by T. T. Monday
I take a deep breath. “They can’t show that on ESPN.”
“You’ve never seen a censor bar? Maybe they’ll tip TMZ or Smoking Gun and give them the link, I don’t know. Did you have any idea he was up to this?”
“Herrera isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last.”
“I know,” Ursino says, “but stories like this never get old. This is huge. We’ll be talking about this for weeks, maybe more.”
I hang up and throw the phone into the passenger’s foot-well. I am furious, but not at Jesse Ursino. Jesse can’t help himself. He is paid to be an asshole. But I should have kept my mouth shut. So I was wrong about Frankie Herrera—did I really need to go on the radio and pretend I was still right? The release of the video will only make it worse: Ursino will play back the clip of me defending Herrera, juxtaposed with audio from the porno. I don’t blame him. If it were my show, I’d do the same thing.
33
I take the exit for La Jolla, a tony enclave wedged between the University of California’s San Diego campus and the Pacific Ocean. In that peculiar California way, La Jolla refuses to advertise its wealth. No Gangnam Style here. La Jolla is full of millionaires who wear fleece jackets to five-hundred-dollar dinners, where they order entrée salads and glasses of organic chardonnay. This bastion of restraint is where Frankie Herrera chose to settle his family. He told me it had been a tough decision: his wife’s parents live in Chula Vista, a gritty strip between San Diego and the border, and Frankie knew the homeboys there would say he moved because he thought he was better than them. Whiter is what they meant, although Frankie told me that La Jolla is actually more Asian than white. His sons’ best friend in preschool was an Indian boy named Saahil whose parents worked at UCSD and at Scripps, the medical research institute next door. Frankie said he understood why some ballplayers settled in places like Phoenix or Orlando, where you could be surrounded by the families of other professional athletes. But he did not mind being surrounded by scientists. They are quiet, he said. Nobody gets into your business.
Only as I am turning off the engine in front of the Herreras’ enormous Spanish-style home, with its nonfruiting olive trees, smoke bushes, and showy fountains of raspberry bougainvillea, does it occur to me that I should have called first. But it is too late for that. Besides, it would have given Maria Herrera a chance to hide. I know she doesn’t want to hear what I have to tell her, and I have no idea when the news about her video is going to break.
I pull the heavy brass knocker and let it fall. The blow echoes through the timbered door like the voice of God. I feel suddenly like an inquisitor at the door of a medieval Spanish monastery. It occurs to me that even the tastefully rich make errors in style. Laugh all you want at the hillbilly quarterback who builds a replica of the Playboy mansion on his property in Scottsdale, Arizona: a dungeon door on your fake California mission is no better. In fact, if you are Latino and have some native blood, it is worse. But I don’t blame the Herreras or any of them. The root problem is not taste but wealth.
As expected, my arrival takes the widow Herrera by surprise. She answers the door wearing a pink velour track suit trimmed with shiny white stones, the kind where the butt—I know this without even seeing it—is emblazoned with some embarrassing word like “Juicy” or “Cherry” or, for the colorblind, “Pink.”
“Johnny Adcock,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Sorry, I should have called.”
She looks at her watch. “Don’t you have a game?”
“Later.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What happened?”
At first I think she means the trade, but then I remember how I look. I touch my temple, the more busted-up one. It feels hot and puffy.
“No big deal,” I say. “I’ve been treated.”
She nods without any special concern, like I’m not the first injured man to show up at her door unannounced.
“Can I come in? I have something to tell you about Frankie.”
She leads me through a long entry hall lined with pilasters—think Caesars Palace minus the triremes and chiming slots—ending in the kitchen. The gleaming marble island in the center is larger than my childhood bedroom. She pulls out a stool and asks if I would like some carrot juice.
“How are the twins?” I say.
“They don’t understand. They think their dad is at work.”
I feel bad suddenly for bringing up the twins. There is the story the boys will come to know about their dad—the star athlete, the hero, the philanthropist—and then there is the rest, which they will never be able to accept. Here I am, the bearer of that infamy, and I’m asking how they feel. Pretty fucking bad, Adcock, what did you think?
“Did you find him?” the widow asks, and for a moment I am stumped. Find who? And then I remember. The murderer, she means. She’s convinced Frankie was killed. Run off the road, I guess.
“Mrs. Herrera, I have some difficult news. It turns out there was another person in the car when Frankie died.”
She is silent for a moment as the information settles in, as questions present themselves.
“Now you are going to tell me it was a woman,” she says.
She must see it on my face.
“I’m not surprised,” she says. “Who was she?”
“She had aliases. The one she used most was Alejandra Sol.”
I watch the widow’s face, but there is no flash of recognition. “A girl who uses multiple names,” she says. “Was she a spy or a stripper?”
“It’s funny you say that.…”
“She was a stripper?”
“Not exactly. She was more of a—I guess you would call her a prostitute.”
There, I’ve said it. The rest of the conversation is going to be a downhill ride. A little consoling, a little it’s-not-your-fault. Maybe a hug. Then I will get into my car, drive to the ballpark, and get on with my life.
But Maria Herrera hangs tough.
“I don’t believe you,” she says. “Frankie never had to pay his girls.”
“He had girls before?”
She snorts. “You guys always think it’s a revelation.”
“Us guys?”
“Ballplayers.”
“You knew?”
“Not this time, not specifically. But did I know that Frankie had girls? Sure. He wasn’t very careful about it.” She laughs. “I wonder how many other athletes’ wives got the joke when Tiger’s wife found those texts on his phone.”
“What was the joke?”
“You think she wasn’t reading his phone for months? For years? Personally, I think he was juicing, and his wife couldn’t take it anymore. Frankie never took those drugs, lucky for me, but I have girlfriends who say it’s like fucking a bear. But it’s the price of admission, right? If you want to live in La Jolla or Winter Park or wherever, you keep your mouth shut and spread your legs.”
“For the bear.”
“Like I said, Frankie never took steroids. He was gentle in bed.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“But now you’re telling me he paid for sex? No offense, Mr. Adcock, but if anybody in baseball was paying for girls, it would be long relievers.”
“I’m a setup man, Mrs. Herrera.”
“Same difference.”
“Actually, it’s not.”
But the widow has no interest in debating my job description. “What else do you know about Alejandra Cruz?”
“Alejandra Sol.”
“Where did she get my video?”
“I never said she had your video.”
“Isn’t that what I hired you for?”
“Your husband hired me, Mrs. Herrera. He was a friend of mine, a teammate, and I said I’d find out what I could.” I reach up without thinking and rub my forehead too hard. The pain spreads out from my thumbprint in waves.
Maybe because she sees my grimace, the widow backs off. “I appreciate what you’ve done,” she says. “I’m just disappoin
ted you didn’t find out more.”
“There is a little more.”
I weigh how much to tell her, knowing that other people’s stories—George Luck’s, for example—might be compromised if I go on. But this woman deserves to know. Her husband is dead. He was consorting with a hooker behind her back. She has two small children she will have to raise by herself.
“The thing is,” I say, “Alejandra Sol was more than a prostitute. She was working for a group that sold foreign girls to American men.”
“My husband was screwing a wetback?”
“Not exactly—”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have people.”
“Who know this personally?”
“Let’s say yes.”
“Come on, Mr. Adcock.…”
“An old friend. He’s a pitcher. And not a long reliever, either. He is a starter on a big-league club.”
She sneers. “I stand corrected.”
“Look, Mrs. Herrera, I know how hard this must be. But I want you to know I’m not done. With your permission, I will get to the bottom of this. I will finish it.”
“Now you sound like a detective.”
“What did I sound like before?”
“Honestly? You sounded like my husband.”
34
In downtown San Diego, I pull into the players’ lot at Petco Park—and by the way, what kind of name is that for a major-league stadium? I know the Padres’ owner has bills to pay, but it’s hard to maintain your dignity in a palace built on kibble.
Anyway, the guard waves me in and shows me where to leave the car. A chain-link fence rolls shut behind me. The Padres’ clubhouse manager meets me at the door, shakes my hand, and shows me to my locker. I’m happy to see that my Bay Dogs equipment bags have arrived already. As soon as the clubhouse guy leaves me alone, I start digging through the bags for Bam Bam’s binder, but I come up empty. I find my gloves, my (mint-condition) game bats, and a photo of a six-year-old Izzy dressed like a cat on Halloween. But the binder is not there. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad about this. On the one hand, maybe now the wrecking crew will leave me alone. On the other hand, how will they know it’s missing? It occurs to me that they may have put two and two together and broken into Dodger Stadium before my bags shipped out, taken what was rightfully theirs. A much more likely explanation is that Bil Chapman did his usual erratic work and just forgot to pack the binder. I’m also missing a little Buddha statue, a souvenir of the Bay Dogs’ trip to Japan for exhibition games three years ago.
I call Bil.
“Johnny, my man! How’s San Diego? Seen any donkey shows yet?”
“That’s Tijuana, Bil.”
“Same difference. What can I do for you?”
“I left a few things in the clubhouse in L.A. One is a three-ring binder, white plastic, with some investment information inside. The other is a little Buddha statue from the Japan trip. It’s about two inches tall, made of dark stone.”
“I have the Buddha.”
“Why didn’t you pack it with my stuff?”
A pause. “Let’s call it a tip.”
“A tip? You stole my Buddha as a tip? That’s wrong in so many ways. Do you know anything at all about Buddhism?”
“I know I like that statue, and I know it’ll look good on my desk. And since you’re not going to be around at the end of the year, when the staff tip pool comes in, I figured it was my right.”
“Your right?” I could strangle him. “What about the binder? Did you take that, too? Are you looking for investment advice now? So you can invest the tips you’re not getting?”
“Sheesh. Cool your engine, Adcock. I don’t have your binder. I never saw a binder. And believe me, I would have. I would never leave anything in L.A. Their clubhouse guys are rats.”
“Are you sure? Did you see anyone snooping around? Maybe two guys, thick around the neck—”
“I’m sure,” Bil says. “You owe me an apology.”
I hang up.
An ironed jersey hangs on the bar, number 39. The Padres’ usual home uniform is white with brown-and-blue trim and letters—not a bad getup—but today we are wearing reproductions of a ghastly throwback from the early eighties. Let me be clear: I was on board with the retro thing when it was about the forties and fifties. Those were tasteful styles, and especially acceptable now that baggy trousers are back in vogue. But the eighties? What is worth remembering about nut-tight pants, knee-high Ozzie Smith stirrups, and misshapen caps? Even without the recent revival, no one will ever forget the Pirates’ wedding-cake hat, with those flat black sides and yellow pinstripes. A child molester would feel self-conscious in one of those.
Tonight’s Padres jersey looks like it belongs to an office softball team. The sleeves are dark brown and longer than usual, sewn onto a white vest front, where the word “Padres” is spelled out in sixties-futuristic letters, like we are the baseball team from Tron. Yellow piping trims the sleeves and neck. It is a pullover, so there are no buttons or placket. It is the most hideous getup I’ve ever seen. Funny thing? I remember this exact uniform from my boyhood. The road version had a brown vest front and canary-yellow sleeves with matching yellow trousers. Thank God we’re playing at home tonight.
Leaving the new uniform on its hanger, I change into a pair of workout shorts and head to the weight room. I sit down at the ergometer, dial in my resistance, and begin to row. The wheel hums, the plastic-wrapped cables slapping against the steel of the machine. My ribs ache from the beating, but playing baseball for twenty years is a kind of beating, too. My muscles—even those thin, smooth ones between the ribs—know that the only option is to heal, because tomorrow there will be another workout. And the day after, and the day after that, world without end, amen. The next time you take a beating, think of me. That is how I feel from the All-Star break on, from July to October, every single year. Used to be that players let themselves go during the off season. Now we are expected to stay in shape twelve months a year. This is probably good for the heart and lungs, but it gives the body no time to heal. Surgery has taken the place of rest. A friend of mine, a pitcher, recently saw a movie with his kid about robots in a martial-arts tournament. The kid loved it, but my buddy said it was eerie. Doesn’t take much to imagine our pubescent GMs sitting in skyboxes controlling robots with joysticks. Jacked-up tin men might lack charisma for the postgame interviews, but think of what you could save on hotel rooms.…
I am twenty minutes into my workout—five kilometers of glassy lake water if you believe the erg’s LCD—when I get some company. A couple of outfielders, Ray Thomas, Jr., and Floyd Witherspoon, stake out a bench. I’ve faced both a number of times. Thomas I own—he’s something like 0-for-6 with three strikeouts, lifetime, against me. Witherspoon is the opposite: in April, on the Bay Dogs’ first trip to San Diego, he burned me for a homer. I nod, they nod back, and Witherspoon lies down on the bench. For all the posturing and grabassing that goes on in a big-league clubhouse, there are a few inviolable rules. One is that if you agree to spot a guy on the bench, you’d better pay attention. No checking your phone or the TV monitors—too much is at stake. Both lifter and spotter need to be locked in, to block out their surroundings. For this reason it’s pretty easy to eavesdrop on bench-press conversations. I turn back to my erg, spin up the flywheel, and listen in.
“You still with that chick?” Thomas asks Witherspoon.
“Hell, yes.” Witherspoon grunts, pushing two hundred pounds of iron off his chest. “Best damn thing I ever did.”
“Tell me her name again.”
“Alejandra Sol.”
“Spanish pussy, huh?”
A clank as Thomas guides the bar home.
“Nigga, there’s plenty of shit you don’t know about me.”
“Tell me this: how does your wife feel about Alejandra Sol?”
Now the two men share the kind of contagious, full-throated guffaw you might think was innocent bonhomie if you didn
’t know the substance of their conversation.
“For real, though,” Thomas continues. “Your girl keeps it hushed up?”
“Oh, absolutely. We have a weekly schedule. The neighbors think she’s the maid.”
“You gave her a key to your condo?”
“It’s safe. This is our thing.”
“I know, I know.…”
Now the men shift places, and Thomas takes the bench. He’s smaller than Witherspoon, and I hear the scrape of metal as they remove a few plates.
Thomas heaves his first rep with a loud exhalation. “Do they got black girls?” he huffs.
“They got all kinds. You should call. Did I tell you homeboy sent me a free sample the first time?”
“For real, free?”
“One night on the house.”
“I better do this.”
“You’re gonna thank me.”
35
At batting practice I feel like the girl who misread the party invitation and showed up underdressed. On the visitors’ side of the diamond, my former teammates pace around in their handsome road grays while I wiggle my shoulders, adjust my hips, put a finger under the band of my cap—none of it feels right. I grab a bat and get in line behind the cage. I have not had a real at-bat in years, but something tells me that if I ever gave up BP, I would be called to the plate the next night. Bases loaded, two outs, the full deal.
My turn comes up and I hustle into the cage. I nod to the guy on the mound, who happens to be Chuckie Householder, the Padres manager. Householder is one of those old men who believe throwing batting practice is the secret to a long and healthy life. A small but dedicated cohort of big-league coaches subscribe to this philosophy. Clearly it’s a way to avoid other types of exercise, because Householder looks like the Kool-Aid man, stubby little arms and legs coming off a big, round middle. His windup is more like a lean-back—remember Fernando Valenzuela?—and I worry that on every follow-through he is going to lose his balance and crash into the L screen. Somehow he gets the ball over the plate.