The Setup Man (20 page)

She regards me with suspicion.

“My sister Ana left home ten years ago,”
she says.
“I was just a girl then, eight years old. Ana said that she would come back for me when I was old enough.”

I turn to Díaz. “Does she mean our Ana?”

He nods and shushes me with a finger to the lips.

“Did you tell her Ana is dead?”

“She knew. The coroner tracked her down.”

“Do you want me to keep going?”
the girl says.

“I hope my friend explained that we are not hiring you to make love.”
My Spanish is grammatically correct, but it sounds too formal.
“However, we will pay you for your time.”

Díaz puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Go on,”
he instructs the girl.

“Ana finally came back last year to recruit girls for her boss. She chose six girls from the group of twenty who applied. We all felt lucky to be chosen, so we did not object when Ana told us we were going to see a doctor before we went to California. She said the clients did not want girls with diseases, and also she wanted to make sure we would not become pregnant. She took us to a house in Tijuana. Every hour Ana led one of us into the back room. It was a small room with a window onto the yard. There was a vanity mirror with a pink wooden frame hanging on the wall, so I guessed it had been a bedroom at one time. Other than the mirror, there was no furniture except a folding bed on wheels, like in a hospital, and a tray with some surgical instruments drying on paper towels.”

I am astounded. I haven’t seen him play much baseball, but Díaz is a natural at this. There are aspects of investigative work that I will never do well; interviewing witnesses is one of them. But Díaz earned this girl’s trust in less time than it took me to walk six blocks across town.

“When I entered the room,”
she continues,
“the doctor was using a sponge to wipe blood off the bed’s plastic cover. He told me to take off my pants and get up on the bed. Then he put my feet in the stirrups, and he moved a lamp between my legs. I asked what he was doing, and he said it was a simple operation—hardly an operation at all. He reached into his apron and took out a plastic bag. He held it up so I could see. Inside was a little wire in the shape of a ‘T.’ ‘This goes into your womb to prevent pregnancy,’ he said. ‘When you get married, you can have a doctor take it out.’ I was frightened, because I did not want him to put anything inside me. I was still a virgin, and I was afraid it would hurt. Ana smiled and said I had nothing to worry about. She said millions of women all around the world have these wires in their wombs. I asked her, ‘Will I be able to have children after the wire is taken out?’ She said yes, I would. Then she left the room to comfort one of the girls, who was just waking up from her operation.”

I interrupt:
“They put you to sleep?”

“The doctor put a mask over my face. Next thing I knew I was waking up, and I saw out the window that it was night. Several hours must have passed. Two or three hours at least. Ana asked if I felt any pain in my pelvis, and I said no. She said that was good. She said, ‘You may have some pain later, but it will go away.’ ”

For a long couple of minutes, we sit in silence. Through the wall, I hear a TV playing the theme to
SportsCenter
. The girl stares at her hands. Díaz and I are both choked up by her story, but we pretend not to notice each other.

When I’ve gathered myself, I say,
“Rosario, did you know what kind of business Ana’s boss was running in America?”

“We knew exactly what Ana did. Lots of girls from my village do it. You can make a lot of money that way.”

“Did your sister make a lot of money?”

“Oh yes. She sent my mother five hundred dollars a month. We
built a concrete house with Ana’s money. She also paid for my brother to go to school. She paid for everything—fees, uniforms, books, the whole thing.”
As Rosario lists the projects financed by her sister’s remittances, her eyes shine for the first and only time in our interview.
“Ana’s dream was to attend university in the U.S.,”
she explains.
“And you know what? She almost made it.”

It is nearly one in the morning by the time I leave the hotel garage for the drive to La Jolla. Sorry, Maria: next time you are thinking of blackmailing your spouse, consider that it may cut into your sleep. At this hour, the freeways are empty except for long-haul truckers and drunken sailors weaving behind the wheels of their Mustangs. As I travel north into the suburbs, the billboards for Latin radio stations and Hooters franchises give way to warnings about immigrants crossing the road. Yellow diamond-shaped highway signs show a family in silhouette, black paper dolls joined at the hands, mom-dad-sister-brother-and-baby, the last pulled through the air like a doll. Somewhere in the dark hills, these people are crouching, waiting for a break in traffic. Or so Caltrans would have us believe.

I exit into the hushed and leafy womb of La Jolla, park a few blocks away from the Herreras’ home, and walk the rest of the way. The neighborhood is so quiet at this hour, you can hear the waves at the foot of the cliffs half a mile off. Salt and iodine and peace: the recipe for expensive coastal real estate. I step up to the Herreras’ dungeon door, lift the knocker, and let it fall. A minute passes with no answer. It appears that someone
is home; lights are burning in the living room and in the rear hall. I knock again. Still no answer.

I consider throwing in the towel and coming back tomorrow. The thought of letting this case go on even one day more is so distasteful that I pull out my phone and dial Maria. It goes straight to voice mail. I hang up.

I am scrolling through a few text messages—Jerry Díaz wrote twice, asking for an update—when I hear footsteps behind me. Before I know what is happening, a gloved hand closes over my mouth. A kick takes out my knees. I’m down, eye-level with a pair of black boots. I struggle to lift my head but get only as far as a pair of dark polyester slacks before I’m shoved back down, nose to the terra-cotta tiles.

“Wait,” I mumble, “I’m a friend of the Herreras!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a second pair of boots. A man’s voice says the Spanish word for “truck.” Again I manage to raise my head, and this time I see a face—or really just eyes, because my assailant is wearing a black ski mask. “Please,” I try to mumble, but the man shoves his fist in my mouth.

“Tie him up,”
he grunts to his partner.

The second guy ties a blindfold over my eyes and stuffs another into my mouth. He binds my wrists behind my back with a plastic zip-tie. Another tie goes around my ankles. I am tied up like a rodeo calf. The first man throws me over his shoulder. He is wearing cologne, something cheap and overwhelming. I hear the door of a van slide open, and then I am dumped, knees first, onto the molded steel floor. I scramble like a hobbled crustacean, bashing my head against the wall of the van. The door slams shut. Muffled voices outside. Then the van bobs on its shocks as the men get in. A seat belt clicks. Up close more cologne, some heavy breathing. I feel a needle pinch my shoulder. These are not the same guys who beat me up at Bam Bam’s funeral. They might be rent-a-cops—maybe
this is like Bel Air, with a private security force—but what kind of rent-a-cop wears a ski mask? My last thought before I black out is that I ought to tell Ginny that if she and Izzy ever feel unsafe in Santa Monica, they should move to La Jolla. Goddamn safest place I have ever been. Safe like a police state.

I wake up in a dark, windowless room. The blindfold has been removed, but not the gag. My hands and feet remain bound. I am lying on a bare mattress in the corner. A little light comes in under the door. I see the shadows of feet, hear rapid Spanish and occasional laughing.

My shoulder is sore from the injection, but it’s my right shoulder. Once again the gods of baseball are looking out for me in their sadistic way. My first inclination is to grunt, or howl, or whatever I can manage, to get the attention of my captors. But this, I realize, would be a poor decision. I have no idea where I am, who they are, or why I am being held. Best-case scenario, I am still in La Jolla. Who knows, maybe the security force has a guardhouse? Worst case—my imagination spirals down—worst case, I am in a Mexican prison, I have lost a year of my life, and my ex-wife and daughter have given me up for dead. Then I remember the soreness in my shoulder. So much for the lost year. Before I have time to test any more hypotheses, the door opens halfway and a head appears: a Latino about my age with a handlebar mustache. When he sees that my eyes are open, he jumps back, slams the door.

“He’s awake,”
I hear him say in Spanish.

Another voice says quickly,
“Already? Damn. That shit is supposed to last, like, much longer.”

I feel a surge of pride. That’s right, I think, your drugs can’t hold me down.

“Call the boss,”
the first guy says.

“I am already!”

The foot shadows move away from the door, and I am not able to hear the substance of the phone call. The guard gives a series of sharp military affirmations:
“Sí. Claro. Pronto.”

Slowly, the door opens. My captors have donned black ski masks. It seems beside the point, since I have already seen one of them, but I understand the psychological value of a uniform, to me and to them.

“Get up,” barks the guard on the left in heavily accented English. He is holding a strip of cloth, which I correctly assume is my blindfold. “Now is time,” he says. “You see the boss.”

“I speak Spanish,”
I manage to say through the gag.

The guy with the blindfold laughs.
“Oh yeah? Fine, we will speak Spanish.”
He turns to his partner.
“Who is this asshole, anyway?”

“A pitcher,”
he replies.

I see the first guy’s eyebrows twitch.
“No shit? Anybody I’ve heard of?”

“He’s a reliever,”
explains the partner. He yanks the blindfold tight against the back of my head.

“Ah. Righty or lefty, do you know?”

“Lefty, I think.”

“A closer?”

“More like a LOOGY.”

“What’s a loogie?”

He spells it out:
“L-O-O-G-Y. It stands for ‘lefty one-out guy.’ They bring him in to face one batter, lefty on lefty, that kind of thing.”

“What does the ‘Y’ stand for?”

“No idea. Some shit in English.”

The partner grunts and hauls me to my feet, puts his hand on my back, gives a little push. He is surprised when I start to fall forward; my feet are still tied up.

“Oh, fuck,”
he says.
“Sorry about that.”

He crouches down and I hear the click of a box cutter, then a snap as he cuts the zip-tie.

“No bullshit, you hear me, pitcher?”

I nod.

They lead me out of the room—right, then left, then right, then left. I lose track after a while. At some point I judge from the street noise and the chill in the air that we are outside, but I can’t be sure.

Meanwhile, the conversation continues.

“My cousin, he was in the minor leagues for two years. He was a pitcher.”

“Really? I didn’t know. Is that Jesús?”

“No, his brother Felipe. He was supposed to be a starter, but they put him in the bullpen, so he quit.”

“Just like that?”

“I know, huh? Me, I would prefer the bullpen. You don’t have to work hardly at all.”

There is a conspicuous pause, and I can tell the guards are tempted to untie the gag and get my two cents on this point. Who better to judge once and for all the foolishness of Cousin Felipe than a major-league reliever?

Fact is, every pitcher wants to be a starter. The only possible exceptions are closers, but most of those guys are bat-shit crazy to begin with, bomb-squad types with an inflated sense of their own importance. That movie
The Hurt Locker
could have been about closers. Seriously, they could have used the same script but set it in a bullpen. Any reasonable guy
understands that the bullpen is the second tier. But pitchers go back and forth between the rotation and the pen all the time. Cousin Felipe could have waited it out, worked on his game. The guy’s real failing was not his arm but his perseverance. The minor leagues is about more than just physical development. You learn resilience, too. Like how to hit through a slump, or how to come back fully charged after blowing a save the night before. If you don’t learn how to deal with setbacks, you ought to quit. Baseball is no place for the easily discouraged.

Anyway, that’s what I would have said, had they asked.

After twenty minutes of walking around like this—in circles, I am sure now—my blindfold begins to slip. I can see up and out from the right eye. For the most part, all I can make out are mildewing acoustic ceiling tiles, but eventually we step outside and I see a billboard for a Latin radio station:
“XRAZA 103.5-FM, El Estación Más Emocionante en Todo Baja California!”
There are photos of the late Tejana singer Selena and a couple other stars I recognize but can’t name.

We go back inside. Evidently the men are satisfied that I have been turned around enough, because now we stop in front of a door—I see the top of the frame, white paint peeling away from the wall. One of them knocks. A voice on the other side asks for the password.

“Alejandra Sol,” says the one on my right.

The widow Herrera is dressed in dark jeans and a short denim jacket. Her hair is blown out straight, makeup freshly applied. She is calm and clearly in charge, a Noriega in jeggings. Behind her, against the concrete-block wall, a couple of guards in black paramilitary attire stand at attention, clutching shoulder-slung Uzis over their hearts.

I am on my knees on the concrete floor, wrists bound behind my back. My gag has been removed, but so far I have said nothing. It occurs to me that I ought to do so, because this may be my last chance. To paraphrase the United Negro College Fund, your last minute on earth is a terrible thing to waste.