Payback is murder.<br><br>A beautiful woman paid it with her body.  A seedy lawyer used somebody else's money.  It's the vig--the exorbitant interest mob loan sharks take on their money.  Now, in the city by the Bay, everyone has to pay...<br><br>Down-and-out-lawyer Rusty Ingraham left behind a murdered woman and a houseboat splattered with blood.  All the evidence said Ingraham was in San Francisco Bay.  Dead.  But a friend of Ingraham's, former cop and prosecutor Dismas Hardy, isn't so sure.  And Hardy has to find out, because a stone-cold killer, now paroled, once threatened to kill Ingraham and Dismas Hardy both.<br><br>Now, to save his own skin, Dismas must face down liars and killers on both sides of the law.  From mob foot soldiers to brokenhearted lovers to renegade cops, a dozen lives are tied to the fate of Rusty Ingraham--and the payback has only just begun....