John Lescroart - The Vig

"But it was half mine, that money. It was half mine."

"I'm sorry, but the check was made out to her, not to both of you."

"I mean, we were married. Separated but married. Married when she got into the accident."

What could he say? The man kept talking. "It was amicable, the separation. We agreed to split everything. And we hadn't even filed for divorce yet. Maybe we would've worked it out."

Kevin remembered the way this man's wife had clung to her attorney, had almost gleefully handed over nearly $30,000 in cash to her attorney. Except for the moment during which Kevin had spoken with her privately, she'd never lost physical contact with her attorney. Ray Weir and his wife weren't ever going to have worked anything out. She had a new man, her attorney, and she was clinging on.

Kevin felt a wave of nausea and then the fatigue kicked in again. He sat down two chairs away from where Ray Weir slumped.

The customer looked at him. "So what can I do now?" he asked.

The sun, morning bright, reflected into Kevin's eyes off the shiny mahogany conference table. He closed his eyes against the glare, then forced them open to answer Ray Weir. "I can't help you on that," he said.

Hardy had been out jogging and missed Glitsky's call, which first chided him for moving around so much and being so difficult to get hold of, then telling him about Baker's attempted suicide.

He stood in his office, still sweating, in his shorts and sweatshirt. The weather had warmed up again.

Why had Baker tried to kill himself?

Hardy's first take was that it was an admission of guilt, another nail in his coffin. Like Abe, he kept having these ambivalent feelings about old Louis. Since he'd talked to Baker the other day and gotten to know Ray Weir, now that Hector Medina was killing dogs, Hardy had pretty much convinced himself that, whatever else Louis Baker had done, and no doubt it was plenty, he hadn't killed Maxine Weir.

And it wasn't so much that Baker had denied anything. That would have been easy enough to discount. No. What had been compelling was Baker's seemingly genuine ignorance of Maxine's presence on the barge. Even if you were pretty inured to killing people, the least you'd do is notice.

Of course, the fact that he hadn't killed Maxine didn't absolutely necessarily mean he hadn't killed Rusty, but that stretch, in the real world, was too long for Hardy's reach.

And that left the question of why Baker had been at Rusty's in the first place. It was pretty thin. Hardy tried to picture Rusty taking Baker back to the barge. Gun in hand. Not very likely…

But why not? After all, how well had he known Rusty? Rusty had seemed much like himself. An ex-D.A., a guy from Hardy's own club-someone who'd been through some shit and now just wanted to be left alone. That's why he'd come to see Hardy in the first place, wasn't it? He'd been afraid. Or he'd sure seemed afraid, enough to convince Hardy, who had no reason to be skeptical about it. Matter of fact, he'd infected Hardy with the fear bug. So…?

But had Rusty really been so much like him? Okay, there were the externals, which were similar, but there was also the description he'd gotten from Karen Moore of a pretty twisted, driven guy-the compulsive gambler, the user of women.

So it came down to who he believed-Louis Baker or Rusty. Not easy. Not anymore. He didn't believe that Rusty had had a gun-else why would he have stopped at the gun shop and ordered another one that he couldn't pick up for three days? Except Louis's story about the day's events had some kind of ring to it. In a way it was too farfetched to have been made up. At least completely. Rusty meeting Baker at the bus station to drive him-

Whoa.

What did he drive him in? Rusty had taken the bus to the Shamrock. His own car had been stolen, remember?

Hardy sat on the corner of his desk. The car was a question. The car was maybe key.

How about if Hardy asked Louis and got told that they'd driven in an old model blue Volkswagen Jetta? Well, that would be interesting.

Somehow his darts had found their way into his hands and he was throwing them into the board. One, two, three. Walk in and pull them, go back to the tape line on the floor and do it again. Not aiming, not working on form. Zen and darts.

What if he only knew the color? Or the make?

Okay, Hardy would ask Baker what kind of car they'd driven in. Color, anything. He'd see where that led.

He picked up the phone, got the number to County Hospital and started to push buttons, then stopped himself. Last time, he'd needed Glitsky to get to Baker.

But Abe wasn't in at the Hall. Hadn't been in, no sign he would be in. Hardy wondered where he'd called him from and what he might be doing, then talked to Flo and found that he was not working but avoiding the shop. They were at least still talking about Los Angeles and Abe wanted to keep some distance-more than usual-between himself and the rest of Homicide. Flo said if she heard from him, she'd ask him to call.

He couldn't get the car out of his mind. After a shower and a can of sardines he was back in his office, going over the notes he'd taken at the computer terminal. It wasn't very fertile ground for either analysis or imagination.

He picked up a pen and started writing down everything he could remember about last Wednesday, when Rusty had come into the Shamrock. He'd gotten off the bus. Hardy had remembered his drink-Wild Turkey. He'd told Hardy about Louis Baker getting out, that he'd called the warden at San Quentin to find out the time of release. Then he'd made his proposal that he and Hardy call each other. Finally bringing it around to maybe looking into buying a gun, and what type would be suitable.

Was that it?

Hardy got up, walked around his desk and opened the window in his office. It was after one o'clock and a light warm breeze freshened the room. He stuck his head out to smell the roses, only there weren't any roses around.

Sitting again, he studied what he'd written. Okay, then, impressions. Rusty down and out. Using public transport. Saying he'd called the warden and was told that Louis Baker had cleaned up his act and not buying that. Saying that guns were for 'cop types' like Hardy. Then saying he wanted to buy a gun.

Had the idea just occurred to him? The switch in attitude from guns being for cop types to wanting one for himself?

It slowed Hardy down. Rusty had taken a bus out from downtown. Hardy could imagine him devising his phonecall protection idea, finding where Hardy worked from any number of old mutual acquaintances. But none of that was acting scared-it was more like caution. Rusty hadn't really been frightened. He had been planning to go home. Hell, he had gone home.

But calling San Quentin to find out exactly when Baker was getting released? That, to Hardy, was more than caution. That appeared to be fear. Didn't it?

He stared out the window, back down to his notes. There were two mentions of things he'd found out from the warden at San Quentin-the circumstances surrounding Louis's release and the fact that Louis had been a model prisoner. If Rusty had called out of fear, to find out exactly when he had to start worrying harder, would he have gotten into a discussion at the same time about what kind of guy Louis had become? If you're tied to the tracks and a train is on the way, do you think about whether it's a passenger or a freight?

He must have, or probably might have, called San Quentin two times. So what?

Hardy looked at his silent phone. He wasn't doing anything else. He spoke to four functionaries, perhaps prisoners, before he got to the warden, Jack Hazenkamp.

Hardy had met Hazenkamp a couple of times in his prosecutor days, seen him speak on prison conditions, recidivism rates, the usual. He was a guy who seemed to have spent a lot of time in the military, but during his talks Hardy had found him surprisingly-well, not exactly a liberal, but fairly sympathetic. The cons were his charges, he didn't mollycoddle them, but they were by and large people, not statistics.