John Lescroart - The Vig

Out the window behind Gubicza's head the sky was still light. Although it was a Saturday, Manny Gubicza was in full lawyer regalia. The coat of his three-piece suit was hung onto a wooden valet just behind and to the left of his chair. There were the purple suspenders and matching purple tie, the light lavender silk handmade shirt with the monogram MAG stitched in slightly darker color over the breast pocket. The shirt was French-cuffed, of course, and now with the cuffs pulled back for the manicure, the ruby cufflinks sat a couple of inches apart on the desk, staring at Treadwell like the eyes of a drunk bulldog.

"All in all, I think it's worth the risk," Gubicza was saying. "We can't just do nothing."

Treadwell was still in shock and mourning. After Hector Medina had left the night before, he had cried himself out, then finally called Manny and made this appointment to discuss their strategy. This morning he had made the arrangements to bury Poppy and left him off at the vet's. It had been the longest, saddest day of his life.

"Is there any way we can kill him?" Treadwell asked. "I'd rather kill him than anything else."

Gubicza shook his head. "Fred, we're trying to get you off on a double murder. I don't think, strategically, it'd be wise to kill someone else right now."

"I don't care."

Gubicza glanced at the manicurist, who didn't look up. "I know you're hurting. It's natural." He started playing with one of the cufflinks. "But it's my job to keep you out of jail. I am the first to admit I find this behavior atrocious. Unbelievable, really. I've never heard of anything like it. I can't believe the police would be so stupid."

"He wasn't the police. I don't believe he was the police."

Gubicza flicked his right hand dismissively. "Of course he is. Officially or not, he represented them, and it seems to me this is a death threat against you."

"But he killed Poppy!"

"Yes, I know. That's horrible, it is, Fred. But I think what we must concern ourselves with is how to respond to this threat against you."

Treadwell was leaning forward in the brocaded loveseat. "I want to punish him."

"Of course you do. And that's the right approach. I suggest we just continue with our original strategy. In a sense, our case is stronger, since this Medina fellow really was there and did damage, whereas in the other charge… well, you know, the evidence with them is rather slim."

"My ankle is really broken. That's real."

Gubicza smiled, warm as a toad. "Yes, and we know how that really happened, don't we? I'm not sure we want to get into that."

Treadwell sat back and pulled his cast up to rest on the loveseat. Outside it had darkened, it seemed, all at once.

The manicurist finished Gubicza's right hand and was moving the other side of his chair, bringing his table with him. The lawyer pushed a panel on his desk and the lights in the room became brighter. He reached out and pulled the chain on a small Tiffany-style lamp on his desk, holding his palm under it, admiring the manicurist's completed handiwork. "Very nice," he said.

"But what about what Medina said, about no one believing me this time?"

"Why would you lie about it? Why would you kill your own beloved pet?" He laid his left hand on the table now, and the manicurist began. "No. Don't forget that the community is our strength. They will believe you. You are being harassed by the bigotry of the straight cops. And incidentally," he said, "if we don't present a pretty convincing case, you get charged with a couple of killings you did…" He covered the manicurist's hand with his own and squeezed. "You didn't hear that, David." The lawyer came back to Treadwell. "Honestly, Fred. This could be a very good thing for our case." He almost said, "I wish I'd thought of doing it myself."

When he got back to the parking lot Louis Baker stood on the side of the court and watched six boys playing basketball. The court was between his car-Mama's car-and where he now stood, and after nearly an hour he decided no one was watching it.

He could be wrong, but he had a hand on the gun in his pocket as he crossed the no-man's-land in case it came to something.

He looked different. With his stolen money he had gone into the St Vincent de Paul store and bought himself some clothes that fit, traded in the tennis shoes for hiking boots, picked up a Forty-Niners jacket, some sunglasses and a mock leather driving cap. He shaved in the bathroom of a gas station on Geary before walking back to his car.

He knew the address-he had burned it into his mind nine years ago. Turning left out of the lot on Fillmore, he headed up to Jackson Street, where Hardy had lived, might still live-you never knew. Either way he'd find him soon enough.

It was funny with Rusty Ingraham dead now, and Dido, and how the unexpected sometimes just put things in your hands. You left the joint, you maybe got intentions to go a certain way, but things happened around you and pretty soon you're sailing along like you never gave a thought to direction. The wind blew, you'd be a fool to fight it.

And now they wanted him for murder again, like they'd always done. There's trouble, first they looked to him. This time he hadn't even gotten the smell of the prison soap off him before the hassling began. Okay. Just so he knew.

It wasn't like they said it would be, but then he hadn't really believed them anyway. But he wondered why they spent so much time trying to convince the cons with the lie. In the House, see, they kept telling you that things would be different on the outside. There're all kinds of agencies and people set up to get you going straight. Which, you know, the first year you just roll your eyes and figure they got to tell you something-might as well be a fairytale. You're in the joint a while, though, and it starts sounding possible, like, maybe there really are jobs out there.

But none of the guys who'd been out and came back seemed to get those jobs. Which was natural… who was going to hire an ex-con when he can get somebody he might need to trust?

In the end you believed what you wanted to believe. And the proof was here. Louis Baker, out about three days, doesn't need no good intentions no more. Hard to live up to anyway. Now, since he's going down for it anyway, he's going to do something to make himself feel good.

He pulled into the curb under a streetlamp across from the old Victorian. There was one light in the front window, the kind people left on when they weren't home.

Louis got out of the car, put his hands in his jacket pocket, where the gun was, and walked over, up the steps, rang the doorbell. He took a couple of deep breaths and squeezed the grip on the gun.

After no one answered he tried the door, but a glance had already told him that would be a tough way in. There was a new, heavy-looking deadbolt set into the door just above the knob.

But going in the front door wasn't his style anyway. He descended the stoop and walked along the side of the house, where a cement strip drained the area between this Victorian and the building nearly flush up against it. There were three windows in that wall, all of them locked.

Coming around the back corner, he kicked the metal lid of a garbage can and it skidded for what seemed like ten seconds, sounding like a small army passing through. Several dogs started barking and Louis pressed himself deep into the shadows up against the house.

The dogs were good, he thought. Dogs were always knocking over garbage cans. Cats, too. Even raccoons. He'd wait. Prison had made him good at waiting. It would get quiet again.

He craned his neck up around him. It was maybe fifteen feet to what looked in the darkness to be a tall back fence on the other side of which an apartment building rose five or six stories. Each story had about six windows facing him, some lit, but he saw no silhouette that came to look down at the noise. On either side there wasn't even a fence-the buildings started at the property line. This would be a bad place to get trapped. There was no way out except back up the shoulder-width alley he had just come down.