There are things Jordan did that I found out about in pieces, months after the fact. This was one of them. I didn't know about the meeting. I didn't know about Dro. I didn't know about any of it until later, and by then he was already so far into it that knowing didn't change anything. That's the thing about secrets that are already in motion. You can't stop them by learning about them. You can only watch where they land.
The text came in at five o'clock.
Zen: Meeting today at 8pm. Come in. Bring a mask and your flag.
I read it twice. I said "fuck" out loud to nobody and put the phone in my pocket.
I did not want to meet these people. I'd been operating on the edges of this thing for months and I'd kept it clean specifically because I'd kept it limited. Me and Zen. Me and the jobs. No faces, no names, no crew dynamic to navigate. This felt like the edge of something I couldn't uncross once I crossed it.
I texted back: What kind of mask.
He said: One that hides your identity. Everyone wears one. Only I know the members.
I stared at that for a second.
What the fuck type of secret society bullshit.
I got in the Z and drove to a mom-and-pop costume shop, I found a mask that covered my face and a pair of goggles that would handle the rest. Paid cash. Drove home, put everything in my backpack with the orange flag, and sat on the edge of my bed for a minute.
Then I got up and went to the storage unit.
* * *
I took the Charger. That was the point of it.
I drove with the mask off until I was five minutes out from the address Zen had sent. Then I pulled over, put the mask on, adjusted the goggles, checked myself in the rearview. Nothing recognizable. That was the point of that too.
The location was a warehouse on the east side of a block that didn't have a lot going on after dark. I parked, got out, walked in.
At least fifty people.
They were all masked. Different masks, different styles, but none of them were playing around about it. You couldn't have picked any of them out of a lineup based on what was visible. I found a spot near the back and stood and waited.
Zen stepped up front. Standing there he looked different than he did at the shop. Not bigger exactly, just more settled. Like the shop was the performance and this was the real thing.
He said: Listen. In three days we're hitting a Compton dealer. There's a safe house and there will be a car with a driver. The driver stays in the car. Everyone else is either on the guns or carrying out valuables. You move fast. You move clean. You do not improvise.
Two guys came out from the side carrying storage crates. Inside each one was a row of phones, identical, sealed in plastic. One phone per person. They moved through the room distributing them quickly and without a lot of ceremony.
Zen said: On missions you call me Dro.
I held the phone in my hand and looked at it and thought: I do not have time for this. I had the competition finale coming. I had the bike half-finished in the driveway. I had Savannah, and the song, and Virgil still texting me about the New Year's set. I had a whole other life running parallel to this one and I was standing in a warehouse in a mask at eight o'clock at night waiting to talk to my crew leader about a raid on a Compton dealer.
I assumed I was the driver. That was what I did. I was good at it.
People were filtering in and out of a back room. Short conversations, quick. Nobody was in there long.
When it was my turn I walked in.
Zen was sitting. He looked at me and said, "Take off your mask."
I did.
He looked at me for a second like he was confirming something he already knew. Then he said, "This is your first mission. What do you want to be called?"
I thought about it for a second. Not long. I didn't really give a fuck what they called me, I just needed something that wasn't my name and wasn't Boosted Jay and wasn't anything that connected to either of those things.
"Hemi," I said.
He nodded. "Let me see the phone."
I handed it to him. There was a number on the back: 33. He read down a list, found the slot, added the contact, handed it back.
"Be ready," he said.
"Cool," I said.
I put my mask back on and walked out.
* * *
I drove home in the Charger with the mask off the second I was out of the lot, goggles on the passenger seat, phone in the cupholder.
I got home, put the backpack in the closet and sat at my desk. Opened my laptop. I had a beat I needed to finish before the finale and I was behind on it and this night had not helped.
I put my headphones on and got to work.
He called himself Hemi. I know that because I found the phone eventually, long after everything, buried in a box in his closet with the number 33 on the back and a contact list I didn't recognize and couldn't decode. I sat with it in my hands for a long time before I put it back.
Hemi. Like the engine. Of course.
That's Jordan all over. Even when he's hiding he can't help leaving something of himself in the thing. Some little detail that only makes sense if you already know him. I don't know if that's careless or if it's something else. Maybe he always wanted someone to find it. Maybe that's the only way he knew how to ask for help.
I don't know. I put the phone back and I closed the box and I didn't say anything to anyone.
I still haven't.