Double Switch

by T. T. Monday

  24

  The Dry Creek Valley road is sticky under the wheels of my bike, thanks to the scorching sun and a recent coat of asphalt. I’m sweating under my helmet and leathers. A couple miles into the valley, the new asphalt ends, and the road goes back to its old shitty self. The smells change, too: petrochemical stink gives way to the anise of the scrub brush and the astringent mint of the eucalyptus trees. Neat rows of grapevines stretch across the valley floor and up the opposite slope. I’m impressed by how rustic the scenery becomes just a few miles out of town. Shingles on mailboxes announce tasting rooms, but when I look down the driveways all I see is farm equipment, tumbleweeds, and roosters. Scrawny goats graze barnyards of dry grass. Out past the new asphalt, this is no country for tour buses.

  After seven winding miles, I arrive at the address on the bottle. A wooden sign nailed to the trunk of a live oak announces Domaine Amphora in the same typeface as the label. I leave my bike behind a smoke bush. On foot I feel smart and alive, like I’m running into the game from the bullpen. I have to remind myself this is no game. If I get too aggressive here, there’s no catcher to cool me off with a visit to the mound, no pitching coach to tap my ass and tell me he loves me. This is me risking my life. I’m not sure what I expect to find at the top of the driveway. It could be a hooded guard with a Kalashnikov, or a retired banker pouring tastes of his estate Cabernet. Neither sounds like much fun.

  After a couple of doglegs, the driveway opens into a parking lot fringed with dusty rosemary and lavender. There is only one car in the lot, an old diesel Mercedes with California plates. The sedan has a bumper sticker that reads SAVE WATER—DRINK SONOMA WINE. Bumper stickers are a strange phenomenon. Most people would rather tattoo their skin than put a sticker on their car. Nearly all of my teammates have ink, but you won’t find a single sticker in the players’ parking lot. I walk around the car to a ranch house that serves as Domaine Amphora’s tasting room. A sign on the door states the hours and age restrictions, along with some bullshit about dogs being welcome as long as they’re over three. The sign is made of wood cut into the shape of a handled jar. An amphora, I read on the winery’s website, is a kind of jar used in ancient Greece to transport olive oil and other marketable liquids. Turns out I knew this already from an in-flight magazine I read years ago, an issue dedicated to “the new Greece” (aka Turkey), where apparently you can scuba-dive to the wrecks of ancient container ships filled with two-thousand-year-old jars. Some of them still have wine in them.

  I stride to the door, my boot heels knocking on the wooden porch, and discover that it’s locked. I step back and check the hours. They should be open. Guess I’m not the only one playing hooky on this Monday afternoon. I pull out my phone and call the tasting room’s number. I hear a phone ring inside the house, but no one answers. Now I’m irritated. I didn’t come all this way just to get dumped. This was supposed to be my chance to make something of the day.

  From the far end of the porch, I see that there are more buildings behind the house. Tall, windowless structures with enormous sliding doors. Barns. Connie said the wine business is really about logistics: storing wine in barrels, then in bottles, then moving bottles to market. The actual winemaking—crushing grapes, blending juice—takes a couple of days. The rest is waiting. And paying rent.

  I step off the porch and walk toward the warehouses. Something tells me it’s a good idea to announce myself, just in case the owner of the Mercedes turns out to be an armed guard.

  “Hello! Anybody here? Any chance I could taste some wine?”

  No answer.

  I approach the first barn. The sliding door, ten feet tall and almost as wide, is open six inches or so. I lift my sunglasses and peer inside. Wooden barrels are stacked on steel racks from floor to ceiling, occupying every cubic yard of space inside the building. It reminds me of IKEA, but much more dense. I understand now why the doors are so large, and why they’re installed on two sides of the barn. If you needed a barrel in the far corner, you’d be better off removing the wall than trying to get there from here.

  “Anybody in here? Hello?”

  Don’t bother us, the barrels say, we’re aging.

  The second barn is a bit smaller than the first, both shorter and narrower, and the weathered siding suggests that it’s older as well. The sliding doors are rusty. I can’t budge the near one, so I move around to the back door, which is already open. I duck inside and remove my shades. Instead of barrels, this building is filled with winemaking equipment: hoses and screw presses and enormous stainless-steel tanks.

  Then I see why no one answered the phone. A man in a winery-branded polo shirt dangles from a steel fermentation tank, a pink nylon rope knotted expertly around his neck. His head lolls lifelessly to one side, dead eyes staring. I take several steps backward. My shoulder collides with something in the darkness. I spin around. It’s a white athletic shoe, attached to a meaty leg. Hanging from the tank behind me is a woman in an identical polo shirt. She’s white, middle-aged. A double suicide? The pink rope suggests otherwise. There were identical nylon fibers on the beam in Magnusson’s video room.

  I know I should call the police, but what good will that do? These two aren’t going to benefit from medical attention. The one who needs help is me. This is a setup. And it may already be too late.

  I run through the yellow grass around the barns, toward the main house. If the killer is here, if he’s watching me, then he has probably moved my bike. And if the bike is gone—then what? What am I going to do? What kind of idiot rides out here alone, unarmed, on an anonymous tip? I feel like a chump.

  When I reach the parking lot, I fall into the trap—but it’s not the trap I imagined. Two police cruisers from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department are idling behind the Mercedes with their light bars flashing. When the officers see me, they leap out of their cars and crouch behind the doors, just like they do on TV. They draw their weapons.

  “Stop where you are!” yells one of the cops. His head is cocked sideways, staring down the barrel of his nine-millimeter pistol. “Don’t move! Put your hands where we can see them and get down on the ground!”

  “Do it now!” yells his partner, crouched behind the passenger’s door of the same car. “Get down now!”

  I do as they say, first kneeling in the dirt, and then lying facedown with my hands clasped behind my head. When the deputy comes to frisk me, he smells like cheap shampoo-conditioner mix, the kind they load into the dispensers in minor-league clubhouses. He pats my flanks and crotch with his hands, then yells back to his colleagues, “He’s clean!”

  His partner plus the two cops from the other cruiser stumble over, belts a-jingling. “We got a call about someone screaming,” one of them says above me. I turn my head to the side and look up. The cop’s body is blocking the sun. “Know anything about that?”

  “I just got here.”

  “Looks like you were in a hurry to leave.”

  “I came to taste wine, but the door was locked, so I looked around.”

  “Find anything we should know about?”

  I realize there’s no point being coy. “Look in the second barn, the low one. There are two stiffs inside. That’s why I was running. It scared the shit out of me.”

  I hear the clink of gear and dusty footfalls as two cops peel off to investigate. The sergeant gets on his radio, reporting an incident with possible fatalities. “We’re gonna need forensics,” he says. The radio squelches in his earpiece. “What’s that? No, I don’t think so. Suspect is in custody.”

  A few minutes later, the deputy returns. “Sergeant, we found two victims, male and female, both Caucasian. Looks like suicide by hanging.”

  “It wasn’t suicide,” I say.

  Both cops look down. The sergeant says, “You do realize it’s better for you to stay quiet.”

  “Just trying to help.”

  “You should be helping yourself, is what you should be doing.”

  Second time this week I’ve go
tten that advice.

  “He’s right,” the deputy adds. “We give you the right to remain silent. You should take it.”

  For some reason, that does it. Not staring down two drawn weapons, not finding myself facedown in the dust, not even being called “the suspect.” No, it isn’t until I have cops feeling sorry for me—giving me advice about how to act in my own self-interest—that I realize I’m in the shit. And deep.

  25

  The interrogation room of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department is air-conditioned to three degrees below freezing. The detective in the chair across from me wears long sleeves, a tie, and a jacket. He’s a middle-aged Latino, clean-shaven and only a little overweight. He’s been reasonable so far, but these guys work in teams. Soon the bell will ring and they’ll send in the Bad Cop.

  “Tell me again why you were on the Domaine Amphora property.”

  “I was there to taste wine.”

  “So it was a pleasure trip.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what kind of work do you do?”

  I pause. Usually, this is my trump card. Over the years, my answer to this question has scored me everything from free drinks to airline upgrades, even a few private tours behind police tape. This time, however, it feels like a liability. “I’m a professional baseball player.”

  The detective raises his brow. “Oh, really? Anybody I’ve heard of?”

  “I’m a reliever for the Bay Dogs.” He already knows my name.

  “Oh, sure. San José, right?” The detective steals a glance at the clock on the wall. It’s a little after four. “Guess you’re gonna miss tonight’s game.”

  “We’re off today. That’s why I went wine tasting.” I’m trying hard to keep the irritation out of my voice, but it’s tough.

  “Right, right.” He taps his pencil on his notebook. “Wait here a sec?”

  Ten minutes later he’s back. “You sure you don’t want to call a lawyer?”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, but if there were charges brought against you, everything you say to us could be used in court.”

  “I understand my rights.”

  “Mr. Adcock, you seem like a reasonably smart guy. Think about this from my perspective. We get a report of, quote, bloodcurdling screams coming from a vineyard, and when officers arrive, they find you running from the scene. It doesn’t look good for you.”

  I say nothing.

  “We find your motorcycle hidden in the bushes near the road—presumably that’s where you were headed when the officers apprehended you.” He sighs. “I don’t want to arrest you, but what choice do I have? Do yourself a favor and call someone.”

  I consider my options. Connie is the only person I know in Sonoma County, and I can’t call her. Not like this. I have some pride left.

  No, I just need to wait this out. It’s only a matter of time before the police connect this murder with the Magnusson case. I’ve already told them to call the Denver PD. You’d have to be an idiot not to see the similarities. Not only the hanging, but the type of rope. And what else? Oh, right: if they look closely, they’ll find that the same man was in the vicinity both times.

  That being me.

  Fine, I need a lawyer. But who? Todd Ratkiss went to law school….Maybe he could make a referral? Then I remember my clubhouse keycard.

  “Where’s the phone?” I ask the detective.

  He smiles, pleased that I’ve finally come to my senses. “Do you know the number?”

  “It’s in my wallet.”

  “No problem, hold on.” He knocks to be let out and returns a minute later with my wallet and a cordless phone. I’m surprised this is how it goes; I thought police-station calls were made at a pay phone in a dingy concrete cell where you have to blow your cellmate for a dime.

  I pull out my keycard and dial the 800 number on the back. A woman answers on the first ring. “MLB Helpline, Janet speaking.”

  “This is Johnny Adcock of the Bay Dogs. Can I speak to Feldspar, please?”

  “Mr. Feldspar is traveling this afternoon. May I take a message?”

  A message? This was supposed to be like 911. “Tell him I’ve been arrested, or I’m about to be.”

  Without a hint of panic, Janet asks, “Where are you right now, Mr. Adcock?”

  “The sheriff’s station in Sonoma County.”

  I hear typing. “Is that the headquarters in Santa Rosa or one of the field offices?”

  “Santa Rosa.”

  “Okay, Santa Rosa…and what are the charges?”

  “Murder, I think. But it’s bullshit.” I meet eyes with the detective, who looks away. “I mean, I’m innocent. But I need a lawyer.”

  More typing. “We’ll let Mr. Feldspar make that determination. I assume we can reach you at this number?”

  “How long until Feldspar calls me back?”

  “He’s usually very prompt. Just sit tight, Mr. Adcock. Help is on the way.”

  We hang up, and I feel surprisingly confident. Help is on the way? You’d think I called the Avengers.

  The detective gathers up the phone and my wallet. “I have a sheet of local attorneys, if you need them.”

  “I thought I only got one call.”

  The detective waggles his hand. “Give or take,” he says.

  I am considering taking him up on the offer when the phone rings. The detective answers, and I hear a man’s voice light into him. I can’t make out exactly what the caller is saying, but he’s pissed.

  Then the detective hands me the phone. “He wants to speak with you.”

  “Hello?”

  “Adcock, it’s Feldspar. From now on, your mouth doesn’t work. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be there soon.” The line goes dead.

  The detective and I are both a little stunned. I hand back the phone and he asks if I’d like a cup of coffee.

  I start to say, “Yes, I would,” but stop myself. I give a thumbs-up instead.

  26

  The detective tells me it will be tomorrow at the earliest before I get my bike back. It’s already on a truck headed for the impound lot in Petaluma.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll come up tomorrow morning.”

  “Actually”—he looks cautiously at Feldspar—“we can have it delivered. What’s your address?”

  Twenty minutes later, I’m in the passenger’s seat of Jim Feldspar’s rented SUV, heading south on 101. For most of the ride, Feldspar has been listening to his messages one by one through the Bluetooth in his ear, then calling his assistant to give instructions on matters I lack the context to understand. Finally, when it appears he has reached the end of his task list, I jump in. “You have to tell me what you did back there,” I say. I’m not flattering him; it was a remarkable performance. He showed up and went into the chief’s office, and five minutes later I was signing for my wallet, keys, and phone. No charges filed, no further questions asked.

  Feldspar’s brow rises. “When Janet told me you were in Sonoma, I figured it was fifty-fifty you’d be released by sundown. I know lots of people in Sonoma. This part of the country was the Eagle’s power base.”

  “The Eagle?”

  For the briefest moment he takes his eyes off the road and looks at me. “President Clinton. We were in California once a quarter at least, and more often than that during election season. Lots of money out here.”

  “So you met the sheriff through the president?”

  “Secret Service has what are called advance teams, groups of agents who travel ahead, making preparations for the visit. So, if the Eagle was doing a fund-raiser in Santa Rosa, for instance, one of us had to meet with Santa Rosa PD and Sonoma Sheriff to plan for street closures, helipad access, rooftop security along the motorcade route, that type of thing. It’s a million little details you have to think about, but after a while it becomes routine.”

  “And along the way you meet a lot of cops.”

  “After the bus
iness is taken care of, you find yourself in a Holiday Inn in a town you don’t know.” He pauses. “It’s sort of like baseball. You end up hitting the same towns year after year, and you get to be friends with the local guys. That guy Vasquez, in the sheriff’s office—”

  “The detective?”

  He shakes his head. “His boss. When I met him he was a beat officer. He took me to a cowboy bar in Petaluma, sawdust on the floor, the whole bit. People were line-dancing in boots and heels. I walk up to the bar to buy the first pitcher, and Vasquez taps me on the shoulder and he says, ‘Not here. Come with me.’ And he takes me to the back of the room, past the restrooms, where he stands in front of this unmarked door and knocks some kind of secret code. The door opens up, and I’m staring into this other room, very dark, with a different kind of music. Topless girls everywhere, you know. This waitress walks right up and greets Vasquez by name, asking where he’s been….”

  Feldspar stares out the window, where the Marin tower of the Golden Gate Bridge rises above the hills. “Anyway, when Janet said Sonoma Sheriff, I said a little prayer that Jack Vasquez was still on the force. Then I called, and it turned out he was the supervisor in charge of your case. Right then the odds went from even to near a hundred percent.” He drums the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Until that point, though, there were no guarantees.”

  “So you just asked your friend to let me walk?” I try not to sound incredulous, but I really can’t believe this is how it works. I always suspected as much, and I’m glad to be free, but I feel like my view of the criminal-justice system will never be the same.

  “It wasn’t that straightforward,” Feldspar says. “I couldn’t ask him to turn you loose for no reason.”

  “What reason did you give?”

  “It wasn’t hard to fix up. He knows you didn’t do it.”

  “You convinced him?”

  “Me? I didn’t have to convince him. You told him you were tasting wine, and he believed you. Also, forensics determined the time of death was at least three hours before you arrived. That was good for you. I just pushed a little, that’s all. My job is to protect ballplayers. Now, do I believe that you were tasting wine? It just so happens that I do not.”