The Death and Life of Bobby Z Read online

  Guy’s lying flat on him, trying to catch his own breath, but is cool enough to get the knife where it can make Tim a quad in about a second and a half and this crazy motherfucker’s so cool he has the stones to say, “Señor Z pendejo fuck.”

  Then straightens up to get some leverage, which is like an error because the guy pinned against the wall is so wigged out he raises his gun.

  Rojas screams, “No!” but it’s too late because that just startles the other guy, who squeezes off his whole clip.

  Tim feels the weight fly off him, and the other green ghost is just standing there in shock with an empty gun and he’s still fumbling for that spare clip as Tim gets up and butt-strokes him across the face.

  Now the adrenaline is like singing in Tim.

  Khafji all over again, like the night he won the Cross, like no impulse control whatsoever, and he pushes the guy against the rock wall, strips him of his ammo and shit, what’s this, grenades? You should have used them, Tim thinks as he grabs the guy by the back of the neck and pushes him in front toward the opening. Pushes the guy out and another green ghost lets his buddy have it with a shotgun blast across the legs before he realizes it ain’t Bobby Z, and he’s standing there in the open when Tim puts a round in his face.

  Then it gets real quiet.

  Tim drops and crawls back to his firing hole in front of Kit.

  “You okay?” he asks the boy, because he can hear the boy crying.

  “I’m okay,” Kit says.

  Brave little fucker, Tim thinks.

  “You’re a good Marine,” Tim says.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  If the kid had started jumping around screaming and shit they’d both be dead. Lying there covered up in that hole while the shit’s flying and you don’t know what the fuck’s going on, that takes some serious stones.

  It’s all like quiet, except that fire at the other end is blazing. A wall of fire, which is just what Tim intended, except that they still have to get out of there and Tim isn’t so sure they can just go waltzing out the front door.

  Might be lawn sprinklers, he’s thinking just as he hears the cowboy holler, “Looks like we got us another situation here, Mr. Z!”

  Tim hauls the kid out of the hole and whispers, “We got to do something that’s going to be really hard and we got to do it now. You up for it?”

  Little bastard just nods.

  “Okay,” Tim says, “We gotta run as fast as we can through that fire.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  “Got to.”

  The kid shakes his head.

  Tim looks him the eyes. “Yes, you can.”

  He strips the kid’s shirt off and puts it over his head. Then he takes the last of the water and pours it all over the kid. Then he says, “We’re gonna run as fast as we can straight through that fire and when we get through you just keep on running. You keep on running into that brush out there and hide—”

  “I’ll find you, I promise. In just a few minutes,” Tim says. “But just in case I get lost or something, you hide till morning, then you walk into those hills. Get yourself on top of one and sit until someone finds you. Understand?”

  “Understand.”

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Let’s make some noise first.”

  Tim lets off a clip through the fire to soften up the darkness a little, then they run. He holds Kit’s hand as they run through the flames.

  Tim breathes again as he sees the boy has made it through clean and he pushes him forward and yells, “Run!”

  Tim watches the boy make it into the brush and then takes a quick look around. Two KIAs and one about to be.

  Tim starts climbing the rock. Figures if that crazy motherfucker could do it he can, too. Slips a couple of times and scrapes himself up pretty good but holds on and makes it to the top. Looks down and sees the cowboy with three of his Indians picking their way through the debris at the bottom of the split. One of the Indians sees the body of one of his comrades and howls, howls like a red wolf when he sees that the man is dead.

  Tim pulls the pin on the grenade and drops it down the split. Buries his head in his arms and hears the loud but dull thud.

  Hears the screams.

  He opens his eyes and sees a weird, eerie green glow from inside the rock. Like from a space-alien movie except this is from a phosphorus grenade.

  He eases his way down the rock and heads for the brush.

  Finds the boy huddled like a jackrabbit underneath some sage.

  Tim thinks he should say something but doesn’t know what to say that won’t make it worse for the boy so he just says, “Can you walk for a while?”

  Kit asks, “Can you?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Tim says. “I’m kind of sick of the desert.”

  “So am I.”

  The moon comes up and the desert’s all silvery and quiet as they walk toward the hills.

  39.

  By the time Johnson makes it back to the hacienda it’s mid-morning and the sun is high. He sends the woman for their bought-and-paid-for doctor in Ocotillo Wells and the man shows up an hour later more or less sober.

  Man stinks of vodka but does a good enough job of picking fragments out of Johnson’s arm and shoulder while the cowboy sits pulling on a bottle of tequila. The doctor’s paid to keep his mouth shut, does his job, puts Johnson’s broken right arm in a sling, gives him some pills and leaves, which is just fine with Johnson, who doesn’t want any excess conversation anyway.

  Johnson’s in an ornery mood. Took a goddamn army of Cahuillas to bag Bobby Z and Bobby Z bags his army. Kills every damn one of them except him.

  As for Johnson, he’s feeling blown-up and bleeding and raw and to add to that he has the aggravation of having to deal with Brian.

  There’s no use putting it off, so Johnson takes a long draw on the bottle, ignores his mejicana’s entreaties to lay down, and hauls himself over to the main house to give fat Brian the cheerful news.

  Don Huertero’s already there. Johnson doesn’t see him, but sees his men stationed all around the house. Standing there all macho with their carbines and Mach-10 machine pistols and shit, reflective sunglasses and those beaner straw cowboy hats, and the head beaner won’t let Johnson go into the house.

  “I just wanted to tell him that we didn’t get Bobby Z,” Johnson says in English.

  “I think he knows,” the honcho answers, and they all stand out there in the sun until Don Huertero and a few more boys come out with Brian.

  Naked as the day he was born. One big fat white blob of flesh, and he’s crying like a baby as one of Huertero’s bodyguards gives him a boot in the ass that sends him sprawling into the dust.

  “We didn’t catch Bobby Z,” Johnson says to him.

  Brian just looks up at him, all red-eyed and puffy, and Johnson can see he’s been slapped around a little. Johnson’s glad he’s had the tequila, because judging by the look on Huertero’s face it’s probably the last tequila he’s ever gonna get unless the next world’s a whole lot different than those old Baptist preachers said it was.

  Old Huertero’s standing in the shade of the porch, all cool in his white suit, ocean-blue shirt and six-hundred-dollar loafers. Blue wraparound shades, salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back, but not greasy-looking like Johnson’s used to seeing Mexicans’. He looks down at Johnson and says, “So you tried to catch Bobby Z?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And what happened?”

  “He killed us,” Johnson says. “Most of us.”

  Huertero nods.

  Then says, “He didn’t kill you.”

  “No,” Johnson says.

  Huertero nods again, then says, “Yet.”

  Johnson shrugs.

  “And yet you had him trapped,” Huertero says.

  Johnson figures this is the moment he’s about to get the drop, but there’s nothing to do about it so he just says, “Thou
ght I did.”

  But Huertero smiles and says, “Ah, well, I know the feeling. Mr. Zacharias is like starshine. You reach for him and …”

  He trails off into some kind of reverie, then his voice gets hidalgo big and he announces, “But Brian had him. A guest of the house. Brian had him and let him go and it makes me wonder if Mr. Z did not offer Brian something more than he thought he could get from me.”

  Brian’s snuffling something that sounds like a denial, but Huertero’s having none of it.

  “How do I know the truth from Brian, who is an accomplished liar?” Huertero asks the assembled crowd. “Do I give him the same as I was going to give Bobby Z?”

  Brian picks himself up and tries to run but one of the honchos stops that with a gun butt to the stomach and Brian’s left on all fours, gasping for air.

  “Let’s let Brian be out in the sun for a while,” Huertero says pleasantly. “Mr. Johnson, will you come in the house?”

  Johnson doesn’t know if he has much choice so he follows Huertero into the big old Arab living room, where one of Brian’s servants is already pouring the drug lord some coffee.

  Elizabeth’s sitting in one of the big chairs. She’s dressed in a green silk robe and hasn’t brushed her hair or done her makeup, but she’s still a handsome woman. Looks pale, though. Scared.

  “Coffee?” Huertero asks.

  “Wouldn’t mind.”

  The maid trips all over herself pouring Johnson some coffee with cream and sugar. Her hand shakes and the cup rattles on the saucer. Somehow Johnson finds it more unsettling than all last night’s gunfire: It’s pretty clear that Brian’s old servants are now Huertero’s new servants, and Johnson guesses that applies to him, too.

  Hopes so, anyway.

  It’s just as possible that Huertero’s going to just kill him.

  Old bastard sits there in silence like he’s just savoring the old richness of Juan Valdez, but Johnson knows that he’s just letting the silence spook them.

  Well, fuck you, Don Huertero, Johnson thinks. You know what you get when you give a beaner a couple of hundred million dollars? A rich beaner.

  Huertero finally opens his mouth.

  “Brian is a deeply stupid and degenerate man,” he says. “He believes that he can make an arrangement with Bobby Z and fool me. I must believe that such stupidity springs from the degenerate nature of his lifestyle.”

  Well, Johnson thinks, if corn-holing Italian boys makes you stupid, Brian’d be pretty near a moron by now, that’s true.

  Huertero continues, “But Brian ungallantly seeks to cast the blame on Elizabeth. Brian tells me that Elizabeth warned Bobby of my plans for him. If that is true—as perhaps it is—then I can only tell Brian that he was negligent in sharing my plans with Elizabeth here, especially if he knew that she and Bobby were at one time lovers. If that is true, then both Brian and Elizabeth are at fault.”

  Huertero sets his cup and saucer on the side table and sharply orders Elizabeth, “Stand up.”

  She gets out of the chair and Johnson sees a tremble pass over her body like a shadow across the desert.

  “Turn around.”

  Elizabeth turns her back to them.

  “The robe.”

  She shrugs her shoulders and the robe slides down her back. Johnson winces: The woman’s back and butt are a raw terrain of welts and cuts.

  Huertero calmly says, “Brian is a deeply stupid young man who does not understand—cannot perhaps understand—the nature of this kind of woman. I know Elizabeth, you see, Mr. Johnson. She was an old friend of my late daughter’s. Her best friend, perhaps. No, Elizabeth? I have known Elizabeth for years; she has been a frequent guest in my home.

  “Elizabeth is warm, lovely, charming, intelligent and lazy. She has the body of a courtesan—that is her blessing. She also has the soul of a courtesan, and that is her curse.

  “What Brian fails to understand is that such a woman does not fear pain. Does not like pain, certainly—I am not suggesting that—but does not fear it. She would not betray a love from fear of pain.

  “Turn around.”

  Johnson watches the woman turn to face them. Her voice is steady and cool as she asks, “May I put my robe back on?”

  “Please.”

  She doesn’t hurry. In a slow, fluid motion she reaches down, picks up the robe and puts her arms through the sleeves. She winces slightly as the silk falls over her back.

  “What such a woman fears,” Huertero’s saying, “is disfigurement.”

  Huertero rises from his chair and steps over to her.

  “Look at that face,” he says. “Beautiful. What such a woman fears is being ugly,” he says. He takes his index finger and slowly runs it from her forehead to her chin. “A deep scar from here to here, perhaps. With the blade of a dull knife so that no surgeon, however skillful, could …”

  He forms his large hand into a fist, softly touching her face as he says, “Or perhaps her cheekbones smashed, or her nose, or the orbital bones of her eyes. Painful? Oh, yes, but that is not the fear that would cause her to betray a lover, no. Only the fear of disfigurement could do that. The fear of ugliness. Am I right, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please sit down.”

  They both take their chairs.

  “With a man such as you it is simpler,” Huertero says. “You want to live, yes?”

  “Yup.”

  Huertero nods, then sits with his thoughts to himself, letting the silence get to them. Johnson doesn’t like to admit it, but it works—he’s about half spooked when Huertero starts to speak.

  “So … for your betrayals and failures I sentence you,” he says, nodding to Elizabeth, “to disfigurement. And you, Mr. Johnson, to death.”

  Johnson sees Elizabeth turn goddamn white and he ain’t feeling so hot himself.

  “But I suspend the sentence,” Huertero says. “Suspended sentence, shall we say, aware that anytime I want you I need only reach out because the world is not big enough for you to hide in. On parole, shall we say, as an expression of mutual good faith?”

  “How do we get off parole?” Johnson asks. Gruffly, rudely, because he’s tired of this Mexican-gentleman-hidalgo crap and his arm aches.

  Huertero feels the rudeness but apparently doesn’t care enough to have Johnson swatted like a fly.

  “Simple,” Huertero says. “You bring me Bobby Z.”

  “Simple.” Johnson laughs.

  “You bring me Bobby Z within, shall we say, thirty days?” Huertero says. “Or the sentences will be executed.”

  Huertero smiles, gets up and walks out, just like that.

  “Didn’t know you was buddies with his daughter,” Johnson says.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And she died?”

  “You heard the man.”

  “What happened?”

  Elizabeth gathered the robe around her and got up.

  “She killed herself,” she said, and started to leave.

  “What for?” Johnson called after her.

  “So she wouldn’t be alive anymore, I guess.”

  Johnson walked over to the bar and helped himself to a new bottle of Brian’s tequila. Had a feeling Brian wouldn’t be needing it anymore. Went out on the porch, sat down and put his feet up.

  They had old Brian laying naked in the sun. Standing around him with those cute-ass machine pistols making sure he didn’t get up. Old Brian lying there crying and blubbering, his skin already a rosy red. Every time he’d try to cover himself one of the boys would give him a kick to make him straighten out. They’d give him water, too, a couple of gulps now and then, because they didn’t want him dying on them.

  That Mexico is a hard country, Johnson decides.

  Hour or so later, Don Huertero emerges from the house and sees Johnson.

  “I don’t know what Brian sees in that old film,” Huertero says. “I’ve been just watching it. It’s lousy.”


  “I like that Gary Cooper, though.”

  “Yes, Gary Cooper is fine,” Huertero admits. “But the story …”

  “Kinda stupid.”

  “Very stupid.”

  “Brian just liked that A-rab shit, I guess.”

  “Do you think that getting drunk will help you to find Bobby Z, Mr. Johnson?”

  “I don’t suppose at this point it’ll hurt.”

  Huertero shouts some orders in Spanish and the boys start scurrying around. A few minutes later they back Brian’s little Toyota four-wheeler up and chain Brian’s ankles to the bumper.

  Huertero stands over Brian. Brian’s burned pretty raw. His face is swollen bad, Johnson sees, and almost the color of his red Brillo hair.

  “I cannot tolerate a man who raises his hand to a woman,” Huertero says. “And all those dólares you keep in holes in the ground …”

  Huertero spits in Brian’s face and yells another order. The Toyota takes off and Johnson can see it racing out toward the brush to where the beaver tail and silver cholla is.

  Johnson unfolds himself from his chair and starts to amble home. He wants to brew himself some coffee, pack his things and locate Mr. Bobby Z before his thirty days are up. He takes a good look at the house as he walks away. Figures that life here is over.

  A damn Toyota, he muses as he shuffles through the dust. In the old days they used horses.

  40.

  Elizabeth sits applying her makeup in front of the mirror. She can still feel the trace of Don Huertero’s fingernail down her face. Can still feel the soft imprint of his knuckles on her cheek, nose and eyes.

  She looks for a long time into the glass, then takes a red lipstick and draws a thick vertical line from her forehead to her chin. Stares at her image for several frozen minutes and thinks about herself, Olivia and Angelica.

  What a trio. The three best buds. The Mascarateers, they called themselves. Playgirls.

  Then.

  Now: Herself a homeless whore, Olivia a rehab junkie, Angelica dead.

  Angelica, Huertero’s little angel. Gorgeous girl, just fucking beautiful. High-flying Angelica.

  But Bobby broke her wings.

  She had no experience falling so she fell hard. Never learned how to roll so she got hit hard. You fall with your arms wide open, Elizabeth thought, you land on your heart.