John Lescroart - The Vig

"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."

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 barechested, 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 Nescafe 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 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.

He kept staring at the gun. People got shot resisting arrest. "You got another piece on you?" he asked. "Gonna plant me?"

It surprised him, the reaction. The Man straightened up a little, smiled that smile again, slowly pulled at the flap of his jacket and holstered the weapon.

"Here's the message," the Man said. "If I find even one of your hairs at Ingraham's place, some cloth we can't match in his closet, a fingerprint, anything, you're on the bus. You hear me?"

What Baker heard was We got nothing on you.

His legs started firming up again.

But the Man kept talking. "And the other thing is this. The other D.A., Hardy. You remember Hardy?"

Baker nodded.

"Hardy is a friend of mine. If Hardy winds up dead for any reason, I'm not going to care about evidence. I'm talking you and me, and I'm hoping you hear me."