The Vig dh-2 Read online

  Mama kept the place pretty clean, but she was old. What was the point of putting in a window over the sink? The plywood wouldn't break-it kept out the wind. It made the kitchen dark, but dark was safer. The whole house was dark.

  "I know 'bout out there, Mama. Here's what I do, so you don't worry. I go see the man, he set me up or not. Come back here and start setting up."

  "Set up what?"

  He stood up, leaning over to kiss her. "The house, Mama. We gonna clean house."

  "Hardy in chains," Glitsky said. "I like it."

  "It is a good time," Hardy agreed. He had stood up when Glitsky entered the living room, and now one of the patrolmen was unlocking the cuffs. "Damn, those things work good." He opened and closed his fingers, rubbing his wrists, trying to get the circulation going. "If this affects my dart game, I'm suing the city."

  Glitsky, ignoring Hardy, asked Patrolman Thomas if he could stand outside and direct the homicide-scene team below as it arrived.

  When he went outside the other patrolman, Ling, said, "The body's in there."

  Glitsky nodded. "What are you doing here?" he asked Hardy.

  "Long story."

  "With a loaded gun?"

  "Makes it longer." He shrugged. "It's registered. I've got a permit."

  Ling spoke up. Glitsky realized he was the shortest cop he'd ever seen. When he had come up there'd been a minimum height requirement of 5'8", but some court had ruled that since many Asians were under this height, the rule unfairly discriminated against a class of people and therefore had to go.

  Ling was about 5'5", but since he had been the one left below to handle Hardy if he got feisty, Glitsky assumed he could take care of himself.

  "Can I see the gun?" he asked.

  Ling handed over Hardy's weapon. He checked the cylinder and clucked disapprovingly. "It's loaded," he said to Hardy.

  "It works better when it's loaded."

  Glitsky flipped open the cylinder and let the bullets fall, one by one, into the palm of his hand. He put them into the pocket of his blue parka and smelled the weapon. "It hasn't been fired."

  "No, sir," Ling said. "I realize that."

  "Come on, Abe," Hardy said. "I didn't shoot anybody."

  "My friend here has a rich fantasy life," Glitsky said. He handed the gun back to Ling. "You think this is Dodge City or what? You can pick it up back at the Hall."

  "Abe, it's a legal weapon."

  "And this is a murder scene, Diz. It can't hurt to check the paper on it."

  Hardy turned to Ling. "And what brought you guys out here?"

  "The couple who live on the next boat over were going out for a jog and passed you walking around with a gun in your hand. They saw you come in here, and they went back to their boat and reported it."

  "The only two good citizens in San Francisco and I run into them on their morning jog."

  "Good citizens abound in our fair city," Glitsky said.

  "They are Chinese," Ling said, as if that explained it.

  "All right. Let's go see the body."

  "I hope you've had your breakfast," Hardy said.

  From identification found in the purse by the bedside, the woman was tentatively identified as Maxine Weir, thirty-three years old. Her address was 964 Bush Street.

  From the trail of blood, she had been shot the first time as she exited the bathroom after taking a shower. That first shot went through the towel that had been wrapped around her.

  There was a splatter of blood on the wall by the door to the bathroom, as though she had either been spun around by the shot or had put her hand to the wound and then to the wall to steady herself.

  It was impossible to determine the order of the remaining shots. One had entered high on the right breast and did not appear to exit, probably hitting the clavicle and ricocheting downward. A second had passed through the side of her abdomen and out her back. Another had hit her in the right thigh. She had clearly gone down by the bathroom and lay still-perhaps pretending to be dead-for a few minutes. A pool had formed there. Then she had crawled across the room and into the hallway, where she had died and where Hardy had found her.

  Glitsky came away from the body with a glazed, guarded look. He had told Ling to wait in the living room to send in the techs. Hardy sat on an upholstered chair in the corner, elbows on knees, his hands folded.

  "What about the bed?" he asked.

  "I'm getting there."

  A second trail of blood began on the bed, which was still made up. Someone had been lying on top of its covers when they'd been shot. The trail crossed the room like a thin strip of syrup to the back door. Glitsky opened the door.

  There was a walkway about four feet wide that must have been used mostly for storage. Paint cans, cardboard boxes, a bicycle, other garage stuff filled the space on Glitsky's left, hard by the piling. The right side had been Astro-turfed. A large pot-style barbecue squatted by the other back door, which led to the galley. Paraphernalia for outdoor cooking hung on the wall by that door.

  The blood drew a line in the middle of this area, swerved over the Astro-turf, paused and pooled at the railing, disappearing over the side of the barge.

  Glitsky came back inside, shivering even in his parka. Hardy was standing now by the bed.

  "The walking dead," Glitsky said.

  "Look at this." Hardy knew enough not to touch anything. He had been a good cop once.

  There was a small hole in the center of a splotch of blood on the bed, at about shoulder level if the victim's head had been on the pillow.

  "Rusty was first, I guess," Hardy said. "He was sleeping, maybe. Lying down. She was in the shower, heard the shot, came out and got hers."

  Glitsky jammed his hands further into his pockets. "What the hell are you talking about? Rusty who?"

  "You don't know?"

  "No."

  Hardy let out a breath. "Ingraham. Rusty Ingraham. He lives, lived here. Louis Baker shot him."

  Glitsky was looking somewhere over Hardy's shoulder, not focusing, putting it together. "Louis Baker."

  "And I'm next."

  "I'll have a cheeseburger with everything, to go."

  The young man punched his register. "Would you like onions and pickles?"

  Glitsky nodded. "Everything please."

  "Will that be here or to go?"

  "To go, please."

  "That'll be one cheeseburger to go." He pushed some more buttons, waited until the machine stopped whirring, then looked up with relief. "That's two sixty-seven."

  Hardy, having just endured the same litany over a much more difficult order of two fish sandwiches, fries and a Diet Coke, rolled his eyes. "Do you want that here or to go, Abe?" he asked when the boy went to retrieve the order.

  Glitsky kept his face straight.

  They sat at a tiny yellow table on a stretch of sidewalk midway between the Third Street Bridge and the Southern Pacific Station. Every few minutes a train's whistle would sound, shrill and distant.

  It was early afternoon. The fog had burned off completely and it was getting warm. They had stayed at Rusty Ingraham's barge through the morning, waiting while the techs photographed and collected and dusted, while the deputy M.E. had examined and moved Maxine Weir's body, while they had begun preparations to drag the canal.

  Hardy opened his bag. "After all that, I get onion rings. Did I say fries or what?"

  Glitsky chomped into his burger. "Twice, I think, maybe three times."

  "Rocket scientist," Hardy said.

  "No dumber than walking around with a loaded weapon out in the open. You should've called me first."

  "And you would've come, right?" He had already told Abe why he was at the barge, about his telephone arrangement with Rusty.

  Abe chewed some more. "Probably not."

  "No probably about it."

  Glitsky reached over and grabbed Hardy's drink. "You mind?" He sipped through the straw. "Louis Baker, huh?"

  Hardy grabbed the cup back. "Louis Baker scares
me, Abe. No kidding."

  "Yeah, that makes sense. I think I'd be nervous myself. Baker know where you live? You moved since you were a D.A., right?"

  "So did Rusty."

  Glitsky chewed and swallowed. "So how'd he find him?"

  "Maybe he's listed. He's a working-he was a working attorney."

  "Quit talking about him in the past tense, would you?"

  "He's dead, Abe. You know it and I know it."

  "I don't know it. Maxine Weir is dead. Otherwise, we're dragging the canal, checking the blood type on the bed, see if we can match it to Rusty, see if we can find him. I'll let you know when I think he's dead."

  "He's dead," Hardy said.

  Glitsky shrugged. "Suit yourself."

  "So what am I gonna do?"

  "I don't know. About what?"

  "About Louis fucking Baker, is what."

  "Don't get all excited, Diz. We finish our lunch here and I locate Louis and drive down and have a talk with him."

  "And what if he's sitting outside my house, or even in it, with a gun?"

  Glitsky said, straight-faced, "That'd be in violation of his parole." The inspector finished his burger, took Hardy's cup back and had a last loud slurp of Hardy's drink through the straw. "Just don't you do anything, Diz. We frown on private citizens shooting one another."

  "Yeah. Well, I frown on being shot at. I see him around my house, I'm going to shoot first."

  Glitsky leaned across the table. "Do me a favor. Let him get a shot off. Make sure he's armed."

  "The rules, huh?"

  Glitsky nodded. "The rules, that's right." He stood up.

  "I don't think Louis told Maxine about the rules," Hardy said. "Or Rusty either."

  Glitsky picked up Hardy's cup and dumped some ice in his mouth. He chewed a minute. "Guess he forgot," he said. "Other things on his mind."

  "When can I get my gun back?" Hardy said.

  Chapter Four

  " ^ "

  You have to remember, sergeant, that everyone we deal with is a convicted felon. Not some, not most-all."

  The supervisor was a plain woman with a no-nonsense attitude that somehow managed to convey warmth. Perhaps it was the Oliver Peoples glasses-tiny little lenses magnifying robin's-egg eyes. The name on the little strip by her door said Ms Hammond, and Glitsky liked her right away. She had the back-corner office in the Ferry Building, with a view over the water to Treasure Island, up to the Bay Bridge, out to Alcatraz. People paid three grand a month for one-room apartments with that view. It might be one of the perks of the job-he knew she didn't make that much.

  Her office was clean and functional, brightened by the view and a small forest scattered in pots. Twenty-one parole officers reported to her.

  "Well, what I meant was-"

  "No. It's all right. It's just helpful to remember where these people are coming from. What they face outside."

  "Well, it's possible our man-Louis Baker-was outside about an hour before he killed somebody."

  Ms Hammond sighed heavily, nodding. "Yes. That happens, too, I'm afraid." She scooted her chair across the floor from her pitted green desk to a battered green file cabinet.

  After a minute looking at something, she sighed again. "You want to see Al Nolan."

  "Is that bad news?"

  She looked at her watch. "It's two-thirty. If he took a normal lunch at noon, he might be back."

  Glitsky wondered if the entire bureaucracy was sinking, every department bogged down in bad faith and bullshit. But Ms Hammond faced him, shrugging. Shrugs and sighs. She probably didn't know she did it. "Some of them need more supervising than others. Let me show you the way."

  She led him down a long corridor that reminded him of the Hall, into a large room that was subdivided into cubicles.

  Al Nolan, a white male in his late twenties, was opening a Wendy's bag and putting the contents on his desk. He wore a bowling shirt with the name Ralph stitched over the right pocket. His long brown hair didn't look too clean and was pulled back into a ponytail. "Al," Ms Hammond said, "this is Inspector Sergeant Abe Glitsky…"

  Nolan held up a hand. "Hey, it's my lunch hour. You mind?"

  Glitsky heard Ms Hammond's intake of breath. "Lunch is supposed to start from twelve to one-thirty, somewhere in there, Al."

  "Well, at noon I had to take my car down to the garage, and the guy didn't have a clue what was wrong, so I had to leave it and take the bus back. You know the buses." He, too, shrugged.

  "You know, Al, that sounds to me like two and a half hours of your own time."

  "Yeah, but I didn't get to eat yet."

  Glitsky butted in. "They paying you for this?" Turning to Ms Hammond, "Excuse me."

  "Hey, what? I'm not supposed to eat? We're entitled to lunch."

  Ms Hammond, getting impatient, said, "And what do you suppose the state of California gets to ask of you in exchange?"

  Nolan chewed a few fries. "In exchange for what?"

  "In exchange for your lunch break?"

  "Hey, I do as much work as anybody here. More than some."

  Glitsky just waited.

  Ms Hammond smiled. The warmth was gone. "You know, Al, that's just not true." She laid a hand on Glitsky's arm. "Mr Nolan is on the state's time now, sergeant. If his eating bothers you, he'll throw his"-she paused-"afternoon snack away." She turned and was gone.

  Nolan rolled his eyes. "Her time of the month," he said, and gestured for Glitsky to pull up a chair. "Who we talking about now?"

  Glitsky was tempted to get into it. This attitude was making him crazy. He wondered if Ms Hammond's sweet grandmother nature wasn't really to blame, and everyone on the top ought to start right now being a hard-ass of the first order, whip things back into shape. Kick ass and take names. Fire people like Al Nolan. Then he remembered -nobody ever got fired from a government job. Kill your neighbors, come to work drunk, miss thirty days in a row calling in sick… hey, it robbed a person of dignity to take their job away.

  Glitsky found himself sighing. "Louis Baker," he said. "We're talking about Louis Baker."

  "Yeah, I just saw him this morning. Seemed okay, a pretty nice guy."

  "Well, we think maybe he killed somebody last night."

  Nolan took a bite of burger. "No shit? Well, these guys can be very cool about things."

  "About killing people, you mean."

  "Whatever. You know, they don't talk to us. They just check in, lie about having a job or an offer, then split."

  "Did Louis Baker say he had a job?"

  "Now you mention it, no." He seemed to ponder that a moment. "Well, he's only been out a day. Hasn't learned the ropes yet."

  Glitsky leaned forward. "So what did you talk about?"

  "Mostly the Giants, I guess."

  Glitsky could have guessed, too. The Giants were in the thick of the pennant race.

  "I think they'll stay in the city."

  "Who?"

  "Who we talking about, man? The Giants. I mean, a pennant is what we need. No way are they gonna let 'em go to San Jose if we get another pennant. The team is happening. Who'd Baker kill?"

  "We don't know if he killed anybody. He's a suspect is all."

  "He probably did."

  "Why do you say that? You just said he was a nice guy."

  Nolan shrugged. Glitsky wondered if people here all had shoulder and back problems from the shrugging. "So he's a nice guy. That just means he's got manners. I mean, everybody says Ted Bundy was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet, and how many people did he ace, twenty, thirty?"

  "So you figure Baker killed somebody. Why? Did he say anything to you about last night?"

  "These guys kill each other."

  "The victim wasn't black, Mr Nolan."

  "No shit. I just assumed."

  "Caucasian woman."

  "Well, maybe he was just unloading after all that time in." Nolan looked at Glitsky man-to-man. "You know." He pointed at his crotch. "No conjugal visits at the Q. Lot of guys get out and
that's the first thing they do."

  Glitsky, suddenly very weary, shook his head. "No, it wasn't that."

  Nolan, thoughtful, chewing. "Well, they kill white guys too."

  It was still early afternoon, balmy with a light breeze. Glitsky had the windows down on both sides of the Plymouth. Driving down Mission, he had intended to get on the freeway and head south to Holly Park and see if he could get a few words with Louis Baker.

  But Al Nolan had gotten inside of him-young, hip, ponytailed Al Nolan with his 'Ralph' fifties-style bowling shirt, probably seriously thought he did a real job. And real clever to boot. Above it all with that glib shit that all these cons were just passing time before they went back. Jive about the Giants. For a minute Glitsky thought about bringing Al to the Hall and booking him for obstructing a homicide investigation. See how funny he thought that was.

  He drummed his fingers on the dash. Then there was Marcel Lanier and the other cops in homicide with their damn golf clubs. What was the use?

  He tried to get his mind kick-started back on Louis Baker. About why was he going down now to see Louis Baker. Sure, Hardy had his reasons. But for him, wasn't it the same reason Al Nolan had for assuming Baker was guilty-because he was a black ex-con?

  There wasn't any hard evidence making him a suspect. There was Hardy's suspicion, and Hardy's fear. But Hardy, all white, points the finger at Baker, all black, and Abe Glitsky-half and half-jumps on the white wagon with both feet. Well, shit, why is that, Abe?

  Look at the facts. Okay, so Hardy is your friend, and an ex-cop. Ex-cops also kill people. And Hardy was apprehended-let's not forget that, apprehended-there at the scene with a loaded weapon. Sure, he had his stated reasons, but why didn't Glitsky suspect him? Well, he knew Hardy. Also, Hardy's gun hadn't been fired. Still…

  He pulled over and glanced at the yellow pad full of notes next to him on the seat.

  Start at the beginning, Abe. Like you've done a hundred times before. Look at the victim. There aren't two victims, not yet. In spite of what Hardy might think, or say… There is one known victim. Her name is Maxine Weir and she lived at 964 Bush Street.

  Louis Baker and Holly Park could wait. Let's see who the facts point to.