The Setup Man

by T. T. Monday

  I’m surprised the writer signed his name to the post. Now he’ll have no chance to make the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, the members-only body that votes on the Cy Young and MVP awards. The BBWAA remains one of the stodgiest clubs in a stodgy sport, but I guess my friend decided it wasn’t worth playing by their rules. The times are changing for all of us. I hope at least he made some money.

  I shower quickly, throw on borrowed street clothes, and wait in the hall outside the visitors’ clubhouse door. A couple of the Bay Dogs say hello as they leave, but most do not. It’s like they can smell the failure on me and don’t want to get infected. I have a choice to make. I could stew in my loneliness, or I could reach out and touch someone. In moments of personal crisis, I used to call my mother, but since she passed away, five years ago, I usually end up dialing my ex-wife. Not sure what that says about me and the choices I’ve made with women, but, for better or worse, Ginny will always be family.

  She does not say hello when she picks up.

  “What’s the matter, John?”

  I hear beeping in the background. “Relax, nothing’s wrong. I just need your advice.”

  “I’m at Trader Joe’s.”

  “Okay, I’ll call back.”

  “No, let’s get this over with.…” She pauses. “Now is fine, I mean.”

  “I’m thinking about calling it quits,” I say.

  “Retirement?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And what will you do with yourself if you retire?”

  “I have some ideas.”

  “Like what?”

  “Marcus wants me to work for him.”

  “At his bar. Isn’t that a cliché?”

  “Marcus’s place is different, but, yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “Do you really have to work? You must have some money saved up.”

  This strikes me as a very Santa Monica thing to say.

  “I have some money, yes.”

  “I’m not digging, you know. Simon gave me everything in the divorce. All he needed was the love of a good man—he said that. Last I heard, he was sleeping under a palapa in Zihuatanejo. My point is, don’t keep playing baseball for our sake. Izzy and I are doing fine.”

  I was afraid she would say this. I was hoping for the opposite, that she would berate me into continuing my career, scorching my ear with all manner of vicious threats and belittlements. You are a fool, Johnny Adcock! What kind of man quits a job that pays a million and a half dollars a year? But the sad fact about divorce is that even anger falls away eventually. First the good kind of passion dissolves, then the bad. I never thought I would miss her rage, but I do.

  “Suppose I retire,” I say. “Will you still, you know, respect me?”

  She laughs, then apologizes. “I don’t mean to belittle your dilemma, but this is not about earning anyone’s respect. This is about one thing: do you want to play baseball or not?”

  “Fair enough,” I say.

  I hear the checker ask Ginny if she wants her milk in a bag. “Is that it?” she says.

  “Actually, I have one more question. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want. It’s about birth control.”

  “You’re not worried about Izzy, are you?”

  “No! Oh, God, no. No—it’s a question for you.”

  “I guess that’s a relief.”

  “Do you know anything about IUDs?”

  “A little. Why? Are you shopping around for Bethany’s birthday?”

  I ignore the jab. “What I want to know is, do they put you to sleep for the operation?”

  A pause as Ginny realizes I’m serious. “Okay, my sister has an IUD, and if I remember correctly, it’s not even an operation. She said they just slipped it in. Maybe some local anesthesia.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. The mysteries of the female anatomy.”

  “Thanks, Ginny, that’s helpful.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Jerry Díaz has emerged from the clubhouse. “Okay, I gotta go. Kiss Izzy for me?”

  She agrees, and we hang up. Another awkward conversation in the past.

  Díaz looks as fresh as ever in jeans and an ironed polo shirt, an Adidas tote slung over his shoulder. “Johnny!” he exclaims when he sees me. I must admit that his enthusiasm is especially welcome today. He shakes my hand with gusto.

  “Díaz.”

  “Well?” he says. “You ready to go?”

  50

  The Aztec Motel in Mission Valley looks pretty much the same as it did when I stayed here in the late nineties as a member of the Cal State Fullerton baseball team: a two-story block of tiny double rooms, external walkways wrapped around the second story, cracked asphalt parking lot with numbered spaces corresponding to the rooms. Off to the side of the parking lot, the motel’s office has its own bungalow, an aged swamp cooler chugging away on the roof. Out on the street, a fluorescent signboard reads VACANCY, COLOR HBO, $69+TAX. No extra charge for bedbugs, and no questions asked.

  Díaz and I go around the back of the main building and climb up the stairs behind the rumbling ice machine. On the second floor, three doors down, we find Room 16, where Díaz has arranged to meet Rosario. This morning, after Marcus dropped me off at the park, I called Díaz and told him I had another favor to ask, a hunch that needed testing. I said it just like that, “a hunch that needs testing.” Needless to say, he was in. After bringing him up to speed on my night in Tijuana and the situation with Maria Herrera, I asked him to call Rosario.

  I knock softly, turning sideways so I can keep an eye on the parking lot.

  A voice from inside: “Who is it?”

  “Barrio El Dorado,” Díaz replies. This is the name of his parents’ ranch. It means Golden Neighborhood. He said he always thought it would make a good password.

  The door opens a crack. When Rosario sees it’s us, she unlatches the chain and lets us in. The room is dark and low-ceilinged and smells of stale cigarette smoke. When my eyes adjust, I see that Rosario is not wearing her work clothes. She’s in jeans and a Padres T-shirt; without her makeup, she looks much less like her sister.

  “Thanks for meeting us,” Díaz says.

  “We will pay you again,” I add.

  Rosario shakes her head. “No money,” she says. “This is for Ana.”

  Díaz and I sit on one of the two swaybacked double beds, Rosario on the other.

  “Last time, you told us Ana wanted to go to university. Did she tell you anything else about her plans in the U.S.?”

  “She saved a lot of money,” Rosario says. “Last time I saw her, she said she had enough for two years’ tuition. That’s why she quit working for Señora Maria.”

  “Hold on,” I say. “Your sister wasn’t working for the Herreras? When did that happen?”

  “She quit a month ago. I was at my apartment one night, and Ana showed up unexpectedly. I didn’t even know she was in town. She traveled a lot for Señora Maria, but she usually called ahead. She said that she had saved enough money to start taking classes at the university. I gave her my best congratulations, because I knew this was her dream. She said there would be much more to celebrate soon, not just for her but for all of us, because she had convinced Señor Frankie to shut down the business.”

  “You are talking about Frankie Herrera, Señora Maria’s husband.”

  “That’s right.” Ana lowers her eyes for a moment. “My sister and Señor Frankie, they were in love.”

  “And he told your sister he was going to shut down the prostitution business?”

  “That’s what she said. The reason it had not happened yet was because Señora Maria had not agreed. Ana said Señora Maria had a new business partner, someone other than Señor Frankie, and this person would be very upset if Señor Frankie tried to shut down the business.”

  “I’m sure he would,” I say. “So Ana was worried for Frankie’s safety?”

  “She said that even if Señor Frankie agreed to let the business stay open, h
e would still be in danger because of what he knew. She said Señora Maria’s new partner might worry that Señor Frankie would go to the police or something like that. In Mexico, the cartels will kill you for what you know, even if you would never dare to speak. I told Ana that this was America, not Mexico, but she would not listen. She was upset, inconsolable. She was going that night to San José to find Señor Frankie.”

  “So Maria didn’t kill him after all,” Díaz says to me. “It was her partner.”

  “Rosario,” I say, “do you know the name of Señora Maria’s partner?”

  Rosario looks at me in horror. “Why would I want to know his name?”

  I decide to change course. “You said there were six girls recruited from your village. Are you still in touch with the others?”

  Her eyes go wide. “When Señor Jerry called me this morning, I was having coffee with Luz—”

  “Luz is one of the other girls?” Díaz says. “She came north with us, but she got sick and had to stop working for Señora Maria.”

  I assume she’s talking about HIV or another career-ending disease. I can’t imagine there are too many reasons a girl like Luz gets to void her contract. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “I told Luz about you and Señor Jerry, that you believed Ana was killed and were going to find her killer. She gave me something to show you.” Rosario digs around in her purse, and then holds out a small glass capsule, about the size of a roll of Life Savers. Inside are an array of densely packed, multicolored electronic components.

  “A month after we came to the United States,” Rosario explains, “Luz began to have horrible cramps. Then she developed a headache and a high fever, so I took her to the hospital. The doctor said she had an infection in her womb. He ordered emergency surgery. He saved her life. Afterward he gave her this. He said it caused the infection.”

  I turn the capsule over in my hand. My first thought is that it’s a bomb, but it seems too small to do anything more than superficial damage. It looks like the remote-controlled firecrackers the pimpito was planting on George Luck’s window. That doesn’t make sense, either.

  I am trying to piece this together—the logic of putting a low-powered explosive inside a human being—when Díaz growls, “Those sick motherfuckers.” His choice of words startles me. It is the first time I’ve ever heard him swear.

  “Jerry? You know what this thing is?”

  He looks at me. “Of course I do. I’m a cattle rancher.”

  51

  Díaz and I are sitting at a table in one of San Diego’s excellent brew pubs. Despite the kid’s successes so far, it is clear he has a lot to learn, style-wise, about being a detective. For starters, he asks the waitress if she has Rolling Rock on tap.

  “You might as well order a seltzer,” she says.

  “Rolling Rock beer,” he says with a flirtatious smile.

  “I know what you mean. We don’t have it.”

  “Oh. What are you ordering, boss?”

  “Pint of bitter.”

  “So two Married Woman Bitters?” the waitress says.

  Díaz nods. “I guess so. Is it dark?”

  “If you want a dark beer, you should try the Fat Madam Stout. It’s on the hand pump tonight.”

  I can tell Díaz wants to chat her up—just to show off his chops—but he can’t seem to bring himself to do it. “Fat Madam Stout,” he says. “Who comes up with these names?”

  “The brewmaster studied creative writing in college.”

  “Bring two pints,” I say.

  The waitress nods. “Right-o.” She has a kind of sexy belligerence that I can’t place. It might come from the way her ass knocks back and forth as she walks. That or the neck tattoos.

  As soon as she’s out of earshot, Díaz starts to explain: “Do you have any pets, Adcock? Any cats or dogs?”

  “I had a dog when I was little.”

  “Was he chipped?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “This is basically a bigger version of the microchips they implant in household pets.” He pulls the glass capsule out of his jacket pocket and holds it between us. “See that? That’s the antenna coil. And here’s the brain of the thing, the silicon chip.” He turns it over and points to a disk about a centimeter thick. “That’s the battery, which tells you this is an active RFID tag.”

  “A what?”

  “RFID stands for ‘radio-frequency identification,’ ” he explains. “When you chip your cat, she’s given a passive RFID tag. Passive means the tag doesn’t have a power source. Using a handheld reader, you can scan the animal and learn its owner’s name and address, phone number, that kind of thing. It’s all embedded in the chip and transmitted to the scanner. But the range of a passive RFID tag is very small. You have to hold the scanner right over the chip. Active RFID tags are different. They have a battery and actually put out a radio signal that can be picked up hundreds of feet away. Ranchers use them to track their herds. You can even have the device transmit the animal’s pulse and temperature.”

  “Your family uses these?”

  “We’re starting to, but the equipment is expensive. You need receivers in the barns, in the corrals, even on the range—basically, anywhere you want to count cattle.”

  “What about the capsules? Are they expensive, too?”

  “Compared to the cost of the receivers, the tags are cheap, but you need to pay a vet to implant them.” He pauses. “Of course, with cattle you just slip the tags under the skin. I’ve never heard of putting them deeper inside the body. Definitely not inside organs …”

  “I’ll bet they implanted the tags when they did the IUDs. That’s why they put the girls to sleep.”

  “The girls never knew what they were getting.”

  “Exactly. The problem is that these things are meant to live under the skin, not inside the womb. I would say Rosario’s friend is lucky she lived.”

  “Do you think they’ve all been chipped?” Díaz says.

  “We have to assume so.”

  “We need to warn them, Adcock.”

  “Good luck with that,” I say. “It’s not like there’s a personnel directory. And even if we did contact them, what would we do, line them up at the emergency room for X-rays? You can’t do that without answering a lot of questions.”

  “There’s an X-ray machine in the clubhouse,” Díaz says. “We could bring the girls there … in the middle of night, maybe … but we’d need someone who knows how to use the machine.” He isn’t even convincing himself. “This is fucked,” he mutters.

  “Rosario told us that business has continued as usual since Maria’s death. Someone pays the rent on her apartment, orders her groceries for delivery, sends reminders of her dates. This suggests Maria’s new partner is firmly in command.…”

  I’m at a crossroads. On the one hand, this could be the out I was pitching for—a satisfactory conclusion to a difficult investigation. My clients, the Herreras, are both deceased, and their enterprise has been passed down the line. I might reasonably wash my hands of the case right now. Problem is, my fingerprints are all over this thing. If the Velásquez sisters are correct and people are getting killed just for what they know, then I have a big “X” painted on my back. And I can’t afford to die. I can’t even decide whether to retire from baseball.

  “You need to be careful,” I tell Díaz. “Don’t go anywhere alone if you can help it.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asks.

  For some reason, a wave of confidence sweeps me up. “I’m going to close this thing.”

  “Solve the case?”

  “And you’re going to help.”

  The waitress arrives with our pints. “What are you guys, like, detectives?” No longer the sardonic tattoo queen, she now appears genuinely interested in us. “Sorry, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.”

  “Actually,” Díaz says without missing a beat, “we’re major-league baseball players.” He smiles ear to ear. He’
s waited years to say that, and now he’s ready to claim his reward.

  “Oh,” the waitress says, no longer interested. She brushes a strand of dyed black hair off her forehead. “You want anything else or just the check?”

  52

  The last two weeks of the season continue the losing theme for the Padres, who finish in the cellar of the National League West, thirteen and a half games behind the Giants. After the last game of the World Series (which I do not watch), the club declines its option on the final year of my contract. Translation: the Padres agree to pay me the million five they owe but prefer that I not pitch for them.

  Next day, I get a call from Todd Ratkiss. “Listen, Johnny,” he says, “I’ve got an offer I need to run past you. Just came in this morning.”

  “An offer?”

  “To play baseball. Which is your job. Am I speaking Chinese?”

  “I’m just surprised. That was fast.”

  “Well, you’re going home.”