The Death and Life of Bobby Z Read online

  One Way’s eyes shine with a fanatical joy.

  “Then what?” Tim asks.

  “Then sail away,” One Way says.

  “I don’t know how to sail.”

  One Way smiles like a lunatic cherub.

  “I do,” he says.

  “Could you sail this boat?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “And you’d do that?” Tim asks.

  “Joyfully.”

  Then One Way frowns. His smile collapses into a shame-faced grimace. “There’s a problem.”

  Of course there is, Tim thinks.

  “What’s the problem.”

  “The cop.”

  “Fat cop?” Tim asks. “Shaved head, like a bullet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ugly mouth?”

  “A mean cop.”

  “I know him,” Tim says. “What about him?”

  “He said if I found you I should tell him where you are,” One Way whispers. “Or he’ll kill me.”

  Tim thinks about this. Then he says, “So tell him where I am.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah,” Tim says. “Tell him exactly what I’m doing. Tell him I’m turning myself in to Don Huertero for Art Moreno and my kid.”

  “Don Huertero … Moreno … kid.”

  “Just don’t tell him about the boat.”

  “What boat?”

  Tim sighs. “The boat that …”

  One Way stops him with a hand on his arm.

  “I know,” One Way says.

  He gives Tim a stage wink and runs off down the beach.

  67.

  As Tim packs his shit he knows what he should do.

  What he should do is he should get on the boat like tonight and sail away with a cool three mil. You can hide forever and hide goddamn well with three mil in cash. Even with a nutball as your captain. You can hole up on some Caribbean island, sip drinks with umbrellas in them and fuck tanned, long-legged women until you die. Eighty-three years old, tan, rich and relaxed, and die of a heart attack in the saddle, man. Give some Caribbean honey a story to tell her grand-kids. Leave fucking Don Huertero sitting on his ass, leave fucking Gruzsa eating his own liver, leave Bobby Z’s problems to … Well, let the dead bury the dead. Adiós, motherfuckers. For once in his whole fucked-up life Tim Kearney has the exit, man. He has the loot and he has the exit and he should for once take it. That’s what he should do.

  But even as he’s stuffing his sweatshirt into his duffel, dumb fucking Tim Kearney knows he isn’t going to do what he should.

  Big news, right? Like that’s a first, Tim Kearney taking a pass on the smart thing. But that’s how you get to be a three-time loser, right? Knowing the smart move and doing the opposite.

  It ain’t for the woman, either. He knows that’s what they’ll all think. That every con will stick his dick in the wringer for some pussy. Especially that pussy. But that ain’t it. Although he sure as shit loves her, he could walk away from her.

  It’s the kid.

  Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it, and it isn’t even his fucking kid.

  Three million dollars and the lifetime out and he’s probably going to get killed for the kid.

  Because Huertero’s probably gonna whack me anyway, Tim thinks, soon as he has the cash in hand.

  So what I should do is split.

  Tim finishes packing, shoves his pistol into his belt and gets in the car.

  Says so long to the trailer and the beach where he could have lived happily.

  Just wasn’t meant to be, he thinks.

  68.

  The doorman won’t let One Way in and threatens to call the cops.

  “They know me,” One Way says.

  The doorman threatens to just beat the crap out of him, but One Way tells him just to ring Gruzsa’s room or he’ll just sneak out and take a dump in the parking lot.

  “But if you do ring his room,” One Way says, “I’ll never forage in your Dumpsters again.”

  This is a big sacrifice, because the Ritz-Carlton Dumpsters are among the finest on the south coast. It’s been One Way’s experience that rich people tend to send a lot of food back just to show that they can, so the Dumpster is a mecca for a gourmand of recycled haute cuisine.

  The doorman tells One Way to go hide in the shadows somewhere downwind and keep his fucking mouth shut, and it’s only about ten minutes later that Gruzsa comes huffing out and spots him.

  Gruzsa hauls him into the parking lot and pushes him up against a Mercedes 510 SL.

  “What?” Gruzsa asks.

  “It’s about Bobby Z,” One Way says.

  “You saw him?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “Fucking where?!”

  “Fucking Laguna Beach,” One Way lies. “He’s going—”

  Gruzsa smacks him across the face.

  “He still there?” he asks.

  “How should I know if he’s there?” One Way answers. “I’m here.”

  “Was he still there when you left?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Gruzsa ponders this for a second then asks, “What’s he going to do?”

  “I heard him over the phone say he’s going to turn himself in to Don Huertero in the morning.”

  Gruzsa looks around the parking lot, doesn’t see anyone, then pulls his automatic and shoves it under One Way’s chin.

  “You fucking with me, nutball?” he asks. “This some kind of a trick?”

  “It’s the gospel truth.”

  “Why the fuck would he wanna do that?”

  “They have his son.”

  “His son?” Gruzsa says. “I didn’t know he had a fucking son.”

  “Don Huertero will phone you when the deal’s complete,” One Way says. “They’ll release Moreno at the border.”

  “No shit.”

  “Completely shitless,” One Way says.

  Gruzsa puts his gun away. “You ever say anything about this to anyone, I’ll find you and really scramble your brains. You got that?”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Gruzsa mumbles Fucking nutball and shoves him away. Watches as One Way runs off.

  A few minutes later Gruzsa goes back to his suite and says to the guy lying on the bed watching TV, “Congratulations, you’re a dead fucker.”

  “Really?”

  “First thing in the morning.”

  Gruzsa pours himself a tumbler of single-malt Scotch from the honor bar and says, “Did you know you had a kid?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I guess you got a kid.”

  “So?”

  “So nothing. You got a kid, is all.”

  Guy shrugs and goes back to watching TV.

  69.

  When Tim pulls up to Blue Lantern Street there’s a limo already parked there. Darkened windows so Tim can’t see in, but he’s pretty sure Kit’s in the car.

  Big fucking hump of a Mexican with a lump in his jacket points down Bluffside Walk.

  Tim checks the view out as he walks down. It’s misty in the early morning, but you can still make out the harbor below even though you can’t see individual boats yet. He can only hope like hell that One Way is on that damn boat with the money.

  Tim goes down some steps where he can see three concrete arches that look funny just sitting there. Like someone took a piece of Greece or something and plopped it down in Dana Point. What’s left from someone’s wet dream after the crash. Tim knows how the poor loser felt, especially because some guy’s standing at the near end of the bridge. Guy takes him by the arm and leads him off the walkway, under the bridge. Where no one can see, Tim thinks, so he knows he’s in for an ass kicking.

  There’s a little flat spot under the bridge, a square of dirt worn down by people coming to drink, screw, smoke dope or all of the above. There’s a residual smell of stale piss and beer. Spot is perched at the edge of a steep ravine. At the bottom, big date palms rise up through boulders.

  It’s gonna be an ugly fall, Tim thinks. />
  A little knot of people standing under the bridge.

  Guy in a gray suit, three bodyguards in dark suits and Elizabeth.

  The guys in the dark suits all have shades on and they’re talking into little bodyguard microphones just like in the movies. Tim knows they’re cutting the walk off.

  Ain’t no civilians going to take a stroll on this part of the bluff walk until the business is over.

  Elizabeth looks like shit. She’s dressed to fucking kill, Tim sees, but her green eyes look dull. Tim’s seen the look before, on the yard, just before some guy gets it. She steps up and throws her arms around him and Tim knows without anyone saying anything that she’s set him up.

  “Thank God you came,” she whispers in his ear.

  She kisses his cheek and holds him tight and Tim braces for the shot he knows he’s going to take. It comes right behind the ear, and smooth as shit the second Mex slips his gun from him before his knees hit the ground.

  Tim sees Elizabeth’s spinning face mouth, “I’m sorry.”

  You’re sorry, Tim thinks.

  70.

  Escobar’s troops are out early.

  They’re out there like hounds with a scent, because the car’s been spotted heading south from Laguna on the PCH. Which is good news for Escobar’s troops, because Dana Point has a barrio just off the PCH, up the hill from the harbor. So there’s a frigging platoon of young Chicanos walking the town looking for the car. Some of them are on bikes, ese, because they’re too young to drive, and they’re all juiced because the rumor is that DFN is on his way from East L.A.

  And the word is out: Don’t anybody lose his cool and blow it, ese. Don’t nobody decide to be a hero and go in blasting, because even if Bobby Z don’t take you out, Luis Escobar will, you blow the shot for DFN Cruz.

  It’s two older boys with a ride who are cruising slow along Santa Clara and one of them jerks his head over to Blue Lantern and laughs. “Check it out.”

  And they can’t like fucking believe it because the car is just sitting out there in the open like this guy has some cojones, ese. Next to a big black limo, so the guys, they punch in Cruz’s number and then get out of the car to check it out.

  The limo driver, he reaches into his jacket as the two men come up, and they put their hands up by their shoulders and just ask, “What’s happening?”

  Driver has some stones himself, because what he says is, “What’s happening is you’re going to get your asses away from here, is what’s happening.”

  One of the cruisers, he says, “We just want to take a walk, ese.”

  And the limo driver answers, “Take a walk in the other direction.”

  So they do. They smile and move backward slowly to show they’re not afraid. They get back in the car and DFN Cruz’s driver checks in and they tell him Get over here, ese. Something’s going down.

  So Cruz starts putting his piece together and checking the sight, and the driver hustles the car toward Santa Clara and Blue Lantern.

  And the two cruisers, they pull out and cruise down Santa Clara to Golden Lantern, where they can get into the park from the other side because they just know that the legendary Bobby Z must be doing some business on the Bluffside Walk.

  And they wanna be there when DFN Cruz does Bobby’s business, ese.

  71.

  “The great Bobby Z,” Huertero says. “The legend.”

  Don Huertero, he shakes his head, then kicks Tim in the face.

  One Gucci fucking loafer right between the eyes, square on the nose where it joins the skull. One inch either way with that pointed toe and Tim loses an eye, but this way it only breaks his nose, so he can still see through blurry eyes as Huertero yanks his head up by the hair, glares at him, coughs up a big ball of phlegm and spits in Tim’s eyes.

  Tim can feel the warm spit merge with the blood oozing warmly down his face and with the tears, because his eyes are overflowing and while he isn’t exactly crying, he isn’t exactly not crying either.

  Huertero jerks his hand away.

  One of his boys is quick with a handkerchief. Huertero wipes his hands and tosses the handkerchief on the floor.

  Tim manages to find Elizabeth with his eyes and asks, “Where’s Kit?”

  “In the limo,” she says. “He’s all right.”

  Then she adds, like she’s begging him, “I’m sorry, Bobby. I had to.”

  Of course she did, he thinks. She knew I was going to get nailed one way or the other, so she has to do what’s best for the kid. Save herself so she can be a mother to the boy.

  “It’s cool,” he says.

  “Your son?” Huertero asks.

  “Yes.”

  Huertero nods silently and seems to lapse into thought. Tim figures he’s thinking about how to whack him.

  But he ain’t going down quite yet.

  “I have your three million,” Tim says to Huertero.

  Huertero raises an eyebrow and smiles.

  Encouraged, Tim adds what he knows. “It’s on a boat in Dana Point Harbor. Right down there. Give me my son and we can walk right down and get it.”

  “Is that so.”

  “I want to pay you back,” Tim says. “One of my men—”

  Huertero bends down and slaps Tim so hard it knocks him over. When Tim opens his eyes, Huertero’s standing over him, his face red and angry.

  “You talk to me about money?!” Huertero yells. “You dare talk to me about money?! You stole my treasure!”

  Tim’s confused as hell, and he hears Elizabeth murmur, “Oh, shit.”

  Then Huertero says, “You stole my child.”

  What the fuck?

  Huertero adds, “You stole my daughter.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “And you killed her.”

  Tim’s like fucking reeling.

  “And, yes,” Don Huertero says. “You will pay me back.”

  And Huertero launches into the story of Angelica Huertero de Montezón.

  72.

  Her father’s treasure, his only child.

  No male children to carry on the line, the one sadness of Huertero’s life, but then there was Angelica, his angel, born to marry some young hidalgo and carry on the blood if not the name.

  A beautiful child, this his angel, with hair as soft and black as a Sonoran night and eyes of purest starshine. A smile that brought the sun to him, a laugh that made the air sing.

  A beautiful child.

  Growing to womanhood, his Angelica, and as she grew she developed the strong will of her father rather than the docile compliance of her mother. It infuriated him but made him proud, her strong stubborn will, and he had to admit that he could refuse her nothing. Not toys or dolls, or jewelry or friends, or dangerous horses or dangerous men.

  He tried to keep her away from his business, he did. But how to give her the riches he made without exposing her to the seamy shadows? Had she been more compliant, less spirited perhaps, he might have managed to keep her in, to lock her up inside the hacienda and let her be trained to the domestic arts. But she had the spirit, this Angelica. The proud spirit of a hidalgo, of countless generations of conquistadors, and she was born to ride and roam and he acknowledged that.

  As with a spirited horse, one tries to guide. To let it run but choose the fields, as he tried to choose her friends, and he liked Elizabeth and Olivia, even though they came from the drug demimonde. They were courtesans, after all, were they not? Sophisticated college girls, smart enough to keep up with Angelica, loyal enough to protect her.

  Had he not even, as it were, sampled Elizabeth? Taken her to bed and sensed her spirit. Rewarded her with a generous stipend and a secret job. The days of black-draped chaperones were long gone, he knew, but perhaps Elizabeth could keep an eye on Angelica? Be, as much as one could in these modern times, a chaperone to this modern girl?

  They roamed the world, these three. Three spirited young ladies with wealth and breeding, but these are different times, freer times, one would have to
be a fool not to acknowledge that reality.

  And he had told her—his angel, his wild child—that she may have her wild years. Her parties, her dances, her shopping sprees. She may go on the cruises, shop in Paris, dance in Rio, flit from club to club in Cap Ferrat, in Cannes, in Manhattan, in Los Angeles.

  She may play the Anglo princess, but deep inside she must remain a Latina. She must—no matter what her loose Anglo friends did—remain a virgin until she married.

  And that man would be a Mexican.

  A Mexican and not a hated yanqui.

  And then she met Bobby Z.

  He would never forgive Elizabeth for that. Could never fully take her in again, for Elizabeth should have stopped it. Or at least come to him so that he could have stopped it.

  He would have forgiven her, too. Taken in his fallen angel, even as she was ruined, and brought her home to him. His hopes for a good marriage dashed by the fall of his high-flying child, he still would have cherished her and they could have spent their years together as the last of their family.

  Had he only known that they were Bobby Z’s harem, the three girls. Elizabeth and the poor drug-addicted fool Olivia, and, yes, Angelica.

  But of the three, only Angelica fell in love. Only Angelica had the tragic purity of heart to fall hopelessly in love. She alone could not give herself to a man without giving herself to a man.

  “But you destroyed her,” he said to Tim.

  Tim shook his head.

  “You used her the way a man might use a whore and you left her,” Huertero said. “Her heart was broken, her spirit was broken, her soul was broken. I tried to touch her, to reach her, but she knew that she was not the girl that I had raised. She could not face me in her humiliation at your hands. She could not look me in the eye.

  “And then she disappeared. From me, she disappeared. I had her tracked to Los Angeles, to New York, to Europe. For months. Then she simply disappeared.

  “Why? I asked myself. Why? I summoned Elizabeth here and finally heard the truth of what you had done. Heard that you had had her. Used her, played with her, led her to believe that you loved her, and then left her. Tossed her away like garbage, and that is how she felt. No wonder she could not stand to look me in the face. And you talk to me of money?!”