The Vig

“You, motherfucker,” he said, “are a dead man.”

The judge slammed his gavel. Ingraham made a motion to aggravate Baker’s sentence in view of the threat, and the judge slapped on another five right then and there.

The bailiff got the huge man to his feet, got some help from two deputies, and started pulling him across the courtroom while he glared at Ingraham.

Then Hardy did a stupid thing.

Baker’s glaring, his posing, his tough-guy bullshit struck Hardy as fu

Here was this twenty-one-year-old punk, going down for a long time, who thought his ghetto glare was going to put the fear of God or something into the man who’d sent him there. So when Baker, struggling in his chains, fixed Hardy with the Eye, Hardy pursed his lips and blew him a goodbye kiss.

At which point Baker had really gone birdshit, pulling loose from the bailiff and two deputies and nearly getting to the prosecution table before he was quieted down with nightsticks.

The scene replayed itself in Hardy’s dreams for months; it wasn’t helped by the letter Hardy received during Baker’s first week in prison. He’d found out who Hardy was from his own lawyer, and when he got out, the letter said, he was going to kill Hardy too.

Hardy sent copies of the letter to the warden and the judge who’d sentenced Baker, but the parole board ruled on these matters, and since the judge had already bumped his time for threats, they didn’t feel compelled to do it again. The letter Hardy received back from the warden explained that although many inmates were bitter just after sentencing, most came around to serving good time and concentrating on getting an early parole.

Most, maybe.

Baker? Hardy wasn’t so sure.

“So he’s out?”

Ingraham pulled his cuff back and checked his watch. Hardy wasn’t positive, but it looked to be a hell of a Rolex. “If they’re on time, in about two hours.”

“How’d you hear about it?”

“I got a friend in Paroles. He called me. And I checked with the warden at the House. Nobody’s meeting him at the gate. Who would? Supposedly taking the bus back to town.”

Hardy whistled. “You have checked.”

“The guy got my attention.”

“So what are you going to do?”

His old office mate sipped at his drink. “What can you do? Something’s go

“Did you ever pack?”

Ingraham shook his head. “That’s for you cops. We gentlemen who believe in the rule of law are supposed to have no need for that hardware.”

Hardy had come up to the D.A.’s office after a tour in Vietnam and several years on the police force. Ingraham had come up through Stanford, then Hastings Law School.

“You pla

“I’m not pla

“What if he comes to see you?”

“I called the warden after I got the word. He says Louis has been a model inmate, has found the Lord, gets max time off for good behavior. I’ve got nothing to worry about. Neither of us do. Evidently.”

Hardy leaned across the bar. “Then why are you here?”

Ingraham’s smile finally caught. “Because it sounds like a heap of bullshit to me.” He leaned back on the barstool. “I thought it might not be a bad idea to stay in touch for a couple of weeks, you and me.”

Hardy waited, not getting it.

“I mean, call each other every day at the same time, something like that.”

“What would that do?”

“Well, hell, Diz, we’re not going to get police protection. Nobody’s go

Hardy picked up his Gui

“Yep. I’m afraid I do.”

“Jesus…”

“One other thing…”

“Yeah?”

“I thought you might recommend what kind of gun.”

Jane was in Hong Kong buying clothes for I. Magnin. She would be back this weekend.

They hadn’t quite formalized living together again, although some of Jane’s clothes hung in the closet in Hardy’s bedroom. She still had her house-their old house-on Jackson, and would stay there once in a while, on nights she worked late downtown. But three or four nights a week for the past three months she’d slept here, out in the Avenues, with her ex-husband.

Padding now from room to room, he realized how much he had come to need her again. Well, not need. You didn’t really need anybody to survive. But once you got beyond survival, you needed somebody if you wanted to feel whole, or alive, or whatever it was that made getting up something to look forward to rather than dread.

After he’d finished his shift and Moses McGuire had come in to spell him at the Shamrock, he shot five or six games of 301 to keep his hand-eye sharp. The newly formed flights worked well, and he held his place at the line until he was ready to quit, leaving unbeaten.

He drove home in darkness, parking his Suzuki Samurai, which he called his Seppuku, on the street in front of the only white picket fence on the block. Inside, he cooked a steak in a black cast-iron pan and ate it with a can of peas.

He fed the tropical fish in the tank in the bedroom, read a hundred pages of Barbara Tuchman and realized anew that the world had probably always been very much like the wonderful place it was today; he went into his office to open his safe and look at his guns.

He’d recommended to Rusty that he consider buying a regulation.38 police Special. It was a no-frills firearm that, using hollow-point slugs, you nicked a guy on the pinkie and he’d spin around like a ballerina and hit the ground.

Hardy lifted his own Special from the safe. The Colt.44 was more of a show gun, and heavy, and the.22 target pistol might stop a charging tree rat, but that was about it. The Special was the one.

He pulled a box of bullets from the back of the safe and carefully loaded the weapon. Immediately he was nervous and walked into his bedroom, opened a drawer in his night table and deposited the Special there.

It was 9:48. He figured he would sit at his desk and wait for Rusty’s call at 10:00, then watch some L.A. Law and turn in-a quiet night.

He picked the three darts out of the board across from his desk and starting throwing, easy and loose, trying not to think about Louis Baker, or Jane, or Rusty Ingraham.

Someone had once told him that the way to turn water into gold is to go to the middle of a jungle and light a fire and put a pot of water on to boil. Now, you ready? Here’s the trick. For a half hour, don’t think of a lion. Pick up your pot of gold and go home.

Hardy checked the clock on his desk. It was 10:12. Maybe he’d gotten it mixed up and they weren’t starting until tomorrow morning at 10:00. Still.

He took the piece of paper that Rusty had given him and dialed the number. The phone rang eight times and Hardy hung up. Anyway, Rusty was supposed to call him at night, and Hardy call Rusty in the morning, unless one of them was not going to be home. Then they’d change the schedule on those days. It was only going to be for two weeks.

At 10:35 he tried again. They must have said they’d start the next morning.

Hardy wasn’t tired. None of this seemed very real, but he did lie down on his bed and take the Special out of the drawer next to him. He flipped off the light and pulled a comforter over him, his clothes still on, the gun in his hand. He looked at the clock by his bed. It was 11:01.

No call.