Las Noticias en Español

“Ya’y que iiiirnos, güey,” Fumigator No. 1 pleads to his colleague. (“Let’s gooooo already, fucker.”) They’re in Orange, California, at a Mexican bakery, Spigas, where they stop most mornings; their truck stretches across three parking spaces outside. The place is packed—Spigas has only four booths—as painters, gardeners, and drywalleros wedge in to pour themselves coffee. A long glass bakery case holds Mexican and American pastries (pan dulce, empanadas, danishes the size of a face). On a small stove near the cash register, a woman makes breakfast burritos.

Fumigator No. 2 won’t leave. He stares at a television, mounted on a wall beside the Spigas menu. It’s airing Noticiero Telemundo 52, the 6:30 a.m. newscast for KVEA-TV in Los Angeles. A report from Santa Ana, just down the 5 Freeway, shows the wreckage of a twin-engine Cessna aircraft that, a day before, had fallen from the sky.

“They said earlier that they were going to show the crash,” Fumigator No. 2 says in Spanish, loud enough for everyone to hear. Customers and Spigas staff turn their eyes to the screen. Then they see what they’ve been waiting for: a grainy cellphone video of a small plane nosediving into a Staples parking lot. “,” someone says.