The Setup Man (25 page)

In recent years, Mr. Eberhardt has been held up by baseball traditionalists as the last holdout from an era when families, not corporate investors, owned baseball teams. However, even the stalwart Mr. Eberhardt had to allow outside involvement a few years ago in order to finance the construction of the new stadium downtown. I had assumed the new investors were banks. Guess I should have read the fine print.

“It was a timed divestment,” Bethany explains. “The Eberhardts have been trying to diversify into other asset classes, and they structured the ownership group to give their partners regular opportunities to increase their shares over time.”

Our eyes meet, and she sees something that makes her frown.

“You’re worried. That’s understandable, but my partners don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with the business.”

“The business. You mean the team?”

“Tickets, parking, concessions, broadcast rights, merchandise, licensing—it is a remarkably diverse income stream. I
had no idea, actually, until Jun showed me some of the analysis he’d done. The stadium alone might be worth the entire purchase price. The land under the stadium, I mean.”

Bethany again eyes her Scotch but reaches out and takes my hand instead.

“Nothing will change except on paper,” she says.

“So you have no role in personnel decisions?”

“We are retaining the current general manager.”

“And you wouldn’t call him to put in a good word on behalf of a certain left-handed reliever who happens to be a free agent?”

“Johnny, no!” She laughs, arches her back. I see the outline of her nipples against the silk. “My job is to make sure the Bay Dogs have a strong capital position. That’s it. I don’t meddle.”

“It’s just a hell of a coincidence, that’s all.”

“I can see how you would think that, but I assure you—”

“All this time you owned me. Well, one percent of me.”

“You want to guess which one percent?”

I crawl on top of her, smell the alcohol on her breath, the chlorine in her hair. I slide my fingers down under the waistband of her jeans.

“What other investments are you hiding from me?”

“Well, you already know about the chain of sushi restaurants run by a retired baseball player.…”

“Do you really expect Marcus to turn a profit?”

“Look, he saved your life—he did—and this was how he wanted to be paid. What could I say?” She pauses, sips her drink. “And he has other businesses besides the sushi bars.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, he’s all over the map. He once told me about this idea he had for a network of health-care centers for immigrant women. It would be like a combination of an urgent-care center and Planned Parenthood. But no abortions or anything like that, just annual checkups, Pap smears, the occasional gynecological
surgery. Do you have any idea how much a hysterectomy costs if you don’t have insurance? Anyway, he did his homework before we talked. He knew, for example, about our investments in the fertility-services sector. He said I had the expertise to help him make this a reality.”

I sit up, pull my hand out of Bethany’s pants. “What else did he tell you?”

“About the clinics? Just that he thought there was a market, and that it was a shame to deny things like diagnostic ultrasounds to women just because they couldn’t afford to go to a traditional OB/GYN.”

“Bethany,” I say, “did Marcus by any chance give you a prospectus for the clinics in a white plastic binder?”

Marcus is upset when I tell him I have decided not to retire, but he’s glad I’ll be playing in San José.

“You can start training at the restaurant,” he says. “Mornings, off days—we got plenty for you to do. And in winter you can work full-time.”

We are at a tatami table in the front window of Makasu South, as the San José restaurant has been renamed since the opening of Marcus’s new location in San Mateo. It is the middle of the afternoon, the restaurant’s dead time, and I’ve caught Marcus between lunch at one restaurant and dinner at the other. Every now and then, a black-clad waitress comes and checks on our tea. Outside the window, a bell heralds the arrival of a VTA streetcar. The side of the train sports a Bay Dogs logo and Malachy Garcia’s pixelated face.
Could have been me
, is what I’m supposed to think, but I don’t. Maybe because the teacup feels warm in my palm, or maybe because I never wanted to have my face on a bus to begin with, I consider telling Todd Ratkiss I changed my mind about playing next year.

“You ever think about what happens next?” I ask Marcus.

“How do you mean?”

“After sushi. After this gets old. What will you do next?” I
understand that with two sushi bars he’s got his hands full, but how much can you love a business? There must be a limit.

“I got plans,” he says, smiling. “You think you know everything about me?”

“I never said that.”

Marcus looks at his watch. “It’s gettin’ on,” he says.

“You headed up to San Mateo?”

Another smile. “You wouldn’t know about a full day’s work, would you, setup man?”

“I could learn. Need help tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“I could ride up with you and take the train back later.”

“If you want, sure. Wait here a minute.”

Marcus goes in the back, and I hear him discussing something with his brother. I used to think they were trading tips about sushi when they held their little powwows in the kitchen. Now I know better. I haven’t spoken to Rich since he shot the widow and set her car on fire. The guy scares the shit out of me.

I pass the time with one of the sudoku books in the greeter’s podium. Marcus requires his employees to solve ten sudoku puzzles every shift. He says it’s good for concentration. I’m doubtful about the health benefits, but it definitely passes the time.

Ten minutes later, Marcus signals that he’s leaving. I follow him out back to the Charger, parked in a spot marked with a stenciled “51,” Marcus’s number from his playing days. The big engine growls to life, and soon we’re sailing up the 101.

“Let’s take the coast route,” I say as we approach Mountain View. “We’ve got time, right?”

Marcus shoots a glance at the dashboard clock. “You mean over the hill?”

“Yeah, cut through Woodside, La Honda, up that way, then
back on the Half Moon Bay road. I don’t think it will take too much longer.”

“Dinner service starts at five-thirty. I got a couple things I need to take care of first.”

“Are you afraid of the fog?”

“In this car? Hell, no. Maybe on your little swizzle-dick Honda bike, but not in this machine.”

“Fine, then.”

“Fine.”

As it happens, the fog is severe, maybe even fearsome, with visibility down to maybe twenty feet by four o’clock in the afternoon. Marcus has to drive slower than either of us would have liked, but we pass the time bullshitting about the old days. Marcus tells me that before I came up, back when the Bay Dogs were new in the league, the owners used to have parties on off days at their ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

“Wasn’t far from here, actually. There was a Girl Scout camp on the way, and some of the fellas used to joke about stopping for a piece.” Marcus shakes his head. “Nasty motherfuckers.”

“Wait,” I say, “wasn’t that the party where DiCamilla met that girl, what was her name?” I vaguely remember a story starring Ken DiCamilla, a lumbering third baseman long since retired, who was known to possess the thickest member this side of a donkey show.

“Yeah, she was the Eberhardts’ au pair. Italian, I think, or Swiss—something like that. Anyway, she took it in the ass like a pro.”

“According to DiCamilla.”

“Right, according to DiCamilla. He called her Butt Nicola.”

“What a guy, huh?”

Our conversation goes on like this for the better part of an hour, taking one Bay Dogs legend after another down to its ignominious roots. I don’t think either of us finds it especially
interesting; it’s just how players pass the time on the road. This road or that road, active or retired, it doesn’t matter. We could probably drag the conversation out by another fifteen minutes dissecting the Frankie Herrera porn film, but we don’t. The story is too fresh. These things need to age for a while to become legend.

When we finally hit the coast highway at San Gregorio, I tell Marcus I have to take a leak. “There’s a store up ahead,” I say. “I’ll be quick.”

After the pit stop, we swing right and head up the coast. The road here is straighter and much smoother, but the fog is as thick as pudding. Marcus switches on the Charger’s fog lamps. They don’t do much but throw a pair of yellow eggs into the soup. This part of the trip would have been the highlight on a clear day—the redwood forest ending abruptly in the coastal meadows and bluffs, churning surf and black rocks. But today we see nothing. Before long we’re in Half Moon Bay, a bedroom community known for its annual pumpkin festival and the Sunday buffet at the Ritz-Carlton. It’s the kind of place where Silicon Valley types go with their wives when they haven’t had sex in six months. How this foggy inlet puts you in the mood for love I have no idea, but if it had been six months since I’d gotten laid, I’d probably do it in a public restroom. At Highway 92, Marcus turns back inland. Makasu North is in San Mateo, on the other side of the mountains. It should take about half an hour from here.

As we climb the hill, the trees get taller and darker—redwoods thrive on fog. Then, near the ridge, the landscape changes. Suddenly the forest breaks and we are in the clear, carving back and forth along the concrete-encased, erosion-proof bluffs near the summit.

“Hey,” I say to Marcus, “you know this is where Frankie Herrera went over?”

“Is it?”

“Right around here.” I sit up and watch the next couple of curves very carefully. “Pull over, will you?”

“C’mon, Adcock. I got dinner service. We’re late as it is.”

“I just want to look around. Won’t take a minute, I promise.”

Marcus pulls into the next turnoff, and I jump out. Looking west across the fog-shrouded highway, I notice that the guardrail has already been replaced. The rail flashes the reflection of an oncoming car, followed two seconds later by the car itself, invisible until the very instant of its arrival, thanks to the blind curve.

It really is the perfect spot. A car could wait here in the turnoff, watching the lights on the rail.…

I bend down, put my head into the Charger. “Get out. I want to show you something.”

At the next break in traffic, we cross to the other side of the highway. Marcus and I stand in the shoulder, between the lanes and the rail. Our bodies absorb the flashes from the headlights. “This is the spot,” I say, taking a deep breath. “But you know that already.”

“Come again?” A van takes the curve a little too fast, tires squealing. A rush of air ruffles Marcus’s corduroy sport coat, revealing a leather shoulder holster.

“I said you know this is the spot, because you were here the night Herrera died.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“You parked right there, against the hillside. Nobody coming west could see you, and anybody coming east just assumed you were waiting for the faster traffic to pass. You sat there looking for Frankie’s car, and when it came along, you put the Charger in gear and crossed the median. You hit the brakes and Frankie’s instincts did the rest.”

Marcus shakes his head. “I got nothing to say to that.”

“The tires gave you away.”

“Plenty of cars got tires like that. Trucks, too. You need to get to Oakland more often.”

I point to the turnout across the highway. “A truck wouldn’t fit in there. As for other cars, you’re right, plenty of cars have wide tires. There’s the Corvette, the Porsche Carrera, some Aston Martins and Bentleys.… But those are all sophisticated vehicles. When was the last time you heard a Porsche peel out? When you laid tracks behind Petco Park, that was all I needed to see.”

“I can’t believe this,” Marcus says. “I saved your life! Not
only that, I went down to L.A. for you and almost got capped by that fool Bam Bam.”

“Right—just for saying the name Herrera. That made no sense until I realized that Bam Bam never confronted you. You never gave him a chance. You showed up at his office that day intending to kill him, and you did. That’s your style.”

“My style?”

“I didn’t know you had one until I saw how you killed Maria Herrera. It’s like pitching—real consistent. I could write a scouting report.”

“You don’t know shit, Adcock.”

“The Herreras were running whores up from Mexico. Lots of profit there, much more than in sushi.”

This, finally, cracks Marcus’s façade. His face relaxes and his eyes narrow. I recognize this as the face he makes when he’s about to tell a joke. “You make me sound like a tycoon,” he says.

“I know I’m right. Maria Herrera hired Bam Bam to shoot videos of the johns. But Bam Bam was a big man with expensive habits. One thing about a cokehead, he’s always trying to get paid twice. Bam Bam figured that once the Herreras brought him into their circle, he had something to sell. He knew that you had your fingers in all kinds of businesses, so he brought you a business proposition. You grabbed the phone and made a deal with your new friend Maria. You paid Bam Bam a finder’s fee, plus some money to let you use his office in North Hollywood. After I helped you dispose of the body, you went back to cover your tracks.”

Marcus isn’t ready to acknowledge anything, but I see on his face that I’m right.

“You sent text messages to Herrera from one of Bam Bam’s computers. It must have been you: how else could you have known Frankie would be driving up here that night?”

“You’ve seen my cell phone,” Marcus says. “You think I could do all that fancy shit?”

“I see it like this: You needed me to keep tabs on Maria. You knew that if Frankie Herrera came to me with a problem I’d try to help him. So you had Bam Bam send him those texts. Once I was on board, Frankie became expendable. You and Maria had already agreed to get rid of him, because he wanted to close down the operation, but she couldn’t do it herself. The deal was simple: you took out Frankie, and she gave you part of the business. But you saw the handwriting on the wall with Maria. Turns out she was just like you. She never intended to share her gig with anyone. My guess is that she planned to have Bam Bam cut you down as soon as Frankie was dead. That was your guess, too, and that’s why you had to kill Bam Bam.”