His life is a movie

Just after 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 13, 1996, Robert Leon, known on the street as Crazy Ace, was released from the California state prison at Norco. For four years and three months, from the time he was 21 years old, Ace had been in the care of the state’s correctional system. On the morning of his release, he walked into the cool spring sunshine wearing oversized jeans, a white T-shirt and black Nike tennis shoes. His homeboys had taken up a collection to buy him the clothes. Another inmate gave him the shoes so he would not have to walk out in prison-issue boots. He had $200 in his pocket, “gate money” that Norco issues every man upon release, and few other possessions.

Ace is an OG (original gangster) of the East Los Angeles gang known as The Mob Crew--TMC for short. He is also one of TMC’s main shot callers. His juice is such that he could even call shots from prison. With few exceptions, the young men who rise to the top of the gang hierarchy are those with the most intelligence, social skills, flair for leadership and the ability not to blink in the face of danger. Crazy Ace has these qualities. Wild, charismatic and full of drama, nobody walked the walk or talked the talk better than Ace. But now he wished to put the gang world behind him and build a safe life for himself and his 8-year-old daughter.

“When I get out I’m gonna surprise a lot of people,” he would say to his mother and the handful of others who accepted his weekly collect calls from prison. “A lot of people expect me to get out and fail. But, watch, I’m going to prove a lot of people wrong.” The adjustment to freedom turned out to be harder than Ace expected. A carload of excited young women waited for him outside the prison gates, intending to escort him home to East L.A. Although he did his best to affect good-humored bravado in front of his female audience, Ace felt more shock than exhilaration. Without walls to confine him, intense nausea set in, accompanied by free-floating paranoia.

Throughout his first week, the seasick feelings persisted. All the while, fearful messages repeated in his head: Maybe he wouldn’t be able to find a job, maybe the people who said they’d help him when he was locked up were just stringing him along. Maybe the only way he would ever make any money was to go back to slanging--selling crack cocaine--and then the inevitable would follow: He’d get arrested and go back to prison

Ace’s fears were not entirely without justification. An extravagantly tattooed homeboy with a felony record and little work experience is not the most desirable of job applicants. Moreover, Ace had two strikes on his record. Strike one was a juvenile conviction for narcotic sales when he was 16. Strike two had snagged him the four-plus years of state time. If he got popped again that would be the end--game over.

Ace trolled the classified ads without much result. Then during the second week of his release, fate delivered him a lucky break. Some gang workers, among them Father Greg Boyle, the Eastside’s well-known priest, recommended him for an innovative job program called Streetlights. The program puts at-risk young men and women through 240 hours of training to prepare them for jobs as production assistants. Thus on April 22, 1996, Crazy Ace was scheduled to begin a career in the movie business.

*

Not everyone in America agrees that training a man like Ace for an entry-level job in the nation’s most glamorous industry is a good thing. In recent years, the notion of rehabilitation for lawbreakers has fallen far from favor. The rhetoric issuing from both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates strongly favors punishment over redemption. In 1994, Congress voted to remove all grants allowing federal inmates to attend college courses; several states have banned weightlifting in prisons; Florida and Arizona have reinstituted chain gangs. Yet, according to the most recent Justice Department statistics, 1.6 million Americans are presently incarcerated, nearly double the number a decade ago, and a number expected to shoot still higher in the next decade. The fact that one out of every 167 Americans is behind bars suggests that--fashionable or not--rehabilitation is a concept that requires further consideration.

At least that’s what Dorothy Balsis Thompson thinks. A former freelance commercial and documentary producer, Thompson founded the Streetlights program in May of 1992, a month after the L.A. riots. At 46, Thompson has a personality of pure adrenaline and long strawberry-blond hair styled a la “Alice in Wonderland,” with bangs that she continually pushes out of her eyes. “Look,” she says, “I don’t think everybody can be rehabilitated. Some people should be locked up and the key thrown away. But you’ve got to offer something to the rest of these guys--the ones who are trying to make something of themselves.”

Even before the riots, Thompson had been disturbed that the city’s main industry was doing virtually nothing to combat the unemployment, frustration and violence of L.A.’s disenfranchised young. When she decided to start a program of her own, Thompson assumed that the entertainment industry would embrace the idea of Streetlights. “After all,” she says, “I was providing them a way that would let them complete a civic duty by doing something they have to do anyway--which is to hire production assistants.”

Thompson assumed wrong. Although her entertainment business friends were supportive in theory, they were reluctant to put kids on the payroll whom they imagined might come back and steal the equipment after hours. But Thompson was committed. To get the program started she depleted her savings, ran up her credit cards and let her rent fall behind. Finally she talked a few production companies into putting some guys on. Then a few more. By its fourth year, Streetlights had grown to the point that Thompson had placed a total of 62 graduates on such film projects as “Dangerous Minds,” “The Juror” and “The Nutty Professor,” plus a string of commercials and TV shows including “Martin,” “Picket Fences” and “Unsolved Mysteries.” Although Streetlights has a remarkable success rate--70% of its trainees have retained regular employment in the entertainment industry--many Hollywood production companies have yet to participate. “Frankly,” one production company head told her recently, “I really don’t believe people can change all that much.”

*

Named Crazy Ace by his homeboys because he is lucky at cards, Ace has a keen eye for emotional and social nuances. If he had been born under different circumstances, he might have excelled as a political organizer or an actor. He says his main memory of childhood is seeing his father knock his mother down over and over. When he was 6, his father and his uncle came in the house saying they were going to kill Ace’s mother. “My dad grabbed my mom by the hair and my uncle pulled the gun out. All of us kids jumped on both of them. That’s the only thing that made ‘em stop.” His father regularly beat all seven kids as well.

At age 12, Ace was walking home from school when he was jumped by local gang members. They beat him so badly that he spent the next two months in a coma. When he returned home to the Pico-Aliso projects, he formed a gang of his own. At first, TMC was mostly a break dancing group, but soon they were selling drugs and carrying weapons.

When Ace was 16 he was arrested on a drug charge and sentenced to juvenile probation camp. From the time he was released in 1988 until the time he went to prison in 1992, Ace was regarded as the leader of TMC--tough, fearless, yet honorable enough that he could facilitate cease-fire agreements between warring neighborhoods when no one else could. In the realm of Boyle Heights gangs, there were few who hadn’t heard of the famous Crazy Ace.

Now Streetlights was offering Ace the belated opportunity to convert his street-honed talents into a vocation. To do so, he would have to make some choices. “Obviously I can’t have a Streetlights trainee who’s still active in a gang,” Thompson told him.

Those who know Ace are split as to whether he can remain out of the action. “Sure, he’s really interesting,” says a probation officer who works the Pico-Aliso area. “But if you bet on this kid to make it, you’re betting on the wrong horse.”

“As a gang member,” says Father Boyle, “Ace is an Olympic gold medal winner, as respected as it gets. Before he was locked up, in terms of juice, it was Crazy Ace--then everybody else. But now, out in the real world, he’s going to be nothing. This could be a tough transition for him.”

*

To qualify for her training program, Dorothy Thompson’s applicants have to meet several requirements set down by L.A. County, the administering entity for the Federal Job Training Partnership Act grant that, together with private donations, allows Streetlights to keep its doors open. Applicants must live in one of several targeted low-income areas, have one or more barriers to employment--a felony record, no high school diploma, a basic skills deficiency--and must have registered for selective service.

A month before the spring ’96 training session starts, Thompson has weeded through her field of applicants and settled on a class of eight young men. Three of the trainees have been drawn from Pico Gardens and Aliso Village, which combine to form the poorest and most gang-ridden of L.A.’s public housing complexes. In addition to Ace, there is Robert Aragon, a.k.a. Creeper, another founding member of TMC, and George Guillen, street-named Koala, a member of another Pico-Aliso gang, Cuatro Flats, the mortal enemy of TMC. Ace has assured Thompson that it would be “no problem” being in a six-week training with Guillen. Thompson hopes he’s right.

Before he can begin class, Ace has a few obstacles to clear, the first being his wardrobe. Thompson has made it clear that Size 55 pants and a white JC Penney T-shirt large enough to be pitched as a tent are not acceptable apparel choices for Hollywood. Father Boyle agrees to spring for two uptown-looking shirts and two pairs of shorts.

Transportation is a knottier problem. While still locked up, Ace had asked that his car be sold to provide support money for his daughter’s mother. Aragon doesn’t have a car either. So together the two have lined up a string of friends and relatives to cover the rides to and from class. This, however, is a short-term solution, because Thompson has told them she can’t get them hired until they have cars. Ace is already dreaming of the car he wants to buy if Streetlights pans out: not a Corvette or a BMW, but a Taurus, the blandest symbol of middle-class success. “A black one,” he says.

*

The Streetlights program is divided into three segments: job training, job apprenticeship and a weeklong life skills course called “Rites of Passage,” the stated purpose of which is to take the Streetlights trainees through 10 “prerequisites” for manhood--Robert Bly meets the street. “Rites of Passage” begins today at 9:30 a.m. in a second-floor conference room on the Raleigh Studios lot in Hollywood. Ace is the first one to show up.

Robert Aragon calls to say his pregnant girlfriend is having contractions and has to go to the doctor. George Guillen is also absent, and one candidate has already been cut from the program by Thompson for “attitude problems.”

Ace sits at the conference table a little apart from the four African American trainees, his gang affiliation apparent by his tattoos. The most elaborate tattoos--the ones on his arms and shoulders that he had done in prison--are covered by his shirt. But a big TMC drawn in 4-inch-high letters above his right ear is easily readable through his quarter-inch haircut. The message “Sniper, R.I.P.,” penned in swirly script, can be seen draping along the back of his neck.

Ace has taken pains to look proper. His denim shorts and blue Henley shirt are so starched and ironed that they could have walked into class on their own. He has the stone-steady gaze of one who has experienced the worst of human nature, and his samurai calm contrasts sharply with the other trainees’ talkative unease. Yet there is also a naive air about him, an eagerness for this new experience.

“Each of you go ‘round sayin’ you da man. Well, are you da man?” begins Robbie Odom, an energetic young social worker is leading the “Rites of Passage” classes with his partner, Erik Ball. Odom and Ball, who has a master’s degrees in psychology, use a fast patois of psycho-speak cut with street vernacular. “Manhood is a social function,” Odom says. It is men who teach men how to be men. But most of you didn’t have a father in the home to teach you. One of the reasons we’re in the street is to find someone who can teach us how to be men.”

Odom asks the trainees to introduce themselves. Ace goes last. Most of the other trainees are what Thompson refers to as “high enders”--young inner-city men who do not fall into the same extreme-risk category as Ace, Aragon and Guillen do. One trainee says he is writing a screenplay. Another, who dreams of becoming a rap star, already has a demo tape.

When it is Ace’s turn, the tone in the room changes. “I’ve been shot,” he begins, his eyes as opaque as olives. “I’ve been beat up. My father left when I was 7. I’m a father--but I ain’t really been a father ‘cause I’ve been in prison. Little by little, me an’ my brothers are killing my mother. My younger brother will be locked up for a long time. My older brother just got 30 to life. I used to look up to him. Now he’ll never see the outside street again. I just got out of prison for two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. See,” he says, after a breath, “you grow up in the projects and you want to be somebody. You want a name for yourself. But you make a mistake and the door shuts for the rest of your life. I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to be a good father. That’s why I’m here.”

*

On day two, Aragon is present. Before class begins, Thompson stops by to make announcements, among them that Guillen has been arrested. The police raided his girlfriend’s house and found a man’s shirt, the pocket of which contained five pieces of rock cocaine. “But George told me,” explains Thompson, “that the stuff isn’t his.” Ace and Aragon smile, their expressions ironic and knowing. “It never is,” says Aragon.

At lunch, Ace and Aragon walk to a nearby food truck that serves tacos and burritos. Claude, one of the black trainees, walks with them. When his lunch arrives, Ace wolfs the food in seconds, then looks up, embarrassed. “I eat like I’m still in the joint,” he says apologetically. “In the joint they give you 10 minutes to eat. I can’t get used to having, you know, time.”

The day is taken up with self-help exercises. One is aimed at goal setting. “Plan your work, then work your plan,” chant Ball and Odom as the trainees clip pictures from magazine to symbolize their goals. “Otherwise the state’s got a plan for you . . . 16 new prisons before the year 2000.”

During the rest of the week, Ball and Odom cover a broad list of topics: How to Control Your Temper (“Respond, don’t react”). Racism on the Job (“It exists. You either gonna let it hold you back or you’re not”). Courage as a Spiritual Concept (“It’s not the absence of fear. It’s acting in the face of fear”). How to Make Peace in Your Life (“Without peace, all the rest don’t mean nothing”). One afternoon is devoted to money management. During this session, Ball delivers a spirited monologue on the glories of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. “You know how you keep somebody down?” he says. “You keep ‘em living from day to day. When you all start earning money, you should be livin’ on 70% of what you earn. The first thing you want to do is pay the bank of yourself. Which means you put money in savings or investments.”

At first glance it doesn’t appear that Ace is taking in much of this. But at the break, he is enthusiastic to the point of gushing. “I want to do that mutual fund thing,” he says. “I want to leave my daughter with something. Nobody ever did that for me. But the way they talk about it, it don’t sound so impossible.”

At the end of the first week of class, although Ace’s post-prison jitters have mostly disappeared, his past weighs on him. He wishes his younger brother, Fernie, was not locked up. He broods about Jimmy, his older brother, the one who was never in trouble, who had a decent job, a wife and a kid. Then, one evening in April 1994, Jimmy picked up a gun and blew his wife away. Ace heard about the murder in prison on the TV news.

“Out of all the things I’ve done--out of all the people I’ve shot. . . . and I’m not saying I ever killed anybody. . . . but I did harm to people. Why was it him that really messed up and got 30 to life?”

When asked if he thinks he has paid his debt for his own previous misdeeds, Ace’s face clouds over. “I don’t think you can never make up for hurtin’ somebody,” he says. “You just can’t. The scar will always be there, even if you can’t see it. I try not to think about the things I’ve done in the past. If I sit here and beat myself about things I done in the past--what could it help? That will only set me behind. All I can do is do my best to do good in the future.”

*

After “Rites of Passage,” the next five weeks belong to Thompson. Class has moved to one of Raleigh’s unused sound stages, where Thompson begins by handing out what she considers to be the most essential tools of the production assistant trade: a Thomas Guide, a fanny pack, a pocket-sized notebook, a copy of “LA 411,” the industry’s where-to-get-it bible, and a Streetlights-funded beeper. “And,” she tells them, “I ordered each one of you a AAA card.” Ace delights in his new tools, particularly the Thomas Guide. “This is even newer than the one in Father Greg’s car,” he says.

At the end of each day of instruction, Thompson and her associate, Janet Crosby, meet individually with the trainees to do what they call case management. Among the strengths of the Streetlights program is the six months of mother-like attention that Thompson and Crosby provide the trainees to make sure classwork and later employment are not derailed by personal issues. Sometimes case management means doing ad hoc couples counseling to head off domestic squabbles or finding a crash pad for a trainee kicked out of the house. In most instances, it has to do with money. The JTPA grant allows Streetlights to cover certain expenses like groceries and daily lunches. Other problems require Crosby and Thompson to be resourceful; Crosby recently scored supplies for Aragon’s new baby. Thompson is aware that, without such interventions, trainees like Ace and Aragon might feel pressed to find a less legal way of financial problem-solving.

Even so, the emergencies are continuous. On a Friday, Ace is issued a check for $47, which is supposed to cover his a week of lunches and other necessities. As the class day ends, he gets a 911 beep from Rebecca, the mother of his daughter. When he calls Rebecca back, she tells him her car has broken down. Ace hangs up the phone and stares at his check. “I didn’t want to cash this yet,” he says. “But what can I do? What if Robin gets sick and Rebecca has to take her to the hospital.” Two hours later he has dropped the entire $47 off to Rebecca.

Then there are the ongoing car and driver’s license problems. A recently incarcerated felon can’t get a driver’s license without fulfilling a complex set of requirements that include taking a drug test and acquiring a supportive letter from his parole officer. By the middle of May, Ace still has no car prospects and, despite several trips to the DMV, he is still without a license. He has, however, received his AAA card in the mail. “My first credit card,” he says.

One of the most frustrating aspects of gang work is that the smartest kids--the ones with the most natural gifts--are usually the hardest ones to get out of the gang life. A high-energy kid with a gifted-range IQ isn’t going to be engaged for long by a job in a warehouse unloading boxes, even though he knows he should feel fortunate to have that job. The street will continue to call out to him, not just because the street is more exciting than the warehouse. But also because, in a skewed and tragic way, the street uses more of his talent. A job in the film industry is different. Even an entry-level job for minimum wage doesn’t feel like a dead end. With a job in the movies, a guy can dream.

During the second and third weeks of training, Thompson has scheduled a series of field trips--junkets to prop houses, truck rental facilities, movie lots. Both Ace and Aragon spend endless time trying on the work gloves Thompson has told them they can select at an equipment supply house. One afternoon, the class meets on the set at Sony Studios, where a commercial for Snackwell cookies is being filmed. On the set, Thompson assigns each trainee to interview the head of a department. Ace is assigned to electrical. He dutifully questions the head gaffer during the lunch break. “I asked him if he knows everything, or if he’s still learning,” Ace says. “And you know what he told me?’ He told me, ‘If I’m not learning something new every day then I’m not doing my job.’ I was impressed with that answer!”

*

There is the illusion that gang members will prevent each other from leaving the neighborhood, as sea crabs will prevent the luckier or stronger of their number from escaping capture, pulling them back into the fisherman’s bucket. In the case of Ace and Aragon, the opposite is true--the homeboys are encouraging. When Aragon goes to take his driver’s test and passes, his friends congratulate him profusely. Another day, Ace and Aragon stop by the projects after class. There, a “street entrepreneur” friend drives up looking prosperous in a new Honda. When asked how he is doing, the friend shrugs. “OK.” He glances at Ace and Aragon. “I’d rather be doin’ what they’re doin’,” he says. “Dirty money don’t make you feel good, you know what I’m sayin’?”

However, there still exists a more subtle undertow that threatens to undermine Ace’s progress. On the first weekend after his release, Ace had called a TMC meeting to announce he was bowing out of leadership. But there are few TMCs who can duplicate Ace’s power to intervene at crucial moments. Thus temptation and pressure are always at hand. One weekend he gets between a pair of fistfighting TMC and Cuatro homeboys and ends up with a swollen eye of his own. And still one sees newly bloomed graffiti with the message “LOCO 1”--signifying Crazy Ace--around the projects. “I don’t tag,” Ace declares indignantly. “I guess the youngsters sometimes put my name up. That’s all.”

While Ace and Aragon have emerged as the stars of the Streetlights classes, there is slippage here, too. One Wednesday Ace forgets to bring a notebook to class. The next day he forgets his Thomas Guide. On the third day he forgets class notes, and he and Aragon are so unruly, laughing and kibitzing with each other, that Thompson gives up and tells the whole group to go home. That night she calls Ace on the phone.

“Maybe this isn’t the right time for you to be in the program,” she says to him. “Maybe you should wait until my next class in the summer. You just got out of prison. Maybe you need time to mess around.”

After Thompson delivers her ultimatum, Ace is quiet for several beats. “No,” he says. “If you kick me out now, I’ll never come back. But I’ll make a deal with you. Give me one more week. If you don’t think I should be there after week, then I’ll leave. No problem.”

Thompson agrees.

On Monday, the first day of Ace’s trial week, Thompson brings in a former Streetlights trainee named Mo Freeman to guest lecture. Freeman is 31 years old with a round, open face that exudes confidence. “Let me tell you about what being a PA means,” Freeman says, his voice resonant with experience. “For the first time in your life, you are in a position where you control your destiny. Look, you guys are getting trained better than most anybody out there. You have the opportunity to look like 10-year studs when you hit the dance floor. ‘Cause you already gonna know the dance.”

Ace sits up straight, takes more notes than anybody in the room and recites many of Freeman’s pronouncements back to him. Only when Freeman holds up a tool belt does Ace begin to fidget. “This is your best friend,” says Freeman, shaking the belt that holds, among other items, gloves, tape, two kinds of utility knives.

Ace raises his hand. “I can’t have those,” he says, pointing to the knives. “I’m a felon and my parole officer won’t let me.”

Freeman nods. “Well, ask him again,” he replies. “Here’s the deal. If it’s on your belt and you’re at work, it’s a tool. If it’s in your pocket and you’re in a liquor store, then it’s a weapon.”

Thompson is encouraged by Ace’s change in behavior. “When I see these guys just beginning to have a sense of a future, I just keep my fingers crossed that nothing crops up to send them over the edge. I mean look at what happened last year.”

Thompson is referring to Robert Aragon, who had been recommended to the Streetlights program exactly a year ago. He made it all the way through the classwork to his second job. Then one afternoon, a fellow trainee dropped the car-less Aragon off on a projects street near his girlfriend’s apartment. Before going upstairs, he detoured to the corner store to buy two beers and a gallon of milk. A police officer spotted Aragon and arrested him, knowing that Aragon’s presence in the projects was a violation of the conditions of his parole. Thompson and Crosby did their best to intervene in his behalf, but Aragon was sent to prison for 10 months. “It’s OK,” he told Crosby. “I’m used to it. I’ve spent the past seven Christmases locked up.”

Ace’s parole does not carry the same restrictions, but Thompson is convinced that walking away from Pico-Aliso is the only prudent course for Ace and Aragon. “I keep telling them,” she says, “that if you’re in a car, and that car turns left, you turn left whether you want to turn left or not. They keep thinking they can get out of the car at the last minute. Well, I got news, a lot of times they can’t. And they don’t just burn themselves, they burn the whole program.”

*

On the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, all the trainees are back at Raleigh for a daylong review session. Earlier in the week, Ace and Aragon worked their first jobs. As they are still in the apprenticeship period, they are not getting paid. But these are real jobs, on real commercial shoots, with real work expected.

Ace worked two days on a Discovery Zone commercial, at the end of which the production coordinator drew him aside. “I never do this,” she told him. “But you have busted your butt working for us, and I’m going to pay you for both days.” Ace is ecstatic. “They’re paying me $200,” he announces to the class.

“I’ll bet that made you feel like a million dollars,” Thompson comments. “No,” Ace says in a slow drawl, “it made me feel like a billion dollars!”

After class is over and everyone is gone, Ace returns alone to the conference room to pick up his fanny pack and other items. He gathers his belongings and is ready to leave, then he turns back to stare at the class materials scattered around the tables. In a few quick moves, Ace stacks the mess of notebooks, pens and papers that Thompson and the others have left behind, transforming the room from cluttered to clean. “There,” he says under his breath, “that’s better.”

When he realizes he’s being watched, Ace becomes uncharacteristically self-conscious. “You know,” he says softly, “I used to dream about a good future. But I couldn’t see it. Now I can see it.”

*

A man with no hope is dangerous. But a young man with a glimmer of hope is something almost worse: incredibly fragile. When things have gone wrong for so much of his life, he may find it difficult to believe that things can go right for very long. Deep down inside he is likely to still say to himself: A good life can never be mine. So I’ll ruin it myself before it gets ruined for me.

For the six weeks since the last day of class, Ace has borrowed his mother’s truck and has worked nearly every day. Once he finished the Discovery Zone job, the production company hired him a second and a third time, then wanted to hire him a fourth. “We love him,” says the production coordinator. But now he and Aragon are doing so well that they have moved up to features. Aragon is working as an office PA on the movie version of the children’s book “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” Recently he announced to Thompson and Crosby that he and his girlfriend plan to marry in the fall. He rarely goes into the projects anymore.

Ace is working on a movie called “187,” which stars Samuel L. Jackson. He was originally set to work for only two weeks, but his boss, a no-nonsense second assistant director named Rebecca Strickland, contrives to keep him on longer. “I have very high standards for all the people who work for me,” she says. “He wants to be good at this job and it shows.’

Ace says he is using the Streetlights training in his personal life. “ ‘Make peace’ and ‘Respond, don’t react’--those are the big ones for me,” he says. “I think it’s helping. I don’t fight like I used to with my daughter’s mother. And I don’t got so much anger at my dad anymore.”

He has asked Thompson to consider one of his best friends, Jaime Saldan~a, a.k.a. Puppet, as an applicant for the next Streetlights session. “Jaime’s ready,” Ace tells her. “I talked to him. I told him, ‘Look, you can’t come down to the projects as much. You can’t slang. You gotta be serious. If you’re not serious, you don’t just burn yourself, you burn the program.’ ”

When trouble comes, it comes innocently enough. At nightfall, Ace is riding a borrowed bike in the projects, headed for a rendezvous with a girl. All at once, several of Ace’s homeboys rush over to say that there are some Cuatros spray painting at the borderline between TMC and Cuatro territory. Ace decides to “take a little ride.” He peddles over to the area in question, where he sees five Cuatro homeboys wielding several cans of red spray paint. The Cuatros spot Ace and four of them respond by simply walking away. The fifth, a small-framed 16-year-old, stays as Ace rides over. “Watcho doing?” Ace asks the Cuatro, who is undoubtedly armed. The boy affects a menacing posture but says nothing. Ace pushes it. “You’re lucky I don’t mess you up,” he says. “Don’t disrespect me by crossing my neighborhood out in front of me. If I wasn’t the way I am now, I would’ve f- - - ed you up.” The two lock eyes for an instant. Then, without a word, the Cuatro turns and trots across the street. A situation that might have turned deadly in the space of a heartbeat ends benignly. When he is asked later if the time will come when he won’t take the bike ride at all, he answers with a steady look. “Yes, it will. But I’m not there yet.”

*

It is just midnight on a balmy midsummer Saturday. I’ve driven down to the projects specifically to find Ace. As a consequence of my writing, I’ve spent six years working in Pico-Aliso. During that time, I’ve gotten to know scores of young men and women well and observed how some are able to make the three-steps-forward, two-steps-back passage from dangerous rebellion to maturity, Ace, Aragon and Guillen among them.

Ace is one of those I know best. I have seen him at his most extreme-- racing down Gless Street, a gun in each hand, shooting with abandon. I’ve watched as he faced down an adversary, holding the silent threat so cold and shiny that he never had to make good. I remember when, crazed and despairing over the deaths of two friends--Sniper and Sugar Bear--he charged two housing police hoping to get himself killed. “Shoot me! Shoot me!” he screamed, running, unarmed, straight into the rookie cop’s drawn 9-millimeter Beretta. To his credit, the badly shaken officer did not shoot but, together with his partner, subdued Ace with a nightstick.

I also know him as a young man whose promise so impressed former Gov. Jerry Brown, when he met Ace during a 1992 inner-city campaign swing, that Brown sat at Ace’s defense table during his trial. During the years Ace was locked up, I regularly connected him to his daughter on the phone as he attempted, in the most impossible of circumstances, to remain a father. When my own son was being bullied on the elementary school playground, it was Ace’s advice (“Try not to let him know it gets to you”) in a call from prison that seemed to have the most calming effect.

I remember when Ace first talked to me about his fears and aspirations 4 1/2 years ago. “I know I can change and make a good life for me and my little family,” he said. “But I’m scared how things are going to be in the new life. It’s like a little kid scared to go to the closet with the lights off. You know nothing bad is in there, but you’re scared anyway because you can’t see what’s inside. I know the life I’m in is scarier, but I’m used to it.” Five days later he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and sent to prison.

Earlier in the week I’d visited the movie set and seen him looking well dressed and professional. But tonight Ace is slouching cool against a car, his hair recently shaved so that the TMC tattoo shows, his body once again shrouded in overblown pants. “But they’re smaller,” he says with a slow grin. “Size 44 instead of Size 50.”

He has been regaling those around him with stories from the movie job. “Samuel L. Jackson is all right,” he says. “He doesn’t act all, you know, up there.” He is enthusiastic, telling how his boss complimented him for his initiative. Homeboys and girls flutter into his orbit, floating out again if he pays them no attention. As he talks, Ace keeps a habitual eye to the street, fixing every passing car with a stare until he has recognized its occupants. Only once, when an LAPD black-and-white circles the block, does he turn his face way.

“I like both commercials and features,” he tells me. “But so far, I like features a little better. On a feature, the crew is more like a family. I’ve been watching all the different jobs, trying to figure out what I’d be best at, ‘cause eventually I’d like to move up. I think maybe be a gaffer, then maybe after some years, learn how to be a cameraman.”

Out of sight of the others, he pulls a check from his pocket. “See that?” he says, pointing at the amount, $234. “That’s for three days’ work. And I don’t spend it. I mean, I buy stuff for my daughter. And I paid half my mom’s rent. The rest I save. It’s not hard for me to save, ‘cause I’ve been on both sides. Easy money you waste. Working money you budget.”

He says his mom has lent him her truck on a permanent basis until he can buy a car of his own. “She’s real proud of me,” he says. I ask if he thinks his dad would be proud of him. He shrugs. “I guess if he knew.” Another shrug. “I guess he’d be happy I didn’t turn out like him.”

So why is he still down here? All it would take for him to lose everything is one crazy enemy homeboy, one cop with a grudge, just one unlooked-for moment of bad luck that no one can predict or prevent.

Ace tucks the check back in his pocket and attempts to affect unconcern. “I just come down here to kick it and go to parties on Saturday night,” he says. “Like tomorrow is Sunday, so I’ll maybe take my daughter to the movies. But I’ll be home and in bed by 9 o’clock, so I can be in good shape for work.”

He takes a breath and lets it out. “Look. Now when I’m here, I let it be known, ‘Don’t do nothin’ around me.’ Like I always want to know where the guns are. I say, ‘Where are the guns?’ They say, ‘Yeah, well, they’re right there and there and there.’ And so I just move away. I look to see who’s slanging and who’s not. Sometimes I have an instinct that something’s going to come down. Then I just up and go home.” For a moment we are both struck silent by the implication of what he has said. A year ago, I would have bet Robert Aragon to be the more imperiled of the two. But now Aragon has crossed over the essential border into a safer life--as safe as safe gets, anyway. Ace has not. As far as he has come, as much talent as he possesses, as fervently as he appears to want to change, he still stands at the borderline.

The dread, hope, heartbreak I feel at this recognition must show on my face. Ace sees it. “There’ll be a time when I’ll be able to leave here,” he says quietly. “But I ain’t gonna let nobody push me into doing it sooner than I can. You know what I’m most grateful for? Just bein’ alive. I ain’t kiddin’ you. Not many people have been where I’ve been and can live and tell about it.” Then Robert Leon, a.k.a. Crazy Ace, cocks his head to the side and smiles his most dazzling smile. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I could’ve wasted my life, but I didn’t. It’s gonna be OK. I’m gonna be OK.”