The Death and Life of Bobby Z Read online

  “A couple of his people are dead.”

  “They’re better off,” Brian says. Then he adds, “Of course, Don Huertero is thrilled with me. Which is good for business.”

  Tim raises his beer and toasts, “Business.”

  “You know the one product Mexico produces really well?” Brian asks.

  “What?”

  “Mexicans.”

  “Mexicans.”

  Brian says, “Mexico fucks up its oil, its gold mines are shot, it can’t market a frijol, but it poops out Mexicans like Japan shits cars. Mexicans are Mexico’s one export.”

  “And you import,” Tim says.

  “Well, we’re importers, aren’t we?” Brian purrs. “Anything the government makes illegal makes us money. Drugs, people, sex. I’m hoping they outlaw oxygen next.”

  Tim smiles what he figures is a Z-like, knowing smile. Which is like the thing to do when you don’t know. There’s at least a shot that people will figure you know so well that you don’t need to say.

  Tim stays cool and silent and drains the rest of his beer.

  A smile plays on the edges of Brian’s lips. Smile flutters there for a second and then Brian just can’t contain himself.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he says, “but … Don Huertero has a big business proposition for you. Big.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Meth,” Brian says. “The new big high.”

  “Meth?”

  Brian nods. “Don Huertero’s setting up meth labs all over the Southland. He provides the chemicals, I supply the labor, and we’re hoping that you …”

  Brian is just breathless.

  “… that you will supply the market.”

  “I don’t do meth,” Tim says. “I do dope.”

  “I know, I know,” Brian says. “But use your imagination, Bobby. Don Huertero’s organization? With my labor supply? Tapped into your high-end market? We could print our own currency.”

  So that’s the deal, Tim thinks. That’s what’s worth giving back poor fucked-up Art Moreno. Turn Bobby’s mellow grass network on to crystal meth.

  Get you a West Coast full of hopped-up yuppies whacking each other’s heads off, going bad fucking crazy. But getting a shitload of work done.

  And let the money roll in.

  “I’ll have to give it some thought,” Tim says.

  “Of course,” Brian coos. “Kick back, chill out, put your feet up. Mi casa, su casa. Anything you desire, Bobby, just nod or lift a finger, let your desire be known and it shall be done.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is an oasis. A perfumed garden. A house of pleasure.”

  Tim says, “The DEA might be looking for me.”

  “They won’t find you,” Brian answers. “Not here.”

  Tim takes the chance. “Where is here?”

  “Anza-Borrego State Park,” Brian answers.

  “A state park?”

  Like with rangers and shit?! State-owned land?! Hey, Brian, I’ve spent just about all the time I want to on state-owned property.

  “This is freehold land,” Brian answers. “Two thousand acres of desert my grandparents left me. Surrounded by the great nothing. Desert flats and desert mountains. A jackrabbit couldn’t get in here without my knowing about it.”

  “Or out?”

  Brian’s smile gives Tim the creeps. “Or out.”

  “And convenient to the Mexican border,” Tim says.

  “A border,” Brian answers, “is a state of mind.”

  He lets Z ponder this for a moment, then says, “So welcome to the Hotel California.”

  8.

  They step outside, where the sun has bleached the world white.

  Sunlight so harsh it burns the eye. Tim puts on his shades and sees through blue filters a party in progress at the pool. Against the noon-faded pastels of the desert the guests are bright primary colors, rectangles of blues, reds and yellows standing around the bright turquoise of the pool.

  Beautiful people in angles of repose.

  Even the ones standing up look like they’re resting, Tim thinks. Their arms bent in the leisurely angle of drink to lips, hips swiveled and knees flexed, ready to move on to the next conversation, eyes lazily scanning the crowd for sights more interesting or pleasurable.

  Tim hates them instantly.

  They look—and are, he supposes—rich. The men are mostly tall and thin and look strong from pushing on machines in air-conditioned gyms. They’re cocoa-butter tan, too—not farmer tan or working-guy tan, tans that stop at the shirt line—these guys are tanned from lying around pools and boats. They sport trendy haircuts, either long with a ponytail, or sides shaved with a ponytail, or sides shaved with no ponytail. A few goatees. A couple have carefully manicured two-day stubble.

  The women are a convict’s wet dream. Mostly blondes with big straw hats over two-hundred-buck hairstyles from José Ebert. Big jewelry—chains, earrings, bracelets over expensive bathing suits, mostly black two-piece. Or topless over wraparounds, beads of sweat dripping between brown breasts.

  Men or women, they turn to look at Tim as he comes into the pool area with Brian. It startles him at first. Shit, scares him, but then he realizes he isn’t loser Tim Kearney from Desert Hot Springs, he’s ultimate-cool Bobby Z from Laguna and he doesn’t have to carry their garbage anymore. In fact, he doesn’t have to do anything.

  That’s California cool, Tim thinks—do nothing but look good.

  Let the legend do the work.

  So he stops and lets them get a good look at the legend. Shielded by the shades he meets their gaze, one lazy pair of rich lazy eyes at a time.

  And for the first time in his life sees … what?

  Not fear, exactly. Not exactly respect. What is it? Tim asks himself as he looks at their pampered faces look at him. Inferiority, he realizes. They think he’s better than they are.

  Except for her. Standing at the far end of the pool, hand on cocked hip. She meets his eyes and gives him that knowing, mocking smile again. He takes the time to stare back. Check her out. A gauze skirt is wrapped around her long legs now, an unbuttoned linen blouse hangs over her black bikini top. He likes it that she’s covered up, her breasts not like everybody’s in some Playboy pictorial. Her hair is still up, her neck long and lovely. But it’s that smile, man, that gets Tim going.

  He feels his own lips twist into a smile of its own.

  She laughs and turns away.

  It breaks the tableau. Most of the guests change partners or approach the Mexican bartender for a fresh drink. Through the breaking crowd Tim’s gaze stays on her as she squats down to speak to a small boy who is putting a toy boat into the water.

  The boy looks so out of place here, Tim thinks. Is out of place. The fuck are his parents thinking? Tim wonders. The scent of marijuana pierces the hot air. Dope and semi-naked women and they’re letting a little kid run around. He hopes she’s not his mother.

  The kid doesn’t look like her. He’s blond, for one thing. His hair long and chopped at the bottom like some Deadhead’s kid, surf bum’s kid. Blue eyes—it’s hard to tell behind the blue shades—and hers are what, green?

  It ain’t her kid, Tim thinks. If it’s her kid she takes him out of here, takes him home because she has class. Tim looks around for the parents, but there doesn’t seem to be a pair of adults with special eyes for the boy. There is another young woman, looks South American, watching the boy. Looking at a magazine and watching the boy, and Tim wants to go ask her what the fuck she’s thinking about.

  Fucking pools are dangerous for kids, Tim thinks. Dangerous for him, too, because even in the Marines he never learned to swim. Switched with a guy on the test. But you got to watch a kid around a pool, not be looking at some magazine reading about having a better sex life in ten minutes.

  But it ain’t my kid, he thinks, and none of my business.

  The boy pushes the boat into the pool, then steps back and points a black box with an antenna at it. />
  Kid’s got a radio-controlled boat, Tim thinks, so the kid’s got him some money. A nanny and a radio-controlled boat, he thinks, and a buddy: her, because the kid is clearly showing off for her.

  Don’t blame you, kid, Tim thinks. You can pick ’em.

  Brian is ushering the guests to a big open tent where Mexicans sweat under white jackets behind big platters of carne asada and pots of chile verde. Tim smells the moist scent of fresh flour tortillas and it makes him hungry again.

  And horny, he thinks. The smell, the sun, all the naked flesh, and her.

  “Just a small Sunday brunch,” Brian says to him. “We’ll have a real party for you when Don Huertero can be here. A barbecue.”

  “Who are all these people?” Tim asks.

  “My friends,” Brian answers. “Mostly Eurotrash. Most of them from the import-export community. A few Germans who live in Borrego Springs. A few weekend guests. A few more permanent houseguests.”

  “Who’s the kid?”

  “Kid?” Brian asks. He turns to look at the boy.

  “That’s Olivia’s boy,” he answers.

  “Which one is Olivia?”

  “Olivia’s not here.” Brian chuckles. “Olivia’s back in Betty Ford. For the eightieth time. She asked Elizabeth to look after Kit, and Elizabeth asked me if she could bring the boy and the nanny here, so here we all are, one great big happy extended dysfunctional family, chez Cervier.”

  Elizabeth, Tim thinks.

  “Cute kid,” he says.

  “Isn’t he?”

  Brian’s practically licking his lips, Tim thinks.

  “Kid got a father?”

  Brian shrugs. “In theory.”

  Tim realizes that they’re all waiting for him to start, so he gets a big bowl of vegetarian chili and some tortillas and sits down. A waiter brings him a margarita.

  He eats and drinks and watches the slave traders and drug dealers line up for their food.

  Something else: A tall man strides into the pool area. Tim watches him. The man wears an old cowboy hat, a thick green work shirt, khaki jeans and cowboy boots. The sleeves are rolled up and show a cowboy’s tan. The man takes off his reflective sunglasses and smirks at the party guests. He squints until he finds Brian, then walks under the canopy, takes off his hat and talks to Brian. Hat in hand, Tim thinks, employee to employer.

  Brian nods, nods and nods again. He gestures for the man to eat, but the man smirks, shakes his head and points the hat out there, toward the desert.

  He has work to do, Tim thinks.

  Then the man looks over Brian’s shoulder and stares at Tim. And smirks. He doesn’t think he’s inferior.

  He’s middle-aged, Tim sees. Big sun-wrinkled face and he’s been working his whole life. Out there. He looks at Tim like Tim’s one of his cattle that he’s sizing up.

  The man doesn’t put his hat back on until he’s out from under the canopy.

  Tim thinks the same thing he’d think if he saw the guy on the yard.

  The man is trouble, Tim thinks.

  Then he goes back to eating. A rule that holds up in the joint or in the Corps: When there’s food, eat. When there’s a party, party.

  9.

  Tim watches the sunset from a parapet on the wall.

  Behind and beneath him the pool party sputters toward an end. Beyond the wall the mountains turn from sienna to chocolate brown as the light fades.

  He’s interested now in watching the sun set because he wants to mark true west for himself. Something he remembers from all that orienteering shit in the Corps. So he watches the sun go down over the nearest mountains and he figures he’s somewhere in the southern dogleg of Borrego, near the Mexican border. There’s a long stretch of desert between Cervier’s ranch and those mountains.

  He can also see that the Beau Geste fort is a make-believe fort set inside a real one, a small compound encircled by a much larger one. The larger circle is bordered by thick rows of tamarisk trees. He can make out the high barbed-wire fence inside the trees. Soda cans, probably filled with pebbles, he thinks, are strung from the lower strands of wire. The top of the fence is stretched with double wire and a single strand of electrified fence. In a thicker grove of tamarisk there’s a barbed-wire gate that leads to a dirt road.

  Outside the trees, out in the scrub brush of the desert, coils of barbed wire lie like snakes on the ground. And probably motion and sound detectors, Tim thinks.

  Brian likes his privacy.

  Not that there aren’t a lot of people around. In the large outer compound Tim can make out several armed guards, at least five outbuildings that look like workers’ quarters, garages and workshops. He sees several three-wheel all-terrain vehicles and a small fleet of dirt bikes. The humvee, and maybe there is more than one, is visible in a garage where a worker is checking the oil. There’s even an ultralight aircraft that one of the Germans flew over from Borrego.

  There’s a stable with horses and the accompanying shit.

  And way off in the southern end of the large compound, and Tim’s had to look hard to see it, there are five rectangles of off-colored brush that look like overgrown tennis courts. But he doesn’t think they are. He doesn’t know what the fuck they are.

  He climbs down and rejoins the party, which is gathered now around the Jacuzzi.

  Brian is cuddled up with a pretty boy from Milan. Two lanky Germans are up to their shoulders in the hot swirling water. Another Luftwaffe type, a big strapping Aryan, is busy seducing a small dark-haired woman whose pert breasts peek through a gauzy poncho. The women who remain are at least dressed, Tim sees, as the desert night turns cold. And she’s sipping a glass of dark red wine and sitting back on the chaise, watching.

  The kid—what’s his name? Tim asks himself—is at it with the boat again, zooming it around the pool in some sort of imaginary race. Against nobody. A lonely kid, with no other kids around to play with and no one seems to care.

  The nanny’s toking on a joint.

  Tim pulls a chair up and sits down.

  Brian takes a thick spliff from his lips and says, “Your dope, Z.”

  Tim makes a sign of the cross and says, “ ‘Wherever two or more are gathered in my name …’ ”

  They laugh and Brian offers Tim the joint. Tim waves it off and Brian slips it into the mouth of his pretty boy, who sucks hard and deep. And the kid’s seeing this shit, Tim thinks.

  The big German—Tim thinks of him as Hans even though he doesn’t know his name—says to the minx lady, “You know what I’d like to do to you?”

  He says it loud deliberately, Tim sees, so that everyone will stop and listen. Everyone does. She’s tickled fucking pink. Her eyes light up and she asks, “What would you like to do with me?”

  Tim sees the kid turn to watch.

  Hans says, “I’d like to spank your little ass—”

  “Why don’t you keep it between you?” Tim asks Hans.

  Hans’s had enough to drink that he forgets who’s talking to him, and he gives Tim an upper-class sneer, turns back to the lady and says, in this B-movie accent, “—eat you until you scream—”

  “Shut up, Willy,” Elizabeth says.

  “—fuck you, then come all over your tits.”

  They all laugh, except the kid, Elizabeth and Tim.

  Tim’s not laughing.

  What Tim does is he springs up and slaps Willy hard across the face. The slap knocks Willy off his chair. He’s on his knees giving Tim this shocked look when Tim grabs him by the shirt collar, hauls him to the pool and pushes his head under the water.

  And holds it there.

  Even while Tim’s thinking that it’s the same bad temper that got him tossed out of the Corps. And even though he knows it’s the same character flaw, all he feels is this red anger as he holds Willy’s head under the pretty blue water.

  Nobody moves, either. Not Brian or his boy, or the woman who had just now thought Willy was so hot. They just sit there watching him drown their friend.

>   Some fucking buddies, he thinks.

  Then Elizabeth uncoils herself from her chaise, walks over and taps Tim on the shoulder.

  “Bobby,” she says quietly, and she’s smiling again, “he’s turning funny colors.”

  Tim hauls Willy up. Willy lays on his back gasping like a trout and Tim tells him, “You shouldn’t talk that way in front of a kid.”

  Then, to sound more like Bobby Z, adds, “It’s not cool.”

  He’s about to tell the stoned nanny to do a better job when the cowboy is suddenly standing there. Now he has a revolver strapped to his hip.

  Talks like a cowboy, too, Tim thinks, when the man says, “We’re ready to go out, Mr. C.”

  And Tim hears himself say, “I want to go.”

  Brian sputters, “I don’t think—”

  “I want to go,” Tim says. Cold, like Z, like nobody fuck with me.

  The cowboy hears, too, because he asks, “You got any real clothes?”

  “In my room,” Tim answers.

  “I can wait a bit.”

  Tim feels the kid watching him as he leaves. Her, too, but she’s trying to hide it.

  When he comes out again a few minutes later the party’s broken up. But the kid is still playing with the boat and Elizabeth’s keeping an eye on him. She gets up when she sees Tim and walks over to him.

  She says, “I liked what you did.”

  “I was an asshole,” he answered. “I lost my temper.”

  “He was thrilled someone stood up for him,” she says. “Finally.”

  “He looks like a nice kid,” Tim says. He can’t think of anything else to say.

  “You think so?” she asks, looking at him funny.

  “Yeah, why not?” he answers, then says, “I mean, if you’re into lads.”

  “Are you?”

  “Not me, no.”

  “That’s too bad,” she says.

  “Why’s that too bad?” he asks, figuring he’s being flirted with. Liking it.

  She looks at him with those smart, knowing eyes.

  “Because he’s yours,” she says.

  And turns around and walks away.

  10.

  The cowboy’s name is Bill Johnson. He’s the ranch foreman. Brian actually has some cattle out there but cattle isn’t the ranch business. Tim learns this riding with Johnson in the front of a Bedford truck, rumbling along a mountain trail toward the border.