The Death and Life of Bobby Z Read online

  On his first juvenile B&E, the family judge asked Tim if he had a drinking problem, and Tim, who was not stupid despite being a monumental fuck-up, knew an out when he heard one and worked up a few crocodile tears and said he was afraid that he was an alcoholic. So he got probation and some AA meetings and a pounding from his old man, instead of the CYA and a pounding from his old man.

  Tim went to the meetings, and of course the judge was there, smiling on Tim like he was his own fucking son or something, which made the judge a little irritated when Tim appeared before him on his second juvie B&E, which included among the usual TV sets, VCRs, cameras, cash and jewelry, most of the contents of the victim’s extensive liquor cabinet.

  But the judge rose above his sense of personal betrayal and sent young Tim to a nearby rehab. Tim spent a month in group therapy learning to fall backward into someone’s arms and therefore to trust that person, and all about his good and bad character points, and various “life skills.”

  The social worker at the rehab asked Tim if he thought he had “low self-esteem,” and Tim was willing to accept the suggestion.

  “Why do you think you have low self-esteem?” she asked kindly.

  Tim answered, “Because I keep breaking into houses …”

  “I agree.”

  “… and getting caught.”

  So the social worker did more work with Tim.

  Tim had almost completed the program when he had a little slip and burgled the rehab’s petty cash box and went out and bought some good boo and the social worker asked Tim rhetorically, “Do you know what your real problem is?”

  Tim said that he didn’t.

  “You have a problem with impulse control,” she said. “You don’t have any.”

  But this time the judge was pissed and mumbled through clenched jaws something about “tough love” and sent Tim to Chino.

  Where Tim did his stretch and picked up a lot of useful life skills, and he was out about a month when the glittering lights of Palm Springs winked at him again. He was looking for jewelry this time and was almost out of the house and away with the goods when he tripped on a lawn sprinkler and sprained his ankle and WestTech Security grabbed him.

  “Only you,” his father said, “could get fucked up by water on grass in the middle of a fucking desert.”

  At that point the old man got the belt out, but Tim had learned a lot of useful life skills in Chino, and in a couple of seconds the old man was falling backward and there wasn’t anyone there to keep him from hitting the floor.

  So Tim got ready to go back to Chino, but he drew a different judge this time.

  “What’s your story, anyway?” the judge asked Tim.

  “The problem is,” Tim said, “I have a lack of impulse control.”

  The judge disagreed: “Your problem is breaking and entering.”

  “There’s no problem breaking and entering,” said Tim. “The problem is breaking and exiting.”

  The judge thought that Tim was such a smartass that maybe instead of learning new material at Chino he should become one of the few and the proud instead.

  “You won’t make it through basic,” his old man told him. “You’re too much of a pussy.”

  Tim thought the same thing. He had a problem finishing things (high school, rehab, burglaries) and figured the Marines would be the same thing.

  It wasn’t.

  Tim liked the Corps. He even liked basic training.

  “It’s simple,” he told his unbelieving barracks mates. “You do your job and they don’t mess with you too much. Unlike real life.”

  Plus it got him out of Desert Hot Springs. Out of that shithole town and out of the fucking desert. At Camp Pendleton Tim woke up and got to see the ocean every morning, which was very cool, because it made him feel like one of those cool Californians who live by the ocean.

  So Tim stuck it out. Stuck out his whole enlistment and even reupped for a second tour. Got his GED, corporal’s stripes and an assignment to Desert Warfare School at Twentynine Palms, about fifty miles from his dear old hometown of Desert Hot Springs.

  Of course, Tim thought. Right back in the fucking desert, and he thought about going AWOL but then figured what the fuck, it’s only one assignment. He figured maybe next tour he gets Hawaii.

  Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in order to fuck Tim personally, and Tim got shipped to Saudi Arabia, which was like major desert.

  “I can’t believe you were a Marine,” Gruzsa says.

  “Semper fido,” Tim answers.

  Of course Gruzsa already knows—Tim knows he knows, shit, his file is sitting right there—all about Tim’s career in the Marine Corps.

  It’s the one thing about Tim that Gruzsa can’t figure out because it doesn’t fit. Here you got your prototypical skell, a born-to-lose moke who can’t pull off a simple B&E, and the guy wins a Navy Cross in the Gulf.

  At the battle of Khafji, before the big U.S. buildup. Iraqi armored division comes pouring across the Saudi border at night and Kearney’s recon unit is the only thing in the way. Unit is hanging out there all by its lonesome and it gets rolled over.

  Corporal Tim Kearney pulls four wounded Marines out from under Iraqi tanks. Citation says he’s running around out there in the desert night like he’s John Wayne—shooting, throwing grenades and getting his buddies to safety.

  Then he counterattacks.

  Against tanks.

  A one-man wrecking crew, a witness says.

  He doesn’t win, of course, but takes out a couple of tanks and his unit is still intact when the cavalry arrives in the morning.

  Kearney wins the Navy Cross, followed by—in classic Kearney fashion—a dishonorable discharge.

  For beating up on a Saudi colonel.

  Shit, Gruzsa thinks, they should have given him another medal.

  “They threw you out, huh? Go figure,” Gruzsa says. “I was a Marine.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened?!” Gruzsa asks. “Fucking Vietnam happened, that’s what happened. Fucked up my leg. That was a real war, not like that pussy CNN videogame war you were in.”

  Tim shrugs. “I’m a pussy.”

  Jorge grins. “A pussy.”

  Gruzsa leans over and sticks his face into Tim’s. His breath smells like Italian sausage.

  “But you’re my pussy, Pussy,” Gruzsa whispers. “Aren’t you?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what you want me to do.”

  “I told you,” Gruzsa says. “I want you to be Bobby Z.”

  “Why?” Tim asks.

  “You probably don’t know who Don Huertero is, either,” Gruzsa says.

  Tim shrugs.

  Escobar sneers.

  “Don Huertero is the biggest drug lord in northern Mexico,” Gruzsa explains.

  “Oh,” Tim says.

  “And he’s holding a buddy of mine down there,” Gruzsa adds. “A damned good agent named Arthur Moreno.”

  “Carnal,” Jorge says. Spanish—“blood of my blood.”

  “I want Art back,” Gruzsa says.

  “Oh.”

  “And Huertero wants to swap him for …”

  “Bobby Z,” Tim answers.

  “They do big business together, and Huertero wants him out and making money,” Gruzsa explains.

  “You have him?”

  “We got him.”

  Got him in Thailand in exchange for returning a heroin shipment to its original owner. The Thais fucking hated Z.

  “The deal’s done,” Gruzsa says.

  “So why do you need me?” Tim asks.

  “He croaked,” Gruzsa says.

  “Who croaked?”

  “Bobby Z.”

  Escobar looks almost sad about it.

  “Heart attack,” Gruzsa says. “Ka-fucking-boom. Face-first on the bathroom floor.”

  “A young man,” Escobar says.

  Gruzsa says, “Don Huertero has no sense of humor about th
is stuff. He’d give us dead for dead.”

  “This is where you come in,” Escobar says.

  Dead for dead? Tim thinks. And that’s where I come in? Like what’s wrong with this picture?

  He asks, “Won’t Huertero figure out kind of quick that I’m not the real thing?”

  “No,” Gruzsa says.

  “No?”

  “No, because he’s never seen Bobby Z.”

  “You said they did business.”

  “Phones, faxes, computers, cut-outs,” Gruzsa says like he’s talking to a moron, which he kind of thinks he is. “He’s never seen Z.”

  “No one has,” Jorge says. “Not since high school.”

  “Until we picked the sleazy cocksucker up in the jungle,” Gruzsa adds, “no one could really say that they’d actually seen the real Bobby Z.”

  “A legend,” Jorge repeats.

  3.

  Escobar keeps it up as Tim’s lying on a gurney with a sterile field over his face and some doctor is working off his cocaine beef by giving Tim a little scar like the one Z got when he bounced his head off a rock surfing the reef break in Three Arch Bay.

  “Z didn’t have any tattoos, did he?” Tim asks, because even with the local anesthetic this shit hurts, and anyway he’s tired of lying there with this white cloth on his face.

  “No,” Gruzsa answers; then, as an alarmed afterthought, “You don’t, do you?”

  “No.”

  Which is a real good thing, Tim thinks, because Gruzsa would probably want to burn them off. But he figures the other option is the Angels on the yard, so what’s another scar?

  So he’s lying there and Gruzsa’s supervising the job and Escobar is yapping about Bobby Z.

  About how Z gets out of high school and he’s already a rich little mother and he’s got a bunch of his little friends running dope all over your basic Southern California marketing area, which gets him some unwanted attention not from the cops but from rival businessmen. These are the days when the Mexican gangs are still a joke, the Vietnamese don’t have it together, there’s like maybe one Chinaman in Orange County and the Italians can still find their own dicks in their own pants. And it’s probably one of the last, although Z never does find out, but two of his runners get taken out near Riverside and Z thinks this is a très bad sign.

  Two young pretty cool kids lying facedown in a drainage ditch and it’s like “Do not send to ask for whom the bell tolls,” right?

  But what to do, what to do? Z’s sitting there in his condo he got a grownup to front for him, with his ’66 ’Stang likewise acquired and he figures, You know what? I don’t exist anywhere on paper.

  So he splits. Disappears.

  “Like the morning mist,” One Way describes in awed tones as his synapses pop like Rice Krispies. He’s dogging four nervous German tourists down Forest Avenue in Laguna, telling them, “It’s like Z recedes back over the ocean. Who knows where? Some say China, some say Japan, a few even claim they saw him on the beach in Indonesia, he’s like Lord Jim, right. Or maybe he’s on a boat sailing the ocean or maybe it’s a submarine, like Z is Captain Nemo—James fucking Mason—but it’s like one day he’s on the beach and the next day he isn’t, he just gone, man. Gone. Like paddling out on his board he goes over the top of the wave and … sayonara.”

  But the dope keeps coming. Z has set up a marketing system using cut-outs and agents and bonuses and profit sharing. Z brings in the sweetest boo on the West Coast. Only primo stuff. By the bale. Bringing it in on boats like he’s a smuggler of old, and every once in a while he loses one, a mule gets popped, but the DEA can’t get near Z.

  “We thought we had him about five fucking times,” Gruzsa says. “And it turns out to be someone else.”

  “Grabbing Z is like grabbing fog,” Escobar echoes. His hand makes a fist as he illustrates.

  Z becomes huge. Enormous. Z is turning on the whole coast, the whole west. You got five yuppies smoking a bowl after their poached salmon, you gotta figure it’s Z’s dope.

  “He’s smart,” Gruzsa explains. “No coke, no smack, no speed, no acid. Just high-quality grass. Opium. Thai sticks. Only sells to people who sell to money. So you aren’t getting some pimpled kid or Deadhead or wanna-be biker who’s gonna roll over for you. You bust someone with Z’s dope, they’re on probation and at Betty Ford before you can get back to the office. Z has a preferred-customer base.”

  “The Nordstrom of dope,” Escobar says.

  Z is landing dope from Alaska to Costa Rica.

  “Who knows when a boat’s going to hit the beach?” One Way asks the tourists as he strides beside them in Laguna. “Like, Z can look at a map, Z can figure out there’s no way the Coast Guard can spot a little boat here, a little boat there on a coastline that big. Thousands of fucking miles for Z’s dope, man. Do you see what I’m saying? Look out there, that’s the Pacific, friends, that is Z’s territory. Z knows the rhythm of the water, man. He knows it and rides it. Z is like Poseidon. Fucking Neptune, friends. Pacific means like peaceful, man. Z is peaceful with it.”

  “So what happens?” Tim asks. Because wonder boy dies in custody, right? Like the rest of the losers.

  “Dunno,” Gruzsa says. “Turns himself in in Thailand. Sick as a dog, got some sort of intestinal bug and walks in to the embassy and asks to see someone from DEA. Says his name is Robert Zacharias. I was on a plane in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Then he dies in the shower,” Tim says.

  “Right?” Gruzsa says. Like, life sucks.

  The doctor finishes up and tells Tim not to scratch it. Holds up a mirror and shows Tim the little scar on the left side of his forehead. Looks like a little “z.”

  Of fucking course, Tim thinks.

  “What am I supposed to do,” Tim asks, “if Huertero takes me across the border because he thinks I’m his partner Bobby?”

  Gruzsa looks annoyed.

  “The fuck do I care?” he asks.

  “What do I do when he figures out I’m not?” Tim persists.

  “That’s your problem,” Gruzsa says.

  So there it is, Tim thinks. I can go back to the joint and definitely get killed or impersonate the great Bobby Z and probably get killed.

  I’ll take Door Number Two, Tim decides.

  4.

  But first some training.

  “What kind of training?” Tim asks. Nobody mentioned anything about any training. The nice thing about the joint is that you don’t have to do much of anything.

  Unless you count making license plates.

  “You got to know some stuff about Bobby Z,” Escobar says. “And some basic vocabulary.”

  So Escobar becomes Tim’s baby-sitter and trainer for the next two weeks, trying to implant Bobby Z into Tim’s brain. They hold him at some camp somewhere around San Clemente to let the scar heal, and Escobar—Tim figures Escobar is like in love with the late Bobby Z, because Escobar just can’t shut up about the guy.

  Tells Tim everything the DEA ever learned about Z. What kind of food he likes, what he drinks, what he wears. Old friends, old haunts, old girlfriends.

  Quizzes Tim on it until Tim feels like he’s flunking high school again. Escobar’s like Jiminy fucking Cricket, he’s always over Tim’s shoulder asking him questions, and all Tim is trying to do is check out the pussy on MTV.

  “What kind of beer?” Escobar asks.

  “Budweiser.”

  “Corona,” Escobar moans, and he’s like pissed.

  Tim’s in the fucking shower and Escobar slides the door open and asks, “Football team?”

  “Doesn’t have one,” Tim answers. “Hates football.”

  “What sports then?” Escobar asks.

  “Surfing,” Tim says. It’s a given. “And beach volleyball.”

  Or Tim’s taking a nap, just stretching out on the couch catching the afternoon sun, and Escobar grabs him by the shirt, yanks him to the floor and shouts, “School colors!”

  “Blue and gold,” Tim mumbles.
/>   Escobar screams, “Maroon and white!” and kicks Tim straight in the gut—hard—with one of those beaner pointed-toe shoes. Tim’s curled up on the carpet in a fetal position and Escobar squats beside him and says, “You better get your shit together, pendejo. What you think Don Huertero’s going to do with you, he finds out you’re a fake? Kick you in the gut? Maybe he chains you to the wall and starts in with a blowtorch. Maybe he starts chopping off fingers. Maybe worse. Don Huertero is serious shit, ese.”

  So Tim tightens it down, starts studying this stuff. Learns all this shit that Don Huertero may or may not know about Bobby Z. Starts looking more like Z, too. The scar blends in and Tim grows his hair out. They won’t let him out in the sun, though. They want him to look prison pale. So Tim watches a lot of TV and does his homework.

  Bobby Z homework. What clothes, what movies, what books? High school yearbook, there’s this picture of Z with this little smirk on his face, like he knows this is bullshit and he’s pimping it, right? High school friends, surfer friends, girlfriends. Lots of girlfriends, Tim finds out and it pisses him off. Not loser girls, either, but your classic Southern California cool girls. Sleek, good-looking, sloop-around-the-beach girls. Girls with that confident look in their eyes, the look that says they know the world is theirs, just for showing up.

  “Z liked his chucha, ese.” Escobar leers as they look at the pictures together, each of them speculating on which of the chicks Z actually banged. Escobar points out the ones they know were Z’s girls: an Ashley, two Jennifers, a Brittany, an Elizabeth, one named Sky. “And the chuch, they liked Bobby.”

  Like this is some big revelation to Tim. It was like a well-known scientific fact that girls will put out for dope. Good looks, cool, money and dope, Tim thinks. But whoever said life was going to be fair?

  Escobar briefs Tim on Z’s male buddies, too. Surfer buddies, doper buddies, some of them—even the girls—became employees, sales representatives for Bobby’s boo. A Jason, a Chad, two Shanes and a Free, who was—go figure—the brother of Sky. Hip-looking guys, cool guys, Tim sees. Guys who rightly figure they own the world because they own the beach. Bobby’s friends.