“Steve says this offer won’t last much longer. Says, we can increase the money. Thirty grand right here and now, and another thirty when it’s done. You can keep the Halliburton. Two of them, actually. On us. Sooner, not later. Weeks, not months. We understand you need time to learn his habits and patterns. But it doesn’t have to look like suicide or an accident. We just want him off the team.”
Gale’s disbelief of Jeffs’s story crashes against the rocks of it. The rocks are winning right now.
“So I told them yes.”
A long near-silence while the Chihuahua barks away.
“Two days later I changed my mind. Cancelled the deal when Steve called. They haven’t contacted me. The thirty grand was under my bed in the Halliburton.”
Another silence.
“And you haven’t gotten more than a glimpse of Curtis,” says Gale. “And not even that of Steve.”
“They’re just voices,” says Jeffs. “I never forget a voice. Ask Mindy.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll come after the money?” asks Gale. “Shoot you in the kneecap for their trouble, or worse?”
“Don’t say kneecap! Let ’em try. They’re not those kind of people. They’re guys in suits. Lawyers, accountants, fixers. Slick and gutless. Not real people, like us.”
Jeffs laughs quietly.
“They could hire it out,” says Mendez. “Like they hired you.”
“Tried to hire me. I have no fear, Daniela. They know I’ll give the money back. I want to give it back.”
“No,” says Gale. “You’re going to give it to us to process into evidence.”
“Vern was afraid you’d pull that one on him.”
“You just confessed to conspiring to murder Bennet Tarlow,” says Gale. “Now you’re under arrest for it.”
Gale exits the Explorer, and Mendez hits the back door unlock. Jeffs glares at Gale but holds his hands out and together.
Jeffs smiles hugely as Gale applies the plastic. His red whiskers are growing out, and sweat rolls down his temples.
“Better tie my ankles, too,” he says. “So I can’t make a run for it. You still got nothing on me. The story about Steve and Curtis is pure bullshit, and I didn’t kill that guy. Don’t bother looking under my bed.”
Mendez rolls out of the parking lot as Gale reads the big man his rights off a card he carries in his wallet.
“Yeah, man. Yeah. You still got nothing on me.”
“How come you ate at Bamboo a few days ago?”
Jeffs’s smile fades, and the sweat is still rolling down his temples.
“I was hungry, man.”
28
After booking Vernon Jeffs into Orange County jail, Daniela fakes Gale with bogus doctor’s appointment so she can surveil Jesse — who is supposed to be in class. She feels bad lying to her new partner, but not bad enough to let her son cut class and do god-knows-what with Lulu Vega.
She’s parked down and across the street from El Jardin restaurant in Santa Ana in her black Explorer, slumped in the driver’s seat, binoculars balanced on the lowered window.
For nearly three hours she’s followed them through her TeenShield app, on a seemingly random tour of gang-infested barrios in Orange and Los Angeles Counties.
She’s watched them go in and out of six dour little houses, returning from four of them with white plastic Ralphs bags and from the other two with brown bags from Vons. The bags look to be weighted by something heavy and small.
From the seventh house, way up in Long Beach, Lulu carried a large rectangular box with a picture of a drone on it, and the words RAPTOR TX-395 CAMERA DRONE emblazoned on the side in red and black.
All of which, bags and box, Daniela watched Jesse and Lulu — not five minutes ago — set in the trunk of a portly man’s gleaming 1955 aqua-on-white Chevy Bel Air lowrider, parked on the street in front of El Jardin.
Mendez knows this guy.
Oh, does she.
Before he closed the sleek aqua trunk lid, Daniela watched Jesse pull out one of the Ralphs bags and show him what looked — through Mendez’s binoculars — to be a smartphone. Which drew an approving nod from the white-suited man, who snatched the re-bagged phone from Jesse, dropped it into the trunk, and carefully lowered the lid.
Now Daniela watches Jesse and Lulu being seated on the open-air deck of El Jardin along with the plump, white-suited man.
Now the hostess hands them menus and departs, leaving Daniela with a clear close-up of them, unimpeded by the blossoms of potted mandevilla vines lining the perimeter of the deck.
Jesse’s wearing black shorts and calf-high white socks that look new and that Daniela has never seen. A red plaid short-sleeve shirt, collar open, silver chains.
Lulu’s got on a black boob-tight singlet and a flowing beige skirt with a slit high up one thigh. Heels. Hair up, lollipop earrings, hummingbirds and vines tattoos on her shoulders.
Daniela has never seen this ink, either.
Uses the binoculars to study her son again, searching for new tats.
She wonders how she could have missed Jesse’s high white socks and cholo shirt. He hid them from her, of course, but how could she have missed what he is becoming? Missed? Missed my ass — she thinks — it’s called denial. Of what’s happening to the thing you love most in this world.
Her heart pounds harder as she focuses in on the man, his clean-shaven, cherubic face and short, gleaming, pomaded hair. He wears his signature getup: a white suit and white shirt, shiny black shoes, and a priestly purple stole.
He’s Alfredo Buendia of Santa Ana, a once-feared, former La eMe kingpin nicknamed “The Bishop” for his primitive, violent Christianity — a Pelican Bay prisoner, pardoned ten years ago by the governor.
Convicted of narcotics trafficking amounting to tens of millions of dollars, and mayhem — sliced open a rival’s face with a knife.
Suspected of ordering thirteen murders, four committed personally, but witnesses kept disappearing or wouldn’t talk.
Founder, years ago, of Camp Refuge for troubled boys right here in Santa Ana.
Camp Refuge for troubled boys.
Of fucking course, thinks Daniela.
Buendia is in perfect company here with her own and only begotten son.
A perfectly troubled boy.
The kind he can help, if you believe what he says.
But some people don’t.
Such as those that Daniela — in her fifteen years with the Sheriff’s Department — seven in Vice, has talked to about Buendia. Deputies. Social workers. Prosecutors. Her own informants. Her eyes and ears on the street.
Not a single one of which believes that Alfredo Buendia is even close to clean.
But the Orange County Catholic Diocese lavishly sponsors Camp Refuge and proclaims that Buendia is a modern-day saint, saved by Christ.
The media love his rise from the ashes, his gang-to-God story. Call him warmhearted, a homie hero. And Daniela’s department treats Buendia as they would any law-abiding citizen, under the laws that she has sworn to uphold.
Innocent until proven guilty.
Happy pink mandevilla flowers flutter around the edges of her lenses, framing his divinity.
Mendez lowers her field glasses. A waitress arrives. Daniela watches as Alfredo Buendia stands, embraces her politely, and pecks her offered cheek.
Her heart is still thumping, and her stomach grumbles. Hot in here, even with the windows down. She wipes her brow with one of the Jack in the Box napkins she keeps in the Explorer for such occasions. Keeping a low profile, she rummages through the Explorer console and finds beef jerky and an apple.