by T. T. Monday
“Maybe. I’m going to need the phone.”
Frankie’s face drops. “For real?”
“Sorry, Frank, but I need to see the video. You can transfer the number to another phone, but I need the message, in its original form.”
“Promise you’ll keep your hands by your sides?”
“Come on—”
“She’s my wife, Adcock.”
“I know she is, and I promise to give her video the respect it deserves, regardless of how effective it may be.”
“I appreciate that. So—how does this work? Do you charge by the hour?”
“We can talk about that later.”
“Okay. I’ll have my agent call yours. You’re with IMG, right?”
“It doesn’t work like that, Frank.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just get me the phone. Call Verizon or whoever, tell them you lost your handset.”
“Yeah, okay. I can do that.”
“The sooner the better,” I say. “You know where to find me.”
3
Tonight our starting pitcher, Tim Harlingen, scatters six hits over seven innings. The Rockies’ only run comes in the bottom of the seventh, when our center fielder loses a routine fly ball in the lights. Harlingen is a prideful guy, he wants to finish the game, but the score is tied, 1–1, going into the top of the eighth, and Skipper pulls him for a pinch-hitter (who strikes out, but that’s how these things go). Bottom of the eighth, we send out Mitsu Yushida to face the top of the Rockies’ order. Yushi gets the first two on grounders, but then he loses his concentration and walks the third and fourth guys on something like nine pitches. I have been warming up for exactly this scenario, because the Rockies’ number-five hitter, Tom Kelton, is a classic Adcock adversary: a lefty batting thirty-five points lower against left-handed pitching.
As I jog in from the pen, I go over Kelton’s scouting report in my head. You’re supposed to jam him inside to start the count, maybe he fouls off one or two, and then put some junk on the outside corner and hope he chases. Kelton and I broke into the league the same year. We have faced each other dozens of times. Like most scouting lines, this one is factual but insufficient. The truth is that if Kelton is feeling good he will put your best pitch in the cheap seats. Inside, outside—it doesn’t matter. He’s a drinker, though, and it is after ten o’clock. I cross my fingers and hope he’s jonesing.
Skipper puts the ball in my glove. “See you in a few,” he says.
I nod.
Our starting catcher, Tony Modigliani, the third member of our little committee on the mound, goes over the plan: “Let’s start him with fastballs up and in. Got it?” Physically, there are two types of major-league catchers. First is the short, stocky guy with a thick skull, the Mutant Ninja Turtle. Frankie Herrera fits this mold, along with greats like Yogi Berra, Mike Scioscia, and the brothers Molina. Most Turtles took up the position when they were young because it suited their physiques. Growing up, they spent the vast majority of their practice time behind the plate, not beside it, so they tend to be only average hitters. But catching is the most specialized position after pitching—just handling pitchers and their egos takes a degree in psychology—so a guy like Frankie Herrera can expect to enjoy a long career if he stays healthy. Tony Modigliani is the other kind: tall and lithe, maybe six four and 220, with the long, strong arms of an outfielder. In fact, Modigliani played outfield until college, when his coaches told him to try catching. Less competition, they told him, more chance to stand out if you can hit. With those long arms he hits for power—forty homers in his rookie season alone—and because he trained as a hitter, his eye is well developed (he led the National League in walks last year). The problem is that these long-limbed guys are not cut out to be squatting four hours a day, two hundred days a year. Eventually, their knees give out, and they have to move to first base, or join an American League club, where they can DH. There are plenty of examples of this type, too: Mike Piazza, Benny Santiago, Joe Mauer. Everyone loves them—when they’re healthy.
One more thing: for some reason, long-limbed catchers tend to be dicks.
“Up and in,” Modigliani repeats, “you got that?”
“Got it,” I say.
He trots back to the plate, flips down the mask. I take my eight warm-up pitches while the crowd watches bloopers on the big screen. Then the ump gives the signal, and Kelton steps into the box.
I do as I am told, spot a fastball up and in. It has good velocity, a little trailing movement, and it is headed right for Diggy’s waiting mitt when Kelton turns and jacks it over the right-field wall.
The runners come home—one, two, three—and the score is now Rockies 4, Bay Dogs 1.
“One pitch,” Skipper says to me as he takes the ball. “I think that’s a record.”
“What can you do?” I say. “Line on Kelton is up and in.”
Skipper taps my ass. “Maybe it’s time we rewrote the line.”
On the flight home, I hide behind my headphones. One of the problems with being on the road with a baseball club is that you’re never alone. There’s always someone around—teammates, coaches, trainers, writers, video crews. If you want the world to disappear after a bad night on the mound, you can’t just put a blanket over your head. The best you can do is crank up the music and shut your eyes. Most people respect that, even if the sulking player is far too old to be wearing a purple headset labeled “EarCanz™ by Weezy.”
Know what I’m really too old for? Late-inning homers. If a kid with a triple-digit heater hangs a slider and loses the game, you forgive him. You take the long view and trust he will work out the kinks by his next outing. After all, he’s still bringing the heat. With me it’s another story. My hard-throwing days are long gone. My game is about location, changing speeds, and outsmarting the hitter. The moment I lose the ability to fool a drunk like Tom Kelton, I become expendable. No headphones can drown that out.
When we reach San José, Herrera finds me in the players’ parking lot.
“So, hey,” he says, “do you think maybe we could erase the link before I give you the phone?”
“Afraid not, buddy.”
“Do you really have to watch the clip?”
“Lucky me, right?”
“Look, Adcock—”
“I’m just kidding. I’ll close one eye, how’s that?”
He hands me his iPhone. The case is decorated with children’s drawings.
“Great,” I say. “Let’s see what we can find.”
“I’ve got my fingers crossed. Thanks for your help, by the way.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
Frankie laughs and pulls out his keys. “Yeah, I guess that would be smarter.” His black BMW chirps. He flips his suitcase into the trunk, slips behind the tinted glass, and disappears into the night.
4
My own iPhone starts vibrating around seven the next morning. I am in my apartment, on the twenty-first floor of a building in downtown San José. It’s not a glamorous address, but it suits me. The ballpark is walking distance, so I don’t need a car. I keep a motorcycle in the garage for emergencies. The view is a nice bonus. From my living room I can usually see the hills on both sides of Silicon Valley, the little horsetail clouds above the ridges, the windmills in the passes. In front of me, northward, are the backwaters of the Bay, the toxic red sludge in the evaporating ponds, the stinking marshland, the abandoned railroad trestles. On a clear day you can see all the way to San Francisco. This morning, though, I see nothing. We are fogged in.
“This is Adcock.”
“Johnny, it’s Bil Chapman.”
Bil is the Bay Dogs’ clubhouse manager, a middle-aged man trapped in the body of a teenager. Though he must be over forty, his face is ravaged by acne and he sweats through his shirt most days by noon. Bil still lives with his mother, but he claims that it is the other way around, that his mother lives with him, in a house he owns. As though that makes any difference: B
il’s life is a series of small, almost unnoticeable rebellions, for example leaving the last “l” off his first name. He tells me that’s edgy.
“You know what time it is, Bil?”
“Johnny, I have some bad news. Frankie Herrera died in a car accident last night.”
I wind up to tell him it’s too early to be fucking around, and then it occurs to me he’s serious.
“Skipper is asking everyone to report two hours early,” Bil says. “We’re going to have a meeting, and then there will be time with grief counselors—”
“Grief counselors. What happened?”
“It was a car accident.”
“Yeah, you said that. How? Where?”
“We got a call from the Highway Patrol at five this morning. They found Frankie’s car on the road to Half Moon Bay. Highway 92. He went over the edge.”
“Half Moon Bay? Frankie’s apartment is in Santa Clara.”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe he went for a drive? I mean, he went for a drive, obviously.”
“When did it happen?”
“They’re saying around three a.m.”
I go back in my head. We landed at SJC at twelve-thirty or one. Back at the stadium parking lot, one-thirty. It occurs to me that I may have been the last person to see Frankie Herrera alive.
“So there’s a meeting?”
“One-thirty sharp.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“I’m really sorry, Johnny. I know Frankie liked you a lot.”
By eight-thirty, I’m in San Mateo, teasing my bike through the gridlock on 101. The interchange with Highway 92 is a giant flyover weaving between office buildings emblazoned with the names of Internet companies selling electronic real estate. This is the suburb where Barry Bonds grew up, where he was the only black kid in his high school. I bet even today he would be the only one. This is still mostly a white area, but it has been filling up lately with Indians and Chinese pushed north out of the deeper parts of Silicon Valley. I think about Barry’s childhood friend, a white guy, who went on to become his trainer and is currently serving time for refusing to testify in the steroid trial. I wonder if any Indians or Chinese would have done that for him. Not that I approve, of course.
As the road winds uphill into the Coast Range, I leave suburbia and plunge into the redwoods. The temperature drops ten degrees. It occurs to me that I do not know exactly where along the next ten miles the accident occurred. I don’t even know what I am looking for. I pass a peloton of cyclists in DayGlo Lycra—computer geeks and bankers who just remembered they have bodies. Every year at least a dozen of these guys go over the edge on this road. The county has installed guardrails on all the curves, but nothing like that is going to stop a cyclist careening downhill at sixty miles per hour. Might stop the bike, but not the rider.
I get plenty of nasty looks as I pass the cyclists. It makes me feel better to know that I could strike out any one of them on three pitches. Of course, a couple are probably rich enough to buy my contract. I think it must be better to be a pro ballplayer in Cincinnati or Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, where the league minimum salary puts you near the top of the local pecking order. Here in the Bay Area, a million five a year makes me solidly middle class.
Three curves after Skyline Drive, I find the spot. There’s no mistaking it: a section of the guardrail has been replaced with yellow police tape, and three uniformed cops stand next to their cruisers, shooting the shit. Two Highway Patrol and a San Mateo County sheriff. I ride past them, around the next bend, and hide my bike in the bushes. I lock up my helmet and open the goody box, a stash of Bay Dogs paraphernalia I take with me everywhere, because you never know when you might meet a fan.
When the sheriff’s deputy sees me walking toward the yellow tape, he comes over and shakes his head.
“You can’t be here,” he says.
Very politely I ask, “Is this where Frankie Herrera’s car went off the road?”
He looks at me like I just told his five-year-old daughter where babies come from. “No comment,” he says, waving his hand. “You have to leave.”
“Because he was my teammate,” I say. I put out my hand. “Johnny Adcock.”
“No shit.” The deputy loses himself for a minute. I wait while he regains his cop composure. “I’m really sorry about Mr. Herrera,” he says.
“Yeah, he was my wife’s favorite.” I smile like I’m embarrassed. “She liked ’em young.”
“My old lady likes Modigliani. But they all do, right?”
I pull a baseball from the pocket of my leather jacket. “Give her this.”
The cop turns the ball, finds Modigliani’s signature, smiles. “So, Mr. Adcock,” he says, “you want to see where it happened?”
“I do.”
He goes over to the two patrolmen, and they chat for a minute. Then he waves to me. “Sorry for your loss,” says the CHP captain, a middle-aged white man with a handlebar mustache and thighs that push the capacity of his golden uniform tights. I’ve always marveled at how much cops look like out-of-shape second basemen—or maybe how much second basemen (Jeff Kent, for example) look like in-shape cops. “Tough luck yesterday,” he says. “One pitch.”
“Scouting report called for a fastball high and tight,” I explain. I shake my head to indicate (hopefully) that I would like to leave it at that.
“That Kelton is a killer,” says the captain.
“You’re telling me.”
“Guess they thought you might get him this time, huh?”
I bite my tongue. “Guess so, yeah.”
I give the captain and his partner autographed balls, and they walk me over to the guardrail. On the way, we cross a set of fresh-looking tire tracks cutting across the road from the east-bound lane to a point just a few feet from the rail. Looks like Frankie was on his way home when he died.
“These from Frankie’s car?” I ask the cops.
“Most likely,” the captain says. “Though, to be honest, those look a bit wide. What was the deceased driving, Cam?”
“BMW 328,” the partner replies.
“I guess you can get those with wide tires, right? Anyway”—he puts his gloved hand on the mangled steel rail—“here is where he went over.” This stretch of Highway 92 is set into a hillside that has been encased in concrete to halt erosion. Imagine a miniature Hoover Dam; add fog. The cop nods to a spot downhill a hundred yards, on the next curve, where two more police cruisers are parked, with their lights flashing soundlessly. “And that is where he ended up.”
“Can you take me down there?”
The captain rolls the baseball in his hand. “I don’t know, Mr. Adcock. That would be against our procedures.”
“Where are you from?” I say. “You want to see the Giants? I can comp you a pair of tickets.”
He smiles at his partner. “The real question is, will you win?”
“Is this about last night? With all due respect, officer, if you want to try to throw a baseball past a hulk with a club, go right ahead. I wish you all the luck in the world.”
The cop retreats from his pose. “I didn’t mean it like that. I know how hard it is. I played ball in high school.”
“And?”
“And I joined the Highway Patrol the week after graduation.”
To save the guy’s pride, I look away.
As we pick our way down the hill, I hear the captain cursing me under his breath: “Fucking left-handed assholes.… One pitch! Fucking jerkoff thinks he’s such hot shit.…”
At the lower site, Frankie’s BMW is a mess of twisted, smoking steel. The air smells like gasoline, burning hair, and plastic. I try to breathe through my mouth.
The captain points to a gash in the roof where the metal has been pried open. “See that aperture? That’s where the crew removed the bodies. They sent the Jaws of Life, but this was no salvation job, I’m afraid. Sorry if that sounds insensitive, Mr. Adcock, but that’s just the truth.”
“Did you say ‘bodies’?”
<
br /> “Two. Your friend Mr. Herrera and an unidentified female.”
I try to act cool, as though this is what I expected to hear.
“Actually, Captain,” the partner pipes in, “she had ID.”
The captain fixes him with a withering stare. “We can’t say her name,” he says slowly, “because she was a minor. Seventeen years old.”
“Oh yeah?” I say.
“Mr. Adcock, I could lose my job if I told you her name—”
“I understand.”
“—but because you were his friend, I will tell you this much: they weren’t family.”
5
Before the evening’s game, the stadium honors Frankie with a moment of silence. For us, though, the silence has been going on since the early afternoon. The grief counselors, two overweight librarian-looking women in cable-knit sweaters, sit for hours in the trainer’s room without any takers. No surprise there. I could have summarized the players’ sentiments like this: Number one, it wasn’t fair, the kid was only twenty-five. Number two, holy shit, it could have been me. And number three—but this is only my concern—who the hell was the girl in the car? Is there a connection with the video? I used to believe in coincidences, but that was before I started doing investigations and realized that “coincidence” is just another way to say “I give up.”
Ironically, our bats choose this somber occasion to explode with an orgy of runs. Fifteen, to be exact, on twenty-five hits, the highest totals of the season. Every man in the lineup scores. Modigliani has two homers and a double, for six RBIs. Skipper decides to air out the bullpen, giving all of us a little work in this rare glimpse of garbage time. I get the whole eighth inning, and our closer, Big Bob Schneider, pitches a perfect ninth. The closer normally does not pitch unless he has a chance for a save, but we’ve been playing so badly that there haven’t been many games to save. Skipper figures Schneider needs work, so he brings him in anyway. I like a blowout win as much as the next guy, but it takes a long time to score fifteen runs. It is eleven-forty-five when Big Bob records the final out. Thanks to the continuing somber mood in the clubhouse, there is no chitchat tonight, and by twelve-thirty I am a free man. Donning a pair of Oakleys and a 49ers hat for cover, I take the light rail to Japantown. There is only one place I want to be, only one man who can help me sort out the events of the last twenty-four hours.