Wild Instinct

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.

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.