The Setup Man (19 page)

The young catcher takes it all in. “How many players are involved?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Could be just a few, could be dozens.” After what I heard in the weight room, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter—but there’s no need to stoke Díaz’s fire more than necessary.

“One more thing,” I say. “Don’t act like a cop.”

“Yeah, okay.” The kid’s eyes crackle with energy. I have never felt older. He raises his mitt and whispers, “Thanks for thinking of me. You won’t regret it.”

Perhaps not. But at this point, what’s one more regret?

You may think it would be easy pitching to your former team, because you know the guys so well. You know their wives’ names and even what they drink in the hotel bar. Trouble is, you don’t know how to pitch them. These are not hitters you have been studying all year. In fact, these are the
only
hitters you have not been studying. Which is why, when the phone rings in the bottom of the seventh, and the bullpen coach nods at me, I start to worry that this could go very, very wrong. The Dogs are sending up the meat of the order in the eighth: Ordoñez, Wood, and Modigliani. Of these, Diggy is the only lefty. There is not a doubt in my mind as I limber up, throwing casually, brushing off the rubber, what my next half-hour is going to look like. How many times have I watched Diggy hit? A couple thousand? Obviously, I am not always paying attention, but shouldn’t I have noticed whether he swings at first pitches? Or how often he takes a pitch when the count is in his favor? On the flip side, he knows me inside and out. He was my catcher. He knows my setup game, knows my out pitch. He can probably tell by watching my warm-up tosses whether I have good stuff tonight (hint: take a look at my bashed-up face).

Basically, I’m fucked.

The top of the eighth unfolds according to the script: Ordoñez beats out a grounder to short, but the ump calls him out even though the first baseman’s foot is pulled off the bag by the throw. Ordoñez gives some lip, and I see Skip come to the top step of the dugout, but it is halfhearted: the play might have gone the other way if we were in San José. Probably would’ve. Umps are people, too, sort of.

The next batter, third baseman Justin Wood, fouls off a whole box of Spaldings before drawing a walk. Out on the mound, the Padres’ middle-innings guy, Freddie Ochoa, goes to the rosin bag, bounces it in his hand like he is getting ready for the next batter. He knows he is done. We all know it. He is doing this routine to give me another couple throws in the pen before Householder comes out to the mound.

As I jog in, I scour my brain for anything I may have picked up subconsciously about Modigliani. He is a prick, I know that. Maybe I can make him angry, get him to lose his cool. This late in a game, it is always risky to bust a guy inside. The ump is liable to see it as intimidation and issue a warning, or even toss you out. The eighth and ninth innings of any game are a bit like the playoffs. Tempers flare and all that. Story of my life.

Diggy smiles at me as he steps into the box. I have half a mind to plunk him in the back just for the hell of it. I will be ejected, but it might be worth it. I might even earn some respect from my new teammates.

But I do not hit him. I bust him in on the hands and he fouls off two quick strikes. He stops smiling. Then he does something that makes me realize I have been paying attention all these years after all. He steps out of the batter’s box, props the bat between his knees, and crosses his arms over his chest. Then he rubs his hands in his armpits, wiggles them a little
like he is scratching himself. I have seen him do this a hundred times and never noticed. But the observation works like a key, unlocking other memories about Modigliani’s batting habits. For example, with two strikes against him, he can’t resist the breaking ball away. How many times have I seen him fold up, chasing an outside curve? He collapses like an ironing board, knees over elbows, the bat dangling behind his back, like a drunk Barry Bonds. So that’s an option. But first I test him with a fastball away—far away, like a foot outside. He does not touch it. I give him another, just to see if he’s paying attention. He is. No swing.

I shake off the catcher, who wants a high fastball. (Marcus would be proud.) He cycles through the signs, finally coming around to my pitch. Like I said, I don’t throw a curve, so it is going to have to be a slider—a pitch that has always been, from its inception, a poor substitute for a proper breaking ball. “Nickel curve” is what my grandfather always called it. He meant it as an insult—for example, when he lit into one of his least favorite pitchers, the mustachioed reliever Rollie Fingers. “That Fingers has nothing but a nickel curve,” Grandpa would say. “Where’s the frigging skill in that? Where’s the art? I’ll tell you where—it’s on his frigging face, that’s where. Frigging hair farmer. Looks like a frigging tonic salesman.…”

Grandpa never saw me play professional ball. That is probably a good thing.

At this point, Diggy has to know what’s coming. He is a prick but not a moron. After ten years in the big leagues, he must know his weak spots. And he certainly knows my repertoire. All he has to do is add the two together. But it seems he switched off his brain with that armpit massage. I place my pitch exactly where I want it: stirrup-high, kissing the outside corner, then falling out of the strike zone. The actual break
leaves something to be desired—like I said, I don’t have good stuff tonight—but it turns out to be enough. The great Modigliani swings and misses.

The San Diego crowd rouses from its stupor for a round of reasonably enthusiastic applause. Householder, god of batting practice, emerges from the dugout once more.

“Well done,” he says to me. “I always love to see that asshole choke.”

I hand him the ball. “You and me both, Skip.”

There are obvious post-retirement benefits to having a line of work outside baseball, but one benefit that pays off while you are still playing is that you have two potential sources of satisfaction. Take, for example, the strikeout of Modigliani. Before the phone rang in the bottom of the seventh, I had spent the hours since my discussion with Díaz despairing over my failures as an investigator. And this was not just a problem of perception: in the Frankie Herrera case, I failed twice. Not only did I fail to answer Frankie’s original query (who sent the video?) but also managed to embarrass him posthumously in front of his wife. And then, in the course of all this blundering, I have discovered some kind of boutique prostitution ring, which seems to be extending its reach even without its leader.

Then: into this steaming shit sauna comes the call from Householder. Oh, right—my other job! Another chance to make good, or at least to reclaim a shred of self-respect. So I take the ball, I throw my pitches, and you know what, sometimes you get validation when you least expect it. My locker is surrounded by reporters after the game. Okay, there are two reporters, but that is two more than I normally attract. They both want to know how I pitched Modigliani. “Take
us through it,” they say, “tell us what was going through your head.”

I say, “You know, guys, I really had no idea what I was doing. I had never pitched to him before.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” says one of reporters, an overweight white man with a boyish grin and a sparse goatee. “Not even in spring training?”

“Never. I just got up there and threw the ball.”

Which is not altogether true, but it is close enough for the papers. They don’t want to hear about Diggy’s armpit scratching, or the depths of my despair. And even if they did, it is my right to be inarticulate. People think professional athletes don’t realize how they come across in interviews—all this nonsense about “giving a hundred and ten percent,” and “it is what it is,” and so forth. That athletes are dunces is pretty much an unchallenged fact in our culture. But have you ever considered that it may be an act? I could have said more to these reporters, but I chose not to. It’s like when reporters stop lawyers on the steps of the courthouse, and the lawyers say they have no comment. Let’s be honest, if there is one thing lawyers have, it is comments. I am not saying relief pitchers are as wily as lawyers, but there is a certain logic in keeping your mouth shut.

When I get around to checking my messages, I find a text from Modigliani:
You got lucky
.

Maybe so, but what difference does it make? I thumb a reply:
You still struck out
.

The next message is from Bethany:
Call me. Have news re: porno
.

She answers the phone out of breath. She sounds sweaty.

“Hey, babe,” she says. And then, muffled: “Carlos, let’s take five.”

I’m not the jealous type, but I have to ask: “What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing? You left without a note, without saying goodbye. And you stole my rental car.…”

“I had a game.”

Now I hear her smile. “And what a game it was!”

“You saw it?”

“I had a dinner meeting, but there was a TV in the bar.”

“Did you see me and Modigliani?”

If I may add a quick aside, I wonder how many men my age, their fathers dead and gone, seek fatherly approval from their female sexual partners?

“I did,” she says. “Very well played, considering you weren’t your best self tonight.”

“Did it show?”

“HDTV is an unforgiving medium, Johnny.”

“Oh.”

“So I have the report on your friend’s cell phone. Would you like to hear it?”

“Yes.”

“I bet you would.” Affecting a terrible Chicago accent, she says, “ ‘I’ve gaaat this thing, and it’s fucking golden!’ ” She pauses to make sure I’m following. “You remember that governor, with the hair? The one who tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat? I want to get the quote right.”

“It’s that good, huh?”

“You decide. The widow sent the video to her husband.”

“That’s impossible.”

“The message you asked me to trace was sent from a mobile number in area code 858, registered to Maria Herrera of La Jolla.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hold on, let me check.” There is the rustle of sheets, and I hear her holler, “Carlos! Hey, Carlos, come back!”

A minute later, she gets back on the phone. “You still there?”

“Still here.”

“You’re not angry with me, are you? It’s totally safe. I made him double-bag it.”

Another rustle, a muffled voice.

“Carlos says it was kids’ stuff. The number mask was superficial. He says you don’t even need a cell phone to do this kind of thing. You can send text messages from any computer with the cloaking application installed.”

“So it came either from the widow’s phone or from any computer in the world. That helps a lot, Beth, thanks.”

“Don’t be sore, Johnny. You know you’re my ace.”

“I know.”

“But I must say, I do enjoy having a bullpen.”

You think you know someone. Later that night, in my hotel room near Flea-and-Tick Field, over a plate of room-service chicken, I begin to understand my mistake with Frankie Herrera. He came to me with a problem, which he described truthfully except for one major omission. Had I pressed harder on his motivation in engaging my services—
You want to protect your wife? Oh, really? From whom?
—I might have uncovered the rotten timber. And certainly when I watched the film and saw that Frankie himself had been, shall we say, involved, I should have known that there was more going on than a husband defending his wife’s honor.

To be honest, I always had trouble believing Frankie was as selfless as he appeared to be. True selflessness is extremely rare in the human animal. I don’t doubt that Frankie wanted to erase the record of his wife’s film career—who wouldn’t?—but he also wanted to protect himself. Some might call that selfish, but to me it just feels like human nature.

In fact, when you take into account that the wife was attempting to blackmail her husband, the Herrera family turns out to be quite human indeed. I see it like this: Maria Herrera was not as cool with Frankie’s infidelity as she claimed to be. So she struck him with the only weapon she had—their
secret porn film. Now that I think about it, I realize she was tipping me off with that comment about Tiger Woods’s wife. I know I should be embarrassed I didn’t catch the hint, but at this point I just want to wrap it up and move on. Tomorrow’s game is a matinee, so if I am going to make another trip to La Jolla, it will have to be tonight.

I’m nearly out the door when my phone rings. It’s Díaz.

“That was quick,” I say.

“Dude, like I told you: I was born to do this kind of work.”

“You got a date?”

“Sure did.”

“Nice work,” I say. “When are we meeting? Tomorrow is a day game, remember.”

“Tomorrow? She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

The Bay Dogs’ hotel is near mine, but by the time I get over there, the girl has already arrived. She sits on the edge of the bed, a petite Latina in skinny jeans, wedge heels, and a tight blouse decorated with black sequins. Her makeup is elaborate but not excessive by the standards of her profession. She steals a glance at me as I enter the room, then returns her attention to her hands, which she has folded neatly on her lap.

She’s a dead ringer, I have to say, for the girl on the card.

“Want a taco?” Díaz says. From the dresser, he lifts a paper tray containing the remains of an order of carne asada.

“No, thanks. How long has she been here?”

“Not long.” Switching to Spanish, he says to the girl,
“What do you think? How long has it been?”

The girl, of course, does not answer. She’s probably wondering what she’s gotten herself into. I gave Díaz explicit instructions not to mention that there would be two of us.

“You were right,” he says to me. “Her name isn’t really Alejandra. It’s Rosario.”

“You told her we’re not customers, right?”

He nods and shushes me with a finger to the lips.
“Tell my friend what you told me a minute ago,”
he says to the girl.
“And don’t be afraid, he’s one of the good guys, I promise.”