The Setup Man (10 page)

“Good luck,” I say.

“You too, Adcock. See you up north.”

I call a taxi, and the dispatcher says it will be an hour. I think of that old sailors’ line: “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink.” In L.A. there are more cars than human beings—but none for me. When my cab finally arrives, it is a bright-yellow Ford driven by a fifty-something man in a beard. He has a hard-luck complexion but truly stunning blue eyes, to match the Dodgers cap on his head. As I settle into the back seat, I watch his face in the rearview. I wonder how many times those eyes have saved his ass. Or gotten him some.

He catches me looking but thinks I am admiring his cap.

“Dodger fan?” he says.

“Used to be.”

“Nah,” the man says, “once a fan, always a fan.”

I want to point out that, though this is an attractive notion, it is not technically true. A Dodger fan who becomes a member of the San José Bay Dogs, for example, cannot remain a Dodger fan. I have never read my contract all the way through, but I am sure this is covered under Conflicts of Interest, right next to the discouraging words about side businesses. The fans take these rivalries seriously. In California, baseball is a proxy for the very real political tension between north and south. The talk of splitting into two states only crops up seriously
every ten years or so, but the Bay Dogs and Dodgers (and Giants, A’s, Padres, and Angels) go at it every summer. Five years ago, I might have come clean with the taxi driver and told him who signed my checks. But that was before opening day 2011, when a gang of Dodger fans cornered a fan in a Giants jersey and beat him within an inch of his life. The guy was in a coma for a year and only recently remembered the names of his three kids.

“I need to go to Santa Monica,” I say, “Fourteenth and Carlyle—you know where that is?”

“Sure do.”

For the rest of the ride—and it is a long, hot forty-five minutes on surface streets—the driver checks his rearview compulsively every couple of minutes, as though he expects me to open the door and leap out without warning. Eventually, we are stopped at a light on the corner of Fourteenth and Montana, in the dappled shade of a magnolia, and the guy lets on: “You’re a ballplayer, aren’t you?”

I reach for the door handle.

“Don’t tell me,” he says, “it’s on the tip of my tongue … Mets?”

“No, sorry.”

“Red Sox?”

“No. Hey, the light is green.”

He keeps eyeing me in the rearview.

“You know what?” I say. “Just let me out here.” On the right is a supermarket that sells eight brands of fig preserves but not a single kind of potato chips. I know this because I have been there, looking for chips.

“Here?” he says.

“Yeah. How much do I owe you?”

I give him the fare plus a twenty, hoping he will drive away fast. I know it’s silly—baseball is just a game, right? Maybe I’m
just shaken up from last night. At any rate, I roll my suitcase the rest of the way.

Three blocks later, I am standing in front of my ex-wife’s house. Here’s a riddle: what do you call a home you paid for but do not own? The manicured lawn and flagstone path, the whimsical window treatments and mature fruit trees, the navy-blue BMW in the driveway, which you also paid for (and also do not own). The multicolored porcelain house numbers painted by your daughter and baked at the pottery shop down the street. I remember that, once upon a time, a football player named O. J. Simpson stood in front of a similar house—not so far from here, actually, just a few miles up San Vicente—and what he saw so enraged him that he broke in, dragged his ex outside, and cut her head off. I can think of half a dozen guys who might have been O. J. Simpson if they’d had one more drink on a given night, or if they had struck out just once more, or if that last pitch had been two centimeters to the left.…

It is the most common rant you hear on the bus:
My ex wants more money. My ex won’t let me see the kids. My ex is getting remarried, and the guy’s a total prick
. Let me tell you something: what these guys are struggling with has nothing to do with money, or kids, or even the ex-wife. I’m not making excuses for the crimes of O. J. Simpson—I use him as an example only because everyone knows his name—but the real object of his rage that night was not his wife and her lover but his own failure. He failed at something billions of human beings have managed for centuries, that thing called marriage. The man was one of the five or ten best running backs of all time, and somehow he could not do something an eighty-pound villager in Bangladesh has no trouble with. How does that compute? That is a lot to take for a man so revered that he is known by a single common noun.

The solution, of course, is simple: you have to let it go. Sometimes people fail at simple things, even world-class athletes.

Back in the days of Matt Young (the object of my father’s scorn, you remember, the southpaw who bounced home a run on TV), money might have been an issue between players and their exes, but really, these days, there is plenty to go around. Anyone who disagrees is not being honest with himself. Besides, wouldn’t you rather give money to your wife, who might share it with your kids, than to some business manager you hardly know, who will probably send it up his nose?

So, yeah, I am standing in front of the house I bought but don’t own. Our financial arrangement is maddeningly simple—maddening to my lawyer, that is, who never tires of reminding me it does not have to be this way. What I do is this: I take my salary, minus taxes and the agent’s commission, and I divide it into thirds, because there are three of us: Ginny, Isabel, and me. Two-thirds of my net income is wired directly to Ginny, and she is free to spend it however she sees fit. Presumably she spends half on Isabel, not only for clothes and food but also saving for her college education. Just in case she does not do these things, I have another account where I lay away half of my third—one-sixth of my net income—as a rainy-day fund for my daughter. I do this because I would never forgive myself if I should one day tear my rotator cuff and Isabel was destitute because I put too much trust in a woman who once locked me out of my own house.

Not this house, mind you. This one is Ginny’s through and through. I have never thought of it otherwise. I think it is important to move houses after a divorce, and I give this advice to anyone who asks. Unfortunately, plenty of people do.

I ring the bell before I realize that Ginny never replied to the text I sent her from the taxi, the heads-up that I was stopping
by. It is nine-thirty in the morning. Isabel will be at school. It occurs to me that Ginny might not be home.

But then I hear steps behind the door, the chunking of the lock, and there she is.

“Johnny?”

“Hi, Ginny. May I come in?”

She is barefoot, nails unpainted, wearing black yoga pants that flare a bit at the ankle. Her faded tank top reads
MIDNIGHT MADNESS 5K
above a stick-figure drawing of runners breaking a finish tape. I gather that she is coming rather than going: the fair, freckled skin of her face and solar plexus shine with perspiration. Her hair is gathered, twisted above her head. It is the color of the sweaters she buys for Isabel to give me for Christmas. Undyed organic wool. Brown, with more than a few strands of gray.

“I just got your text,” she says. “I was at the gym. I thought you were coming later.”

“Sorry. I was expecting more traffic.”

“Well, come in. Izzy’s at school.”

“I know.”

“Let me change my shirt at least.”

Ginny has always been a proficient perspirer. The first time we met, at a summer orientation in Fullerton for student athletes, she was in a similar condition. The orientation started at 8 a.m., but Ginny had managed to squeeze in a jog beforehand. She might have gone back to the dorm to shower, but that would have made her late. Her mind works like this—always prioritizing and living with the consequences. She was at Fullerton on a soccer scholarship, but as a freshman, she was relegated to the bench. Hence the extra workouts. When we got together, I learned that she became instantly sweaty from all kinds of physical exertion, even without clothing.
She said her sweating embarrassed her. I always took it as a compliment.

“Why don’t you make some coffee,” she says.

“Sure. Take your time.”

Ginny goes upstairs, and I show myself into the kitchen. It is my favorite room in her house, full of warm light, always clean and well stocked. A single man’s kitchen is never a comfortable place, no matter how many times we see George Clooney or Matthew McConaughey whip up dinner while his lady friend moons over a glass of Cabernet. A stained-glass mobile hangs over the sink, catching light and throwing it around the room like a baby with a paintbrush. Like me, Ginny has a fancy espresso machine, but I decide to make the coffee by hand. I find some filters in the pantry, grind some beans. When Ginny walks in fifteen minutes later, I hand her a mug I can take credit for.

She is wearing a pair of white shorts and a black sleeveless sweater. Her hair is still wet from the shower.

“You look good,” I say.

“Thanks.” She takes the coffee and raises it to her nose but does not drink. “I thought you weren’t coming into town until tomorrow.”

She no longer follows my games, but I let her know at the beginning of the season all the dates I am going to be in L.A.

“The team comes tomorrow,” I say.

“Did you get fired?”

“I have a contract, Ginny.”

“You know what I mean. Did they let you go?”

From her tone of voice, I can tell that she is trying to be sympathetic—just trying it on, in case she is right. But sympathy does not come easily to her.

“Actually, I got promoted. They want me to be the closer.”

“Good for you, that’s great.”

“You think so?”

Ginny may not look it, with her country-club clothes and Santa Monica lifestyle, but she is smarter about baseball than half the professional players I know. Her dad was a high-school coach, a southern California legend. Ginny spent a good portion of her girlhood in the aluminum bleachers at Culver City High, absorbing all there is to know about baseball—along with a fondness for ballplayers, which served me well for a while.

“It will be good for your career,” she says. “Pitchers don’t go from closer to nothing. If you fail at this, they will kick you back to setup before they let you go. And that’s especially true because—”

“Because I’m such a great guy?”

“I was going to say because you’re left-handed.”

“That’s encouraging, thanks.”

“You’re not going to fail, Johnny. That is not what I meant.”

“It’s okay, I already have.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Tuesday, at home against the Padres, I started the ninth and gave up a double, then a single, then hit a pinch-hitter in the back.”

“Ouch. And they’re sticking with you?”

“They say I’m the closer whether I want it or not, end of story.”

Ginny sips her coffee. “Never heard that one.”

“It’s complicated. Skipper doesn’t have a lot of options.”

“And he gave you a day off to think things over?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Ginny does not know about my other life. I have thought about telling her on several occasions, but, as the father of her child and the source of her livelihood, I decided it would only
worry her. If I were Ginny, I would not want to know. Usually this doesn’t bother me too much—I don’t want to know her secrets, either—but today I feel guilty. Three people are dead. Bam Bam’s associates, whoever they are, could find her. She and Izzy aren’t living under assumed names. Why would they? I might tell Ginny that my second career has entered a new, more perilous phase, but I’d have to start by explaining that I have a second career. Wouldn’t it be easier just to wrap up this case and leave her in blissful ignorance?

“Are you coming to the game tomorrow night?” I ask. I always reserve two tickets when we play the Dodgers, even though I can’t remember the last time she used them.

“We’ll see. Izzy has a play rehearsal.”

So it goes, that our daughter, spawn of two jocks, has zero interest in sports. She prefers to spend her time learning how to be Woman with Newspaper in her school’s production of
Stuart Little
.

“Well, if your plans change …”

The chance is so small it is not even worth considering. And Ginny’s mind is on to something else already.

“Simon said something interesting the other day—can I tell you?”

Simon Fine was Ginny’s therapist during our divorce. Later, he became her second husband. A year after that, Simon revealed he was gay. Ginny declined therapy during her second divorce, but she and Simon still talk. I guess some people just stick to your fur.

“He asked if I would lock the bathroom door when I took a shower if he was in the house.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes, I think I would. But here’s the thing. Just now, while I was upstairs taking a shower, I realized I didn’t lock the door.”

“Should I be flattered?”

“I don’t know how you should feel. I just thought I should tell you.”

I think I know what Ginny’s getting at. I would not have locked the door, either. I might even have left it cracked.

“Izzy will be sorry she missed you.”

“Tell her I’ll see her tonight. Meantime, can I ask a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Do you still have Simon’s Porsche?”

My ex’s second husband was a Germanophile, which should have been a sign. Another is the license plate on his Porsche:
ERREGEN
, a German word meaning “arouse.” The car is a model 911, vintage 1977. After a few tense moments, it turns over and purrs like an emphysemic cat. I promise Ginny that I will bring it back by dinnertime.

I need some time to piece together the events of the last few days. Top of the list is figuring out the connection between Bam Bam and Herrera’s wife. Unless Bam Bam was brainwashed like Frank Sinatra in
The Manchurian Candidate
and had no idea what he was doing, he was ready to kill Marcus for asking questions about Maria. I don’t get it. I saw her film—it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t shocking, either, except maybe for the identity of the actors.