The Vig dh-2

by John T Lescroart

  Jane paused. "My cheerful ex-husband."

  "Hey, not so ex."

  "Not so cheerful either. Gone by next year! You can't live thinking like that."

  Hardy wanted to tell her you'd better, that even a year was pretty optimistic. He was tempted to remind her that their son hadn't even made it that year, but he let it pass. She didn't need to be reminded of that. "You're right," he said. "You can't live like that."

  "Dismas, are you all right?" she asked. "Are you doing anything for fun?"

  "I am tearing up the town. I'd just rather be doing it with you." He realized he was being a pain in the ass. "Look, I'm sorry. It's three A.M. and you tell me you'll be gone another week. I'm a little disoriented, is all. A little case of vu zjahday."

  "Vu zjahday?"

  "Yeah. It's the opposite of deja vu. The sense that you've never been somewhere before."

  Jane laughed. "Okay, you're all right."

  "I'm all right."

  "I love you," she said.

  "Maybe when you get home we talk some long-range, huh?"

  A beat, or it might have been the delay on the line. "It could happen," she said.

  Frank Batiste wasn't sure anymore that he was happy to have made lieutenant. It was more money and that was all right, but sitting here in the office all day, the conduit for gripes going up and edicts coming down, was wearing him down.

  In ancient times they killed the bearer of bad news, and he was starting to understand why. Maybe, somehow, the news would go away, or wouldn't have to be thought about.

  He couldn't just hide in here all day. He forced himself up from his chair, feeling the beginning of back pain, and opened the door.

  The homicide department was commencing to take on the feel of a country-club locker room. Several golf bags leaned against desks.

  He walked back through the room, nodding at the guys and getting ice for his troubles. Hell, it wasn't his doing. He even sided with the men. Maybe he should step down as looie, let someone else deal with this crap. But what would that do? Just put someone else in, someone who wouldn't be as sympathetic to the team.

  If only the City That Once Knew How had a goddamn clue, he thought. Now it didn't know how to wipe its own ass. And nowhere was it more clear than here in Homicide. These fourteen guys-it sounded funny, but was true anyway-were the shock troops against the worst elements in the city. No one got to Homicide without nearly a decade of solid police work, without a lot of pride, and without some special mix of killer instinct, stubbornness and brains. These guys were the elite, and if you cut their morale you had a problem.

  But last week, for the first time in seven years, the department had brought charges against two men on the squad. A month before, the two officers-Clarence Raines and Mario Valenti-had gone to arrest a telephone-company executive named Fred Treadwell for murdering his lover and his lover's new boyfriend. Treadwell had resisted arrest-kicking out a window of his second-story apartment, cutting his head upon his exit, falling to the alley below, breaking an ankle, smashing his head again as he pitched into some garbage cans and escaping on foot to his attorney's office.

  Treadwell and both the other principals in this triangle being gay, his attorney immediately called a press conference and trotted poor Fred out with his cuts, breaks and bruises, charging police brutality.

  Valenti and Raines, two of the elite with perfect records, had, it seemed, suddenly not been able to contain their prejudice against gays (probably as a result of their own latent homosexuality), and had beaten Fred to within an inch of his life, leaving him for dead in the alley behind his apartment.

  Somebody took Fred's lame story-or the righteous outrage of the gay community-seriously enough to bust Raines and Valenti and begin a formal investigation.

  As if that weren't enough, at about the same time as the charges came down, the latest budget cuts were announced. Effective immediately, no overtime was to be approved for 'routine procedural work,' which meant writing reports and serving subpoenas.

  A significant number of murder cases now were what they called NHI cases. It stood for 'No Humans Involved,' and a kind interpretation meant that the victim, the suspect and all the witnesses were at best petty criminals.

  These people were not fond of policemen and tended to be hard to find during normal business hours. So the service of subpoenas would most often take place in the early morning or late at night, and the cops going out after their witnesses would put in the overtime knowing this was their best chance of doing their job. Now the city had decided it wasn't going to pay for that.

  Which led to the golf clubs. The guys went out at eight or nine o'clock, knocked at doors, found no one home, played a round of golf, went back to the same doors and tried again, still found no one home, came back to the office, and wrote reports on their day in the field.

  It sucked and everybody knew it.

  Jess Mendez nodded at the lieutenant and called over his shoulder. "Hey, Lanier! What time you tee off?"

  Batiste didn't turn around. He heard Lanier behind him. "I got three subpoenas first. Say nine-thirty."

  Abe Glitsky's desk was near the back window with a view of the freeway and, beyond it, downtown. Today, however, at 7:50, there was no view but gray.

  Glitsky did not have a bag of clubs leaning against his desk. He was also one of only two men in the squad who worked without a partner. He and Batiste had come up to Homicide the same year, and neither of them had given a shit about their minority status-Glitsky was half Jewish and half black, Batiste a 'Spanish-surname'-so there was a bond of sorts between them.

  Batiste pulled up a chair. "Forget your clubs, Abe?"

  Glitsky looked up from something he was writing. "I was just going to come see you."

  "Complete a foursome?"

  Abe moved his face into what he might have thought was a smile. He had a hawk nose and a scar through his lips, top to bottom. His smile had induced confessions from some bad people. He might be a nice person somewhere in there, but he didn't look like one. "I'm glad you think it's funny," he said.

  "I don't think it's funny."

  Abe put his pen down. "Flo and I, we're thinking we might make a move."

  "What are you talking about?" This was worse than golf clubs.

  "L.A.'s recruiting. I'd have to go back to Burglary maybe for a while, but that'd be all right."

  Batiste leaned forward. "What are you talking about? You've got, what, nineteen years?"

  "Close, but they'll transfer most of 'em." He motioned down at his desk. "I was just working on the wording here on this application. See where it says 'Reason for Leaving Present Employment?' Should I say 'incredible horseshit' or keep it clean with 'bureaucratic nonsense'?"

  Batiste pulled up to the desk. "Abe, wait a minute." He wasn't about to say Abe couldn't quit-of course he could quit-but he had to say something. He put his hand on the paper. "Can you just wait a goddamn minute."

  Abe's stare was flat. "Sure," he said. "I can wait all day."

  "You know it'll turn around."

  Abe shook his head. "No, I don't, Frank. Not anymore. It's the whole city. It doesn't need us, and I don't need it."

  "But it does need us-"

  "No argument there. Give me a call when it finds out." Abe took the paper back and glanced at it again. " 'Incredible horseshit,' " he said. "It's a stronger statement, don't you think?"

  Hardy parked at the end of the alley and turned up the heater. His Samurai was not airtight and the wind hissed at the canvas roof. On both sides, buildings rose to four stories, and in front of him fog obscured the canal and the shipyards beyond.

  It was not yet 8:30. The gun-still loaded-was in his glove compartment. It was a registered weapon. It was probably one of the few legally concealable firearms in San Francisco. Hardy's ex-father-in-law was Judge Andy Fowler, and when Hardy left the force, he'd applied for a CCW (Carry a Concealed Weapon) license, which was never, in the normal course of San Francisco events, approved.<
br />
  But Judge Fowler was not without influence, and he did not fancy his daughter becoming a widow. Not that being allowed to pack a weapon would necessarily make any difference. But he had talked Hardy into it, and this was the first time Hardy had had occasion to carry the thing around.

  Okay, he would legally carry it then, even concealed if he wanted to.

  He turned off the ignition. He slowly spun the cylinder on the.38, making sure again that it was loaded. Stepping out into the swirling fog, he lifted the collar of the wind-breaker with his left hand. In his right hand, the gun felt like it weighed fifty pounds.

  He hesitated. "Stupid," he said out loud.

  But he moved forward.

  The alley ended in a walkway that bounded the China Basin canal. To Hardy's left an industrial warehouse hugged the walkway, seeming-from Hardy's perspective-to lean over the canal further and further before it disappeared into the fog. The canal, at full tide, lapped at the piling somewhere under Hardy. There was no visible current. The water was greenish brown, mercury-tinged by the oil on its surface.

  Behind Hardy the Third Street Bridge rumbled as traffic passed. Somewhere ahead of him was another bridge. Ingraham had told him that his was the fourth mooring down from Third, between the bridges.

  Hardy walked into the wind, his head tucked, the gun pointing at the ground.

  The first mooring-little more than some tires on a pontoon against the canal's edge and a box for connecting electricity-was empty. A Chinese couple approached, walking quickly, hand in hand. They nodded as they came abreast of Hardy. If they noticed the gun they didn't show it.

  The second mooring, perhaps sixty feet along, held a tug, which looked deserted. Next was a blue-water cruiser, a beauty which Hardy guessed was a thirty-two-footer, named Atlantis.

  He wasn't sure he'd want to name a boat after something that had gone down into the ocean.

  Ingraham had called his home a barge. It was a fair description-a large, flat, covered box that squatted against the pontoon's tires, its roof at about the height of Hardy's knees.

  Getting there finally, seeing that the electrical wires were hooked up, suddenly the whole thing seemed crazy again. He was just being paranoid. He looked at his watch. 8:40.

  Rusty should be up by now anyway.

  Hardy leaned down. "Rusty?"

  A foghorn bellowed from somewhere.

  "Hey, Rusty!"

  Hardy put the gun in his pocket and vaulted onto the barge's deck. Three weathered director's chairs were arranged in the area in front of the doorway. Green plants and a tomato bush that needed picking livened up the foredeck.

  A two-pound salmon sinker nailed to the center of the door was a knocker. Hardy picked it up and let it drop, and the door swung open. There was no movement from inside, no sound but the lapping canal and the traffic, now invisible back through the fog. The wood was splintered at the jamb.

  Hardy put his hand in his pocket, feeling the gun there, taking it back out. He ducked his head going through the door, descending three wooden steps to the floor-level inside.

  A line of narrow windows high on the walls probably provided light normally, but curtains had been pulled across them on both sides. The room was cold, colder than it was outside.

  In the dim light from the open doorway, nothing seemed out of place. There was a telephone on a low table in front of a stylish low couch. Hardy picked up the receiver, heard a dial tone, put it back down.

  Then he saw the pole lamp lying on the floor on the other side of the room. He reached up and pulled back the curtain for a little more light. The lamp's globe was broken into five or six pieces scattered around the floor.

  At the junction of the rear and side walls a swinging half-door led to the galley. Another door in the center of the rear wall was ajar. Hardy kicked at it gently. It opened halfway, then caught on something. A wide line of black something ran from under the door to the wall.

  Hardy stepped over it, pushing his way through. His stomach rose as though he were seasick, and he leaned against the wall.

  What was blocking the door was a woman's arm. Naked, she was stretched out as though reaching for something, as though she'd been crawling-trying to get out? There was something around her neck-something strange, metallic-holding her head up at an unnatural angle. Hardy realized it was a neck brace. Hardy looked back to the stateroom.

  It was painted in blood.

  There was a sound like something dropping on the front deck and he dropped to one knee, steadying the gun with both hands and aiming for the hall doorway.

  "This is the police," he heard. "Throw out your weapon and come out with your hands up."

  Chapter Three

  " ^ "

  Like the other housing projects in San Francisco, Holly Park had at one time been a nice place to live. The two-story units were light and airy. The paint and trim had been fresh. Residents who did not keep their yards up to neighborhood standards could, in theory, be fined, although such infractions were rare due to the pride people took in their homes.

  In 1951 seedlings had been planted to shade and gentrify the place-eucalyptus, cypress, magnolia. Within the square block that bounded Holly Park there were three communal gardens and a children's playground with swing sets and monkey bars and slides. Curtains hung behind shining windows. In the four grassy spaces between buildings, now each a barren no-man's-land called a cut and 'owned' by a crack dealer, people had hung laundry and fixed bicycles.

  One hundred eighty-six people over eighteen claimed residence in Holly Park. There were one hundred seventeen children and juveniles. Every known resident was black. One hundred fifty-nine of the adults had police records. Of the juveniles between twelve and eighteen, sixty-eight percent had acquired rap sheets, most for vandalism, shoplifting, possession of dope, several for mugging, burglary and rape, and three for murder.

  There were four nuclear families-a man, his legal wife and their children-in Holly Park. The rest was a fluid mass of women with children.

  Because Holly Park was provided by the city and county for indigent relief, by definition every resident was on welfare, but twenty-two women and thirty men held 'regular' jobs. The official reported per capita income of all the adults in Holly Park was $2,953.13, far below the poverty level.

  Income from the sale of rock cocaine was estimated by the San Francisco Police Department to be between $1.5 and $3 million per year, broken down to about $50 to $75 per hour per cut, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  So far this year-and it was September-ninety-six percent of the residents of Holly Park over the age of seven had been victims, perpetrators or eyewitnesses of a violent crime.

  Police response time to an emergency in Holly Park averaged twenty-one minutes. By contrast, in the posh neighborhood of St Francis Wood, it averaged three and a half minutes, and Police Chief Rigby was upset about how long it took.

  Some people believed that the solution to the drug and crime problems in the projects was to put a wall around them and let the residents kill each other off.

  There are all kinds of walls.

  Louis Baker was cold.

  He opened his eyes, awake now, unsure of where he was. It was dark in the room, but a slice of gray light made its way through where the plywood sagged off the window. The box spring he had slept on had a familiar smell. He sat up, pulling the old army blanket around his massive bare shoulders.

  At least it not be the joint, he thought. Praise God.

  He stood up, shivering in his bare feet, and put on the suit pants they had given him when they let him out the day before. He crossed to the crack at the window and looked down into one of the cuts.

  Pretty much the same. Gray building, gray fog, the constant wind. No trees, no grass, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Now it was Rap, already coming up from three, four places. That was cool. Faces changed, music changed, even people sometimes. But it was the same turf, his old turf. Territory, tur
f. You controlled it you could be happy. The constant.

  He pulled the blanket up closer and put his eye to the crack, checking down the cut. Kids standing around. Some business maybe going down.

  His Mama called out from down below. "You movin', child? You up?"

  She was not his mother but he called her Mama. He was not even sure they were related. She had just always been around, always been Mama.

  "Comin' down," he said.

  Mama dressed exactly the same. There was no fashion here in Holly Park. There were no politics. Nothing external was going to change things here. Louis knew that. It was all inside, as it had been for him.

  Mama was large. She sat sipping instant coffee at her formica table. Her hair was held by pins and covered, mostly, with a bandanna. She wore a plaid flannel shirt, untucked, over a pair of faded blue jeans that was tearing at the seams by her generous hips.

  Louis kissed her, spooned some coffee crystals into a mug, poured boiling water over it and sat down across from her.

  "It's good to be home."

  "What you be doing now?"

  Louis shrugged, blowing on his cup. "Get a job. Something. Got to work."

  "An' be careful, right?"

  He reached over and touched her face. "Don't you worry, Mama. Nothin' else, I learned careful."

  But he wondered then, for a second, if it was true. When they let him out, he had not given a thought to careful. But seeing Ingraham just when he got out had brought it all back. Back on the streets, he best be careful every minute.

  He saw Ingraham again-taking care of business before he had even come down here to Mama's-and his blood ran hot. The rage was still there. Beatin' it was the hard thing.

  He gripped at his mug with both hands, bringing it to his mouth.

  But that had been old business. Finished now, he hoped. He wouldn't have any cause to think about it again. It was settled.

  "Cause out there, you know…" Mama motioned to the back door.

  Louis followed her glance, then scanned the kitchen. Over the stove the paint was peeling in wide sheets. A poster of Muhammad Ali was taped up next to a religious calendar-he noted the suffering Christ.