by T. T. Monday
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.
46
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.”
47
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.
48
A no-hitter in progress is like Fight Club: first rule is you don’t talk about it. Our starting pitcher, Dan Wheeler, has not allowed a hit through seven innings, and he sits alone at the end of the bench, hat over his eyes, right arm coddled in a warm-up jacket. No one speaks to him. It’s exciting but awkward, like riding in an elevator with a celebrity. When Wheeler heads out to start the eighth, the dugout breathes a sigh of relief to have him gone. Then it’s all over. On the first pitch of the eighth inning, my former teammate Chichi Ordoñez lines a shot over the shortstop’s head into left field, a clean single. There is no call to dispute, no lazy outfielder to blame, just a textbook hit. We still have the lead, 2–0, but as so often happens in baseball, the tiniest shift in momentum changes the balance of everything. Just like that, the air goes out of Wheeler’s sails, and the next batter, Julio Cabrera, takes the first pitch he sees over the center-field wall. The ball goes much farther than that, actually, caroming off the “batter’s eye” screen and returning to the field. Our center fielder scoops the ball up and throws it back toward the visitors’ dugout, in case Cabrera wants to keep it as a souvenir.
In the bullpen we spit our sunflower seeds, cross and recross our legs, and wait for the phone to ring. You can almost feel the heaviness in Householder’s dialing finger. Until five minutes ago, his pitcher was totally unhittable, a golden boy. Two batters later, the game is tied, there are no outs, and the Bay Dogs’ number-three hitter is stepping up. On deck, in the cleanup spot, is our friend Modigliani.
The phone rings and the bullpen coach picks up. He nods, replaces the receiver, and tells me to get my glove. Fritz DeVries also gets tapped. Fritz is right-handed.
You see where this is headed.
Before I get my glove, I try to touch my toes. My left arm is loose. The problem is my rib cage, specifically the right side, which feels fused. I bend down and hear cracking like knuckles in my lower back. It occurs to me that I am too old to be doing this. Or maybe too old for the other thing. Definitely too old to do both.
“Let’s go, Adcock,” the bullpen catcher calls. “You’re up.”
He crouches behind the plate, and I give a few weak tosses from in front of the mound. He looks at me sideways. I ignore him. Fact is, if he were all that, he wouldn’t be catching practice tosses in a cage behind the left-field wall. He knows this, of course, so he says nothing. Eventually, I work my way backward to the rubber. Until you are injured, you never realize how many muscles are involved in the simplest tasks. With this particular injury, the act of throwing the ball doesn’t hurt too badly; it’s the follow-through that kills, when the right side of my body curls in on itself. Now that I’m moving, getting warm, I hear no cracking, just a sort of moan, like Styrofoam flexing.
Then there’s a crack, and a loud one: the sound of the Bay Dogs’ second home run of the inning. This one is a monster shot onto the grassy knoll in right-center. The stadium falls silent as another of my former teammates rounds the bases. Those fans who are paying attention know that they have seen the last of Dan Wheeler, and when Householder waddles out to the mound, they stand and give Danny the ovation he deserves.
Five minutes later, these same fans have forgotten about the no-hit attempt. All they see is the home team trailing, 3–2. Never mind that ten minutes before they had been ready to nominate Dan Wheeler for governor. A week from now, his seven innings of no-hit ball will be a statistical anomaly, like getting heads in a coin toss seven times in a row, indistinguishable on the page from seven random, nonconsecutive hitless innings. Which begs the question: is it better to have flirted with history and failed, or never to have flirted at all?
Under the falsely optimistic cheer of the ballpark organ, I jog in from the pen. Every step twists the dagger in my rib cage. I wonder what Householder would do if I kept running past the mound and into the dugout, down the tunnel, into the clubhouse Jacuzzi. Among other things, it would vindicate the baseball brass in their conviction that my second career is detrimental to my first. I would never admit they’re right, of course, but on a day like this it’s hard to argue with their logic.
In the end, I’m too proud to back down. I take the ball from my manager, nod and grunt as required, accept a pat on the ass. “Just like last night,” says the catcher. “Let’s get him again.”
First pitch is wide, and Modigliani takes ball one. Second pitch is the same. Diggy calls time, steps out of the box to check the signs from the third-base coach. I try to guess what he is hoping to see there: a bunt? You never know what the other guy is up against. Could be Modigliani had a hard night, too. He could be angling for a walk, nursing a hidden injury through these last few weeks of the season. A pitcher can hope.
I throw him a couple of sliders away, and he fouls both off—one deep the other way, off the corner of the old warehouse that doubles as the left-field foul pole.
I am pitching from the stretch, even though the bases are empty. This is standard reliever stuff, facing every batter like the bases are loaded. Each pitch must be sequestered in its own universe, each as important as the next. The rhythm of a windup, the economy of motion it provides—all that is useless to me. I will face one batter today. I can afford to burn my last drop of fuel. In fact, if I have anything left when I’m done, I will have failed to do my job.
The count is two balls and two strikes—a pitcher’s count. The catcher wants a slider outside, the same pitch we got him on last night. Diggy�
��s weak spot is weak for a reason, not because last week he forgot how to hit breaking balls on the outside corner. This bit of intelligence is culled from years of analysis, from thousands of at-bats. Yet today for some reason I have convinced myself he is expecting the slider. A high fastball, my gut tells me, would be a better choice. I wave off the catcher until he agrees.
Modigliani steps into the box. The catcher crouches down, raises his target. I set my hands at the belt. I stretch. The pitch feels right as it leaves my hand. The arm angle is good, the follow-through doesn’t hurt too badly. But this is baseball, not ballet. You get no credit for a beautiful motion. Half a second later, as my pitch rockets into the San Diego afternoon, on its way to becoming the Bay Dogs’ third homer in as many batters, I remind myself that often we are just plain wrong. About our friends, about our enemies, and even about ourselves.
49
Nothing like a humiliating loss to show you who your friends are. In the Padres’ clubhouse after the game, I am surrounded by a cone of silence. My teammates are talking to reporters, talking to one another, just talking in general, but not near me. I want to tell them I know what they’re thinking, that I was asked to do a small job and blew it. I feel awful, but that’s part of the game when you pitch to only one batter a night. There’s no middle ground; it goes either very well (you get him out) or very poorly (you don’t). For years I’ve been content to take my lumps, but today it hurts. Maybe it’s my age. Pitchers tend to lose their confidence like Hemingway said men go bankrupt: gradually and then suddenly. And once the confidence is gone, it can take weeks to gain it back, if it comes back at all. Plenty of guys just retire.
If I were going to chat with my teammates, the topic of the day would be Frankie Herrera’s porn film, news of which hit the Twitterverse this morning. By noon, ten different acquaintances had forwarded me the link: “Know this guy???” and “Pst, Adcock, check out GRANMA!!!” In the end, ESPN wouldn’t touch the story, so the scoop came from an unauthorized Bay Dogs blog called DawgPound. I know the guy who wrote the piece—he hired me to follow his new girlfriend to Vegas during the off season three years ago. (She was what they call a weekend warrior, a stripper who lives elsewhere but flies to Vegas on the weekend for the premium tips. I think he was actually pleased by my discovery.) In his article, my friend pointed out that the Herrera film represents an interesting cultural moment. In an era where celebrity sex tapes have become so common they’re almost required for a certain kind of fame, we get a new wrinkle: the tape from beyond. On my phone, I skim the article and some of the hundreds of comments. Most of the talk is about whether or not the black guy is Prince Fielder (I’m pretty sure it’s not him), but there is also some discussion of the actress. A couple of people correctly identify her as Herrera’s wife. Somebody else says a reporter tried to track her down for comment, but apparently she has gone into hiding.…