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  “A LARGE CAST, SWIFT PACING, AND GOOD LOCAL COLOR … A GRIPPING YARN.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Soldier. Cop. Lawyer. Dismas Hardy’s done the tough jobs and had some tough luck. Now he’s kicking back and tending bar at the Shamrock in San Francisco. But the past returns in the form of Rusty Ingraham—a former fellow prosecutor who drops by to warn Hardy that a perp they put away nearly ten years ago just got released … and might still be looking for revenge. Next thing Hardy knows, Ingraham’s houseboat becomes a murder scene, with a dead woman aboard and Ingraham, presumably, at the bottom of the bay. To save himself, Hardy’s got to solve the case. But there’s more than one kind of payback, and it’s not just the ex-con who might have wanted it. Now, as Hardy tangles with a mob enforcer, a rejected lover, and a renegade cop, he is haunted by the knowledge that the later you pay, the steeper the price….

  “[Lescroart has a] sensitive touch with psychologically complex characters … a tense, tough, page-turning plot.”

  —Playboy

  continued …

  Praise for the novels

  of John Lescroart

  The Motive

  “Surpasses anything Grisham ever wrote and bears comparison with Turow.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Unfolds like a classic Law & Order.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  The Second Chair

  “Lescroart gives his ever-growing readership another spellbinder to savor.”

  —Library Journal

  “Great characters and a wonderful sense of place.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  The First Law

  “With his latest, Lescroart again lands in the top tier of crime fiction.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Oath

  A People Page-Turner

  “A terrific crime story.”

  —People

  “Hardy and Glitsky are like good wine, improving with time.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  The Hearing

  “A spine-tingling legal thriller.”

  —Larry King, USA Today

  Nothing But the Truth

  “Riveting … one of Lescroart’s best tales yet.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  The Mercy Rule

  “Well-written, well-plotted, well-done.”

  —Nelson DeMille

  Guilt

  “Begin Guilt over a weekend…. If you start during the workweek, you will be up very, very late, and your pleasure will be tainted with, well, guilt.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  A Certain Justice

  “A gifted writer … I read him with great pleasure.”

  —Richard North Patterson

  “Engrossing.”

  —The San Francisco Examiner

  “A West Coast take on The Bonfire of the Vanities … richly satisfying.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  The 13th Juror

  “Fast-paced … sustains interest to the very end.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  Hard Evidence

  “Engrossing … compulsively readable, a dense and involving saga of big-city crime and punishment.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  Dead Irish

  “Full of all the things I like. Lescroart’s a pro.”

  —Jonathan Kellerman

  ALSO BY JOHN LESCROART

  The Motive

  The Second Chair

  The First Law

  The Oath

  The Hearing

  Nothing But the Truth

  The Mercy Rule

  Guilt

  A Certain Justice

  The 13th Juror

  Hard Evidence

  Dead Irish

  Rasputin’s Revenge

  Son of Holmes

  Sunburn

  THE

  VIG

  * * *

  JOHN LESCROART

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Published by arrangement with the author. Previously published in Donald I. Fine, Inc., and Island editions.

  First Signet Printing, August 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © John Lescroart, 1990

  Excerpt from The Hunt Club copyright © The Lescroart Corporation, 2006

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Version_2

  To Al Giannini

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25r />
  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  1

  At 2:15 on a Wednesday afternoon in late September, Dismas Hardy sat on the customer side of the bar at the Little Shamrock and worked the corners of his dart flights with a very fine emery board. A pint of Guinness, pulled a quarter of an hour ago, had lost its head and rested untouched in the bar’s gutter. Hardy whistled tonelessly, as happy as he’d been in ten years.

  He’d opened the bar at 1:00 P.M. sharp and had served a bottle of Miller Draft to Tommy, a regular who’d retired from schoolteaching some years back and who now spent most afternoons by the large picture window, talking to whoever would listen. But today Tommy told Hardy he had an appointment and left after one beer. Tommy was all right, but being left alone didn’t break Hardy’s heart.

  Hardy finished one flight and raised his head. He took the Guinness and sipped at it. Through the window over Tommy’s table, light traffic passed on Lincoln Blvd. Across the street, the evergreens and eucalyptus that bordered Golden Gate Park shimmered in a light breeze. There had been no fog that morning, and Hardy guessed the breeze would still be warm. If you want summer in San Francisco, plan your vacation for the fall.

  A bus pulled up across the street and stopped. When it pulled away, it left a man standing, lost looking, at the corner.

  A minute later, the double doors swung open; Hardy scooped up his flights and swung himself around the end of the bar. He stood behind the porcelain beer taps and nodded at the customer.

  If it was a customer. At first glance, the man didn’t bring to mind visions of bankrolls and limousines. Whether he had sufficient money for a beer seemed questionable. His shirt was open at the collar and frayed badly. His baggy pants needed pressing. Under a forehead that went all the way back, eyes squinted adjusting to the relative darkness of the bar, although the Shamrock was no cave. He needed a shave.

  “Help you?” Hardy asked, then as he looked more closely, the pieces began to fall into place. “Rusty?”

  The man let loose a low-watt smile that seemed to require an effort. He stepped closer to the bar. “Ten points.” He stuck his hand over the bar and Hardy took it. “How you doin’, Diz?” The voice was quiet and assured, cultured.

  Hardy asked what he was drinking and said it was on him.

  “Same as always.”

  Hardy closed his eyes, trying to remember, then turned and reached up to the top shelf, grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey, and snuck a glance at the man who’d shared his office back in the days when they’d both worked for the district attorney.

  Rusty Ingraham had aged. There was, of course, the hair, or lack of it. At twenty-five, Rusty had sported a shock of orange-red hair and a handlebar mustache. Now, with no facial hair except the stubble, bald on top and gray on the sides, he looked old—handsome still, but old.

  Hardy poured him a double.

  “Prodigious,” Rusty Ingraham said, nodding at his glass.

  Hardy shrugged. “You know somebody at all, you know what they drink.”

  “Well, you found your calling.” He lifted the glass, Hardy raised his pint, and they both said “Skol.”

  “So”—Hardy put down his glass—“you still a lawyer?”

  Ingraham’s lips turned up, yet there was a gentleness Hardy hadn’t seen before. Before he’d left the D.A.’s, Ingraham might have had some sensitivity but it didn’t ever come out gentle. Now his half-smile was that of a man looking back only. The good times, whatever they’d been, would never—could never—return. He sipped slowly at his whiskey. “You must have been out of the field awhile yourself if you still call them lawyers.”

  Hardy grinned. It was an old joke. “Attorney then—you still an attorney?”

  Like a flame trying to catch on a wick, the smile flickered back. Hardy was getting the feeling Ingraham hadn’t spoken to a soul in a long while. “I still have that distinction.” He paused. “Though I rarely stand upon the ‘Esquire’ in correspondence, and as you can see”—he gestured at his clothing—“my practice is in a hiatus.” He drank again, like a drinking man but not hungrily, not like an alcoholic. There was a difference, and Hardy was keyed to it.

  “You do this full-time?”

  Hardy’s eyes swept the room, proprietary. “Nine years now. I own a quarter of the place.”

  “That’s great. And you’re still with Jane?”

  “Well, we got divorced once, but we’re going at it again.” He shrugged. “I’m confident but cautious.”

  “Yep. You always were.”

  “So what about you? I noticed you came by on the bus.”

  Their eyes met a moment, then the flame of Rusty’s smile went out. “I got my car stolen a month ago. It’s still gone. A major hassle. So I spend a lot of time waiting for the N-Godot.”

  Hardy liked that. The N-Judah, which ran behind the Shamrock, was a notoriously slow line.

  “Otherwise, you pretty much see it, Diz. I hang out. I live in a barge down at China Basin. Chase an ambulance every month or two, hit a good nag now and then. I’ve still got one good suit. I get my shoes shined and for a day or two I can get by.”

  He tipped up his glass and asked Hardy if he could buy him one. He put a ten-dollar bill in the gutter. Hardy refilled them both but didn’t grab the bill.

  “Actually, Diz, I came by here today for a reason. You remember Louis Baker?”

  Hardy frowned. He remembered Louis Baker. “Eight aggravated to thirteen?”

  “Nine and a half, it turns out.”

  “Nine and a half,” Hardy repeated. “Hardly worth the effort.”

  “Not even hardly.”

  Hardy took a belt of his stout, set the glass down, and swore. “I must’ve sent down a hundred guys. You too,” he said.

  Ingraham nodded. “All told, I put away two hundred and fourteen assholes.”

  Hardy whistled. “You were red-hot, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but there was only one Louis Baker.”

  Baker had been a cancer in Hunter’s Point for the first twenty years of his life. He had a huge head, a well-trimmed Afro, and the body of a defensive safety. In spite of having a sheet ranging from the petty—vandalism and car theft, burglary and muggings—when he was in his teens to the heinous as he matured, he was convinced he would never do hard time, and not without reason.

  The D.A. had been forced to drop charges on him twice for murder and four times for rape. He was good at not leaving evidence, or at making witnesses reluctant to testify.

  The one time Baker went to trial for attempted murder and mayhem on a man who had talked too long to his girlfriend in a 7-Eleven, the man had finally refused to identify him when the crunch came. He got all the way to the stand, then looked at Baker at the defendant’s table and evidently decided that if he pointed the finger at him, he would not live to see his grandchildren. So he suddenly couldn’t say for sure that Baker had been the man who’d cut off his ears before stabbing him in the stomach in the middle of the afternoon.

  Hardy had been the prosecutor in that case.

  The D.A.’s office—Rusty Ingraham this time—had finally gotten him for armed robbery of four victims, one of whom he’d wounded, but as it was only Baker’s first conviction, meaning that in the court’s eyes he wasn’t yet a hardened criminal and hence a candidate for rehabilitation, the judge had been inclined to be lenient and had given him eight years.

  When the verdict came down, Baker had quietly hung his head for a short time, then looked over at the prosecution table. Hardy had wanted to come down for the verdict, see this guy finally get put away, and he was sitting next to Ingraham. Baker looked in their direction, directly at Ingraham, seemingly memorizing him.

  “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 funny for a second—for just a second. But it was enough.

  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 good-bye 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.