Vato Gomez

Vato Gomez is a tow-truck operator in Vineland whose everyday partnership with Blood is marked by teasing, shared work, and a common devotion to the Los Angeles Lakers. His decisive appearance comes when he answers Brock Vond’s late-night call and drives him away from a stranded car. On that journey, Vato tells an old Yurok tale about a bereaved man who follows his beloved toward the land of the dead, turning an ordinary pickup into a passage shaped by folklore.

Identity and Connections

Vato appears in the evidence through a small number of concrete roles rather than an extended personal history. He works alongside Blood in their Vineland shop, and the two have an F350 tow truck, El Mil Amores. Their partnership is practical as well as social: when a call comes in, they decide together to go, and Vato takes the wheel while Blood rides with him.

Vato is also named in a remark about a Mexican curse that wishes a person a life crowded with lawyers. The remark is attributed to him in connection with Zoyd Wheeler’s reluctance to approach Elmhurst, Zoyd’s lawyer. It places Vato’s speech within the novel’s comic suspicion of the legal system, but does not supply further detail about his relationship with Zoyd.

Work, Banter, and the Lakers

One evening, Vato and Blood watch a television film that casts a Lakers game in Boston as a struggle against hostile opponents, officials, and spectators. Both men support the Lakers, so their shared allegiance gives them little to argue about; they find another subject in Jack Nicholson’s sunglasses. Their mock criticism briefly distracts them from the game, while Lou Gossett Jr. makes a basket.

The exchange establishes the texture of Vato and Blood’s companionship: rivalry is a pastime rather than a rupture. The slow evening brings no calls while the film plays. At its emotional ending, the two have gone through a whole box of tissues between them. The comic contrast between their needling over sunglasses and their shared tears makes the shop feel like a familiar place of work and leisure, before the telephone interrupts that routine near midnight.

Answering Brock Vond’s Call

Vato answers the phone and learns that Brock Vond is stranded. Vond’s account is vague: he has gone by helicopter and then by car, but the unfamiliar vehicle has failed on the road. Its battery is dead, its headlights have faded out, and Vond has reached a roadside telephone. After Vato hangs up, he tells Blood who called; the two agree to go.

The pickup is described from Vond’s disoriented perspective. He has difficulty recalling how he reached the car and feels detached from what is happening. In the darkness he sees the approaching lights of El Mil Amores. Blood tells him to get in, and Vond boards the truck beside him. When he asks about his car, Blood looks around and finds that it is no longer there. The stranded vehicle’s disappearance is left unexplained; Vond simply leaves with the two men.

As the truck moves on, the road changes from pavement to dirt and the trees draw close on either side. Vato drives while Blood accompanies him. The change in setting leads into Vato’s story, so his role in the scene is more than that of the person who answers the call: he carries Vond from a confusing roadside encounter into a landscape the narration increasingly associates with the dead.

The Yurok Tale and the Road to the River

Vato tells of a man from Turip, on the Klamath River, who loses the young woman he loves and follows her into the land of the dead. There he finds Illa’a, the ferryman who carries the dead across the final river, and smashes the boat’s hull with a stone. With the crossing disabled, no one dies in the world for ten years. The man does not recover the woman; instead, he returns to Turip, where everyone had believed him dead, becomes famous, and repeatedly warns others against the Ghost Road to Tsorrek.

In the tale, the road leads to a crowded land of death from which no traveler can return. As Vato continues driving, the scene around Brock Vond takes on matching features: the road narrows between high walls, roots twist overhead, and the sound of a river grows louder. Beyond it are voices telling stories, cursing, arguing, and singing without pause. The narrative does not explain Vato’s purpose in choosing this particular tale. Its placement, however, makes his storytelling the bridge between the practical act of answering a call and the increasingly uncanny journey that follows. The man in the tale cannot retrieve his beloved, and the tale offers no promise of return; its warning accompanies Brock as the truck approaches the river.