Free The Setup Man by T. T. Monday Page A

mid-eighties, when Pete Rose was player-manager. He took the lessons of Charlie Hustle very seriously—the bad as well as the good.
    “I wasn’t sandbagging out there, Skip. It was bad luck.”
    “Bad luck, my ass. You don’t want to be our closer, fine. But here’s news for you, Johnny: we don’t always get to do what we want.”
    “I know that, Skip. I wasn’t trying to fail.”
    Skipper finishes the noodles. He tears a hunk of garlic bread from the half-baguette the kitchen provides with his meal. He uses this like a sponge to mop up the oil on his plate.
    “This is the deal I’m offering you,” he says. “Take it or leave it, but there are plenty of arms in the minors perfectly willing to do what they’re told.”

15
    Half past midnight, my plane touches down at LAX. I turn my phone back on and see that I have a text from Bethany. Two words:
Call me
.
    Her voice is garbled, which worries me until I remember that she swims two-a-days on Wednesdays. She is back in the pool, talking to me on her waterproof throat mike. She says that because of the poor sound quality—it is an early-stage prototype from a company she has funded—she uses the apparatus only on calls where she is expected to speak very little, like board meetings. The fact that she takes my call suggests her news must be important.
    “Hello, Johnny? [
Gowmp! Gowmp!
] Johnny, can you hear me?”
    “Roger that, deep-sea diver.”
    “Johnny [
Grrrrimp!
], I went to the San Mateo coroner. [
Krrrz-gowmp!
] Can you hear me?”
    I try to speak as slowly as I can: “The name, Bethany—tell me the girl’s name. That is all I need.”
    “Yeah, that’s the thing, Johnny. She has lots of names. They ran the prints [
Grrrgle grrrgle
], and this girl is known as Luisa Valdez, Alejandra Sol, and one more [
Gowmp!
] that I can’t remember right now. I will e-mail it to you when I get home.”
    “Don’t e-mail anything! Do you hear me? Something has happened.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m in L.A.”
    “Why L.A.? [
Gowmp!
]”
    “Marcus is here.”
    “But you have a game.”
    “It’s okay. Skipper knows. Listen, Bethany, I want you to go home and stay there. As a favor to me.”
    “What happened, Johnny? [
Grrrrkle!
] Tell me what happened.”
    “Nothing—a guy down here was killed. A pornographer. Nobody important.”
    “Do you know who [
Gowmp!
] killed him?”
    “I have some idea. So are you going home after this?”
    “Yes [
Grrkle grrkle
], yes, Daddy.”
    “You know I don’t like it when you call me that.”
    “Sorry. You should come [
Gowmp! Gowmp!
] and punish me.”
    “I have to go,” I say. “Thanks for going to the morgue.”
    “No problem [
Splash!
]. It was fun!”
    Either she ends the call or her submarine Bluetooth finally gives up. At any rate, I text her a proper thank-you (no specifics, just in case) and grab my bag from the overhead bin.
    Three names. A girl with three names is nothing but trouble. You can quote me on that.
    Marcus is waiting curbside, leaning against the front fender of a 1972 Cadillac Eldorado coupe, brown paint and a brown vinyl canopy. The hood alone is longer than any other car in sight. I have never been a car guy, but there is a special place in my heart for the Eldo. One of my buddies in high school had one—a gift from his father, who taught auto shop at our high school. It got about six miles to the gallon, but you could lie down flat in the back seat. My buddy and I couldn’t understandwhy the girls didn’t flock to him. It was like a bedroom on wheels. We even loaded the ashtrays with condoms.
    Before I can ask where he got the car, Marcus tells me it’s not his. “Belongs to a friend,” he says.
    “Does she know you have her car?”
    “You think I’m a car thief?”
    “Just be careful when you open the doors—they swing wide.”
    Marcus heads north on Sepulveda into silent, foggy Westchester and begins to tell his story.
    “It was like Bam Bam wanted me to find him,”