun he was never going to use?”

  Hardy leaned over the bar, his elbows almost in the trough. “Rusty was the great American lawyer. Never lost a case. You can bet he’s a very thorough guy who wanted his scam to work. And you know what genius is, Mose? It’s endless attention to detail.”

  Moses went to pour a drink.

  Hardy fingered his darts, sipped his coffee. Tried to picture Rusty Ingraham at the bottom of the ocean.

  Couldn’t do it. Not anymore.

  22

  Lace removed a board from the side of the stoop at the place Samson mostly stayed. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but he hadn’t been getting any sleep to speak of anyway, and he wanted some darkness.

  Jumpup, he’d gone ‘til things chilled out over to his cousins at Hunters Point, but Lace lived here and he wasn’t leaving. This be his home turf and, he starting to think, woe betide the man who fucks with it.

  Fighting his fear of rats and whatever else might live in there, Lace reached his hand far into the dark hole under the steps. He patted the ground inside, his teeth chattering. He hoping nobody hears it inside.

  Nothing.

  He sat, arms now tucked into his pits, huddled in the jacket, letting the fear subside.

  It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be wrong.

  The shaking still there, he forced his hand again into the cold and silent space. Retraced what he’d just done, making himself feel the stones, the chunks of rotting wood, a piece of moldy cloth that felt like a dead animal. Reaching back, up, to the front, seeing the yellow rat eyes about to snap at him, take a finger, give him the rabies. He closed his eyes, feeling.

  Way in, up in the front, wrapped in the freezing oily animal cloth, he felt the package. The gun felt heavy in his hands.

  The strip of light in the east hadn’t widened by a hair and he was walking now, the board back over the hole, in place, his pocket heavy, shoelaces trailing around his feet.

  Over to the Mama’s, around to the front door by the street, away from the view of the cuts. No one around. Nothing moving.

  After some knocks he heard somebody moving inside. Then, enormous in a white housecoat, Mama opened the door a crack. Seeing it was Lace, she let him in.

  “What time it, child? You all right?”

  Lace closed the door behind him and waited for Mama to sit on the couch next to the dim light before he came over and sat at the other end. He noticed that the window over the couch had been covered over again with cardboard. She pulled a knitted cover up over her body, tucking her feet under her giant thighs.

  “Now,” she said, “what you doing?”

  Lace took the gun, still wrapped in an old shirt sleeve, out of his pocket. He started pulling it out from the cloth. “We gotta tell somebody,” he said.

  The Mama wasn’t taking her eyes from the gun.

  “This the piece killed Dido, Mama,” Lace said. “Ain’t no Louis Baker kill him. This Samson’s piece.”

  The Mama nodded. “Who we fixin’ to tell about it? You want to put it down?”

  Lace had it unwrapped. “It’s loaded still,” he said. He turned the barrel toward himself.

  “Don’t!”

  He froze. “What?”

  “Just put it down! Put it down! Thing go off by itself then what? Put that thing down! On the floor!”

  He leaned over and laid it down.

  The Mama let out a breath, another one. “They’s dangerous, guns. Where you get that one?”

  “It’s Samson’s. It was Samson’s.”

  “You said that.”

  “And that mean Louis, he didn’t kill Dido.”

  “Child, I knew that. Louis never hurt nobody anymore. He just want to set up house. ‘Til they don’t leave him alone.”

  “But he run.”

  “You run, too, child, they come after you.”

  Lace put his back up against the cushions. His red-rimmed eyes suddenly burned—up all night waiting for his chance, light enough to see where he’s going, dark enough to get away.

  He was safe here with Mama now, and Samson didn’t have the gun. He had it. Seemed that ought to change the way things felt.

  “You know, Mama, runnin’. Don’t that make them think you did it, too?”

  Bundled in her blanket, her big head bobbed. “That’s right.”

  “So Louis ran and he saying he did it?”

  “But he don’t run and they take him down for it.”

  “But now he run and they got him anyway.”

  “That often the way, child.” She made a clucking noise, shifting her bulk, impatient. “This ain’t be the news. You go bad with the law, he keep you bad. Don’t matter what you do, you the first body they come at.”

  “But they got Louis for Dido, and he don’t kill Dido. This gun prove that.”

  “All right,” the Mama said. “What?”

  “So we let it on to the Man.”

  She labored to pull herself up. “Here’s what happen then. You listen up now. The Man come here and you talk about Louis and that gun there. Then he say, ‘Interesting, and how come it be you now holding this piece?’ And next you know you down there next to Louis. You like that?”

  “It won’t be …”

  She leaned forward and rested a meaty hand on his thin leg. “There ain’t nobody with Louis more than me. He don’t kill Dido and maybe it come out, but it don’t come out with you going to the Man. He just resent you interferin’. You got a problem, you best take care of it yourself.”

  “And Louis …?”

  “Louis take care of hisself, too.”

  “Seem like I ought to talk to someone. Get some help. Help Louis out.”

  She gently tightened her grip on his thigh. “I know it seem like that,” she said, “but that ain’t be how it works.”

  It wasn’t that Abe didn’t believe that coincidences occurred. You could be humming a song and have it turn up on the radio. Somebody’s on the phone when you were just about to call them. That kind of thing.

  But when you mentioned, say, a Johnny LaGuardia to a potential suspect in a murder investigation like, say, Hector Medina, one day, and the next day you find yourself at a Dumpster behind the Wax Museum in Fisherman’s Wharf, looking at the holes in Johnny’s head, it made you wonder.

  Two holes. One in the back and one at the temple. Either one would’ve done the job fine by itself.

  Abe wondered if Medina’s logbook showed that he’d worked a double shi
ft all last night. He wondered if he had some extra money lying around, if he were at work today.

  Maneuvering through the techs, Abe cleared the morning shade in the alley and stood on the sidewalk in the bright sun. Knowing that Glitsky had interviewed Johnny recently, Batiste had called Abe at home as soon as the call with the tentative I.D. came in. Abe had called Hardy out of courtesy. Hardy had been groggy, perhaps hungover, but he said he’d be there.

  Now he was walking up wearing corduroys, hiking boots, a “Members Only” jacket over a turtleneck. Abe cocked his head back toward the alley and started walking. Hardy fell in beside him. They lifted the yellow tape.

  “Johnny LaGuardia?” Hardy said.

  “The late great.”

  They both studied the body, still uncovered, now laid out on a stretcher. One tassled brown loafer was still on. His sport coat hung open revealing a salmon-colored shirt half-tucked into some stylish pleated Italian trousers. His shoulder holster was empty.

  “The gun was on him when we got here,” Abe said, “in case you were wondering.”

  “So he knew whoever it was.”

  Abe nodded. “Safe bet.”

  Johnny’s face, surprisingly to Hardy, showed no sign of exit wounds. “Small caliber, huh?”

  “Must have been,” Abe said. “Looks like twenty-two or twenty-five.”

  “Again,” Hardy said.

  “I noticed. And it didn’t go down here either,” Abe said. “He was dumped.” He motioned to the Dumpster. “Symbolism, yet.”

  Hardy looked another minute. “You had coffee yet?”

  A black Chrysler LeBaron pulled into the mouth of the alley. A chauffeur stepped out and walked around the front of the car. Abe waited, watching.

  “Who’s that?” Hardy asked.

  The Angel sat in the backseat, holding hands with Doreen Biaggi. She had been staying in his upstairs room since Sunday, taking meals with the family. Now she wore sunglasses to cover her black eye. The swelling on her cheek was still visible. Tortoni squeezed her hand. “Va bene?”

  She nodded. Matteo had come to the door and opened it. He took Doreen’s hand and helped her out of the seat. Tortoni got out his own side and glanced down at the area surrounded by the police tape. He took a thin cigar from his inside pocket and rubbed it between his fingers, breathing in the energizing odors of garbage and crab smell. He lit the cigar, flushed in the pleasure this perfect morning was giving him. But he kept his face expressionless. He was supposed to be in pain here.