The Death and Life of Bobby Z

by Don Winslow

“But I have it in my truck,” Johnson says.

  That gets Macy smiling again.

  “Half now,” Johnson says. “Half when I get my man.”

  “Getting your man is your problem,” Macy says. “I’m not going to lose out just because you can’t do your part. Half now, half when you identify him as the man you want.”

  Macy describes him. When he’s done Johnson asks, “Man I’m looking for is alone. Your man alone?”

  Johnson sees a cloud come across Macy’s face.

  Macy says sadly, “This man has a kid with him.”

  Johnson smiles and asks, “Little girl?”

  “Boy,” Macy says.

  Johnson smiles and says, “Mister, thank your stars you got an honest streak in you. That’s the man I’m hunting.”

  Macy grins like a butcher’s dog.

  “That man’s at my motel,” Macy says.

  Johnson says, “Come on out to my truck and I’ll give you your money.”

  They go out to the gravel lot and Macy hops in the passenger seat.

  “Lock your door,” Johnson says, and Macy pushes the button down.

  Johnson reaches across into the glove compartment and takes out a white envelope. He hands it to Macy, who tears it open. Macy counts the money and asks, “What’s this?”

  “It’s five hundred bucks. It’s what you’re getting.”

  “Now listen, mister …”

  Johnson takes his good right hand, grabs Macy by the throat and shoves the man’s head back into the window. Once, twice, three times—real hard—until a stain of blood shows up on the glass.

  “No, you listen, mister,” Johnson says. “Five hundred’s what you’re getting and you’ll be happy with it. You’re also going to keep your mouth shut or I swear I’ll come back and beat you into a pulp. You understand? Now where is he?”

  “The Knotty Pine, just up the road. Cabin 8,” Macy croaks. Johnson’s hand is still tight around his throat.

  “He there now?” Johnson asks.

  Macy shakes his head.

  “You telling me the truth?”

  Macy nods.

  “Where’d he go?” Johnson asks, alarmed because maybe Bobby’s luck is holding and he’s already taken off. Johnson almost can’t stand the thought.

  “Don’t know,” Macy croaks.

  “Shit,” Johnson says, releasing him.

  Regrets it the second he does because the old bastard starts to reach behind him and Johnson realizes he must have a pistol stuck in his waistband.

  Johnson doesn’t have time to pull his own gun so he throws his weight across the seat and slams Macy into the door, pinning the old man’s hand behind his back. Johnson keeps pushing so the old man can’t bring that gun around and the old man keeps trying to get his arm out so he can shoot Johnson.

  The windows start to fog up as the two men struggle and suck air and Johnson watches Macy’s eyes get real wide as the old man realizes he’s fighting for his life. Johnson digs his feet into the floor and pushes harder.

  Goddamn shoulder hurting like hell where he’s pushing, but he needs his good hand to get the pistol from its hip holster and he does and Macy’s eyes get real wide like a horse that’s seeing a saddle for the first time and just figured out it’s going on him.

  Macy’s eyes are that wide when Johnson takes the .44 barrel and shoves it through the old man’s teeth. Macy makes choking noises and shakes his head wildly back and forth and Johnson has a tough time holding the barrel in there as he pulls the trigger once and then again.

  Johnson holsters the gun, starts up the truck and drives out of there. There’s blood, hair and brains all over the passenger window, but he figures he can clean that up when he gets to the motel.

  He wants to be sitting in that room when Bobby gets home.

  He pulls his truck into the Knotty Pine Motel, looks around, then carries Macy’s body into the motel office. Sits him down in the back room and puts the pistol in his hand. Looks for and finds the keys to Cabin 8. Drives the truck down the road a piece and leaves it at a scenic turnout. Hikes back up to the cabin and puts the key in the lock.

  49.

  Tim parks Kit by the gorillas. There’s a bench there on the little knoll and it’s an easy place to find.

  “Don’t move from here,” he tells the boy. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

  “Why—”

  “Do not move from this spot,” Tim says.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Kit’s pissed off but Tim doesn’t care. If everything’s cool at the meet he’ll be right back; if things are uncool there’s no reason to walk the kid into it.

  The kid sits on the bench and won’t look at Tim.

  “I’ll be right back,” Tim says.

  Kit just stares toward the gorillas.

  Tim stops in a men’s room on his way down to the elephants. He goes into a stall and fits the homemade silencer over the pistol barrel, jams it into the front of his pants under his denim jacket. Then he takes the cookie sheet from the bag and sticks it into the back of his pants and pulls the jacket down over it.

  On the way out he steps in front of the mirror to see if he looks like he’s walking anywhere close to normal. Decides he is—maybe a little stiff—but also decides it’s gonna play hell on any hopes of a future sex life if that pistol goes off accidentally.

  The elephant exhibit turns out to be a good choice. It’s on the end of a broad, straight walkway that allows Tim a good view on his approach. The Monk’s still standing there, the white bag dangling from his wrist.

  Tim tries to look around to see if there’s anyone else at the meeting who shouldn’t be, but he doesn’t see anyone too obvious just hanging out. Mostly it looks like foreign tourists and school groups and old people. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, really, but there’s no guys with shades, radios and machine guns standing around so he decides to go ahead in.

  Anyway, Monk spots him, takes off his shades and gives him as hard a look as you can give to a man you’re pretending not to see.

  Monk checks him out and then turns to the elephants and leans against the railing. Tim steps up beside him.

  “Good to see you, man,” Monk says. “It’s been—how long?”

  “Long time,” Tim says.

  “You look—”

  “Changed, Monk,” Tim says. “So do you.”

  “Time …”

  “Yeah,” Tim says. “Monk?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t look down, but I’m holding a silenced 9mm pointed at your gut.”

  “You don’t trust me, Bobby?”

  “I don’t trust anybody, Monk,” Tim says. “Let’s swap the bags now.”

  Tim can’t see through Monk’s shades but there’s that slight motion of the head that Tim’s seen a few hundred times on the yard. That look over the shoulder of a con who’s about to get it from behind.

  He sees it a fraction of a second before the blade of a heavy knife hits the cookie sheet over the small of his back. The point slides off where it was aimed but slices the side of Tim’s stomach. Tim looks down and sees the bloody blade straight under his right arm. He traps the attacker’s elbow under his own right arm, then grabs the guy’s wrist with his left hand. He presses down with his left and up with his right until he hears the guy’s elbow snap and then he lets go.

  And Monk is like gone.

  Tim’s walking away before the would-be killer hits the ground.

  He hears some old lady yelling, “Somebody’s fainted!” and he guesses that the elephants are shook up, too, because they’re making those noises from the old Tarzan movies, and then Tim realizes he still has the knife in his hand and he tosses it on top of a pizza box in a wire trash basket.

  Another classic Tim Kearney fuck-up in progress, he thinks as he notices the warm sticky feeling of blood coming from his right side and realizes that he would be like fucking dead if he hadn’t taken the precaution of that old trick from the prison kitchen. R
emembers that goof from Fresno and the surprised look on his stupid face when he went to stab Johnny Mack and the cheap shiv just bounced off the cookie tray and Mack turned around and like put his lights out and stomped him until the guards got there, and Johnny Mack was one big fucking black man, too.

  And why the hell am I thinking about that, Tim wonders, ’cause this is no time to daydream, because they’re coming after me.

  Tim’s trying to think—shit, trying to stay conscious—and walk and look behind him and even in the crowd he can make them out now. Three guys dressed like dorky tourists, one with an I ♥ San Diego T-shirt, another one with a Sea World T-shirt and a third with a Padres cap, and Tim doesn’t know how he missed them except that he’s a world-class fuck-up.

  Now Tim knows he’s truly out of his league, because there’s just too much going on for him to handle. Maybe Bobby the great Z can deal with this shit, Tim thinks, but I can’t. Like, there’s getting away with my ass, and finding Kit, and now we’re going to be out of money and out of chances and I’m going to get whacked at the fucking zoo, for chrissakes. And is that a pisser, or what? I mean, you live through three stretches in the joint, the Gulf War, the whole fucking scene in the desert, and you’re going to buy it at the zoo.

  But then he thinks Would these guys really take you out in broad daylight in a public place? And then he thinks Well, I guess so, because they just tried it, didn’t they?

  Life blows big-time.

  What Tim would like is to sit down and keep moving at the same time, which even he knows is a contradiction, but then he remembers the cable cars.

  Doesn’t think it through, though, and only figures out when he gets on one that he’s now fucking well trapped, because only two of the guys get on the car behind him and the third one goes racing up to meet them at the top.

  Anyway, there’s nothing to do about it so first Tim pulls out his shirt to check his side and there’s a nice five-inch cut bleeding like a son of a bitch and starting to burn. But it isn’t too deep, he sees, and figures he won’t bleed to death if he can get it bandaged pretty soon, so he tucks his shirt back in and starts looking around for Kit.

  Who isn’t at his bench by the gorillas.

  Tim feels this fucking terror shoot up around his heart because the kid isn’t where he’s supposed to be.

  Tim’s looking wildly around and can’t spot Kit’s blond head anywhere, and now he feels like he can’t breathe, and while he’s cranking his head around he sees the two guys in the gondola behind him just grinning. Tim looks up the hill and sees Mr. Sea World leaning against a tree screwing a sniper rifle together, and Tim knows the guy doesn’t have to be Lee Harvey Oswald to put two nice shots into Tim as he steps off the gondola onto that nice flat platform.

  You dumb moke, Tim tells himself. You monumental fuck-up. You blow the money, you lose the kid, and you get yourself killed. Just another day’s work for Tim Kearney, three-time loser.

  So Tim’s riding up to his death like he’s on a conveyor belt at a slaughterhouse. Like, he’s a hundred feet in the air with nowhere to go except the target range and like what’s he gonna do, jump?

  Which is what he does.

  Later his pursuers will tell Monk that Bobby Z flew—fucking flew—through the air. Just climbed up onto the edge of the rocking gondola, kept his balance and fucking flew across to the car coming down the cable on the other side.

  They’ll tell Monk that all of a sudden it was the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus up there, because the few people who happened to be watching at the time screamed like they do at the circus when they think the trapeze guy has terminally fucked up and there’s no net. Which there like isn’t at the San Diego Zoo, just hard ground and spiky fences and man-eating animals and shit. In fact, one of the hitters will tell Monk he saw the lions look up in anticipation when Z leapt from the gondola, but Monk would put that down to literary license. Anyway, the fact is that anyone who drops out of one of those gondolas at the San Diego Zoo isn’t likely to pop up and go like Ta-da, and jumping from a car going up to a car coming down is something only an idiot or a lunatic would attempt. Or a legend.

  “I can see now why the guy is a legend,” one of the hitters will tell Monk, who will not think this is literary license but will nevertheless be annoyed by the remark.

  “He flew,” the hitter will add in awed tones. “Like Superman.”

  Anyway, people are screaming—including Tim—as he jumps out of the car and he’s in air for what seems—especially to Tim—like a long time, then he’s grabbing the edge of the descending gondola and holding on by the fingertips and the two guys chasing him are too shocked to shoot him which would have been easy except that a couple of dozen people are now paying intense attention.

  People screaming, lions roaring, elephants trumpeting, security guys on the run, and Tim finally gets a leg up and over and pulls himself into the gondola.

  Landing with like a thump.

  But alive.

  At least for the time being, because Tim knows that when he reaches the bottom landing there’ll be security cops there, which could mean the slammer, which will mean death. And anyway, Mr. Sea World is probably right now madly unscrewing the sniper rifle and trying to get back down the hill to greet Tim at the successful conclusion of his ride.

  So there’s nothing to do but jump again before he gets to the landing, although Tim waits until it’s about a ten-foot drop before he does the Geronimo bit and just hopes that whatever’s down there is either like a Bambi or something or has already had its lunch.

  It is some sort of weird deer, as it turns out, that looks real startled when a human drops from the sky. It looks at Tim for a split second, then runs like hell away, which Tim also thinks is a fine idea, and he starts to climb the fence.

  Tim can hear the pitter-patter of little security feet—a familiar sound from his youth—running around looking for him so when he gets over the fence he gets into some thick bamboo and starts to make his way to a path on the other side, where maybe he can get away.

  Going through the bamboo is such a good idea that the sniper thought of it, too, and they’re each a little surprised when they come practically face-to-face. Tim hits him with three short, chopping blows to the face and the guy drops. Tim keeps moving, thinking fuck it—if I get out of here, I’m going to find the kid and move to Oregon because you have to fight too many people when you’re Bobby Z.

  So he decides just to start another life altogether. How to finance it is a different story, and he thinks maybe he’ll stop in Palm Springs on the way out.

  But first he has to find Kit, because although the smart thing to do would be to just get the fuck out of there and leave the kid, this is no time in his life to start doing the smart thing.

  Anyway, he just can’t do it for some reason, maybe the old impulse-control thing, so even as he hears the security cops in the bamboo yelling We found him! He’s hurt! Tim heads not out but up toward the gorillas to see if Kit has maybe gone back there.

  He hasn’t and Tim goes on your basic whirlwind tour of the animals of the world as he strides past gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, the rest of the primates, across the Asian steppes, through the jungles of India, down by hippo beach, into the snake house, and he can’t find Kit.

  Tim’s like panicking. He’s not even thinking that the hitters might still be cruising around looking for him, he’s just got tunnel vision for his kid and he can’t find him. He’s sees a sign for “Petting Zoo” and makes a dash for that, figuring that no kid can resist petting goats and sheep and other smelly shit, but Kit’s not there either, and now Tim thinks that somehow Monk knew about the kid and has grabbed him as a hostage.

  And Tim’s thinking about shooting Monk in the kneecaps as he goes out into the parking lot to drive off and phone Monk and make a deal, and then he can’t remember where he left the car.

  Parking lot the size of like Rhode Island and he can’t remember where he left the car.

>   Some kind of bird.

  Tim can’t remember the actual bird. What he can remember after some effort is Kit saying “The ostrich row,” he has a real clear memory of Kit’s face as the kid repeats it to himself, so Tim looks around until he spots the ostrich on the pole and he heads for the car, only remembering that Kit has the keys when he sees the boy sitting in the passenger seat.

  With a white plastic bag on his lap.

  “You’re hurt,” Kit says when Tim slides into the driver’s seat.

  “I thought I told you to wait at the gorillas.”

  “Good thing I didn’t,” Kit says, pointing to the bag.

  “How did you get that?”

  “I followed you to the elephants.”

  “You did?!”

  “And then I followed the guy with the white plastic bag,” Kit says, “and I grabbed it and ran.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Kit shook his head. “No guy is going to chase a kid through a zoo. They’ll figure he’s a pervert and beat him up.”

  Tim looked at the kid for a long moment and said, “We’re moving to Oregon.”

  Kit hands him the keys.

  50.

  Johnson’s been sitting in the cabin for hours and he’s starting to get worried that maybe Bobby’s smelled out the trap and taken off. The thought aggravates Johnson, because he’s tried to be real careful. He even decided against going through the front door, because Bobby might well have been cautious enough to leave a hair or something across the door and would check it. So Johnson went through all the hassle of climbing through the back window and now he’s sitting there with his cocked rifle across his lap and maybe his man ain’t coming after all.

  The same thought occurs to Boom-Boom, who’s spent the entire afternoon draining beers and eating pork rinds and waiting for that faggot lime-green car to come rumbling up the road. So by nightfall Boom-Boom’s drunk and ugly, much drunker than really behooves a man about to commit a murder, even by remote control. He just sits there by the window, staring out, and it’s almost too dark to make out the lime-green car when he does see it head up the road.