Daniela watches another young couple being led across the patio by the hostess, menus in hand. She seats them at Jesse’s table.
More troubled youth, thinks Daniela. They’re dressed cholo and chola, like Jesse and Lulu. Swagger and style. Look like teenagers. Daniela thinks of the seedy neon motels on Beach Boulevard, and the young prostitutes and pimps she busted in Vice. Pretty, most of them. The johns older, shamed and pathetic.
And now asks herself the million-dollar question: Will Jesse move in to Camp Refuge?
More accurately, will Jesse move in to Camp Refuge if Lulu wants him to? Camp Refuge is for boys, of course, but Daniela once worked a sting near the camp, where two girls working Harbor Boulevard flopped at a dingy Airbnb, an easy walk to Camp Refuge, where they hung when they weren’t hooking. Not enough reason for Vice to go after the church-backed camp or its suspect founder, although Daniela’s Vice squad partner — a dolled-up Deputy Bonny Lilly — tried to tempt Buendia at the Grove, where he was a frequent guest of, supplicant to, and a parasite upon, the rich and powerful.
No luck. On the several occasions that Deputy Lilly dangled herself at him in the Grove, Buendia barely talked to her.
Well, Mendez thinks: If I ask Jesse about mystery plastic bags, and certainly the Raptor camera drone, he’ll know he’s been surveilled and would swiftly abandon ship. Absolutely. As had Daniela, abandoning her entire ship, with a secret that was just beginning to show.
Like mother like son: Jesse would go.
So, why not head for Camp Refuge? Free room and board, and plenty lax enough that pretty Lulu could come and go as she pleased. He wouldn’t even have to change high schools. Could keep his job.
Mendez feels the frustration heating her up in the hot cockpit of the black Explorer.
Almost frustrated enough to go across the street and order Bishop Buendia to open the trunk of his lowrider.
And take Jesse by the collar of his red plaid cholo shirt, march him back here, and...
Ridiculous, she thinks. Stupid, destructive, and dangerous. She cracks a smile, self-disgusted and bitter as it is.
Daniela watches the two new arrivals order their food, and a few minutes later the waitress arrives with a tray of five platters and a stand. She remembers doing that at Applebee’s in her Citrus College days, how those platters would slide around the tray when she tried to lower it to the stand.
She eats the jerky and the apple, looking in on Jesse at work on some big grilled shrimp.
Sees the beauty of the child still in him and the strength of the man he’s becoming.
Hard to take her eyes off him but she finally does; starts up the SUV, cranks the air, and slowly drives away.
On her way to the Tarlow Company building in Newport Center, Daniela takes a call from Orange County Seventh District Supervisor Kevin Elder.
“Yes,” she says.
“I apologize for calling you out of the blue. I was wondering if we might take a walk on the beach at Crystal Cove.”
“Why?”
A pause, then: “For the reasons we discussed at the Grub.”
“Norris Kennedy or the personal ones?”
“Not Norris Kennedy,” he says quietly.
“Really I can’t. I wasn’t kidding about being taken.”
“By two lucky men! Is one of them Jesse?”
“Yes.”
“Well, are you happy with the other one? Does he treat you with respect and care about your happiness? Does he have any clue how singular and special and bitchin’ you are?”
“You’re laying it on pretty thick, Kevin.”
“I’m serious, Daniela. Isn’t there one thing I can do to get your company for a while? To see that pretty face of yours break into a smile? Anything?”
“I’m sorry. I’m taken and happy to be.”
“You are single. A widow. Pardon me if you find my curiosity offensive.”
“Single and happy enough.”
“Woman, woman. I admire you and what you’ve been through. I am trying to offer you friendship. Okay, Daniela, I won’t call you again. But you — if you ever need me for anything — please reach out. I’m always here and you know how I feel about you.”
Daniela punches off.
Single and happy enough.
Happy as hell.
29
That evening Gale takes the barstool next to Geronima Mills in the Swallows Inn bar in downtown San Juan Capistrano.
She’s got thick black hair, dark eyes, a pronounced Acjacheme brow, and a seashell necklace against a red, snap-button blouse.
He recognizes her from the YouTube Wildcoast protest, one of Franklin’s comrades-in-arms.
To Gale, a handsome young woman.
“I didn’t think you’d call,” she says.
“Why?”
“Just my doubtful nature.”
She waves the barwoman over, orders a shot of bourbon and a beer.
Gale does likewise. Reminds himself to go slow.
“How goes the case?”
“Plodding forward,” says Gale, worried about his arrest, if the DA will choose to charge and arraign.
“A suspect?”
Gale nods, watching the barkeep set down the drinks. “Vern Jeffs. We took him in this morning.”
“What’s he do?”
“Tends bar. I can’t tell you any more, Ms. Mills. Open investigation, all that.”
“Salud.”
They touch beer glass rims. Geronima Mills’s thick black hair is held back in a comb that looks fashioned from bone. Her eyes are alert and prying. Gale notes the intimacy implied when Acjacheme women wear decorative bone, checks his vanity.
“How old are you, Lew?”
“Forty-three.”
“I’m twenty-seven. Why do you live with your mother?”
Oh boy, he thinks. What he often thinks when asked a question he doesn’t want to answer. “It’s temporary.”
“How long has it been?”
“Couple of years. Why?”
“I just think it’s interesting,” says Mills. “I love her baskets. Frank brought some to Native Studies one day and some of the old ones, too. Made way back when by our ancestors. I started making baskets last year, but they’re atrocious.”
“Mom told me she started at twelve and didn’t get one she liked until she was sixteen.”
“A four-year degree in basket making,” Mills says with a humored smile. “Ever try it?”
Gale feels his candor slipping. “No. I made bows and arrows when I was a boy. I still do some of that. Helps me relax, get to sleep.”
She lifts her shot glass. “To baskets, bows, and arrows.”
Gale tastes the bourbon going down, feels its promise.
“I got a weakness for this stuff,” she says. “You, too?”
Gale nods.
“Are you sad to let go of me as a person of interest in the murder of Bennet Tarlow?”
“Burn him at the stake and eat his face?” asks Gale. “Killer dot-com? Kill Wildcoast? You’re still a very interesting person, Ms. Mills.”
“That’s just the way young people get things done now, Detective. It’s called branding. The power of drama. Becoming a virus. Killing Wildcoast isn’t killing Bennet Tarlow! It’s just self-promoting theater.”
“I understand that. So you’re old enough to know better.”
To Gale’s surprise, Geronima Mills laughs.
“Lew, I asked you to buy me a drink so I could ask you to come on my Kill Wildcoast podcast. I want you to introduce you as the detective who considered me a person of interest in the murder of Bennet Tarlow III.”
Gale flashes on his disastrous Times interview. “That’s a firm no.”
“I took it as honor, being a person of interest in the killing of a powerful man in a historically evil family. It made me a part of what happened, even though I had nothing to do with his death.”