John Lescroart - The Vig

"Do you know what you want to do when you get back?"

As though she were sitting in front of him, Hardy shook his head. "No. What I'm trying to do now is figure out what lunacy made me decide I could find Rusty Ingraham down here, if he's alive, if he's here."

"Maybe Abe could somehow get the police down there to help you?"

"Who's going to help a civilian with no hard evidence look for a guy who's considered dead? Abe won't."

"I don't know. When he called"-she paused-"he's your friend, Diz. He really sounded worried, wanted to know where you'd gone, why didn't you tell him, all that."

"It's just not the kind of thing he would understand. That's why he gets paid for what he does."

"Well, he also told me to tell you to come home. The case is closed."

Some parrots screeched in the top of one of the palms. Hardy's stomach tightened. "They found Rusty's body?"

"No, not that. Just a second, he had me write this all down."

His cigar had gone out. The swimmer's wake lapped the pool's edge. Hardy found he was sweating, gripping the receiver white-knuckled.

"Okay," she said, "are you still there?"

She told him that Glitsky said he had questioned a man named Hector Medina as he'd been planning to. The next day, the day Hardy left for Mexico, Hector evidently jumped from the top of the Sir Francis Drake to one of its lower roofs. They found between two and three thousand dollars in cash on him.

"So Abe thinks he killed this man Johnny LaGuardia. And he says it follows that he paid Johnny to kill Rusty Ingraham."

"What about the girl that was with him?"

"Maybe, he says, it was just bad luck she was there. Anyway, that's what Abe seems to think. That Hector Medina realized he was going to get caught for it and couldn't face it."

"Was there a note? Didn't he have a daughter or something?"

"I don't know. I guess no note. Abe would have said, wouldn't he? I mean, in a message for you."

"And Abe said he really thought that's how it went down?"

"Well, he said it tied everything up pretty well."

Lap of water, screech of parrot, the hum of the longdistance connection.

"Diz?"

"He's in L.A. now, interviewing for a job down there. I wonder if maybe he just wanted to feel like his cases were settled."

"Doesn't it make sense to you?"

"I guess. No. Not really."

"Abe told me you'd made a pretty good case that Rusty was dead."

"I know. I did."

"But now you don't believe it?"

"Well, four days and fifteen hundred miles ago I wasn't sure I believed it. Now, I'm here, I might as well give it a day or two more, but I have to say that after today, even if he's alive, finding him doesn't look very promising."

"And what'll you do if you do find him?"

"I don't know. I guess it depends. Have a party, get drunk, tie him up and ride him back to San Francisco. Maybe go to the police here and try to have him extradited-"

"Would you please try to remember he might be dangerous?"

"Okay. I already thought of that."

"I mean it, Dismas."

"I mean it, too, Frannie. What more do you want me to say?"

She waited a beat. "I want you to say you're coming home, that we'll see each other again."

"Okay, I'll say that."

Another beat. "You will?"

"God willin' and the creek don't rise," he said.

The eyes opened to darkness. Over by the opening for the window, where the light would eventually start, there was nothing. Gradually as he looked, the one darkness became several different shades of black and gray-the shapes of the desk, a poster, the window, one of the chairs. Stars flickered dimly in the black sky.

Rusty Ingraham sat up on the hard bed. The girl next to him was asleep, her long hair splaying over her pillow. He wearily tapped his good right arm on the mattress, as though asking it to quit being so unfriendly. He got up and went into the bathroom, feeling his way through the still unfamiliar house. Closing the door behind him, he turned on the light and watched the cockroaches scatter.

Outside were no living sounds, not even the birds that herald the coming day hours before the sky began to lighten. So it was very early, perhaps even very late the night before. How long had he slept?

Abruptly, he flipped the light off again, standing still and listening carefully now. Always listening carefully, keeping his eyes open. It was already getting old.

He could just make out the sounds of water in the bay -the slush slap against boat and piling, the gentler wash against sand. The house was north of the city, on the beach.

Something-a lizard? A tree rat?-skittered across the roof. Far off, a motor-a car or a fishing boat-started up, coughed once, then faded. He turned the light back on. The porcelain toilet didn't have a seat. The mirror over the sink had rust spots through the glass. There was no curtain in the shower area.

Well, what did he expect on the notice he'd given? There would be time, and already money, for something better..

His arm was throbbing slightly and he tried to remember if he'd taken his antibiotics before going to bed with… whatever her name was.

Well, whoever she was, she had been just what he liked -pretty, enthusiastic, game for a good time. And going home to Atlanta today. And another one would arrive, or had arrived and was waiting for him. These vacation girls were the way to go. No promises, no pretense. None of the hassles a steady woman could bring you.

He touched the bandage gingerly, trying to see if the throbbing was the onset of infection, which could be trouble, or just the pain of rebuilding tissue. He tried to flex his left arm but thought he was still quite a ways from that.

No, it was a good solid dull pain. He mugged at the mirror, his lady-killer grin. His eyes were clear. No fever, therefore no infection.

He went back to the bed and stretched out next to the girl. The window remained a black hole in deeper blackness. A creaking sound, like a twig breaking, made him jump, and the girl stirred beside him. Then silence.

It was just the house settling.

He drifted back off into sleep.

It was only a hunch, but Hardy thought it was better than trying to cover twelve exits at one time.

He thought he would give it two more days and then start the long haul back home. This morning, still pretty fatigued from the drive down, he had slept in, but tomorrow he planned to get in one run at deep-sea fishing, maybe get a nice picture of himself and a sailfish to brag about back at the Shamrock.

He got to the stadium well after the games had started. He heard the loudspeaker and the applause from the edges of the parking lot. There'd been no blue Volkswagen Jettas parked in the street he had taken leading up to the stadium. Tomorrow, if nothing worked today, he would hire a lucky cab driver and put on some miles covering the streets all around the neighborhood. But today he would start with the parking lot.

There was no concrete. It was a dusty, grassless, pot-holed couple of square blocks surrounding the stadium, into which people had driven and parked in pretty much random order. If you were near the stadium, Hardy figured it would take at least an hour to let the lot clear enough to make your way out. There wasn't anything resembling a lane where traffic should go, no white lines for parking areas. If your car fit, jam it in there.

Twenty-five minutes of walking in the bright hot sun got pretty depressing. The Volkswagen was a popular car in Mexico. The old Beetle was as common as it had been in the United States in the sixties. But there were also Rabbits and, unfortunately, Jettas. And two of them light blue in his first pass at the outside border of the lot.

Wonderful, he thought. A dozen exits to the stadium. Probably a dozen blue Jettas in the parking lot. He needed twenty guys, a week, and a ton of luck. And even then…