The Death and Life of Bobby Z: A Novel - Hardcover

Winslow, Don

 
9780679454298: The Death and Life of Bobby Z: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0679454292 ISBN 13: 9780679454298
Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

After killing a Hell's Angel, Tim Kearney finds himself offered a choice by the DEA, life without parole or impersonating dope smuggler Bobby Z, a masquerade that leads him to Bobby's girlfriend and young son, with a host of enemies in hot pursuit

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

<b>Think you've had some interesting jobs? You haven't read Don Winslow's bio.</b><br><br><b>Don Winslow</b> was born in New York City on Halloween night, 1953.  Go figure.  His father was a career Marine and Navy NCO, so he hit most of the ports on the East Coast by the time he was about six. Don grew up in Warwick, just outside of Providence and then in South Kingstown. He spent some time as an actor as a kid, at Theatre-by-the-Sea in RI, and doing radio commercials.  Don always knew he did not want to be an actor but the experience later helped him bluff himself into a job in college, directing a theater company for the Ford Foundation.<br><br>Don went to college at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, majoring first in journalism (even as a student he had the crime bea

Aus dem Klappentext

rney 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, according to California 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. Tim Kearney bears an uncanny resemblance to Bobby Z, and, with some training, he might be able to pass.<br><br>Or not. But, really, what choice does he have?<br><br>So, he's off to a compound in the middle of a desert that's been designed by Huertero's number-two man to look like the Arab fort in his favorite movie, <b>Beau Jeste</b> ("The Santa Fe thing had been done to death.") Kearney's surprised when he meets Bobby Z's old flame, Elizabeth, who was never mentio

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1.


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 Cruzsa 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 beant," 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 Ware 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 flick-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.

"Dub," 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...

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Verlag
Alfred a Knopf Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
1997
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0679454292
ISBN 13 
9780679454298
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
259
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Knopf
https://knopfdoubleday.com

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Verantwortliche Person
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Softcover