“Mom, either way that’s not going to be long.”
“Either way?”
“Whether I go now or later.”
“Go where?” asks Daniela.
“Lulu’s got family and friends in LA.”
“Have you spent a single day in LA?”
Another blush, fueled not by pride, but by being exposed.
Jesse shrugs. “Maybe get away from Dogtown.”
“Oh?” Daniela reaches across the scarred wooden table and sets her hand on her son’s. She’s surprised again by how much she doesn’t know about him. Maybe he’s right, she thinks. Maybe I only imagine the worst and that is all I can see. “That would be a good thing, Jesse.”
“Even with Lulu?”
“Even,” says Daniela.
“She’s better than you think. Maybe even as good as you.”
During her next few heartbeats, Daniela Mendez considers her life, her passion and seduction, her lies, her failing to protect her own son.
The story of my life, she thinks: circles and lines and knots.
I’ve got nothing on Lulu.
“Jesse, you said maybe move to LA. So, remember that college I’ve been telling you about? Azusa Catholic, run by Holy Martyr — my old parish, when I was your age. It’s in LA County, Jess.”
“I never liked my first Catholic school.”
“Holy Martyr is different,” says Daniela.
Is it ever.
He eyes her suspiciously. “Maybe. But I’d rather work and game than study.”
“There’s money to help pay for it.”
And your father can get it, she thinks.
“I can live at Camp Refuge for free, Mom.”
“While you run with Barrio Dogtown? No. I’m talking about a real school. Private. Nice dorms. Good faculty.”
“Priests and nuns, Mom. Hell.”
Jesse slides his hand out from under his mother’s, stands. As does Daniela. Who looks across the table eye to eye with him, wondering how he’s managed to grow four inches in one night.
All the things I do not see, she thinks, while I’m imagining the worst.
He heads down the hall.
“I love you, Jesse.”
“Early auto shop, Mom. Muffler repair.”
“Work tonight?”
“Oh yeah.”
Daniela sleeps until five that afternoon, dreaming of shooting a man she knows but doesn’t know, who gets up and tells her it’s okay, I’m alright, just want to be your friend.
Again and again.
Until her phone vibrates on her nightstand.
TeenShield notifies her that Jesse has entered the forbidden Barrio Dogtown ’hood to which her son has become a frequent flyer.
Work tonight, my ass, she thinks.
Jumps into her Explorer and heads out.
Halfway to Dogtown, Daniela sees that Jesse is back on the move, southbound on Victor Street.
To Colton to Edgar.
Picking up Flaco Benitez and his drone and cell phone team?
Is Lulu with him?
Jesse heads onto First Street, then Santa Ana Boulevard.
Daniela follows the TeenShield GPU car icon, which enters her own stomping grounds: headquarters of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and Forensic Services buildings; the federal building and courts; Orange County courthouse; the county supervisors; the hulking, concrete Orange County jail.
When she pulls close to the blipping icon, she spots Jesse’s shiny silver Corolla just four car lengths ahead, listing to starboard, probably, from the immense weight of Flaco “Skinny” Benitez in the front passenger seat.
Jesse stops at the parking structure across from the jail, punches in, takes a ticket, and waits for the arm to lift.
Daniela gives him two minutes to change his mind but the silver Corolla doesn’t reappear.
A red Tesla sweeps past the rising arm and Daniela pulls up, pushes the button, and waits.
This is the hairy part: Jesse’s going to make her black take-home Explorer if she doesn’t spot him first.
Spying, distrusting Mom.
Busted.
TeenShield shows his car a hundred yards ahead, which seems longer than the parking structure is wide, so Daniela figures part of that distance is up, not out.
The roof?
She plods along slowly, like someone looking for just the right space, some privacy, maybe, or to prevent door dings.
This late, the open parking places are many.
The higher she goes, the less cars.
Level four, spotty. Level five, nearly vacant.
She taps her brakes for a dusty silver Corolla, clearly not Jesse’s.
Then: ROOF, and an arrow pointing up and right.
Daniela takes a level-five space, puts the ticket on the dash and a wide-brimmed sun hat on her head, locks up.
Through the open-air railing near the elevator, she sees two young men and Lulu on the roof, huddled with exaggerated casualness around Jesse, almost totally blocked by Flaco Benitez, blue sky and white clouds above them.
She recognizes the two men from the recent drone-and-phone mission at El Salvador Park.
Looks around for Bishop Buendia, sensing that he’s hanging back, letting his foot soldiers do their thing, whatever that is. And, of course, letting them take the risk.
Her inner cop knows this is wrong: She’s not close enough to note details, and she’s not high up enough to see what a drone — once in flight and depending on its direction — might be flying toward.
She takes the elevator up one floor to the roof, exits quietly, her back to the boys and Lulu, sticking close to the safety railing, looking out and up as if enjoying this nice rooftop view, protected from the stunning sunset by her stylish hat. Pushes her thick black hair up under it.
Hears laughter from the gang, Lulu’s soprano and Flaco’s deep baritone.
Takes cover behind a security light stanchion and watches.
The others step away from Jesse, who lifts the drone for inspection. Daniela recognizes the red-and-black Raptor TX-395, fitted with what looks from here to be a smartphone, as before.
Lulu pulls Jesse’s arm her way, adjusting the phone, then clapping her hands and jumping up and down in her little skirt. She pecks Jesse’s lips and Flaco puts a hand on her back.
Daniela looks past the happy drone squad, recognizing the slot-windowed, forbidding jail buildings — Men’s Central Jail to the south, and Women’s Central Jail to the north. From her sixth-floor rooftop perch here, she’s looking down on the largely barren rooftops — enormous air conditioners sprouting thick hoses and pipes, electrical junction boxes, structures that look like backyard tool sheds but she knows to be exits. The roof panels are gray and rain stained.
Then Flaco takes the drone and holds it out over the railing like offering a sacrifice. The propellors blur and the Raptor TX-395 lifts off from Flaco’s big hands and, with the spindly lightness of a mosquito, rises into the sky.
Daniela watches her son, balancing the controller on the railing, and the drone, climbing toward the Men’s Jail.
High over the jail now, the Raptor begins its descent.
Movement on the jail roof, then Daniela sees a man, clad in an orange jumpsuit, slip from one of the exits, drop to the gray, stained panels, and scuttle into the shade of a huge air conditioner.
Lulu turns and looks at her.
Daniela moves in tighter to the big stanchion.
And sees the drone circling lazily down, Jesse sidling along the railing to keep the visual, controller held out, his fingers assured on the buttons and the toggles and the tiny joystick.
Lulu has turned back to the action.
Mendez watches the drone settle onto the Men’s Jail rooftop, not far from the inmate hidden in the AC’s shadow. Its rotors slow to a stop.
The orange-clad man hops from the shade, kneels, and removes the smartphone from the Raptor gimbal suspender and slips it into a black waist pack.