Wild Instinct

41

Just hours later, at first light in her humble Tustin home, Daniela showers off the dried sweat and blood, puts on jeans and her OC Sheriff’s windbreaker for the October chill, and looks in on her sleeping son again.

Look at him, she thinks. Just look.

She takes a mug of coffee to the table in her small living room, watches the local news. Nothing about the fatal shootout in Huntington Beach yet, but two men with ties to the Aryan Brotherhood have been arrested for the murder of three Laotians out in the mountains near Wildcoast.

People with guns, thinks Mendez.

Fuck them all, but not us. Defund us not.

She’s too weary to sleep, her mind scrolling through the last hours over and over but in random order:

Grant Hudson’s Rivian crashing into the oil pump.

Fog and gunsmoke.

OCSD Internal Affairs Form 1-C Deputy-Involved Shootings.

Mindy’s blood-smeared robe.

The suppressed bullet tearing through the heart of large Vernon Jeffs.

That smacking sound.

Kevin Elder’s blue eyes and his gray widow’s peak.

The jump of her pistol in her hands and the flicker of blood in the fluorescent lights as her and Gale’s bullets went through him.

We needed the money for the cancer... these pukes hired Vern...

Wiping the blood off the soles of her Adidas on the thin brown lawn of the Jeffs’s front yard.

“Morning, Mom.”

“Jesse. You’re up early.”

“School. Remember?”

“Sit down. I want to talk to you.”

Jesse gets a cup of coffee, loads it with creamer, and sits across from his mother. He’s in his black-and-white flannel PJs, his shiny scalp recently shaven, his eyes fastened on hers.

“I know about the drone,” she says. “I know about you and Bishop Buendia. I know you and Lulu have been running with Barrio Dogtown and I know from the counselor you’ve been cutting most of the few classes you have.”

“How do you think you know all this?”

“Friends. People at work. Buendia’s under surveillance by the gang squad, and you came up. Lunch at El Jardin. Drones and phones at El Salvador Park. You were observed to be a talented pilot.”

Jesse blushes with what Daniela can only surmise is pride. “Your friends are all cops, Mom.”

“A cop is what I am, Jesse. And your friends are all gangsters and wannabes. Such as yourself.”

He swallows, his Adam’s apple thickly bobbing.

“Well, about all that,” he says. “So what?”

“What does Buendia want you to do with them, the drones and phones?”

“They’re for rescue work in disaster zones. One of the things the bishop’s Camp Refuge does is disaster relief in California. You know, like wildfires and floods and the fentanyl epidemic.”

“So you shoot video and pictures from the sky?”

A smile and a nod. “Absolutely we will. The phones and drones are donated.”

“Not stolen?”

“See, Mom? You imagine the worst in me, so that’s what you see. All you can see. We’ll be delivering food and survival blankets — the lightweight, silver ones.”

“I see a lot of good in you, Jesse,” says Mendez. “Intelligence. Light. Bigheartedness. Love.”

“You hate Lulu.”

“I hate what she wants you to become.”

“You don’t know anything about her or what we want together. Do you want me to move out?”

Daniela chokes back the painful lump in her throat. “Absolutely I do not. I love you more than life, Jesse, and I want you to be here as long as you want to be.”

“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.

Then dodges back into the shade of the air conditioner.

The Raptor lifts off and climbs again, rising from the rooftop in a loose spiral and leaning toward Jesse and his team.

Daniela is pretty sure she gets it now.

There will be another smartphone and another.

Smartphones being even more valuable in prisons and jails than good dope, strong liquor, breakout saws, or weapons.

Phones are how inmates who haven’t seen the streets in years command them.

Such as Buendia’s Mexican Mafia royalty in Pelican Bay.

The Bloods and Crips in prisons and jails up and down the state, the nation.

The Aryan Brotherhood.

The Asian gangs in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Smartphones, often smuggled into correction centers by enterprising guards, crooked lawyers, crafty family and friends.

In this case, however, smuggled in by wannabe banger Jesse and his idiot friends, in the employ of Bishop Buendia.

Free phones to important gangsters.

Or for sale to anyone at two thousand a pop.

Felonies both.

Mendez smiles. It’s a bitter smile in her hard face but there’s mirth in it, too.

Over the next fifteen minutes, she watches her son pilot four more smartphones to the inmate slipping in and out of the shadows of the Men’s Central Jail roof.

“Jesse forgive me,” she whispers. “But maybe I can trade Buendia for you and your bonehead friends.”

She calls for backup, code red, no weapons on scene, tells Dispatch to run them in cold, no lights and sirens or we’ll lose them.

Flashes of botched arrests and excess force shoot through Daniela with the adrenaline. “God, he’s my son. Don’t hurt him.”

“The jail rooftop? Holy shit.”

Lulu turns in Daniela’s direction again, then she says something to Jesse, who ignores her, bringing the empty drone back from the jail.

Two minutes later, four Sheriff’s Department cruisers come up the ramp and onto the roof, running silent.

She waves them toward the Corolla even though it’s one of only three cars this high up, this late in the day.

Lulu pulls Jesse by the arm but he’s still got the Raptor in the air.

The radio cars sweep across the parking slots, spreading out and slowing as they near Jesse’s car.

Daniela strides toward Jesse with all of her considerable purpose and authority.

“Jesse! Lulu! Freeze!”

Flaco lumbers toward the stairs.

Six uniforms pile out, guns drawn.

Then two more, veering after Flaco.

Jesse faces the rushing deputies and lands the drone halfway between himself and them.

Sets down the controller and raises his hands.

As do the Dogtown boys.

Not Lulu, who raises something small and black and shiny, holding it away from her body.

Daniela sees that whether phone or gun, it really doesn’t matter, it’s enough to get her killed.

Jesse jumps and yanks the thing from Lulu’s hand, and in this moment Daniela knows he’s about to die. But Jesse stoops to backhand it across the concrete toward the closing deputies, the flat black phone skipping like a rock on a lake.

Flaco’s gigantic white Nikes plop loudly on the concrete as his right hand burrows into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Stop and down, big boy!” one yells. “Stop and get the fuck down!”

Flaco stumbles but doesn’t fall. Doesn’t stop as ordered, either. Can’t quite get his feet under him. Given his modest speed, he’s still a long way from the stairway.

“Freeze!”

He pulls the gun from his pocket and points it at the deputies, who unleash a roaring storm of bullets.

He backpedals and collapses. Butt-flops, then backslaps to the floor, arms and legs spread wide.