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

he says. “I show up at his office Tuesday morning at ten-thirty, but nobody’s there. I go around to the back—but before I do, I take a little something from my girl’s glove box, you know what I’m saying, and stuff it down in my pants. Not that I ever thought I would have to use it.”
    He looks me square in the face and I can see he’s pissed. Yeah, I’d be angry, too.
    “I go around back, and there’s nobody there, neither.”
    “This his porn company’s office?”
    “Yeah, Two Lives Video in North Hollywood. Then, all of a sudden, I hear a motorcycle, and this fat dude riding a Kawasaki crotch rocket turns the corner and stops right in front of me. Sure enough, he lifts off his helmet and I see it is Bam Bam, and of course he’s surprised to see me. I sense right away that he’s coked up or something. He’s all smiles and hugs and my-nigga this and my-nigga that. I’m making up some shit about how I was in the neighborhood and heard he was making videos, and he says, ‘Oh yeah, come in and see!’ So I’m, like, ‘Great,’ and he unlocks the back door and leads me into his office. It’s a plain sort of room, blinds over the windows, lots of flat-screen TVs hanging on the walls. He flips the light switch and all the TVs turn on at once. Each one is playing a different scene. Bam Bam is smiling ear to ear, just all thegladness you can stand, and he says, ‘I almost don’t miss baseball.’ So we start laughing about old times while these folks are slanging bone on the TVs. I say, ‘Hey, Bam Bam, you ever heard of this girl name of Maria Herrera?’ And as soon as I say the name, this motherfucker reaches into his jacket and pulls out a fucking nine.”
    “Like as a joke?”
    “I wish. His face is set, man. No more smiles. He lifts up the gun and just kind of admires it for a second. He must have been high. Then he pulls back the slide—”
    The Cadillac swerves a little. Marcus has been cool to this point—much cooler than I expected him to be—but this part of the story is hard to tell.
    “What did you do?”
    “What could I do?”
    “Karate?”
    “Fuck karate, man! I shot him in the head.”
    We ride in silence for a moment, then Marcus says, “You realize you owe me.”
    “I know. Big-time.”
    “Bigger than big-time. You told me to come down here and find the motherfucker. To find him, not to spray his brains against the wall.”
    “I know, I’m sorry.”
    “You are going to make it up to me.”
    “I will. I promise.”
    Another few minutes of silence as we roll north. We are not far from the neighborhood in Culver City where Ginny and I had that first house. She doesn’t live there anymore; she sold the house years ago and moved to Santa Monica. She said the schools were better in Santa Monica, but then she put Izzy in private school. I never asked why. This is one of the battles I have chosen not to fight.
    “Did anyone see you go into Bam Bam’s office?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “And did you pick up the casings?”
    “Of course. I ditched his gun, too.”
    “Was anyone in the office when you left?”
    “Don’t you think I would have told you that?”
    “Calm down, Marcus. It’s over with, and I said I was sorry. I’m just trying to figure out who might find the body.”
    “Nobody going to find shit.”
    I raise an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
    “Because I took him with me.”
    “You what? Where?”
    Marcus flips his head back slightly, quickly—the motion he used on those rare occasions when he accepted the catcher’s sign. “In the trunk,” he says.

16
    My professional opinion is that Marcus is too shaky to drive. I reach over and steady the wheel. “Move over,” I say. And, just like we used to do in high school, I slip over Marcus’s knees into the driver’s seat. He slides along the warm Naugahyde to shotgun.
    “Did you wrap him up in something?” I say. “A tarp, maybe?”
    “No time for that.”
    “Sounds like I owe your girl a