The Vig

by John Lescroart

All innocence, Drysdale held up his hands. “It seemed to spring naturally from the previous answers.” Not pushing it, he looked over at the polygraph. “Look, in any event, the machine seems to be working properly.” He came back to Fred. “You’ve not lived in your apartment two years and the apartment is not on the third floor. Are both of these statements correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Drysdale glanced at the machine again, took in a breath and held it a minute. Letting it out in a rush, he said, “All right, the test is over. Let’s begin.”

  Drysdale had the typed questions in front of him. He also had Fred’s Statement of Facts on Medina’s attack, which he’d used to draw up the questions. He started at the beginning and asked the questions in order, lulling Fred into a space where his confidence was growing with the polygraph’s support to the point that he seemed almost unaware that he was wired. It was just a conversation between Drysdale and himself, even if one side of it was only yes and no.

  Drysdale paused in the questioning. “All right,” he said, “now we’re where the talk with Mr. Medina has turned to the alleged Valenti/Raines assault on you. Is that correct?”

  It wasn’t a question on the typed list, but it was so natural that Fred didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yes.” True.

  “And Mr. Medina said he represented Mr. Raines?”

  Fred didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Treadwell?”

  “That’s not one of the questions.”

  Drysdale settled back in his seat, not pushing it yet. “Fred, we’re corroborating the events of last Friday night, right? You want to look at your own Statement of Facts? You mention Valenti and Raines.” He was all reason. “I’m not getting back to that case—I’m verifying the facts in this statement.”

  “But it wasn’t one of the questions.”

  Drysdale smiled. “Come on, Fred. So I missed one. I made a mistake, but if you want, we can stop now. If you don’t answer this question I don’t see where we can go from here.”

  The sweat had come back to Treadwell’s forehead. “All right,” he said finally. “What was the question again?”

  “Medina said he represented Raines, yes or no?”

  “Yes.” True.

  “But he told you he had no formal connection to that case.” Drysdale went from the questions to the Statement of Facts. “He said he wanted you to know about the damage that just accusing somebody can do to their life?”

  “Yes.” True.

  “And he wanted you to know that because he thought you were falsely accusing Valenti and Raines of beating you up?” Good, they were way off the question list now.

  “Yes.”

  “And then he grabbed your dog, Poppy, was it?”

  Treadwell swallowed, off the list himself now, remember. “Yes. He was just petting it …”

  “And he broke its neck?”

  “Yes. Yes. He just …” He hung his head, suffering through it again.

  “He broke your dog’s neck because he thought you were falsely accusing Valenti and Raines?”

  “No! I mean, yes!”

  “Yes, he thought it, or yes, you had falsely accused them?”

  Treadwell was looking around, panic setting in. “He did it to threaten me,” he said, “to threaten my life.”

  “If you didn’t retract your story?”

  “Yes.” True.

  “Your story? Your true story about Valenti and Raines?”

  “Yes, he just—”

  “Your story about Valenti and Raines is true, then, is that correct?”

  “Yes! Yes, it’s true. That part is true.”

  False. False. False.

  “They did beat you?”

  “Yes.” False. “He killed Poppy, and they beat me.” False. “Why don’t you believe me? He killed my Poppy.” Fred was slumped on his arms over the table. He raised his head. “He killed my Poppy.”

  Drysdale reached over and patted his hand. “I believe you, Fred. He killed your Poppy.”

  Fred put his head back down on the table. Drysdale kept patting his hand, feeling dirty and sad. “I think we’re done here,” he said to the technician. “You can unhook him.”

  A rust sky presaged an uneasy dusk.

  Lace was wearing an army-surplus all-weather jacket and, collar up against the cold, walked the periphery of Holly Park alone. From time to time he’d nod at one or another of the small groups of younger men hanging on stoops or by their wheels, but no one asked him to join them, or offered much more than a cock of the head. Jumpup was over to Lorethra’s house, inside, with her and her mama and the little ones. Lace, he’d looked in at Baker’s Mama, but she had come back from the hospital with a bottle and it was way down already.

  He passed Dido’s old cut—his old cut—crossing the street away from it, making clear he understood the new territory. He stopped, hands in his pockets, and was startled by a hand on his shoulder. He turned around.

  “Easy, my man.”

  Samson had backed three steps away. His dreadlocks hung like thick cobwebs around the obsidian, small-eyed, expressionless face. Lace’s heart was pumping pretty good.

  As though they’d been having a conversation all this time, Samson said, “Three ways it can go.”

  Lace shook his shoulders loose, the casual attitude. He knew how Samson was. Like an animal, you show any fear around him and he attacks. “What is?” Lace said.

  “The man be lookin’, askin’ around maybe, sometimes the wrong stories get out.”

  “I got no stories.”

  “No. See? That’s one way it can go. You got no story, maybe you hang in the cut, run with me.” Samson’s teeth showed yellow. “Same ol’. Back to it, right?”

  He stepped closer. There was a brightness in the tiny eyes as though he’d been using his product. Dido didn’t go in for that when he was working. Well, Dido wasn’t Samson, and Lace had better get used to that.

  “Other story,” Samson said, “is the con—be talkin’ about taking over the cut, how Dido best be movin’ on, like that. Come down to blood.”

  Lace was thinking that if Louis Baker had wanted the cut, and killed Dido, wouldn’t he have stayed to hold the claim? But he said, “What’s three?”

  A cold wind from behind Lace blew some leaves and papers up the street. Samson squinted into it at Lace, his eyes even smaller, glinting. “Be no three,” he said. “Only two stories. Be no one tellin’ any third stories is what I’m saying.”

  Lace wondered if the gun that had been used on Dido, the one Lace had originally assumed had been Louis Baker’s, whether that gun—Samson’s—was still in the cut, if he could find it and get his hands on it. He clenched his fists inside the pockets of the jacket, released them, fighting the shivering that was threatening to rake over. “I hear you,” he said. “Hey, I hear you. It’s casual.”

  19

  The picture of Eddie was still on Frannie’s dresser. She got home from work and, changing into a sweatshirt and some jeans, noticed for the first time that things weren’t fitting the same. She reached for a dab of perfume and saw the photograph of Eddie.

  She stopped, her hand still outstretched. Something curled up inside her. Eddie had been caught climbing up into a friend’s pickup down by Dune Beach. One leg was up on the tailgate and he’d just been turning around to answer as Frannie had yelled something at him. He was smiling his two-hundred-watt smile and his hair was blown every which way, his jacket collar turned up. She’d enlarged the picture to eight by ten and it hadn’t been perfectly focused, so there was a graininess to it that for some reason added to its immediacy.

  Forgetting the perfume, she watched her hand go to the frame, and she brought the picture back to the bed, where she sat holding it on her lap.

  Eddie looked about eighteen in the picture, impossibly young. She closed her eyes.

  It was hard to imagine that they’d been the same age. Eddie now stopped forever only eight months older than the photograph. Frannie felt she’
d aged a lifetime.

  But the pregnancy kept things in real time. The baby, Eddie’s baby, growing inside her so slowly that it had hardly changed her yet.

  There he was—her man—waving back to her. Daring to claim back a little space, charming her so she’d let him back in.

  The grief over Eddie’s death had affected her differently than she’d have thought. The only way she found she could cope without crying all the time was to put him, put their life together, out of her mind. Actively not to remember how it had been, how they’d been together. Move on. Look ahead.

  Or, the few times she’d let down, allowed his memory back into her mind, the anger would overtake her. Why did he have to go meddle in things that weren’t his business? She thought she’d loved his idealism. But that’s what had gotten him killed, and she tried to convince herself that she even hated him for being that way, because it was what took him away from her. Why did she have to have met him in the first place? It wasn’t fair.

  Eddie’s smile didn’t fade, didn’t change. It was grainy, like an old photograph, getting older every day. Smiling, charming, kidding her. I’m still here, Frannie. Can’t deny it forever. I’ll bet the kid winds up looking like me.

  A tear fell on the glass that covered the picture.

  The kid.

  One hand held the frame. The other pressed itself flat against her belly, somehow had worked its way under the sweatshirt.

  God, Eddie, she thought. Come on, this isn’t fair.

  What isn’t fair? he said. That I’m in you? That all this moving ahead and looking forward and getting together with Diz … that’s okay, I realize I’m gone … is just setting yourself up for the fall later. You’ve got to find a real place to put me. I was your husband. I’m the father of that little person in there. Don’t hide me. Don’t shut me out. I don’t deserve that. If it’s painful I’m sorry, but I miss you, too. Don’t you think I wish I could be there?

  “Yes, I do.”

  Well, then?

  Hardy came and sat next to her where she lay on the top of the bed, the picture of Eddie Cochran facedown on her stomach.

  Her hair was spread out behind her on the pillow, the face slightly puffed.

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s just too soon.”

  “I know it is. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  She moved the picture of Eddie to the floor, put her hand on his thigh, curled onto her side against him. He rubbed her back inside the sweatshirt.

  “You are the only male friend I have, Dismas.”

  “I am that.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’ve done with Eddie.”

  Hardy patted her stomach. “Eddie’s here.”

  “That’s what I mean. I’m not just lonely.” She revised that. “I’m not even lonely. I’m trying to find Eddie and that’s not fair. To you.”

  “Move over,” Hardy said.

  She lay, one leg over him, her head in the hollow of his arm, a hand between the buttons of his shirt.

  “Because something in me loves you,” she said. “A lot.”

  “But there’s the other stuff.”

  “There is.”

  He blew a breath out at the ceiling. “It’s pretty natural. You’re nesting. You want a man around. You trust me, and I show up needing a place to stay. It’s a neat little dream.”

  “It’s more than that, too.”

  Hardy turned onto his side and undid the button on her jeans, the zipper.

  “They finally feel a little tight.”

  She bit at his lower lip, flicked her tongue against the tip of his. His hand, down inside her pants, pressed against her.

  “See, this is real, too,” she said. “This part.”

  The kiss, Frannie undoing his pants, freeing him. Another kiss, deep and slow, then more getting out of clothes and he was entering her, breathing her in, mouths together, bodies close and hard pressed, pushing but not moving, her legs wrapping him, holding him as far in as he could get.

  The house was cold. Walking down the long hallway, he checked the thermostat and saw it was at 58 degrees. By the time he got to the kitchen, six steps later, he heard the creaks of the responding furnace. In his bedroom he realized he hadn’t fed the fish in several days. Bad. He shook some food over the surface and they didn’t wait for him to tap the glass.

  “Sorry, guys.”

  He raised the blackout curtain in front of the one window in his office and looked back toward downtown, out at the twinkling lights. He could see the very tip of what the previous week had seemed the evil Pyramid presiding, like the triangular cyclops eye on the dollar bill, over the shadowy line of Jackson Heights. Leaning out, off to his right, the once spectral Sutro Tower, now vaguely benign, thrust its fingers toward some high clouds. The moon was up, nearly full.

  He wondered at the change in his perception of things. He listened to his house creaking as the warmth spread in the pipes. The sound wasn’t ominous.

  After the coal fire was going well, after the heat had really kicked in, after he’d gone through all his mail (except for one postcard), sitting in the pool of light cast by the green-shaded brass lamp on his desk, he switched on the room’s main lights and grabbed his darts from the board next to the fireplace.

  These were his office darts, the same type of custom 20-gram tungsten beauties he carried with him at almost all times. He hadn’t thrown since he’d left the house, but in his first round, shooting for the bull, he hit two and the last one thokked low in the “20.”

  He picked up the postcard. Hong Kong by night.

  His ex-wife.

  Carrying the card with him, he went back out through his bedroom to the kitchen. He kept no hard liquor in his house, but there were four bottles of Anchor Steam in the rack on the refrigerator door. He found some frozen chicken breasts and in the cupboard a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of green beans. He put the breasts in his heavy black all-purpose cast-iron pan, poured the green beans and soup over them, added a little beer, covered the whole thing and turned the heat on low. Jane was appalled at his home cooking.

  Frannie had made him every meal at her house.

  At the kitchen table, bottle of beer in hand, he read the back of the postcard. Where was he? Would he be home to get this? Well, she guessed she’d find out next week. It wasn’t exactly a game, but neither was it very serious.

  That was Jane. Maybe it was serious, but she just wouldn’t acknowledge that anymore. Maybe, with her marriage to him and then the second one—the rebound—that had lasted less than two months, she could only let things get so serious and then pull back. When their son, Michael, had died, he had to remember, she’d gone through it too. Sometimes it felt like it had only been him, but that hadn’t been because Jane wasn’t there. It was because he was blind to anything else.

  Give her a break, Diz.

  He was starting to smell the food. He got up and made sure it wasn’t burning, sticking on the bottom, and turned down the heat a little. He opened another beer.

  Well, what was there to be so serious about, anyway? She was good at her job and liked it. She liked him, too. At least that. She knew who she was. He thought, with a pang, and though it had never come up, that she was still faithful to him.

  It wasn’t just that he’d slept with Frannie. Frannie had told him tonight, before and after they’d made love, that she needed, she felt they both needed, more time. He ought to go home.

  And he’d wanted to go home. Not to get away from Frannie. Not to figure anything out. Just to be home. What the hell did that mean? That he didn’t love Frannie? Or Jane?

  The difference with Frannie was that she let him see she needed him. Maybe not for everything, maybe now only for some physical comfort, some familiar warmth, but the door was open. Jane might love him, but he didn’t feel like she needed anybody anymore.

  So what was it with the Hardy monster? Did he just need to be needed? Well, if there wasn’
t some need, how real could it be? Okay, but how badly would Frannie just need a father for her baby, not necessarily Dismas Hardy? It would be bad luck to get that part confused.

  And when he and Jane had first gotten back together, there had been some serious voltage. Okay, there had always been the attraction—that was still there—but maybe Jane’s need at that time was to lay to rest the ghosts of their failed marriage, to prove that it really had been their son Michael’s death that had destroyed her man, Dismas, and not some failing in her.

  Now, that done, the point made, it was time to coast.

  The problem was that until a few months ago, until he’d gotten back with Jane, Hardy had coasted for the better part of a decade. He was coasted out. Now he was in gear, ready to roll.

  He thought about having a third beer, decided what the hell, and filled a plate with the Chicken McHardy. It tasted great.

  Frank Batiste had the only real office, with a door, in Homicide. Now he sat at his desk, the door open a crack, and for the first time in what seemed months felt some measure of satisfaction in his position, in the department, in the way things were shaking down. For once, he thought, the good guys might be getting a break.

  The word on the dropped charges in the Valenti and Raines investigation had spread through the ranks—guys calling each other at home. Frank had personally called both men to tell them they were reinstated with back pay effective immediately.

  At Clarence Raines’s suggestion he did something else that was as much the source of his satisfaction as anything else. He’d gone down to Judge Lyons and explained the mutual exclusivity of the Raines/Valenti and Treadwell investigations and requested a warrant right now on Treadwell.

  Which he got and served as Treadwell sat flush-faced and shaken in Art Drysdale’s office. Treadwell’s lawyer had had a shit-fit, which did Batiste’s soul some good, and the bare fact was that now, at 9:30 P.M., Fred Treadwell was in the can on his double-murder rap, at least until the morning when bail would probably be set.

  Batiste’s prompt move on Treadwell had also gotten out to his squad, and they had been returning to the office in dribs and drabs, catching up on things, getting the further notice that Batiste was personally okaying the overtime they needed to serve subpoenas, write their reports, do their work. If he lost his job over that, so be it. You couldn’t run this bunch of guys like a kindergarten without the risk of losing them. And if he lost these handpicked pros, then his own numbers, and eventually his job, would also go to hell.