The Death and Life of Bobby Z Read online

  And cool. Maximum cool. DFN Cruz doesn’t even sweat. In the fucking desert. Just puts that scope up to one stone-cold black eye and plink. Death from Nowhere. DFN Cruz is as crazy in his way as Corporal Tim Kearney, who is also a crazy fucker. Night of Khafji, DFN is lying in the sand plinking Racks and Kearney’s running around in the open like bullets can’t touch him. Running around blasting away, throwing grenades, dragging the wounded out from under the Rack tanks. Like Kearney’s out there yelling, “Medic!” at the same time he’s blasting Racks with his free hand, and it was some videogame out there that night, you got crazy Tim and DFN Cruz on the same screen.

  Two Navy Crosses for the unit that night, man—Kearney and DFN Cruz. Some crazy motherfuckers, Semper Fi.

  And those two like ripped up Kuwait City. Cruz is in fucking sniper heaven, man, playing pop-up in those blasted buildings. Fucking Rack shows his head and his head is like bye-bye, and then DFN and Kearney start working as a team. Kearney is so loopy he plays like bait, getting the Racks into a running firefight until one of them pops up to make the kill, and it’s welcome to paradise, Ahmed.

  And Kearney thinks it’s like funny, man. He comes back to the firing line all laughing and juiced, and everyone figures Kearney’s heading for another Cross, and then he smacks that Saudi officer and that’s that.

  The Saudi colonel is beating the hell out of this Palestinian kid he finds hiding in the rubble, and Kearney just gets up from where he’s eating his meal and puts the Saudi down. Like one punch—whack—and the Saudi colonel drops, but Kearney’s not finished, because he like stomps on the colonel’s balls, and the Saudis, they want to decapitate Kearney right there and then.

  It’s like some old movie—the Saudi MPs actually pull out those monster curved swords and they’re looking to sever Kearney’s head from his body. Would have, too, except that DFN Cruz is sitting back against a wall with his weapon across his lap and smiling and shaking his head, and the Saudis get the message that DFN Cruz doesn’t care who he kills.

  So Kearney gets to keep his head, but he sure as hell doesn’t get another Cross, and the brass don’t want like an international incident or a public relations disaster by court-martialing an honest-to-God hero, so they settle for a DD and Kearney becomes a civilian.

  So does DFN Cruz. Becomes just Cruz again and goes back to the old neighborhood. Where Cruz has like nothing to do because there are no frigging jobs and he can’t get into the police academy. And Cruz, he’s thinking about becoming a mercenary and he’s showing a classified ad from Soldier of Fortune to Luis Escobar one night, and Escobar, he says, basically, What do you want to go and work for strangers for? so Cruz goes to work for Luis Escobar.

  As a precision tool.

  Escobar’s been thinking this thing through. What Escobar thinks is that killing Bobby Z is a long shot. Literally—because no one is going to get close enough to Z to do the bang-bang thing in the back of the head, because this Z is just too good. So it’s going to have to be a long shot, a bullet that comes from nowhere.

  So when Escobar gets his lead on Bobby Z, he goes to talk to Cruz, who’s hanging out waiting for his next assignment.

  Stand by, Escobar tells him. We’re going to do this job right. Find this piece of garbage, throw a net around him and then you can come in and do your thing. Death from Nowhere.

  This makes Cruz happy, because he’s very good at his job and takes a professional’s pride and gets bored and unhappy when there is no work. Also he has enormous respect for Luis Escobar, who is not only his patrón but is also a man.

  Also, Cruz can use the money. He’s saving up for one of those giant big-screen TVs like they have at the sports bar, and he wants to hook up a monster Super Nintendo system to it so it’s better than real life.

  Cruz misses the war.

  Tim doesn’t. Tim would be perfectly happy to live the rest of his life quietly on that beach with Kit and Elizabeth, even though he knows that isn’t going to happen.

  What he doesn’t know is that he screwed up this one detail. What’s flirting around the edge of his consciousness is something else that just doesn’t square, and that isn’t about the car, it’s way back on that first night on the border when Jorge Escobar bought the farm. Tim can’t dump this image of Escobar’s brains bursting through the front of his skull. The front, man, like he was shot from behind. From the U.S. side.

  But this is just too fucking confusing for Tim to deal with at the moment, what with the sunshine, the woman, the kid and everything. He just dismisses it all, so even as he and the woman and the kid go inside to make some sandwiches, he doesn’t get that the world is fucking him in fresh and imaginative ways.

  59.

  What’s bothering the Monk is One Way’s John the Baptist routine. Monk strides through the streets of Laguna searching out this wack job who predicted the return of Bobby Z.

  Monk just can’t get it out of his head, because it smacks of powers cosmic and supernatural, which of course is the very stuff that the Monk decisively dismissed that warm morning in Tucson.

  So Monk is desperate to hear a rational, scientific explanation exhale from the otherwise foul breath of Laguna’s resident bard and public nuisance. But just at the unprecedented moment that someone in the community actually wants to see One Way, the perverse madman has seemingly disappeared.

  Just dropped off the screen.

  The cops and the merchants are delighted, of course, One Way’s sudden disappearance being an event devoutly and daily wished for by the entire law enforcement and business communities. Even the other street people are relieved by One Way’s absence, because the loony fucker like just cannot shut up, so they welcome the unusual quiet.

  They all have different explanations for the disappearance.

  The cops—and one of them even got on the horn and radioed comrades in Dana Point and Newport Beach—are betting that One Way’s decomposed body will wash up on the beach or become entangled in the nets of the commercial fishermen off Dana Point. The merchants are speculating that One Way has migrated south to the larger vagrants’ community in San Diego’s Balboa Park. The street people, generally a more imaginative lot, are at the point of deciding that One Way has been abducted by aliens, the only point of debate being whether or not One Way put up any struggle.

  But none of the above are obsessed with the mystery. The street people have the daily challenges of food and shelter to obtain, the merchants are busy doing mercantile things with the throngs of tourists descending on the town, and the cops, well, the cops are having a busy day keeping an eye on the unusual influx of bikers into the community. The cops are always wary of any confrontation between motorcycle gangs and the town’s large gay community, which would present them with the double dilemma of (a) how to tell them apart and (b) who to root for.

  The cops are also freaking a little bit on an unusual increase in cars with Mexicans in them cruising around. The Laguna cops call their brethren in Newport Beach—jaded types who ask what the fuck they’re being bothered for—and their more jejune colleagues in tiny Dana Point, who have nervously noted the same phenomenon.

  So the street people are busy, the merchants are busy, the cops are very busy, and the only person obsessing on One Way’s apparent disappearance is the Monk, who has his own explanation.

  Which is basically like paranoid.

  What the Monk is thinking as he’s pacing around the community not finding One Way is that Bobby’s behind the whole thing. Bobby contacted One Way and told the freak to spread the word of his return just to spook the Monk, and now One Way is in hiding somewhere at the behest of Z in a conspiracy so diabolical that Monk does not stand a prayer of unraveling it before he’s undone.

  So the Monk is in a sweat to find One Way and rattle the truth out of him before it’s too late. But Monk can’t find him and Monk starts freaking. It’s like Bobby’s everywhere and sees everything. Monk starts thinking about how that knife just bounced off Bobby at the zoo and how Bobby f
lew through the air and then disappeared.

  And Monk starts losing it, like he can never go against Bobby Z, and as Monk’s walking around he starts losing it worse and worse and finally he goes into a phone booth and drops a dime.

  Starts babbling into the phone some semi-coherent shit about how One Way has gone into hiding with Bobby Z.

  The truth is that One Way is hiding.

  One Way is squatting in a cave on the beach with his hands over his ears, because the surf won’t stop talking to him. The surf won’t stop talking and the sunlight reflecting off the uneven surface of the cave wall sparkles in shifting diamond shapes before his eyes.

  What the surf is telling him is truly horrific. The surf is screeching that Bobby Z is in danger. Mortal danger and One Way must warn him.

  And One Way is squatting in this cave, hiding from Z’s enemies lest he be captured before he can deliver his jeremiad, and he’s crying. Crying in frustration and the fear of an unfathomable failure.

  One Way is weeping because he must find Bobby Z to rescue him, but he doesn’t know where he is.

  60.

  Kit’s pissed because Tim is leaving.

  “It’s just for a while,” Tim says to the boy, who’s fighting hard not to cry. “Elizabeth’ll be with you.”

  “You’re leaving,” Kit insists.

  “I’m coming right back,” Tim says. “I just have to talk to a guy.”

  Kit shakes his head and closes his eyes.

  “C’mon,” Tim says. “You and Elizabeth’ll have fun.”

  Tears spill over this time as Kit asks, “Why can’t I come with you?”

  Because it’s too dangerous, Tim thinks, but he doesn’t want to scare the boy. It’s dark out now. They’ve had supper, and done the usual thing of settling in for some TV, some wrestling on the floor and a comic book or two. Then they’d put Kit to bed and Tim had hoped to sneak out and back before the kid woke up, but with that eerie kid ESP the boy had woken up, is some fucking upset. Tim doesn’t want to scare him on top of it.

  So Tim says, “It’s grownup stuff.”

  “I can help you!”

  “You probably could.”

  “I helped you at the zoo!” Kit cries. “Who got the money?”

  “You did,” Tim says. “You’re my man.”

  “So why can’t I come with you?!” Kit cries, and he throws his arms around Tim’s neck and holds on hard.

  Tim rubs the boy’s back for a few seconds and whispers in his ear I’ll be back soon and pries Kit’s arms from his neck and hands him to Elizabeth. Kit buries his face into her neck and sobs.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” Tim says quietly.

  Elizabeth nods and holds the boy tightly. Tim looks at her green eyes and sees something sad.

  She’s hurting for Kit, he thinks. So am I, but I need to go do this thing.

  In the kitchen he checks the load on his pistol and sticks the gun in the back of his waistband. Then he gets in the car and follows Elizabeth’s directions to this cave they all hung out in when they were kids. He parks on a quiet side street off the PCH and follows some old concrete steps that curve down to the beach. Seems to be about a million of them, but he’s edgy and wired so it probably just seems like a lot. The steps end suddenly at a big broken hunk of concrete, and he has to make a little jump onto the sand.

  The beach is a narrow strand at the base of a steep sandstone bluff. There’s just enough moonlight for him to see where he’s going, and the moonlight is flickering off the water and the big rocks that set just outside the break line.

  The beach seems deserted. Of course, it’s almost eleven and the beach is officially closed, but Tim had expected at least a few horny couples or drunks. But the beach is quiet.

  Tim doesn’t like it. Feels too exposed out here, when he realizes he’d be an easy shot for someone sitting on the bluff with a nightscope, so he finds a worn footpath on the edge of the slope to take away that firing angle if the Monk is setting him up for a pop.

  Bad fucking idea, he thinks now, to meet in this cave. Can’t blame Elizabeth because she hasn’t led the life, you know, but still, the approaches to the meet are too dangerous, too exposed, and it’s a bad fucking idea.

  But too late now.

  He edges his way along the path until it ends back at a tiny sliver of beach on a point. The cave’s in front of him.

  It’s bigger than he thought—about ten men wide and at least ten feet high at its highest and shaped like a big bowl. He can see the faint glimmer of a flashlight in there and a person’s shadow. Tim pulls his gun, holds it low on his side and goes in. His shoes crunch on the small rocks that make up the cave floor.

  “Bobby?”

  It’s Monk’s voice.

  Tim doesn’t answer. Doesn’t want his yes to be answered with a bullet in the chest.

  “Bobby?” Monk asks again. “Is that you?”

  Tim waits for his eyes to adjust to the cave’s dim lights. He waits until he can clearly make out Monk, and from what he can see Monk is alone. Standing alone in the cave with a flashlight in his hand and a gym bag at his feet.

  “Hi, Monk.”

  “You are a sight for sore eyes, Bobby,” Monk says and he comes forward with his arms open for one of those guy hugs.

  Tim raises the gun.

  “Uh-uhn,” he says, shaking his head.

  “Oh, Bobby,” Monk says, hurt and disappointed like. “You’re being paranoid, old friend.”

  “What’s the beef with Don Huertero?” Tim asks.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Monk says. “I asked, I did research, I talked to all our distributors. Nada.”

  “Say good night, Monk,” Tim says. He points the barrel between Monk’s eyes.

  The man’s knees start to knock. Really actually fucking knock, and Tim thinks it’s a good thing Monk never had to go to the joint, because he’d’ve been like a universal bitch, man. Everybody’s girlfriend, and Tim realizes that if Monk knows the truth he’s going to spill it.

  “You fucked me, Monk,” he says. “You fucked me with Huertero.”

  “Didn’t happen, Bobby.”

  But his voice is getting thin and reedy.

  “Did you jam me with the Thais, too?” Tim asks. “Get me popped in Bangkok?”

  “Bobby …”

  “You ever see the inside of a Thai jail, old friend?” Tim presses. “Not a day at the beach.”

  “Bobby, I—”

  “You better get right with God,” Tim says, starting to squeeze the trigger, “because you’re going, Monk.”

  Monk like freaks. Drops to his knees and starts praying, “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. And I do repent all my sins, not for the fear of the fires of hell, but because they have—”

  This is not the confession Tim has in mind, so he sticks the gun into Monk’s forehead and says, “Talk to me, Monk.”

  Monk looks up with big eyes and says, “I took the money, Bobby. I took Huertero’s money and arranged with the Thai police to arrest Huertero’s men after they picked up the dope. I split the take with the Thais, but I didn’t give you up, Bobby, I swear.”

  “Why, man. Why?” Tim asks. Like suddenly he’s feeling like he is Bobby, and he’s actually hurt. Like why did Monk have to go and fuck up a good thing. “Didn’t you have enough, man?”

  “Greed, Bobby,” Monk says sadly. “The worst of the seven deadly sins.”

  “Least you could have split it with me,” Tim mutters.

  “I wanted you to have deniability.”

  Whatever the fuck that means, Tim thinks. Well, at least now he knows what the beef is and maybe he can make it right.

  “How much we owe Huertero?” he asks.

  “Three million.”

  “We got it?”

  Monk’s still sniffling, but he casually shrugs and says, “Of course.”

  “Can we lay our hands on three mil cash?” Tim asks. Now his voice is shaking because this
is a little different from boosting TV sets and liquor.

  “Yes,” Monk says.

  “Where?”

  “On the boat.”

  “On the boat?” Tim asks. But he doesn’t want to ask like what boat, because it sounds like he’s supposed to know. So he asks, “Where is the boat now?”

  “Dana Point Harbor,” Monk says. He starts praying again, but Tim’s not listening. He’s thinking if he can get his hands on the cash and get in touch with Huertero he can give the money back and maybe take a stroll on all this. With enough cash left to have a fucking life somewhere.

  Like maybe he can pull this whole thing off without fucking up.

  So he’s trying to think about how to do that when Monk finishes praying and asks, “What are you going to do, Bobby?”

  “The fuck you think?” Tim asks, annoyed. “I’m going to try to make this right with Don Huertero.”

  “I mean about me.”

  Good question, Tim thinks. He knows he should get the name of the boat and then cap Monk. Like if this was the joint he’d lose respect—terminally—if he didn’t cap a guy who did what Monk did.

  “Monk, say the truth,” Tim says. “Was it you set me up at the zoo?”

  Monk’s voice quakes, “Yes.”

  “For you or someone else?” Tim asks. “The truth.”

  “For myself,” Monk says softly. Tim feels the man’s body tense in anticipation.

  “Fuck, man,” Tim says.

  “I know,” Monk whispers. “I have the soul of a Judas. There is a God, isn’t there, Bobby?”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m ready, Bobby,” Monk says. “Thank you for the time to get my spiritual matters in order.”

  “Sure.”

  Tim lowers the gun.

  “Pick up the bag and walk,” he tells Monk. “C’mon, get up.”

  “Really, Bobby?”

  “Take me to the boat,” Tim says. “C’mon, Monk, move.”

  “You want me to go first?” Monk asks.

  “No offense, but I’m not real comfortable with you behind my back,” Tim says. He gestures Monk forward and the tall skinny man picks up the gym bag and starts to walk.