The Setup Man (22 page)

In this pause—the first since we fled the widow’s bunker—I say, “I guess thanks are in order?”

Marcus snorts. “Your girl called last night. She was worried because you didn’t reply to the texts she sent after the game.”

I pat my pockets. My phone is long gone. Wallet, too.

“Smart lady,” Marcus says. “First thing she says to me is ‘Know where I can get good sushi in Palo Alto?’ Because I have been thinking of opening a Makasu on the Peninsula.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Ain’t your place to know. But your girl is savvy, she anticipates this kind of thing. Anyway, she says she got an errand for me, to come down here and rescue your ass. After which I would get a line of credit from her fund.”

“How did you find me?”

“Don’t forget you were in her rental car. Easy to trace if you bug the GPS. Which she did.”

I nod, pretending I knew this somewhat disturbing fact.

“So we find the car, but no Adcock. I call up Bethie, tell her the trail went cold. She asks where we at, and I tell her La Jolla. She says you must have gone to see that lady there.” He points through the windshield.

“Maria Herrera.”

“Correct. Bethie gives me an address two blocks away. Me and Natsumi split up, case the place, expecting we might have to do some ninja shit. But just as we coming round the corner, the garage door lifts up, and this black Lexus pulls out. We run back to the car and follow her all the way to the border.”

“Ahem.” One of the girls in the back seat clears her throat.

“Oh yeah. We also muscled up.”

“How did you know she was buying girls?”

Marcus cracks his knuckles against the steering wheel and says, “We sat in the car awhile, and people kept going in and out of the building, but I didn’t put it together until Natsumi’s girl LaTasha talked to one of the guards on his cigarette break. I guess he smelled meat, ’cause he asked if she knew anybody selling bodies.”

“How’d she take that?”

Marcus grows stern. “You realize that is how our African ancestors ended up on this continent, right? Selling each other out? She said maybe she knew somebody, maybe not. Then she circled back to the car and we cooked up this act. The plan was for me and Natsumi and LaTasha to go in, and the others
to wait outside.” Marcus cranes his neck around. “What happened with those motherfuckers in the hall? Did y’all tie them up when you heard the shots?”

“We did that as soon as we saw them,” says the girl in the middle. “Can’t be too safe.”

I glance at the back seat, catch a whiff of fruity perfume. “And you had these costumes with you?” I say.

Marcus looks at me. “What costumes?”

Keeping one hand on the wheel, he pulls out his cell, a sad-looking flip phone with a rubbed-down chrome finish. When the person on the other end answers, he says, “Almost there,” and hangs up.

Marcus tails the car in front of him and makes it through the intersection ten seconds after the widow’s Lexus. Then he makes up for lost time, flooring the Charger and switching lanes like Dale Junior. Soon we’re right behind the Lexus, close enough that I can see the widow’s eyes in her rearview mirror. Road signs announce the last exit before the border crossing. Up ahead, the highway fans out into eight lanes.

“Hold on,” Marcus says. A jolt as we bump the rear of the Lexus. We’re going fifty or sixty in what must be a thirty-five zone, although these are TJ numbers. The girls in the back seat complain that Marcus is going too fast. He says nothing. The widow’s eyes dart to the mirror and back.

Then, suddenly, a Ford van—white, unmarked—cuts in front of Maria. She slows a bit, and the van brakes hard. Maria swerves to the right, narrowly avoiding a collision. Marcus must have known this was coming, because he has eased back so that there are several lengths between us and the Lexus. The widow’s momentum sends her careening onto the exit ramp. We follow at a safe distance.

The ramp dumps us into a ragged, burned-out section of town: empty lots behind chain-link fences, weeds strewn with trash. A couple of tarp-and-cardboard shacks stand in one of
the lots, but there are no live bodies anywhere. The frontage road continues for five hundred feet and ends in a concrete wall. The highway courses above us, twenty feet up. As soon as the widow senses the trap, she begins a K turn, but by the second pivot she’s toast: the white van accelerates past us, kicking up a cloud of dust as it skids into place, closing her off. From the idling Dodge, we watch the driver of the van leap out—he’s a black man in jeans and an Oakland A’s T-shirt. It takes me a minute, but I recognize him as Marcus’s brother Rich, the ex-con turned sushi chef. I’ve never seen Rich without his rising-sun headband. He looks good in a
hachimaki
, but this outfit suits him better. His right hand dangles a chrome-plated revolver, an old .45. With military precision, Rich runs to the door of Maria’s Lexus and pulls it open. He extends the pistol to arm’s length. The gun recoils twice. Without a pause, he throws the weapon inside the Lexus and slams the door. Then he jogs back to his van, where he retrieves two jerry cans of gasoline. The man’s efficiency is breathtaking. In less than thirty seconds, he douses the Lexus bumper to bumper, makes a gasoline trail along the asphalt, and tosses the cans back in the van. He slams the sliding door. Then, very casually, he looks up and acknowledges us with a thumbs-up. Marcus nods, and Rich drops a match.

The Lexus erupts in flame.

Tijuana sighs.

The U.S. border plaza is fortified by concrete barricades and federal officers with bomb-sniffing dogs—more apparatus than the Maginot Line, and about as effective. Ten of the twenty lanes are open at this hour, and Marcus hops the Charger back and forth, testing each lane like a busy Safeway shopper. When a booth on the end changes its light from red to green, he hauls the wheel around, and the car lurches to one side. He accelerates and slips into the line just behind a dark Ford Explorer with Oregon plates. We wait. This time no one speaks. I feel like I might throw up.

A Border Patrol agent steps out of the booth, holding a travel mug of coffee, which he pulls on between questions to the driver of the Ford. The agent is a middle-aged Latino in uniform pants and a federal-issue windbreaker. His hair is still wet from the morning’s shower, gelled to preserve the lines of the comb. He has a full-lip mustache, black flecked with gray. He balances the mug in the crook of his elbow and takes a stack of blue booklets from the driver.

Shit
, I think.
Passports
.

“Marcus,” I say, “we’ve got a problem. I don’t have a passport.”

“No problem,” he says. He pats his waist, where I see the outline of a gun.

“Are you kidding me? These are federal agents, and they’ve got cameras everywhere!”

Inexplicably calm, Marcus says, “I saw you on
SportsCenter
last night.”

I haven’t thought about baseball in what seems like an eternity, although in fact it has been less than twelve hours since I walked off the mound.

“You and Modigliani … damn. Motherfucker didn’t know what hit him! Always nice to see the good guys win.”

Is that what we just saw? I wonder. Do the good guys shoot their enemies in cold blood?

The agent hands the passports back to the driver of the Explorer and waves him through. Now Marcus pulls into position and rolls down his window. “Passports, please,” the agent says. He stoops to look into the car, craning his neck to see the girls in the back. He has the tiny, dark eyes of a rat.

“Morning, officer,” Marcus says. “Busy day?”

The agent is all business: “I need valid U.S. passports for everyone in the vehicle, please.”

“The thing is,” Marcus says, “we sort of rushed down here last night, and some of us forgot our passports at home.”

I appreciate that Marcus is trying to talk this out, but I really don’t want to see him resort to plan B. So I start talking: “Officer, the truth is that I came down for a party after work last night. One thing led to another, and I lost my wallet, my passport, everything. My friends here pretty much rescued me. I promise you I’m an American citizen. I can give you my address, my Social Security number, whatever you need.”

The agent is unmoved. “Without proof of identity,” he says, “I couldn’t let a senator through here unless I knew him personally.”

“That so?” Marcus says. “A senator?” Out of the corner of my eye I see him reach for his waistband.

I lean over the console and start pleading: “Sir, I just moved to San Diego for work. My name is John Adcock. I’m from the L.A. area originally, graduated from Cal State Fullerton. My ex-wife and daughter live in Santa Monica.…”

Now the agent lowers his sunglasses. “I thought I recognized you,” he says. “Adcock, sure. The new lefty. You came over in the Millman trade, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hell of a job last night, Adcock. Do you know how many times that bastard Modigliani has torn us up? Sometimes I think he has a vendetta against the city of San Diego.”

“I appreciate the confidence, sir.”

“Well, keep it up. We may be a losing team, but we’re not losers. The San Diego Padres are a proud organization. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“I think so, sir.”

“And hell if we didn’t need a new setup man! My God, the way Jacoby was stinking up the place, you’d think we were trying to lose games.…” The agent shakes his head, apparently lost in Padre Nation. Then, suddenly, he snaps out of it and looks at his watch. “Day game today?”

“Correct,” I say. “Sir.”

“Well, then, I can’t very well detain you.” He leans down and scans the cabin of the Charger once more with his small black eyes. “I’m going to assume the rest of you are also American citizens?”

“Every last one,” Marcus says. “The rest of us are from Oakland.”

“So you’re A’s fans.”

“As you know, sir, American League baseball is an inferior game. The DH ruins everything. But when we must watch AL ball, yes, we do like the A’s.”

“I once met Rickey Henderson in a nightclub,” LaTasha
adds. “His cousin offered me blow, but I’m, like, ‘I don’t care who you are—you keep that stuff away from me!’ ” She smiles, certain that this tale of discretion will aid our cause.

A vein throbs on Marcus’s temple. I hold my breath, banking on telekinesis to keep his hands on the wheel.

“Well, we could talk shop all morning,” the agent says. “But I’m on duty today, same as you.” He turns his head, observing the line of cars with a deep, satisfied exhalation. “Guys like us, Adcock, we take pride in our work. Most folks don’t understand.”

“I just try to give my best effort every night, sir.”

“I know it.” He steps back and waves us through. “Throw hard today.”

Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful to Marcus. It’s just that I’m frightened by the ease with which he has carried out these crimes of self-defense. With Maria and Bam Bam both dead, I know I should feel safe, but I do not. In fact, I have never felt so uneasy. So many questions remain unanswered. Here’s one example: Marcus said Bethany called him because she hadn’t heard from me after the game. I’m open to the possibility that he might have his timeline mixed up—two murders in an hour will certainly do that—but I distinctly remember speaking with Bethany after the game. She gave me the news about Frankie’s blackmail text. It wasn’t a long conversation, but it happened. It isn’t like Bethany to forget.

But if Bethany didn’t send Marcus to San Diego, who did?

I become even more confused after we drop off the girls at LaTasha’s place in Chula Vista. I ask Marcus if I can borrow his phone to call the Padres’ clubhouse manager. I explain that my stadium keycard was in my wallet, and I will need someone to let me in.

Marcus tosses me his flip phone. “Don’t laugh,” he says. “I know it’s old, but us old folks like to give something a full run before we kick it to the curb. You wouldn’t understand.”

Before I punch in the Padres’ emergency number—every
team has one of these, and you have to memorize it before they give you cleats—I glance at the list of recent calls. There’s the call to Rich, sure enough. There are several from the night before, back and forth to a 415 number I recognize as Bethany’s cell phone.

I look at Marcus, tapping his thumbs on the wheel. I owe my life to this man, and I can’t even trust him to tell the truth about his phone calls. I am a shitty, shitty friend. The fact that my spying turns up nothing only serves to reinforce my shittiness.

I reach the clubhouse guy at home, and he agrees to meet me at Petco in half an hour. My street clothes are at the hotel, but it’s a day game. I’ll just shower and put on my uniform, then maybe grab some breakfast.

Also, I need to talk to Jerry Díaz.

The ride is tense, to say the least. I have an urge to talk through what just happened but find it hard to describe. “Is Rich okay with the … Do you think he’ll … You know, everything with Maria?”

Marcus raises his brow. “I’ll say this about my brother—he knows what to do with a body. Wish it weren’t so, but there you go.”

“I owe you double now.”

“Nah, man,” he says. “You would have done the same for me.”

“Does Natsumi have my number?”

“Why’s that?”

“So she can call me in case you’re ever in trouble.”

He glances at me, then back at the road. I wonder if he knows I was doubting him a minute ago. Sometimes these things show on your face.

Beyond the windshield, downtown San Diego is alive with the benign business of ordinary folks: secretaries rushing to
work in sneakers, hot-dog vendors staking their claims outside the high-rises. Hard to believe gritty, greasy Tijuana is just ten miles south. In the harbor beyond the stadium, a navy ship churns into port, its antennas spinning slowly above the bridge.

“All right, then,” I say as Marcus pulls up to the players’ gate at Petco. “Drive safe.”

The electric fence slides closed behind me. Marcus starts a three-point turn, but the alley behind the stadium is tight, and he loses patience. Three points become five, six, seven. The concrete walls echo the
chugga-chugga
of the Charger’s V8, and the air begins to smell like half-burned gasoline. Eventually, he gets close enough and floors it. The Dodge peels out, filling the morning air with an ear-piercing squeal and leaving a pair of wide tracks along the road.