The Setup Man (21 page)

“I know you sent Frankie the video,” I say.

The widow holds a nine-millimeter pistol at arm’s length, peers down the barrel, and pulls back the slide to load the chamber. “What’s that?” she says.

“You’re not the first wife to take action, and you won’t be the last. I see it all the time, and I don’t judge. He was cheating, and it broke your heart. You said it didn’t bother you, but it did. Look, Mrs. Herrera, your husband was the one who hired me, but he’s gone now. I see no reason not to tell you that I understand why you did it.”

“I appreciate the compassion, Adcock, but you’re wrong. I didn’t send that video. I couldn’t care less who saw that thing. I thought I was clear about that.”

“I have it on good authority that the message was sent from your phone.”

“You ought to question your authority, because I didn’t do it.”

I expected her to deny it—when I imagined this conversation occurring in her kitchen in La Jolla. My plan was going to be to lay out my evidence, including the call records dredged up by Bethany’s guy, and declare the case closed. The widow could accept my conclusion or not. But circumstances have changed. I’m no longer in a take-it-or-leave-it situation. Time for a change in strategy.

“You were trying to scare Frankie into breaking off his affair. When he didn’t do it, you had him killed. Excuse me—you had both of them killed. Two birds, one stone.”

“You think I killed my husband because he refused to be blackmailed? If that’s your conclusion, you’re not much of an investigator. You’re not going to believe this, but I looked forward to meeting you, Adcock. When Frankie told me he hired you, I thought, here’s someone I should know. With your contacts, we could have saturated baseball, then moved on to basketball, football, maybe international soccer. In this business, you can’t stand still. There’s always somebody trying to knock you off the hill.” She pauses to make sure I follow. Apparently, she doesn’t like the look on my face, because she says very quickly, “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“If you’re referring to the prostitutes, then of course I know. Everybody in baseball knows.”

She laughs. “You didn’t know! I can see it on your face. That’s amazing. Well, Frankie was a man of his word. He said he wasn’t going to tell you. He said we might need to use you
someday, and he didn’t want you to think he was corrupt. I always assumed he was kidding.”

She’s proud her husband’s integrity has outlived him—ironic, given Frankie’s deceitfulness in other aspects of his life. Strange what we will cherish about the deceased.

“It was Frankie’s idea?”

“His and mine both. He was in the minors a long time, you know. There was never any guarantee he was going to get called up. I told him he needed something else, something to fall back on.”

My mind races. Bam Bam wasn’t behind the operation; it was the Herreras. Maria worked the girls, and Frankie worked the sales. This explains the innuendo in the eulogy at Frankie’s funeral. I can see it now, Frankie strolling up next to an acquaintance at batting practice, somebody on the opposing team, talking about this girl he’s seeing. She’s hot as hell, fucks like a champ. He takes out his phone and shows the guy a picture—or maybe a video? Then he says the best part is that she’s discreet, that his wife will never know. When the guy expresses interest, Frankie gives him a card with a photo and a phone number. The number rings the local pimp, somebody like Ana’s “Uncle Miguel,” who hooks the guy up with a girl. It’s all squeaky clean from Frankie’s point of view: as far as the new customer knows, Herrera is not the owner, just a very satisfied client. I bet he made most of his sales that way. And after a while, the sales made themselves by word of mouth, as I witnessed in the Padres’ weight room. It could have gone on like this forever—a happy family business, Maria and Frankie working side by side—until Luck’s girl drove a wedge between them.

“But then Frankie made the big leagues,” I say. “Why did you continue to risk it?”

“With his knees? He had one more season, two tops. A family needs to plan for the future, Mr. Adcock.”

“Tell me about Ana Velásquez.”

The widow raises her brows. “Ana was the first girl we hired. She was fresh off the boat, but she was smart, anybody could see that. She was always telling me she wanted to go to college. I told her she had a talent for business, and I left her in charge when I flew out to meet Frankie on the road. I even paid for some accounting classes at Mesa. Best investment I ever made, I must say. She was the one who realized that there was only so much money in the girls. It was her idea to tape them with the johns.”

“You taped them?”

“Sure, you tape the player in bed with the girl, and then threaten to send it to his wife. Suddenly the fee we charge goes up. Sometimes way up.”

“Clever.”

“Yeah, Ana was clever,” Maria says. “I saw a lot of myself in her.”

“Sounds like she saw it that way, too.”

“When the twins were six months old, I found out about her and Frankie. They had been meeting behind my back for almost a year, whenever he was in town and even sometimes on the road. I had set it up so perfectly for them. When I went down to Mexico on recruiting trips, she was already in the house. All she had to do was climb into our bed. But what could I do, fire her?”

“Even better,” I say. “Hire someone to run her off a mountain.”

The widow has been almost wistful to this point, but now she returns to the moment. Her eyes turn sharp, and she says, “I didn’t kill Ana Velásquez, and I certainly didn’t kill my husband. I know what it’s like to grow up without a father. I
would never wish that on anyone, least of all my own children.” With this, she raises the pistol to arm’s length and cocks the hammer with her thumb. She is very comfortable handling a gun. “Do you have children, Adcock?”

“I have a daughter. She’s thirteen.”

“That’s too bad. I wish I didn’t have to do this, but you’ve given me no choice.”

“Wait. You came to my apartment to say Frankie was killed. You asked me to find out who did it. If you shoot me now, you’ll never get your answer.”

“And you have the answer? I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s your choice. But if you want me to talk, you’ll have to put down that gun.”

The widow lowers the gun but maintains the game face. “You have one minute.”

“You mentioned the secret blackmail tapes of the johns. Did you set up those shoots yourself, or did you hire someone to do it for you?”

“We used a guy in L.A.,” she says, “somebody Frankie knew from baseball.”

“Bam Bam Rodriguez?”

“That’s him. You think he killed Frankie?”

In essence, yes, that’s what I think. I don’t know what sort of agreement he had with the Herreras, but what if he got greedy and wanted a bigger piece of the action? What if this led him to blackmail Frankie? If anyone knew about that video, it would have been Bam Bam. And it explains his bizarre behavior when Marcus came calling. Bam Bam must have thought the gig was up—that Frankie had figured out who was behind the blackmail and sent some muscle to set things straight.

“Put it this way,” I say, “there was bad blood between your husband and Bam Bam.”

“And you know this how?” The widow’s tone is dismissive, almost condescending.

“I can’t tell you that.”

In one swift motion, the gun is leveled at my head. “Is this really the time to be protecting your sources, Adcock? I’ll give you one more chance to explain yourself. After that …” She swivels to the right and squeezes off a shot. The slug bores a hole in the cinder-block wall behind my head. A plume of dust rises toward the fluorescent tube lights. Behind the widow, the guards raise their Uzis a little higher.

“The source is a friend of mine,” I say. “A ballplayer.”

“The same one who tipped you on Ana? The starting pitcher?”

“He is a pitcher, but he’s not the same guy.”

Just then the door opens, and a guard in a Kevlar vest strides into the room. He goes to the widow’s side and whispers something in her ear.

She raises an eyebrow. “Here?”

“Yes,”
the guard says in Spanish.
“He brought some black girls. Very cheap, he says.”

“Fine,”
she says to the guard.
“Bring them in.”

Once more she lowers the nine. “It’s your lucky day,” she says. “You get to see how this works. Not that it will do you any good, but I’m sure you don’t want to die confused.”

A moment later, the door reopens, and the guard appears with the guests: two black girls in miniskirts and fuck-me pumps, and a tall black gentleman in red snakeskin boots, leather jeans, and a bolo tie.

It is Marcus.

“Everyone out,”
the widow tells the guards.
“Leave one man to guard the girls. The rest of you go. We will negotiate alone.”

“What about the pitcher?”
someone says.

“The pitcher stays.”

Boots squeak as the guards leave the room. The door slams shut.

“So,” the widow says to Marcus, her voice airy now, almost flirtatious. Gone is the grieving wife, the devoted mother, the long-suffering minor-league spouse, and all the other avatars she cycled through in our conversation. This is the businesswoman, the negotiator. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

Marcus nods but does not extend his hand.

“Do you have a name?” the widow asks.

“My name don’t matter.”

“Fine,” the widow says. “I respect your caution.”

“I got two ladies here that didn’t come cheap,” he says.

Marcus does not acknowledge my presence, does not even look at me, which when you think about it should have raised the widow’s suspicions. (Marcus:
I’ve got these hos to sell you, but I’m not going to tell you my name—oh, hey, there’s a beaten-up white boy on the floor—so, anyway, how much you going to give me for these hos?
)

“They Trinidad hos, already trained. Show the lady what you got, baby doll.”

He slaps his fingers on the ass of the girl nearest him. I see now that it’s Natsumi, the L.A. boxer. Natsumi doesn’t look at me, either, just clatters her bangles and thumbs her nose at Marcus.

“This isn’t a talent show,” the widow says.

“I am aware of that. But the thing is, these girls have experience. They was working in a house in Port of Spain when I bought them. They all been tested, too. No diseases, not even crabs.”

The widow walks past him, heels clicking on the concrete floor. She stops in front of Natsumi. “How old did you say this one was?”

“Don’t take my word for it,” he says. “Have a pinch. Here …” He grabs her ass under the miniskirt.

“Quit it!” Natsumi shouts.

The widow turns to Marcus. “You say these girls are from where?”

“Port of Spain. They Trini hos.”

“I see. So if I did this—”

The widow’s hand shoots out and slaps Natsumi across the face.

Natsumi doesn’t waste a second. “You gonna be sorry you did that,” she barks, without a trace of Caribbean accent.

“Leave the merchandise be.” Marcus is now plainly nervous. “You can’t just lay your hands anywhere you please.”

“If I’m buying this merchandise, I can lay my hands wherever I want.”

“Do you need help, boss?”
The lone guard is agitated. Gunmetal tinks against the zipper on his jacket.

“Stay where you are,”
the widow says.

She turns to inspect the second girl, and then there is a flash of movement—limbs swirling, sweeping. Marcus fells the widow with a leg tackle. Then shots, one-two-three-four. A body thumps to the floor. The room vibrates with gunfire, and the air fills with concrete dust. Wrists still bound behind me, I drop to the floor and find myself next to the prone, black lump of Maria Herrera’s bodyguard. The back of his head has been removed, replaced by a messy hash of hair, blood, and brain. My stomach seizes. I perform a quick self-check: as far as I can tell, I have not been shot. Very carefully I lift my head and see Marcus holding a smoking pistol. Natsumi has one, too, which she is holding away from her body like a bag of stinking dog shit.

“Where she at?” Marcus barks at Natsumi.

“I thought you took her legs out,” Natsumi says.

“I did,” he says. “But she ain’t here now.”

I scan the room: the widow has vanished.

Marcus pulls a blade from his pocket and cuts my arms loose. He nods toward the door, and I follow my liberators into the hall. The rest of Maria’s guard corps is seated against the wall, bound and gagged, weapons stacked neatly out of reach.

“This way,” Marcus says. We follow him down the hall until the ceiling opens up. We are in a warehouse of some kind. On the far wall there’s a bright aperture where a rolling door opens onto a loading dock.

“There she is!” Natsumi shrieks. She stops and fires two rounds into the sunlight.

“Are you crazy?” Marcus yells as he rushes past her. “Put that thing down. You could hit the others.”

We exit the warehouse just in time to see a black Lexus SUV pulling away. A quick honk, and the lights flash on a blue Dodge Charger R/T, freshly waxed, with twenty-inch rims. “Get in,” Marcus shouts. We are joined in the car by two more black girls—dressed more modestly than the others, in jeans and short leather jackets. I see pistols in shoulder holsters under their arms. The Dodge is a hunk of American steel with the widest tires I have ever seen on a passenger vehicle. Marcus guns the engine and sets off in pursuit of the Lexus.

The widow takes a left at the main drag, and Tijuana opens
up: just ahead, a man in a grubby hoodie pushes a cart of folded T-shirts across the road. The Lexus zags to avoid him but takes out the cart. Marcus accelerates through the cloud of fluttering white cloth, then takes the next corner without braking, sending the six of us careening against the side of the Charger.

“The fuck!” Natsumi screams.

“Sit tight,” Marcus says.

The Lexus turns down an alley that is really an open-air mall specializing in cookware, dishes, and all kinds of glass. The widow’s car does most of the damage here, but the Charger is wider by a foot and expands the zone of destruction. The noise of shattering and metal on pavement drowns the cries of the vendors. We emerge from the alley onto another main road, and the widow takes a left across four lanes, narrowly avoiding half a dozen collisions. Marcus follows, hugging the widow’s rear end. On the other side of the road the traffic is slower, so the widow cuts onto the shoulder and shoots ahead a few hundred feet before tucking back in. Marcus tries to do the same, but the width of the Charger works against him. The shoulder is too narrow. When we pause at the next intersection, where a ragged-looking cop is directing traffic, we are two cars back of the Lexus. There’s nothing Marcus can do to close the gap until we’re on the other side.