Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Thank you to Dave Schniepp for sharing his knowledge of the Southern California surfing scene.
When longtime loser Tim Kearney draws a license plate across the throat of a Hell’s Angel, he’s pretty much a dead man. It’s his third crime and under Californian law that gives him ‘life without the possibility of parole’. Killing a Hell’s Angel also makes him a dead man on any prison yard in California.
That’s when the DEA makes Kearney an offer: impersonate the late, legendary dope smuggler Bobby Z so that the agency can trade him to Don Huertero – northern Mexico’s drug kingpin – for a captured DEA agent. Kearney bears an uncanny resemblance to Bobby Z, and with training, he might just be able to pass.
Or not. But, really, what choice does he have?
Kearney meets Bobby Z’s old flame, Elizabeth, and the son she claims is his, goes on the run from drug lords, bikers, Indians, and cops. Some of his pursuers want the legend, Bobby Z, and some want the rather less legendary Tim K. Regardless of who everybody else thinks he is, Kearney knows he is going to have to do something pretty legendary to save the girl, the kid, and his own life...
Don Winslow is the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels, including The Gentlemen’s Hour, Satori, Savages, The Dawn Patrol, The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Power of the Dog, California Fire and Life and The Kings of Cool. He lives in Southern California. To learn more, follow him at twitter.com/donwinslow or visit www.donwinslow.com.
HERE’S HOW TIM Kearney gets to be the legendary Bobby Z.
How Tim Kearney gets to be Bobby Z is that he sharpens a license plate to a razor’s edge and draws it across the throat of a humongous Hell’s Angel named Stinkdog, making Stinkdog instantly dead and a DEA agent named Tad Gruzsa instantly happy.
“That’ll make him a lot easier to persuade,” Gruzsa says when he hears about it, meaning Kearney, of course, because Stinkdog is beyond persuasion by that point.
Gruzsa is right. Not only does the murder rap make Tim Kearney a three-time loser, but killing a Hell’s Angel also makes him a dead man on any prison yard in California, so “life without possibility of parole” really means “life without possibility of life” once Tim gets back into the general prison population.
Not that Tim wanted to kill Stinkdog. He didn’t. It’s just that Stinkdog came to him on the yard and told him to join the Aryan Brotherhood “or else,” and Tim said “else,” and that’s when Tim knew that he’d better hone that license plate to a surgical edge.
The California Corrections Department isn’t all that thrilled, although a few of its officials admit to mixed feelings over Stinkdog’s demise. What pisses them off is that Tim used the supposed tool of his rehabilitation—honest work making license plates—to commit premeditated murder inside the correctional facility at San Quentin.
“It wasn’t murder,” Tim tells his court-appointed public defender. “It was self-defense.”
“You walked up to him on the yard, took a sharpened license plate out of your sweatshirt and slashed his throat,” the lawyer reminds him. “And you planned it.”
“Carefully,” Tim agrees. Stinkdog had about ten inches and a hundred and fifty pounds on him. Used to, anyway. Lying dead on a gurney he is considerably shorter than Tim. And much slower.
“That makes it murder,” the lawyer says.
“Self-defense,” Tim insists.
He doesn’t expect the young lawyer or the justice system to appreciate the subtle difference between a preemptive strike and premeditated murder. But Stinkdog had given Tim a choice: join the Aryan Brotherhood or die. Tim didn’t want to do either, so his only option was to take preventive action.
“The Israelis do it all the time,” Tim says to the lawyer.
“They’re a country,” the lawyer answers. “You’re a career criminal.”
It hasn’t been much of a career: three juvenile B&Es, a short stay with the California Youth Authority, a court-suggested stint in the Marines that ends in a dishonorable discharge, a burglary that ends up in Chino and then the beef that Tim’s prior PD referred to as “the Beaut.”
“This is a beaut,” Tim’s prior attorney said. “Let me make sure I have this straight, because I want to get it right when I dine out on it for the next three years. Your buddy picks you up at Chino, and on the way home you rob a Gas n’ Grub.”
My buddy, Tim thought. Asshole Wayne LaPerriere.
“He robbed the Gas n’ Grub,” Tim said. “Told me to wait in the car while he just went in for cigarettes.”
“He said you had the gun.”
“He had the gun.”
“Yeah, but he cut a deal first,” the lawyer said, “so for all practical purposes you had the gun.”
The trial was a joke. A regular laugh riot. Especially when the Pakistani night clerk testified.
“And what did the defendant say to you when he pulled the gun?” the DA had asked.
“Exactly?”
“Exactly.”
“His precise words?”
“Please.”
“He said, ‘Don’t stickin’ move, this is a fuck-up.’”
The jury laughed, the judge laughed, even Tim had to admit it was pretty funny. It was so fucking comical that it landed Tim an eight-to-twelve in San Quentin in the proximity of Stinkdog. And a murder beef.
“Can you plead it down?” Tim asks this public defender. “Maybe third-degree?”
“Tim, I could plead it down to pissing in a phone booth, and you’re still looking at life without parole,” the lawyer says. “You’re a three-time loser. A monumental career fuck-up.”
A lifetime ambition realized, Tim thinks. And I’m only twenty-seven.
That’s where Tad Gruzsa comes in.
Tim’s reading a Wolverine comic book in solitary one day when the guards take him out, put him in a black van with blacked-out windows, drive him to an underground garage someplace, then take him in an elevator to a room with no windows and handcuff him to a cheap plastic chair.
A blue chair.
Tim is sitting there for about thirty minutes when a squat muscular man with a bullet-shaped head comes in, followed by a tall, thin Hispanic man with bad skin.
At first Tim thinks that the squat man is bald, but his hair is just shaved close to his head. He has cold blue eyes, a bad blue suit and a smirk, and he looks Tim over like a piece of garbage and then says to the other guy, “I think this is the one.”
“There’s a definite resemblance,” the beaner agrees.
That said, the squat guy sits down next to Tim. Smiles, then takes a big cupped right hand and whacks Tim on the ear—hard. Pain is like fucking unreal, but Tim, keeling over, manages to keep his ass on the chair. Which is a minor victory, but he knows that a minor victory is about the best he’s going to get.
“You’re a career fuck-up,” Tad Gruzsa says when Tim straightens back up.
“Thank you.”
“You’re also a dead fucker when you get back to the yard,” Gruzsa says. “Isn’t he a dead fucker, Jorge?”
“He’s a dead fucker,” Jorge Escobar echoes with a grin.
“I’m a dead fucker.” Tim smiles.
Gruzsa says, “So we’re all agreed you’re a dead fucker. The question now is, what, if anything, are we going to do about it?”
“I’m not rolling over on anyone,” Tim says. Unless it’s LaPerriere, then just show me where to sign.
“You killed a guy, Kearney,” Gruzsa says.
Tim shrugs. He killed a lot of guys in the Gulf and no one seemed to get too uptight about it.
“We don’t want you to roll over on anyone,” Gruzsa says. “We want you to be somebody.”
“So does my mother,” Tim says.
This time Gruzsa hits Tim with his left hand.
To show he’s versatile, Tim thinks.
“Just for a little while,” Escobar says. “Then you walk away.”
“And you keep walking,” Gruzsa says.
Tim doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, but the “keep walking” part sounds interesting.
“What are you guys talking about?” he asks.
Gruzsa tosses a thin manila file folder onto the table.
Tim opens it and sees a picture of a thin-faced, tanned, handsome man with his long black hair pulled sleekly back into a ponytail.
“He kind of looks like me,” Tim observes.
“Duh,” says Gruzsa.
Gruzsa’s fucking with him, but Tim doesn’t care. When you’re a three-time loser people get to fuck with you and that’s just the way it is.
“Try to pay attention, dummy,” Gruzsa says. “What you’re going to do is you’re going to pretend you’re a certain person, then you can split. The world thinks the Angels whacked you on the yard. You get a new identity, the whole works.”
“What ‘certain person’?” Tim asks.
Tim thinks Gruzsa’s eyes sparkle like those of an old con who sees a fresh piece of chicken on the yard.
“Bobby Z,” Gruzsa answers.
“Who’s Bobby Z?” Tim asks.
“YOU NEVER HEARD of Bobby Z?” Escobar asks. His jaw’s hanging open like he just can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“See, you’re such a moke you never even heard of Bobby Z,” Gruzsa says.
Escobar says proudly, “Bobby Z is a legend.”
They tell him the legend of Bobby Z.
Robert James Zacharias grew up in Laguna Beach, and like most other kids in Laguna Beach he was very cool. He had a skateboard, then a boogie board, then a belly board, then a long board, and by the time he was a sophomore at the aptly named Laguna High he was an accomplished surfer and a more accomplished drug merchant.
Bobby Z could read the water, read it like it was “See Spot run.” He knew if the waves were coming in sets of three or four, knew when they were going to peak, break right or left, A-frame, backwash or tube, and it was that sense of anticipation that made him such a promising young surfer on the circuit as well as a successful entrepreneur.
Bobby Z couldn’t even get a driver’s license and was already a legend. Part of the legend was that Z had hitchhiked to his first big marijuana buy and hitchhiked back, just stood out there on the Pacific Coast Highway with his thumb out and two Nike gym bags stuffed with Maui Wowie at his feet.
“Bobby Z is ice,” intones One Way, resident lunatic of Laguna’s public beach and self-appointed Homer to Bobby’s Ulysses. “One Way” is short for “One-Way Trip,” the story being that One Way took a trip on six dots of blotter acid and never really came back. He wanders the streets of Laguna annoying tourists with his endless stream-of-consciousness soliloquies about the legend of Bobby Z.
“Those skinny Russian babes could skate on Bobby Z,” One Way might typically pronounce. “He’s that cold. Bobby Z is the Antarctica, except no penguins shit on him. He’s pristine. Placid. Nothing worries Bobby Z.”
The legend continued that Bobby Z converted the profits of those two Nike bags into four more Nike bags, then sixteen, then thirty-two, and by that time he’d given some money to a flunky adult to buy a classic ’66 Mustang and drive him around.
Other kids are worried about what college they’re going to get into and Z is thinking fuck college, because he’s already making more than your third-year MBA, and he’s just getting started when Washington declares this war on drugs, which is a major boon to Z, because not only does it keep the prices high, it also puts in jail that layer of semipro incompetents who would otherwise be competition.
And Z figures out early, even before he skips his graduation ceremony, fuck retail, retail is where you get to lean against your car and spread ’em. Wholesale is where it’s at: Supply the supplier who supplies the supplier. Get to that level and become a non-person just managing the orderly flow of the product and the money and never ever put your own ass on the line. Like buy sell, buy sell, and Z is an organizational genius and he has it figured out.
Bobby Z has it figured out.
“Unlike you, dipstick,” Gruzsa says to Tim. “You know how Bobby Z spends his high school graduation night? He rents a suite—a suite—at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel and has his friends over for the whole weekend.”
Tim remembers how he’d spent graduation night. Not graduating, for one. While most of his classmates were at the prom, Tim and a buddy and two loser girls parked in a Charger up by the recycling center in Thousand Palms with a few six-packs and a low-grade joint. He hadn’t even gotten laid—the girl just puked on his lap and passed out.
“Like you’re a moke from fucking birth,” Gruzsa adds.
What can I say? Tim thinks. It’s true.
Tim grew up—or failed to—in the shithole town of Desert Hot Springs, California, just across Interstate 10 from the resort town of Palm Springs, where the rich people got to live. The people who lived in Desert Hot Springs got to clean toilets in Palm Springs and wash dishes and carry golf bags, and they were mostly Mexicans, except for a few white-trash drunks like Tim Kearney Sr., who on his rare visits home used to beat the shit out of Tim with a belt while pointing to the lights of Palm Springs and hollering, “See that? That’s where the money is!”
Tim figured he had that just about right, so by the time he was fourteen he was breaking into those Palm Springs houses where the money was, nailing TV sets, VCRs, cameras, cash and jewelry and tripping off silent alarms.
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 this 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.
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.
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.
Good friends, too, Escobar tells him. Bobby’s carnal.
So carnal, Tim thinks, that two of them—one of the Shanes and the Brittany—end up facedown in an irrigation ditch.
Tim studies their pictures, their names. He studies books on surfing, he gets lectures from Escobar on how Bobby Z’s empire runs. As much as they learned, Escobar says sadly, before Z’s heart banged out.
“Bobby’s head guy in the States is someone called the Monk,” Escobar tells him.
The Monk? Tim thinks. The fuck is this? Only monk Tim knows is the fat guy in Robin Hood.
So he asks, “Who’s he?”
Escobar shakes his head.
“If we knew that, we’d grab him, wouldn’t we?” Escobar asks.
“I dunno,” Tim says. Cops have cop brains, and who knows what’s going on in there.
It’s all too much for Tim. He shuts the yearbook and closes his eyes.
“You better learn this shit,” Escobar warns. “Huertero’s men will ask questions, make sure you’re the real deal, before they make the trade. They better make the trade, ese, or Gruzsa’ll burn you bad. Things can happen on the border at night, you know?”
Tim knows that. Tim was on the fucking Kuwait-Saudi border when the Iraqi tanks poured in. Yeah, Jorge, bad things can happen on the border at night, pendejo, ese?
So Tim studies and learns the shit. Couple of weeks he knows everything there is to know about the legendary Bobby Z. And not because he’s so entranced with the boy wonder, but because Tim wants to have at least a shot of living through this little scam on the border.
Boring couple of weeks, though. They won’t let him go out, of course, and won’t let him bring anyone in. Won’t even bring a working girl up from Oceanside to let him get his rocks off, even though they know he’s been in the joint for months and didn’t go the fag route. Tim asks, though, and Escobar just sneers, “You can get laid after the trade.”
If I’m alive after the trade, Tim thinks.
It wouldn’t be half so bad if they’d feed him some real food, but Bobby became a vegetarian and Escobar doesn’t want Huertero to smell any rotten meat on Tim’s breath.
“That’s stupid,” Tim argues.
“Isn’t,” Escobar says. “Huertero had Indians working for him. Cahuila. They can smell that kind of shit, man. They’re like coyotes.”
So no cheeseburgers, no hot dogs, no tacos al carne that Tim’s been dreaming about. Escobar tells him he can have a fish taco if he wants and Tim tells him to fuck himself with his fucking fish taco. Hurts Escobar’s feelings and for three days all Tim gets is pita bread and rice and vegetables and Tim says I know all the shit now, let’s do this thing.
So Gruzsa shows up and gives Tim a little test. Escobar’s standing there like a nervous father, smoking a cigarette and rooting for his boy as Gruzsa asks Tim a shitload of questions about the late great Z.
Escobar’s grinning like an idiot when Tim 4.0’s the test.
Gruzsa doesn’t get all warm and gushy.
“I guess you’re ready, dumb fuck,” is what Gruzsa says.
So one night they stick him back in the van and haul him out.
LATE NIGHT IN some canyon on the border.
Tim figures they’re somewhere east of San Diego.
The moon is out and the sky is not black but silver as Escobar walks Tim down the slope to the canyon floor. Gruzsa’s sitting in his jeep back up on top, watching through a nightscope, a small battalion of DEA guys with M-16s, shotguns and maybe mortars, for all Tim knows, there to back them up.
The INS guys must have taken a prearranged hike because there’s no green-and-whites around, and Huertero must have cleared the Mexican side because there are no illegals crouched behind the wire to make the dash for the dollars. The usual game is off tonight, it’s just this session of swap and trade with your friends, Tim thinks, and now he can see some figures coming toward them across the canyon from the Mexican side.
Tim feels the butterflies he used to get in his stomach just before a B&E, the same feeling he had that night when the fucking Iraqis came pouring into Khafji before the troop buildup and it was just a few Marines and the Saudis and all hell broke loose, and he can feel Gruzsa’s nightscope on his back.
Now he can make out a couple of Mexicans holding up what must be Art Moreno, like semi-dragging him between them, and Tim figures Moreno has had a rough ride. It sure doesn’t look like his legs work real well anymore, and as they get closer he can see the agent’s face and it looks some fucking tired.
So Tim’s happy for Moreno cuz the guy is coming home and happy for himself, too, although he doesn’t want to get too happy until it’s over. But he has to admit to himself that he’s excited about the prospect of freedom.
He’s spent the two weeks waiting for the scar to heal reading Consumer’s Digest and other useful magazines, trying to decide where to move after this is over. One of the magazines rated cities by quality of life, and it’s mostly midsized cities in the Midwest that rank high. A lot of that, though, is the school systems and similar shit Tim doesn’t care about.