The Setup Man

by T. T. Monday

  Lights out, Adcock.

  29

  I wake up in a hospital bed, surrounded by puke-green institutional curtains. A familiar voice is speaking on the phone nearby.

  “I said fifty-one percent of equity.” Long pause. “Yes, I know my first offer was higher, but that’s what happens when you make me wait.” Another pause. “No, Terrence, this is not a surprise. I warned you.”

  I lift my head. “Bethany?”

  “Let me call you back.” Bethany tosses the phone into her purse. Her face is stern. “She may have small tits,” she says, “but you owe that girl your life.”

  “Who, Brita?”

  “Is that her name?”

  “Yeah, like the—” I cough.

  “Like the water filters. Cute. Anyway, write her a thank-you note. I’ll remind you.”

  Bethany leans over, kisses my forehead with surprising tenderness, and starts slipping pillows behind my back so I can sit up.

  “Brita called you?”

  “She checked your phone and saw all the calls to my number. I have to admit, Johnny, I was touched.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “She found you on the men’s room floor. By the way, why don’t you ever ask me to funerals?”

  “And then she brought me to the hospital.”

  “She called 911.”

  Shit.

  “She was surprised to learn that your name was not Marcus Washington, but on the whole she rose to the occasion.”

  “Does she know?”

  “That you play baseball? No, but it’s funny, one of the paramedics recognized your name and asked if you were the Johnny Adcock of the San José Bay Dogs.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She must have said no, because she asked me if a bay dog was a breed of retriever.”

  “Does the team know?”

  “Oh, thanks for reminding me: you’ve been traded to San Diego.”

  “What?”

  Bethany produces my phone from her jacket pocket.

  “Your agent called an hour ago.”

  30

  The news stings, even though I expected it. My agent answers the phone breathless, as always. “They waived the physical,” he brags. It’s a win only an agent could appreciate. Todd Ratkiss is a forty-year-old man-child, a redheaded Jew on his third marriage. The most recent Mrs. Ratkiss was a rental-car clerk he met at the airport in Cabo. I hate going out to dinner with Todd, because I’m always afraid he is going to propose to the waitress.

  “That’s fine,” I say. “But I’m not worried about a physical.” It is the supremest irony imaginable, given my condition.

  “You are not a young man anymore, John. All kinds of things can happen at your age. Things you don’t even feel. Hairline fractures, bone spurs, shredded ligaments, sports hernias.”

  He stops, perhaps sensing, in that way agents have, that I am hiding something from him, something (to use his legal term) “material.”

  Or maybe Bethany just told him what happened.

  “Hey!” he yells. “You should be thanking me! I saved you from waivers!”

  “Nobody mentioned waivers.”

  “Not to you. But it was there, Johnny. Like an angel’s voice.” He whispers through the phone, “Way-vers … Way-vers … Waivers!”

  Waivers is when a baseball team puts its old sofa out on the curb. When a player is waived, all the other teams get a chance to claim him. If more than one club is interested, the team with the worst record has dibs. In my case, all roads lead to the Padres, owners of the worst record in the National League.

  “But back to the physical,” Todd says.

  “Thanks to you, I have an extra fifty milliliters of urine to play around with.”

  “Haven’t I always tried to get you something extra?” Todd tells me that I need to report to the Padres’ stadium, Petco Park, by five-thirty this evening. Although my left arm is more or less unhurt, the rest of my body is a shit show: the swelling under my eyes makes Joe Torre look like Miss America.

  “So you’re welcome. And, Johnny,” Ratkiss adds, “try not to fuck this up if you want to keep playing.”

  “What do you mean, if?”

  “I’m just saying, you’re coming up on your expiration date.”

  “You’re one to talk, Todd. You probably couldn’t get the ball over the plate, and we’re the same age.”

  “This isn’t about me,” he says, suddenly cool. “I get fifteen percent if you play and zip if you don’t. That should tell you where I’m coming from.”

  “I know where you’re coming from.”

  The conversation ends sour, which was never my intention. Todd is a decent guy and a dedicated agent. I’m just upset that everyone seems to think I should retire. I wonder if I have been limping and everyone notices it but me, like a dog who needs to be put down. Doubtful, but sometimes even Johnny Adcock, the great detective, fails to see the obvious.

  31

  Unlike the tenderfoots I work with, Bethany has zero patience for injuries. She and her ultra-endurance friends don’t even trade aphorisms like “You gotta play through the pain.” For them, it goes without saying that if you can walk you can run. And if you can go a mile you can go ten. Medically speaking, it is probably not the soundest strategy, but I know a few pampered infielders who could learn a thing or two about duty from these masochists.

  Lucky for me, this mind-set means that Bethany has no qualms about helping me escape medical supervision. She strips me out of my gown and helps me into a new charcoal Zegna suit. She calls it a get-well present, and it fits like a glove.

  We take her rental car to her hotel in Westwood, where she leads me to an air-conditioned suite on the tenth floor. She tells me that she is scheduled to give a talk about venture investing to a business-school class at UCLA. The professor is a friend who told her to stop by next time she was in town.

  “A student is picking me up downstairs,” she says. “I’ll be gone two hours. Three, tops. Can I trust you to stay put?” The plan is that I will wait here until Bethany gets back from her lecture, and then she will drive me down to San Diego in her rental car so I can report for work. But she knows I won’t wait around. And I know better than to lie. So I say nothing.

  We look at each other in silence for a minute.

  “You know,” I say, “there is one place the doctors forgot to check. Would you mind taking a look? I think it might be broken.”

  I drop the Italian suit trousers to my ankles.

  Bethany decides UCLA can wait.

  Twenty minutes later, she ties up her hair, pulls the pencil skirt down over her spectacular ass, and repeats the question: “Will you be good, Johnny? Or do I need to call someone to watch your door?”

  “You would do that?”

  She smiles. “No one watches their own boyfriend’s door these days.”

  It is the first time she has ever used the word “boyfriend” with me, and I have to admit it gives my heart a little jolt. It casts the indomitable Bethany in a strangely juvenile light, so that I catch a glimpse of Bethany Pham at age fourteen, sitting by her parents’ phone, praying for the courage to dial that cute boy from geometry. She may be human after all.

  Or maybe not. But she was once fourteen.

  “Just do me a favor,” she says. “Don’t do anything stupid. You’ve been beaten up enough for one day.”

  I rub my aching ribs. “You think?”

  “This isn’t even your full-time job, John. And fishing you out of trouble isn’t mine.”

  “I know. Hey—do you still have that guy?”

  “I have lots of guys.”

  “Sorry—the hacker. The one who can pull information from anonymous e-mails, find out where they’re from? That guy.”

  She nods. “Sure. And the best thing about him is that he’s hung like a freaking ox.”

  “That’s great. Here—” I throw her Frank Herrera’s phone. I found it as we were leaving the hospital, still in the p
ocket of my bloody jacket. “I need to know who sent the last text message. And, Bethie, please don’t let anyone know you have that thing.”

  She gives me a peck on the forehead and says she’ll see me in a few hours. After she leaves, I open the curtains. The hotel has a view of the Westwood veterans’ cemetery, row upon row of uniform white markers, punctuated by sycamores and live oaks. In the distance, the freeway winds into the hills, a river of windshields shimmering in the heat.

  Bethany has a point: I am in no shape to continue this investigation, not the way it’s going. I’m not an accountant or an insurance adjustor; I don’t sit behind a desk to earn my keep. I have a professional obligation to maintain my body in working order. God help me if the Padres call on me to pitch tonight, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. I could always fake the flu.

  The phone rings, and I see that it’s Marcus. “You’re not going to believe what happened to me,” I say.

  He laughs. “Richard Millman? I was traded a couple times, but never for a washed-up closer. My sympathies, kid. You must be hurting.”

  “I am, but it has nothing to do with Richard Millman. I got the crap beat out of me yesterday at Bam Bam’s funeral.”

  “Damn. You know why?”

  “I took something from Bam Bam’s office, and now I’ve been rolled twice for it.”

  A short pause, then: “You went to his office?”

  “I had to go back and make sure you didn’t leave anything behind. You were pretty rattled.”

  “Rattled? The fuck I was!”

  “Anyway—I took a binder, some kind of investment prospectus. I stashed it with my gear in the visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium. Problem is, I’m no longer a Bay Dog, so I’m probably locked out.”

  Marcus isn’t worried. “The clubhouse guys will pack it up.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Did you tell Herrera’s wife about the chick in his car?”

  “Jesus Christ, you wouldn’t believe the story on that girl. Turns out there’s a whole operation going on. Another buddy of mine was screwing the same girl. Looks like a ring of prostitutes aimed at ballplayers. I’m thinking Bam Bam was involved.”

  “With the hos?”

  “Sure. He sent the video to Frankie because he was shaking down his johns. Or something like that. What do you think?”

  “Could be,” Marcus says. There isn’t any doubt in his voice, but I get the feeling he’s humoring me. I agree that it seems unlikely a small-time operator like Bam Bam Rodriguez would have been running girls as well as porn, but why else would Luck’s pimp have attended his funeral? Bam Bam Rodriguez was a juiced-up power hitter prone to flattery, dirty jokes, and swinging at the first pitch. I know the type all too well. It doesn’t fit that he could have managed an operation like this. How would he have laundered the money, for instance? The guy couldn’t even keep his desk clean.

  “You okay to play tonight?” Marcus asks.

  “Not sure. My arm is fine, but the rest of me is jacked.”

  “Well, if you need anything.”

  “Thanks, but you’ve done more than enough.”

  After we hang up, I stand and lift my arms above my head. It feels like knives are slotted between my ribs. Buddies who have undergone reconstructive surgery tell me this is how rehab begins, with pain so unbelievable you’re reminded that what you’re doing (rebuilding an elbow with tendons from the leg, for example) is not supposed to be done. The human body has natural limits. Our profession ignores those limits, and this is our reward.

  In this era of piss tests and mandatory suspensions, you have to be careful with your remedies for pain. Something as benign as a muscle-relaxing ointment can trigger hormones that will land you on unpaid leave for fifty or a hundred games. Fortunately, the little cocktail I have in mind is as old as the hills, and as far as I know still legal. It has many names: Scope-a-Dope, Advil Shooters, or my favorite, Champion’s Tea. I go to the bathroom and grab a handful of ibuprofen from Bethany’s kit. On the counter, the hotel has set out an assortment of toiletries. I grab a travel-sized bottle of mouthwash, crack the seal, and drop the pills on my tongue. Mix, swish, and swallow. Who needs HGH?

  32

  I am crawling south on the San Diego Freeway behind the wheel of Bethany’s rental car, in what must be the slowest getaway since O.J. and Al Cowlings. I flip the radio to AM and find—what else?—Jesse Ursino’s call-in program. As usual, Jesse manages to be both reasonable and reactive, but this time the topic hits close to home:

  “… and what’s with these who-cares trades? I mean, it used to be that when a club swung a deal the night before the trade deadline, it was an impact move. I’m thinking of the Dodgers snagging Manny Ramirez in ’08, or the Rangers and Cliff Lee in 2010. Now what do we have? Richard Millman to the Bay Dogs for Johnny Adcock? I’m sorry, but Johnny Who? I played with the guy, and I consider him a friend, but for Christ’s sake, a left-handed setup man is not going to make the difference between playing in October and going home.”

  Just goes to show, you never know who your friends are until you hear it on AM radio.

  Asshole.

  I grab my phone and dial the number Ursino barks to the listeners before every commercial break. Two rings and I am speaking with a screener who sounds about two hundred pounds overweight, wheezing like a whale with a congested blowhole. “Talking Trash with Jesse Ursino, please state your name and location.”

  “This is Johnny Adcock. Let me speak to Jesse.”

  You can hear the guy sit up. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “If you don’t believe me, tell him it’s Sparkle Dick.”

  Ursino is famous for the incident with Kirk Gibson, but he staged plenty of other pranks, too, including one on yours truly. Unlike Gibby and the shoe polish, this one never entered baseball lore. Only a member of the late-nineties Bay Dogs would get the reference.

  There is a full minute of silence before Jesse Ursino comes on the line. “Fucking Sparkle Dick Adcock, is that you?”

  “Since when am I your friend?” It comes off more aggressive than I intended, but I decide not to worry about it. After all, this is the man who put glitter glue in my athletic supporter.

  “Hold on,” Jesse says, “let me patch you in.”

  There is a pop on the line, and the fat assistant asks me to turn off my radio. I do as I am told.

  Through the phone now, I hear the show’s theme music, followed by Jesse’s voice: “Welcome back to Talking Trash. Would you believe that during the commercial break none other than the who-cares man himself, Johnny Effing Adcock, picked up his phone and called the Trashman? Yes, it turns out Adcock was cruising through the airspace in his automobile and heard our program. Seems we hit a nerve. Can’t imagine why that would be.… Johnny, are you there, my man?”

  “I’m here, Jesse. Thanks for having me on.”

  “So tell me, how are you feeling post-trade?”

  “I haven’t joined the Padres yet, but I know I’m going to miss my teammates in San José. And the whole Bay Dogs organization, the Eberhardt family, the front office, everyone.”

  “You’ve spent your whole career in San José, correct?”

  “That’s right. Thirteen years.”

  “You don’t see that much anymore.”

  “You would know.”

  “Hey! Okay, yes, it’s true. The Trashman did make the rounds a little bit. But as I always say, baseball is a business, not a hobby. We sell our services to the highest bidder.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “Are you saying you would have preferred to remain with San José? I would have thought you’d want to move closer to your family. They’re still in SoCal, no?”

  “I don’t talk about my family with the press.”

  “Oh, right …”

  I hear the rare twinge of regret in Ursino’s voice. He knows he fucked up. Any other player, sure, but he knows what I do in my spare time. In fact, he knows too well:
six years ago, just before he retired, I helped him find his teenage daughter. She was a rebellious girl who got mixed up with drugs and disappeared with some questionable friends. All Ursino knew was that she was heading south. Thanks to my network of contacts in Central and South America—yet another reason to be grateful for Latin American baseball—I located her at a resort in Costa Rica and had her home within a week.

  “Anyway, the Padres—not exactly a trade up. fifteen games out of first place with sixty to play. Mathematically, their season is not over, but for all intents and purposes …”

  “I don’t want to talk about the pennant race, Jesse. I want to talk about Frankie Herrera.”

  “Herrera, folks, was the Bay Dogs catcher killed in a car crash last week.”

  “That’s him. I wanted to say for the record that Frankie Herrera was a good man.”

  “I never said he wasn’t.”

  “You suggested earlier this week that the callers were making too much of his charity work in Mexico.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did.”

  “We can review the tape, but I have no recollection of saying anything like that. I never knew Frankie Herrera, and I certainly had nothing against him personally.”

  “You should be careful what you say on the radio, is all I’m saying.”

  “Thank you for the warning, Johnny Adcock. The Trashman will certainly mind his P’s and Q’s. But now it’s time to pause for a station identification. You’re listening to K—”

  The show goes to a commercial break, and Ursino clicks over to a private line.

  “You there, Sparkle Dick?”

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t know why I called in. It was a bad idea.”

  “I’m glad you did, because I’ve got a piece of news that may interest you. It concerns our friend Frankie Herrera, as a matter of fact.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Turns out he was something of an actor, if you know what I’m saying. I haven’t seen the clip personally, but ESPN is about to break the news that there is a video on the Web of Herrera and another dude tag-teaming a chick who looks like Herrera’s wife.”