Snowblind

Chapter 26: Smooth Operator

San Juan Capistrano, California

April 2, 1996

The limousine dropped Matt Tisdale off in front of his house just past two o’clock that afternoon. He stepped out, his battered briefcase in hand, without waiting for Brian, the driver, to open the door for him. He handed Brian a fifty-dollar bill, told him to go get his weenie wet, and then trudged slowly up to the front door. He had been home from the United States portion of the tour for three days now—the last date had been in Buffalo, New York—and he had just returned from his first trip outside his home since then. He was still tired and still a little wasted despite having slept for thirty-nine of the last seventy-two hours. He really wanted a little snort of the white powder right now, but, unfortunately, he still had one more meeting on this day—although this one was at least in his own home—and his rule about imbibing under such circumstances still held.

The house was its usual spotless self when he entered, but none of the servants were currently in residence. Kim was there, however. She was in the living room watching an old episode of Star Trek the Next Generation on television and sipping from a glass of white wine. Her blonde hair was down, and she was wearing a crop top and a pair of loose-fitting cotton shorts that showed a lot of her sexy legs.

“Hey, Mattie,” she greeted as he came into the room and set the briefcase down.

“Hey,” he returned, eyeing her glass of wine. He did not normally drink the shit, but maybe one glass wouldn’t hurt? He had not had any alcohol since about nine o’clock the previous night and he was starting to feel just a little jittery.

“How’s the taxes?” she asked, turning the volume down on the set.

The meeting Matt had just returned from had been with Andrew Hopple II of Hopple and Hopple Accounting. They had gone over Matt’s federal and state tax filings that Hopple had prepared and Matt had signed them.

“Looking good,” he told her. “I pulled in almost eighteen mil last year when you add up all the album royalties, tour revenue, endorsements, and all the merchandising. My best year so far.”

“Not bad,” she said appreciatively. “How much did you pay in taxes?”

“One point five mil,” he said sourly. “Ain’t that some shit?”

This got her attention. “One point five million dollars? Is that all?”

“Yeah, between federal and state, one point five mil. What do you mean ‘is that all?’ That’s an assload.”

“That’s nothing compared to your income,” she said. “I paid half that much in taxes and I only pulled in about three million in income last year.”

“That’s because you got those fucking Jew accountants doing your books for you,” he said. “Their asses are so tight you couldn’t put a fuckin’ Q-tip with lube on it up there. My guy is a fuckin’ sleazeball—and that’s a bold fuckin’ statement coming from someone like me—but he’s pretty good with figuring out loopholes for me. The big one is that I can claim I don’t live in the US because I got a house in Mexico. That means I’m not subject to US taxation on my royalties since the point I bought the house. Also, my boat and everything associated with it is registered in Mexico. I don’t have to pay luxury tax or any of that other bullshit on it.”

Her face scowled a bit. “Are you sure about that?” she asked. “That doesn’t sound legal to me.”

“Hey,” he said with a shrug, “Hopalong Ass-sleaze has been filing my taxes this way for a few years now. So far, everything’s gone through like shit from a goose.”

“It still sounds kind of funny,” she said. “Maybe I can have Adam, the guy who does my taxes, take a look at your paperwork? Just to confirm you’re not playing with fire here?”

“Fuck that shit,” he said. “I don’t want those fucking kikes getting their eyeballs on my financial business. It might give them ideas.”

She sighed, knowing better than to push the issue beyond this point. “All right,” she said. “But I would be wary if I were you.”

“I’m always wary around that asshole Hopple,” he assured her. “Don’t worry. Things are well in hand.”

“You say so,” she said. “What time is that music guy coming over?”

The music guy she was referring to was Jerry Stillson, who used to be head of tour management at National Records. Matt and Jake and the others had banged heads with him a few times back in the early Intemperance days, though only on the telephone, never in person. Stillson was now the head of something called Music Alive and had asked to meet with Matt to discuss “a very lucrative proposition”. After determining that this proposition did not involve Matt performing any Intemperance material or reuniting in any way with any Intemperance member, he agreed to the meeting, but only if it would take place at his home so he did not have to travel.

“He’s supposed to be here at three o’clock,” Matt told her.

“Any idea what he’s after?”

“Not really,” he said. “I know he’s separate from the record companies now and in the business of booking live music for tours. Most of the shit he’s involved with is getting these old broke-dick bands that used to be popular in the seventies and eighties back together so they can tour for money.”

“Cashing in on baby boomer nostalgia, huh?”

“That’s right,” he said. “He’ll sign these guys up and then send them out touring in small venues in small cities across the country, charging sixty or seventy dollars a ticket.”

“I guess that’ll pay the bills,” she said approvingly. “What does he want with you though? You’re not a broke-dick. You’re one of the hottest of commodities right now.”

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “I guess I’ll hear the man out at least. The moment he starts saying shit I don’t want to hear though, he’s out on his ass.” He sat down next to her and put his hand on her upper thigh. “Want to fuck?”

“I do,” she said. “I’m very horny right now.”

“All right then,” he said, running his hand up a little higher.

“But...” she said, pushing it back down, “I want a real fuck, not a quickie. I want to grind out at least two comes from your mouth and two from your cock.”

“No problem, baby,” he said. “I haven’t eaten pussy in a while now. You know I don’t do that shit with groupies.”

“I know you don’t,” she said. “But there’s not enough time for such a fuck before your meeting.”

“Sure, there is,” he assured her. “We got fifty minutes. I’ll just skip the shower afterward.”

“You want to have a meeting with your breath and skin smelling of my pussy?”

“Why not?” he asked. “I’ve done it before.”

She shook her head. “No way, Jose,” she told him. “Just keep it in your pants until the man leaves. We’ll fuck our brains out and then heat up the dinner Louisa made for us.”

“All right,” he said sourly, “but if we’re gonna do it that way, I’ll need a couple of drinks and a few lines of blow before we get started.”

“Understood,” she said. She then reached over and picked up a magazine from the end table. “Here. Check this out.”

He saw it was the latest issue of Smooth Operator. Kim had a permanent, gratis subscription to the publication, as well as to Hustler, Penthouse, and Barely Legal, because she paid for a significant amount of advertising for her company’s videos in these magazines each month. This was the May edition, which, per normal practice, always came out at the beginning of the previous month. The cover showed a very buxom bleach-blonde who looked pretty damn close to that ‘barely legal’ demographic sitting in a bath towel with her legs spread, the towel just covering her nipples and her crotch at either end, an expression that just dripped with ‘I want to fuck’ on her face. Ginny Jacobs was her name, according to the print below her, and she was the ‘Operator of the Month’.

“She’s pretty hot,” Matt opined. “And I’ll probably whack-off to her at some point, but right now I’m saving my load for you.”

“I don’t want you to whack-off with it,” Kim said, continuing to hold the magazine out to him. “Read the part next to the slut on the cover.”

He took the magazine from her and took a closer look at the cover. Sure enough, what he saw there piqued his interest a bit. Under the bold listing of INSIDE THIS EDITION, was a teaser.

THE SEARCH BEARS FRUIT! INTERVIEWS WITH MINDY SNOW’S CONQUESTS!

IT TURNS OUT MINDY IS A STRONG SUPPORTER OF THE WORKING CLASS!

“Ohhhh,” Matt said, smiling a little. “Jerry Claw found some people willing to talk, huh?”

“Several,” she confirmed. “It’s a very interesting read.”

Matt had followed the whole Mindy Snow and Greg Oldfellow saga with lukewarm interest when it first broke, mostly because he couldn’t stand that bitch Celia Valdez. He still held a grudge against her dating back to the Intemperance days and he was also jealous of her recent runaway success. When Condom-Gate began, however, his interest perked up, mostly because he enjoyed watching bitches like Mindy Snow (who he had never fucked, and who had rejected him the one time he had hit on her) get taken down a few notches. And he did feel a certain kinship with Greg Oldfellow. According to the stories, Oldfellow was a man who liked to score his share of gash (nothing wrong with that, it was natural) and who had apparently been roped into knocking the bitch up through conniving and deceit—the exact scenario that was one of Matt’s greatest fears in life.

He opened the magazine to the table of contents and saw that the Mindy Snow story started on page 23. He flipped to that page, pausing only once to admire a few shots in the “Amateurs Show Their Smooth” section (a buxom brunette housewife with huge, floppy tits and a C-section scar—though she was indeed ‘smooth’, per submission requirements—drew most of his attention). On the opening page of the article was a picture of a young, physically fit man in his early twenties. He was not showing his smooth but was instead dressed in a pair of jeans and a work shirt with the name of the company he worked for blurred out.

Stan Colder was the man’s name, according to the article, and he worked for the company that delivered propane to Mindy Snow’s ‘mountainside retreat outside of Hollywood’. His claim was that on his last delivery to her house, which took place on February 6, 1996, just one day before the American Watcher broke the story of Mindy’s pregnancy, Mindy had invited him into her house and flat out asked him to fuck her.

“Had you ever met Mindy Snow before that day?” he was asked.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t even know that was her house. I was very surprised when she came out and started talking to me.”

“Did she mention why she chose that particular moment to introduce herself to you?”

“She said she was horny as hell and needed a good fuck and wanted to know if I could provide her with one.”

“And you did?”

“Hell yes, I did,” Colder said. “This was Mindy Snow. Who is going to turn something like that down?”

What followed was a clarification that Smooth Operator investigative reporters were able to verify that Colder worked for the company he claimed, that his route did indeed service Mindy Snow’s publicly recorded address, that he had been on duty on the day in question, and that Mindy’s domicile did receive a propane delivery on that day. There was then a disclaimer that they could not actually verify Colder’s story was true, but they had enough corroborating information to print it. That being said, the rest of this section of the article was a fairly graphic description of the sex itself—graphic enough that Matt sprung a respectable semi just reading it. Colder alleged that Mindy took him immediately to the bedroom, stripped off her clothing, and ordered him to start squeezing her tits. He did so with pleasure, finding them the most squeezable tits he had ever had the pleasure of handling. After a few minutes of that, she pulled him down onto his knees in front of her bed, grabbed him by the hair, and pulled his face into her crotch, demanding he eat her pussy out. She gave him very explicit directions about how to perform this act, dictating every move he made, how long he made it, and what amount of pressure he made it with.

“And then she told me to stick my finger up her ass and finger fuck it while I ate her,” Colder said at this point in the story. “I did it, and that’s what set her off. She came really fast after that.”

Following the orgasm, Mindy pulled him to his feet. She then got on her hands and knees on the bed and told him to fuck her. He readily agreed to this plan and dropped his pants, not bothering to take off his work boots or his shirt. Before he could make entry, however, Mindy handed him a condom in a wrapper.

“Put this on first,” she ordered.

“So, Mindy provided you with the condom?” he was asked, just for clarity.

“Of course,” Colder said. “I don’t carry condoms around with me at work. Why would I? Despite all the porno movies that make it seem commonplace, shit like this never happens to guys like me. Not even with normal chicks.”

He then went on to describe a frantic, aerobic exercise level sexual encounter in the rear-entry position while Mindy continuously exhorted him to spank her ass, to stick his fingers in her asshole, and to ‘fuck me like you hate me’.

When it was over, she told him to throw the rubber away and get out. He did so, still wondering if he was in the middle of a wet dream or something, but Mindy did give him a little something to remember her by. It was a pair of slinky red panties. There was a picture of them in the magazine. The picture showed the crotch of them, which was slightly discolored. There was a quote from Colder that he could still smell Mindy’s essence on the panties when he sniffed them.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Matt whispered when he finished the first section of the article. There were two more sections to go, each an interview with another man that Mindy had allegedly had a brief, anonymous fuck with.

Matt saw that the story was to pick up on page 44. He started to flip through to read the rest but got distracted again, this time by the pictures of Ginny Jacobs. She was as smooth as a baby’s butt and oiled as well. He decided to peruse the shots for a few minutes and got lost in them. By the time he finally made it through the section, it was 2:55 PM, only five minutes until his guest was to arrive. He put the magazine aside until later.

The doorbell rang at 2:59. Matt’s hard-on had retreated by that point (mostly anyway) and he went to answer the door. Standing on his porch was a man in his mid-forties, smoothly bald, wearing a grey business suit and carrying a briefcase. He had an earring in his left ear and a pair of dark sunglasses covering his eyes. It was Jerry Stillson, presumably. He smiled when he saw Matt standing there, a good old-fashioned used car salesman grin.

“Matt!” he greeted, as if they were long estranged friends reunited at last. “It’s good to see you again!”

Matt was unamused. One of the things he and Jake Kingsley held in common was a deep hatred and mistrust of phoniness. “This is the first time you’ve ever seen me,” Matt reminded him. “We’ve only talked on the phone before.”

“Well ... yeah, it’s only an expression,” Stillson said. “I feel like I’ve met you before. After all, it was me and my team who put together all those Intemperance concerts back before you and the boys ... well ... you know ... assumed control of that responsibility yourselves.”

“Before we renegotiated that shitty contract we signed in the beginning, you mean,” Matt said. “The one where you were able to force us to wear leather fuckin’ pants on a stage blazing with more light and more heat than the fuckin’ sun while a bunch of lasers shot over our heads and explosives went off blowing our fucking bass player into the audience.”

“Uh ... yeah, exactly,” Stillson said, his smile now faded into nothingness, his expression turning troubled. “Listen, Matt. Maybe we’re getting off on the wrong foot here.”

“We got off on the wrong foot the first time you called me up and told me I would be in breach of contract if I insisted on playing my Strat onstage. You remember that conversation?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I remember it.”

“And then you went whining to Acardio and Doolittle like a little bitch when I told you to go ahead and breach me.”

“Well ... uh ... yeah, I suppose. Water under the bridge now though, right?”

“I’m still playing that Strat onstage,” Matt told him. “I have never stepped out to perform in front of an audience without that Strat in my hands. Not even once.”

“Yes!” Stillson said, the smile returning. “I know! I was totally wrong on that issue. I admit that freely now. Your Strat has become an icon, an integral part of your story. There are actually urban legends about it.”

“Yeah,” Matt said sourly. “I’ve heard them.” And he had. The most popular and widespread of these legends was that Matt’s Strat was somehow enchanted (probably by Satan Himself and probably because Matt had sold his soul to Satan, but this was open to debate) and that it was, in fact, the only guitar he could play. If he were to put his fingers on any other guitar, he would not even know how to make a G-chord, let alone rip out a riff or a solo. And, subsequently, anyone else who tried to play the Strat, no matter how proficient and talented at the instrument, would be unable to grind out even a single note with it. This story greatly offended Matt, not just because it was ridiculous bullshit and there were people in the world who were moronic enough to actually believe it, but because it implied his talent was artificial and not the result of thousands of hours of practicing and perfecting the art of playing the instrument back in his adolescence and early adulthood.

“Anyway, you and your Strat are the reason I’m here today,” Stillson said. “I have a very lucrative proposal to make, as I mentioned when I set up this meeting. Will you allow me to come in and explain it to you?”

Matt stared at him for a moment and then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said with a certain reluctance. He stood aside to allow the man to enter his home.

Stillson did not take off his shades once inside. Matt did not give the man anything resembling a tour of the home. He led him through the entryway, through the entertainment room (without offering any refreshments), through the living room (without bothering to introduce him to Kim, who was still watching TNG, although by this point it was a different episode) and into his composing room, which was windowless, soundproofed, cluttered, and smelled of marijuana. He waved him to one of the chairs near his desk, upon which sat a bong full of dirty, foul smelling water, and a paper plate with crumbles of marijuana bud still speckled across it.

Matt sat down in his own chair behind the desk. He burped, farted, and then turned to his guest. “All right then,” he said. “What’s all this about? Give me the details.”

“Uh ... sure,” Stillson said, still trying to get used to the surroundings. “Right to the point. I like that. However, I did bring some rather fine uncut Peruvian flake with me. I’ve heard you enjoy a little blast now and then. Perhaps I could line us up a few rails to break the ice?”

“Naw,” Matt said. “I don’t use anything that alters the mind before or during a meeting. I’ve found, over the years, it’s the best way to deal with you weasels.”

“Oh...” Stillson said slowly, taken aback. “I see.”

“Good,” Matt said. “Now, what’s the deal?”

Stillson took a few moments to compose himself—it was obvious that this meeting was not starting off as he had envisioned—and then started to lay it out. “It’s like this,” he said. “As I told you on the phone, I’m now the CEO and lead investor in a venture called Music Alive. What we do is put on concert tours for profit of our organization and the artists involved.”

“Yeah, I know,” Matt said. “You get these has-been bands back together and send them out on tours to cash in on baby boomer nostalgia so you can separate the more successful boomers from their income. It’s a good business plan, honestly. I kind of wish I would have thought of it first. Kudos to you for having an idea.”

“Thank you,” Stillson said.

“Now tell me what this has to do with me,” Matt said. “I’m not a has-been and the boomers ain’t really into me anyway. I’m a generation-X icon and I’m already committed to a European, Asian, South American tour for National anyway.”

“I am aware of your tour dates,” Stillson said. “I touched bases with Crow over at National and he gave me the schedule, as well as your contact information.”

“How fuckin’ nice of him,” Matt grunted.

“And it’s not the baby boomers I’m after with the proposal I’m about to make. The gen-X crowd are now mature enough to have a fair amount of disposable income of their own. That is why you and Celia Valdez and Alanis Morrisette and Collective Soul are able to sell performance tickets at fifty to a hundred dollars a seat. It really is a great time to be in this business.”

“True,” Matt had to agree. “I just went over my taxes today and a good portion of my income comes from touring revenue.”

“Exactly,” Stillson said. “And so, with that in mind, I’m organizing a two-day event that we’re calling the Tsunami Sound Festival. It will be on September 28 and 29, a Saturday and Sunday respectively, just outside of Indian Springs.”

“Where the fuck is Indian Springs?” Matt asked.

“In the Mojave Desert forty miles north of Las Vegas,” he said. “We’re building an amphitheater with two stages there on a piece of BLM land we have leased. The venue, when complete, will be capable of holding one hundred thousand fans.”

“One hundred thousand?” Matt asked incredulously.

“That is correct,” Stillson said. “And with the lineup I’m developing for the event, I am anticipating sales of at least ninety thousand tickets per day. These tickets will cost a minimum of ninety dollars per seat for general admission and up to three hundred a ticket for assigned seating near the stages.”

Matt whistled appreciatively. “That’s a lot of coin,” he said, “assuming that you can actually pull this shit off.”

“I am confident we can pull it off,” Stillson assured him. “But even if we can’t, there is no risk to you. I want you to be the headliner on both nights. For this, I will offer you a flat fee of one point three million dollars, guaranteed payable as long as you show up and perform, regardless of whether or not anyone even buys a ticket.”

“A million three, huh?” Matt said, pondering that. That was a very respectable payday for just two shows. “And that is not dependent on me doing any Intemperance material?”

“We don’t want any Intemperance material in the show,” Stillson said. “National Records would charge us too much for the performance rights—if they would even grant them at all. We just want original Matt Tisdale material. The set you’re doing now would be perfectly fine. National has already agreed to grant permission for your performance.”

“Out of the kindness of their hearts?” Matt asked sarcastically.

“Yeah, right,” Stillson grunted. “Two grand per song is what they want, and that is for each performance, payable upon agreement and irrespective of whether you actually perform or not.”

“That’s pretty cutthroat,” Matt said, doing some quick mental arithmetic. His set was eighteen songs, which equaled thirty-six grand times two shows for a total of seventy-two big just for signing a paper giving this weasel permission to have Matt perform his own music. What a fucking scam.

“As I said,” Stillson went on, “Crow gave me your tour schedule. On the dates in question, you will be on break between the last of the Asia shows and the first of the South American shows. You’ll likely just be kicking it somewhere and waiting for your equipment to be shipped across the ocean.”

“That sounds about right,” he said. And then something occurred to him. “How am I supposed to perform at this tidal wave gig of yours if our equipment is on a fuckin’ ship somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”

“The Tsunami Sound Festival,” Stillson corrected. “And, obviously, we will have to rent equipment for you; microphones, amps, effects pedals, a drum set, all of the cabling and electrical. We will foot the bill for this.”

“I’m not playing without my Strat,” Matt warned.

“We wouldn’t want you to,” Stillson assured him. “As I said, it’s an icon, a part of who you are as a performer. The solution to this, however, is quite simple: You just don’t put the Strat on the ship with the rest of your gear. Bring it with you as checked baggage and travel to the festival with it. Your bass player and your secondary guitarist can do the same if they wish. If they do not wish, we’ll rent guitars for them along with everything else.”

“Yeah ... I guess that makes sense,” Matt allowed. “What about travel expenses and lodging and all that shit?”

“We will cover it all,” Stillson promised. “First class air from wherever you are staying to Las Vegas. Suites for you and all your people in one of the hotels on the strip. Private luxury limousine travel to and from the venue. First class air back to wherever you want to go once the festival is over.”

“Sounds good,” Matt said. “Be sure the limo is big enough for at least six groupies to ride back to the hotel with us.”

“Naturally,” Stillson agreed.

“All right then,” Matt said. “And what about paying my band members? Are you going to cover that as well?”

“No,” Stillson said simply. “We will pay for travel and lodging and meals for your band members, but you will be expected to pay them whatever rate you settle on out of the compensation we are giving you for the performances.”

“I see,” Matt said slowly. “That’s kind of a rip.”

“Sorry,” Stillson said, sounding anything but, “but we are compensating you rather well for your performances.”

“True, but I want my guys to have a decent piece of this action. After all, this will be an interruption to one of our extended breaks. If I have to pay them out of my own pocket, I’ll need a little more coin in that pocket before I sign on the line.”

“How much more?” Stillson asked warily.

“Let’s make it an even one point five mil,” Matt suggested.

“I’m sorry,” Stillson said, shaking his head. “I can’t go that high. How about one point three five?”

“Not enough,” Matt said. “How about one point four? That’ll give me an even hundred big to lay on my guys for two days of work. That’s thirty-three grand apiece. I think they’ll go for that shit.”

Stillson sighed. “I really should check with the other investors first, but ... what the hell. One point four million it is. Do we have a deal?”

“We’re getting there,” Matt said, smiling. “Just one more question. Who else is going to be at this gig? How many bands do you have lined up?”

“We’re still working on the final lineup,” he said, “but there will be at least eight different acts on each day. You will be the headliner for both nights; I guarantee that, and it will be in writing on the contract.”

“I would expect so,” Matt said. “But you didn’t answer my question. Who else is onboard at this point?”

“So far, we have commitments from Alice in Chains, Dreamline, Backyard Dirt, David Gross, Seavey Circle, Hole, and The Dave Matthews Band. Lisa Loeb, No Doubt, Pantera, and Linda Perry are all considering.” He did not mention one other performer who was also considering, knowing that it would likely be a deal breaker. He would let Matt know about that particular performer after he signed the contract.

Matt nodded in appreciation at most of the acts, grimaced at a few, but was satisfied. “All right then,” he said. “I guess you can count me in as long as the terms you just laid down are in the final contract and you don’t try to slip any bullshit in on me.”

“We will slip in no bullshit,” Stillson promised. “The contract will be in plain English. That’s how we do things at Music Alive.”

“Uh huh,” Matt said skeptically. “I’ll believe it when I see it. For now though, we have a deal.”

Stillson smiled. “Welcome aboard,” he said, holding out his hand.

Matt shook with him. “Now then,” he said after. “You said something about some Peruvian flake earlier?”

“Indeed, I did,” he said, smiling.

“Let’s take it in the entertainment room and line up then,” Matt suggested. “You crunch it and I’ll make us a couple of drinks.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Stillson told him.

Two evenings later, Jake flew his plane from Oceano to Whiteman airport in the San Fernando Valley. Laura was with him. She, along with Celia and the rest of the band, were on tour break for three weeks between the first and second legs of the North American tour. They had arrived back in LA the day before Matt had his meeting with Stillson. Jake had picked up Laura from the airport and driven her to Whiteman. They had flown home shortly after that and had spent most of the ensuing two days either in bed or lounging around in their sweatpants and t-shirts.

Lounging, however, was not the only thing on the agenda for the tour break. Tom and Mary, Jake’s parents, and Cindy and Stan, Nerdly’s parents, had flown into LAX the day before. The Kingsley elders were staying with Pauline in her house. The Nerdly elders were staying with the Nerdlys in their house. But this was only until the next night, at which point Jake, Laura, and the parents would all board an Air New Zealand Boeing 747 and make the thirteen-hour flight to Auckland, after which they would catch another ANZ flight to Christchurch and stay for ten days in Jake’s hillside house there. All of the parents wanted to see Jake’s pad in the far corner of the Earth and experience the South Island autumn. The Nerdlys wanted to see it too, but they did not want to subject little Kelvin or themselves to the long, torturous airplane rides there and back and the mere thought of leaving their precious child with the nanny for ten days was unthinkable to them. They would stay home and spend most of their time administering and improving their website.

Jake and Laura flew back to Whiteman in the early afternoon on the day of their flight. They loaded their luggage into the back of Jake’s truck—one big suitcase for each of them, plus Jake’s battered old Fender in a guitar case (he was hopeful that he could begin composing some new material during the trip)—and made the drive to Pauline’s house where a farewell dinner was to be held before a limo picked them up for the trip to LAX at seven o’clock that evening. The Nerdlys were there along with Cindy and Stan, as were Obie and Tabby (who, by this point in her terrible twos, had been re-nicknamed “Satan’s Master” instead of merely “Satan”). Hugs and greetings were exchanged all around and then everyone settled into the entertainment room for cocktails and appetizers while Gloria the housekeeper prepared their meal of chicken marsala, garlic bread, and salad.

It was Obie who brought Jake the latest issue of Smooth Operator. Jake, who used to have a subscription to the publication (along with Hustler and Penthouse) before the proliferation of free and easy to access internet porn, had heard rumor of the Mindy Snow tell-all tales but had not seen or heard any of the details yet. He looked at the cover in interest, not even seeing the young lady on the cover, but focusing on the description of the article within.

“A ‘strong supporter of the working class’, huh?” Jake said with a smile and a chuckle as he took the glossy magazine.

“That’s what the man alleges,” Obie said with a chuckle of his own.

“Jacob, really,” his mother said from her seat on the couch across the room (she only used the name printed on his birth certificate when she was irritated or mad at him). “You’re going to look at a girlie magazine while your mother sits in the room?”

“Hey, we’re all adults here,” Jake said lightly, opening it to the table of contents. “Well ... Tabby excepted, but I’m not going to read her a story out of it.”

“But still...” his mother started.

“I just want to read the article, Mom,” he told her. “This is journalism here.”

“And when you’re done,” Tom said with a grin, “pass it over this way. I’d like to take a gander at that ‘article’ as well.”

That earned him a slap on the shoulder from his wife. It was not quite a good-natured slap.

Jake saw the page the article started on and began flipping through the pages, though, of course, this task was made a little more difficult because the actual page numbers were not printed at the bottom of every page, only about every five pages or so. Like Matt, he paused for a moment in the “Amateurs Show Their Smooth” section when a buxom, Amazonian brunette caught his eye. She was holding her glistening vaginal lips open and had a sexy smile on her face.

Nice! he thought appreciatively, careful to keep his expression neutral, not letting the thought that she strongly resembled Celia Valdez come to the forefront of his consciousness. Only when Laura, who was sitting next to him, elbowed him in irritation, did he move on.

“Right. The article,” he said.

He flipped some more and finally came to the first page of the story. He perused the picture of Stan Colder, the propane man, for a moment and then began to read, absorbing Stan’s story of his brief, intense sexual encounter with Mindy Snow. Jake had no trouble believing the tale. In fact, he became absolutely convinced it was true when he read the part about Mindy telling him to “fuck me like you hate me”. She had hit him with that line on more than one occasion as well.

After reading Stan’s tale, he flipped to the next section, this time passing right over the Ginny Jacobs pictorial without a glance. He picked up the story as the writer introduced one Malcolm Washington, who worked for the feed supply company that delivered bales of hay for Mindy’s horses. As had been the case with Colder, there was a picture of Washington. He was a dark-skinned black man, well-built, handsome, and powerful looking. The name of the feed supply company he worked for was printed on his work shirt, which he wore in the photo, but the printing was blurred out. The writer of the article reported that he had confirmed that Washington worked for the feed supply company and that one of his primary jobs at the time of the incident in question (two years ago now) had been to make deliveries. Furthermore, they had verified that Washington had been at work on the day in question and that he had made a delivery to Mindy’s Snow’s publicly recorded address.

“She was in the barn when I pulled up,” Washington was quoted as saying. “It was a hot summer day, and she was wearing short shorts and a half top and brushing down one of the horses. I was really surprised to see her, truth be told. I didn’t even know that was Mindy Snow’s house, and there she was, standing right in front of me.”

Washington then went on to describe how Mindy only muttered a hello to him at first but seemed to be watching him as he unloaded the hay bales and stacked them on the storage rack. It was just as he was finishing up that she walked over to him and told him what a handsome man he was. He thanked her for the compliment, a little tongue-tied from being in her presence, and then she asked him if he minded if she ran her hands over his muscles to see what they felt like. He allowed her to do this and he could tell that she was getting aroused by the contact. He was getting aroused as well, feeling Mindy’s hands touching him in a way that was not just curiosity, but hunger.

She then asked Washington if it was true that black people did not like to eat pussy. Washington allowed that there was a cultural taboo about that particular activity among certain demographics of his people.

“And what about you?” she’d allegedly asked at that point. “Do you eat pussy?”

He told her that he was not an adherent to that particular cultural belief and that he rather enjoyed eating a nice pussy now and then.

“Why don’t you eat mine then?” Mindy asked, unbuttoning her shorts and pushing them down to her feet where she then kicked them off. Washington saw that she had apparently forgot to put on her underpants that day.

“It was a beautiful pussy,” Washington reported. “Shaved smooth, the lips all swollen and wet. And she smelled strong, like she hadn’t taken a shower that day.”

“So, what did you do?” the reporter asked.

“What the hell you think I did?” Washington replied. “This was Mindy fucking Snow! I got down on my knees and ate her pussy while she sat on one of the hay bales.”

Like Colder before him, Washington relayed how Mindy was very specific in how her pussy should be eaten; what the tongue and fingers should be doing at what time and with how much pressure. And, as had also been the case with Colder, she insisted that Washington stick a finger up her ass while he licked her, and this was what triggered her orgasm.

After that, she pulled him to his feet and handed him a condom in a wrapper.

“Where did she get the condom?” Washington was asked.

“Fucked if I know,” Washington reported. “It was just there in her hand. Maybe she had it in her hand the whole time, maybe she had it in her shirt pocket.”

“Put this on and fuck me,” Mindy ordered Washington at that point. She then turned around and leaned over the hay bale, presenting her exquisite ass to him. He put the condom on and fucked her. Throughout the act, Mindy kept barking at him to fuck faster, fuck harder, to slap her ass, and then to put a finger back in her anus. She threatened to rip off his balls if he came before she did. He managed to hold on until Mindy squeaked out one more shuddering orgasm and then he finished off.

“Throw the rubber in the garbage over there by the barn door,” he was told as Mindy picked up her shorts and put them back on. “Nice fucking you.”

And, with that, she had walked away, heading in the direction of the house. Washington continued to make deliveries to her house for another year before being given a job with more responsibility and less delivering. He never saw Mindy Snow again—at least not in person.

And that ended the tale of Malcolm Washington. There was one more of Mindy’s lovers to hear from. Jake started to flip to the next section of the story when he felt a little hand tugging on his arm. It was Tabby.

“Read me, Unka Jay!” she told him. “See pictures!”

He quickly closed the issue of Smooth Operator and shoved it behind his back. “Not from this book, Tabster,” he told her gently. “Maybe from one of your books?”

“Want your book!” she insisted, climbing up on the couch next to him and trying to retrieve it.

“Not for a few more years,” he said. “Why don’t we read ‘Everybody Poops’ again? That one is a classic.”

“WANT YOUR BOOK!” she screamed. A moment later she was in the midst of a full-blown fit of rage and evil that did every ounce of justice to her new nickname.

Pauline came and picked her up and carried her screaming into her bedroom. She unceremoniously dumped her onto her bed.

“You know the rules, Tab,” Pauline told her. “You can come out when you’re ready to be a respectable member of society once again.”

“WANT UNKA JAY’s BOOK!” she screamed once more and then began to hysterically cry.

Pauline left her in there while Jake gave the magazine back to Obie. He would read the rest of the article later.

Tabby cried herself to sleep and woke up just before dinner. Jake did not read any more of the article, however, nor did Tom. After dinner, Pauline asked Jake if she could see him in her office for a few minutes.

“What for?” he asked.

“Just a little business,” she told him. “Nothing big.”

This turned out not to be entirely true, although, since what did and did not constitute “big” was a subjective interpretation, Pauline was not really lying.

“What’s up?” Jake asked.

“It’s about the Tsunami Sound Festival,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” Jake said. “The concert in the desert. What about it? Is that suit Stillson ready to sit down and sign some papers?”

“He is,” she said, “but that’s not what I want to talk about. He called me yesterday to set up a meeting for the contract. I was hoping to get it done today, before you left for New Zealand, but ... well ... a complication has come up.”

“What kind of complication?”

She sighed. “I asked him if he had nailed down a headliner for the show,” she said. “He started hemming and hawing and being otherwise evasive about the subject without actually giving me a solid yes or no, so I insisted that he tell me what the hell was going on.”

“And what did he say?” Jake asked.

“He hemmed and hawed a little more, but when I told him that we would sign no papers until this issue was settled, he finally came clean.”

“Came clean with what?”

Another sigh. “He’s going to sign Matt Tisdale to be the headliner for both nights of the festival.”

Jake’s expression darkened. His eyes burrowed into his sister. “Matt Tisdale,” he said slowly. “That’s who he wants me to play in front of?”

She nodded. “That’s correct. The papers aren’t signed yet, but Matt has verbally agreed to be the headliner on both nights.”

“I thought he was already on tour,” Jake said.

“He’ll be on tour break between the Asia and the South America legs of his international tour on the dates of the festival,” she said. “They’ll have to rent all of the equipment for him, but he has still agreed to perform.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jake said, shaking his head. “How much are they paying that asshole for this?”

“He did not disclose Matt’s rate of compensation,” Pauline said. “I did not even ask. It’s not any of our business and it’s irrelevant to the discussion at hand.”

Now Jake sighed. “I guess so,” he agreed. “Well, this is a deal breaker for me. I will not open for Matt Tisdale. Either he finds a different headliner or the Tsunami fucking Sound Festival goes on without me participating.”

She nodded. “I anticipated such a response from you,” Pauline said. “I think it’s a dumb response, based on pride and little else, but I anticipated it.”

“Pride is not a bad thing, Paulie,” he told her. “Pride is why we’re not still living in fucking caves.”

“A debate for another day perhaps,” she said. “Anyway, I told Stillson that you would likely make such an ultimatum. He told me that he would up your compensation to one point two million, but, that if you absolutely want to go to the wall on this thing ... well ... he will go with Matt as the headliner and find another second to last act.”

Jake gritted his teeth a little, his pride definitely taking a shot but still standing.

“I guess that’s the way it will have to be then,” he said. “Call him up and tell him to remove me from consideration.”

The following afternoon, while Jake, Laura, and the two sets of parents were south of the equator and west of the International Date Line, waiting for their connecting flight in the first-class lounge of Auckland International Airport, Celia Valdez was having a business brunch with Anwara Khatun-Nelson, her high-priced divorce lawyer.

They were in a place called Mimosas and Eggs, a classy, trendy joint on the northern fringes of Brentwood. Celia, dressed in black slacks and a pink blouse, was finishing up her second of the signature mimosas while Anwara, who was wearing a dark gray pantsuit, was still working on her first.

“You’re all settled into your new place now?” Anwara asked her. Pauline had secured for her a six-month lease on a residential condo in the South Park district of downtown LA while she had been out on tour. It was a 2500 square foot luxury condo on the top floor of a twenty-two-story building. She enjoyed an impressive view of the west side of Los Angeles all the way to the ocean.

“For the most part,” Celia said. “Paulie arranged to have most of my clothes and other personal things brought over from Greg’s house, as well as getting me a bed and a few basic items of furniture. All I have to do now is finish up the interior design, get a few more couches and chairs and things, and set up my entertainment system.”

“Do you plan to stay there?” the lawyer asked.

“Not any longer than I have to,” she said. “It’ll do for now, especially since I won’t be there much over the next few months. Once we’re done touring, however, I plan to buy my own house, probably in Malibu.”

“Malibu is nice,” Anwara said appreciatively.

“It is,” Celia agreed. “I’ve developed an affinity for living on the ocean.”

“You know, I’ve talked to Greg’s lawyer a few times now. Greg is perfectly agreeable to paying your housing expenses until you acquire your own home.”

“Tell him thanks, but no thanks,” Celia said plainly. “I have enough money of my own. There is no reason for him to pay for anything for me.”

Anwara shook her head a little in wonderment. “Wow,” she said. “That statement goes against everything I believe in as a ball-busting divorce lawyer.”

“Greg has had his balls busted enough by Mindy Snow,” she said. “I am not without a certain degree of sympathy for him.”

“I suppose,” Anwara said. “It’s just ... you know ... un-American not to go after a man for everything he has during a divorce battle.”

“I’m not American,” Celia reminded her. “I’m Venezuelan, remember?”

“You hold dual citizenship now, don’t you?”

“I do,” she confirmed. “I went through the process about a year after Greg and I got married. I even get jury duty notices now, although they never pick me.”

“That makes you half American,” Anwara told her. “Couldn’t we go after half of his stuff?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t need his money. I have enough of my own. I just want to make a clean split. I take my stuff, he takes his, and we stay out of each other’s way from here on out.”

“His lawyer said pretty much the same thing,” Anwara said sourly. “Greg just wants to get the whole process over with and start life over.”

“He’ll be fine,” Celia predicted. “Thanks to the little campaign we initiated, his reputation and mine remain reasonably intact.”

“Yes, that was quite the production,” Anwara had to admit. “Even before this last issue of Smooth Operator came out, Mindy Snow was pretty much trashed. And now that everyone is reading about her escapades in a notorious pornographic publication ... wow ... I’d be surprised if she has the guts to show her face in public for the next year. Maybe even longer. Did you read that article?”

“Uh ... well ... some of it,” Celia said. “I had the doorman of my new building pick me up a copy of it this morning. I only read about the first two encounters before it was time to start getting ready for this meeting.”

“I haven’t read it,” Anwara said, “just heard the tales from some of the paralegals at the office. They said it’s a very raunchy article.”

“That is what Smooth Operator is known for,” Celia said. “They spare no sleazy detail.”

“Alleged sleazy detail,” Anwara corrected.

“Of course,” Celia said with a chuckle.

The waiter brought their food to them—Eggs Florentine for Celia and a shrimp omelet for Anwara. Celia ordered one more mimosa. They ate slowly, talking a little more about the next steps in the divorce process and then gradually working the conversation over to Anwara herself.

Celia was fascinated by the story of how the beautiful woman before her had been born in the city of Dhaka in what, at the time, had been known as East Pakistan, a subdivision of Pakistan that had been created with the partition of British controlled India after World War II. Made up mostly of members of the Bengali race, of which Anwara and her family were a part, East Pakistan fought a brutal civil war with Pakistan in 1971, eventually bloodying the Pakistanis enough that they were granted independence and became the country of Bangladesh. While the war was in progress, however, Anwara’s parents, both of whom were professors at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and, as such, primary targets for Pakistani death squads operating in Dhaka, fled first to India and then, in 1975, to the United States.

Young Anwara flourished in the upper middle-class upbringing of diverse Los Angeles. Though she abandoned her adherence to the religion of Islam at a young age—her parents had both been quite secular themselves and never discouraged this—she held onto her culture’s reverence for education. After graduating high school as valedictorian, she attended USC and then the UC Berkeley School of Law, graduating summa cum laude from both. While at USC she met a fellow Philosophy major named Jeff Nelson, an easy-going surfer, very fond of marijuana intoxication, who was simply obtaining a college degree as a requirement of getting his hands on a trust fund his grandmother had set up for him years before. Nelson drifted through college, getting mostly C’s and the occasional B in his classes, keeping his head just enough above water to graduate. Still, there was something in him that Anwara fell deeply in love with. They got married shortly after they both graduated and had their first and only child while Anwara was in law school. Jeff now took care of their daughter Mia full time and had a part-time gig as a semi-professional surfer. He spent a lot of time getting stoned and playing video games and surfing the net on an expensive computer system with the highest available online bandwidth currently available.

Sounds like a dream life for this Jeff character, Celia thought as she heard the tale. At the same time, however, she could not help but notice the clear affection Anwara had in her voice whenever she spoke of her husband and her child. She really did love the man, it seemed. Which was a good thing for Jeff. Imagine if he had to get divorced from one of the best divorce attorneys in Los Angeles. I’m betting she had his ass sign a prenup.

The lunch wrapped up just after two o’clock. The two women hugged and said goodbye for now. Anwara retrieved her Mercedes from the valet and Celia used her cell phone to call for her limousine. It arrived a few minutes later and she climbed in the back for the trip back to South Park. She consumed a potent rum and coke on the way.

She arrived back at the Sky Park Building on South Grand Avenue at 2:30, tipped the limo driver fifty dollars, and then the doorman another ten. She rode the elevator up to the twenty-second floor and opened the door to her new condo. It was a luxurious place, but she still thought it was rather depressing. Most of the floor space was still empty. There was no one here but herself. She really had no one she could call for company since Jake and Laura were now in New Zealand and Suzie had returned to San Diego. There was not even a maid or a cook since she had not yet hired anyone for the job since she would just be returning to the road in a few weeks.

She went to the bar and poured herself a glass of wine. This, she carried into the room she had designated her music room, although she currently had no operating sound system. Her twelve-string guitar was here, however, the one she had bought in the Portland Music Store the day she and Jake had ... well ... it was useless to ponder the events of that day.

“And it never happened,” she sang softly, almost unconsciously, laying down the chorus line from her hit song inspired by what she would not let herself think about too often.

She took down the guitar and sat in her chair in front of the desk. She strummed it a few times, wincing at the sound. It was out of tune, of course. It had been un-played for nearly five months now. She tuned it by ear and then began to strum out a few simple melodies, searching for inspiration. She found none and a few minutes later she put the guitar back in its place and walked back into the living room. She had no television either so she could not even engage in that mindless pursuit.

Her eyes caught the glossy magazine on her coffee table, the latest issue of Smooth Operator, which she had been reading earlier, reveling over the Mindy Snow stories. She had not finished the article. With nothing else to do, she leaned forward and picked the magazine back up. She quickly flipped through the Mindy Snow article pages, skimming for a rehash of the tale of the propane delivery man and the hay delivery man.

I wonder if the hay guy has a big dick? she found herself wondering, feeling a little naughty for having the thought. Conventional wisdom and urban legend suggested that he might. She had never had sex with a man with a huge member before and she wondered if it actually felt better than the normal size. The biggest one she had ever had was ... well ... she wasn’t supposed to think about that. And anyway, it was not that much bigger than Greg’s, the member that she was most familiar with in her life.

With a sigh, she flipped through a few more pages until she found the next section of the Mindy Snow article, the part that described the third encounter. The picture this time was of a smiling, well-muscled white man. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a pullover t-shirt that did justice to his physique. He was displaying for the camera a blue work shirt that the caption stated he had saved from his previous place of employment—a major regional drug store chain—that, like the others, had the name of the business blurred but that anyone who lived in LA and had patronized the establishment would recognize as a shirt from Lister Drug Store.

Daniel Marks was the man’s name, and he was currently a baggage handler at Burbank Airport. Two years ago, however, he had been a stocker at the aforementioned “regional drug store chain” in the San Fernando Valley and Mindy Snow had paid his place of employment a little visit.

“I was stocking those scented candles,” Marks told the reporter, “and, all of a sudden, Mindy Snow is there talking to me. She smelled a few candles but didn’t really seem interested in them. And then, out of nowhere, she just comes out and asks me if I want to go up to her house after my shift and fuck her.”

“She put it just like that?” he was asked.

“Just like that,” he confirmed.

“And you did it?”

“Of course I did it,” Marks replied. “Wouldn’t you?”

The reporter’s answer was left unprinted, but Marks did go on to describe a lengthy sexual encounter with Mindy Snow at her house. He told of a blowjob in her bedroom; a blowjob that involved Mindy’s fingers penetrating his ass. He told of Mindy shoving his face between her legs and instructing him to eat her pussy out until his mouth was sore and cramped and he could barely speak. And then it was time to start fucking.

“I brought a pack of condoms with me,” Marks said. “I mean ... I knew what I was going there for and I assumed she would want me to use protection, so I bought a pack before I got off shift.”

“Did you use any of those condoms?” he was asked.

“No,” he replied, “she wouldn’t let me. She had her own supply. I used three of them while I was there; all condoms that she gave me.”

The tale continued, with allegations of an episode of analingus that Mindy demanded he engage in, of Mindy biting his nipples until they bled, of demands that he stick his cock in her freshly licked asshole and spank her, of a lengthy doggy-style slam that led to his second orgasm (the first had been in her butt, sooner than she liked and she had slapped him for this transgression) and a third and final shag that involved Mindy mounting him in the female superior position and riding him like a bronco for the better part of thirty minutes, telling him all the while that she was going to rip his balls off if he came before she was ready for him to.

After the final fuck, he was told to put his clothes back on and “get the fuck out”. He did so.

“I limped and couldn’t touch my own dick for like three days after that, but goddamn if it wasn’t worth it. I mean ... I got to fuck Mindy Snow. How many guys can say that?”

Quite a few, apparently, Celia thought with a smile as she read this line.

As in the previous two tales, the reporter was able to verify that Daniel Marks had actually worked at the drug store in question and that it was, in fact, on the route between Mindy Snow’s house and the greater Los Angeles area. They could not verify that Mindy had actually been in the store that day (and no one made the connection with Emily Strough, who had worked in the same store and had been the one to break the birth control pill aspect of the Condom-Gate saga) or that Daniel had actually met her on that day, but Daniel did describe Mindy’s property and the inside of her house in a manner that matched up with the previous two lovers’ depictions. And he also still had the piece of paper with directions to Mindy’s house written on it. There was a picture of this piece of paper displayed in the article.

Reading the rest of the story served to put Celia in a better mood. She sipped a little more from her wine and thought, I guess I was wrong to imply that she was a whore in my statement. Whores charge for their services.

She giggled a little at her own wit—she was feeling more than a little tipsy at this point—and then began to flip through the magazine again. She looked first at the pictures of Ginny Jacobs, the girl from the front cover. These shots did little for her but make her feel a little dirty. Ginny was very young; eighteen years old according to the bio at the beginning of the pictorial (and she was into puppies, smooth jazz, silk sheets, classic American literature, and double penetration by two big cocks).

She flipped a little bit more and happened across the “Amateurs Show Their Smooth” section. These shots were a little more interesting. They were not professional models. They were not models at all. Instead, they were shots of ordinary, everyday American women posing in the nude and showing their smoothly shaven vaginas (as well as everything else). The shots were generally credited to a boyfriend or a husband, but a few were allegedly taken by “my best friend”. There were chubby women, older women, younger women, and a few who were certainly beautiful enough to be professional models of their smooth. Most of them were actually wholesome looking, or at least not slutty looking like the primary models in the magazine.

She found herself getting quite aroused by looking at the shots. And then it occurred to her that there was one activity she was set up for.

She returned to her bedroom and took off all of her clothes. She then reached into the little drawer on the bedside table and pulled out her dildo and her vibrating butterfly. She went to work on herself, quickly getting into it.

As she tuned her own instrument, her thoughts first turned to Suzie, the pilot, and the things she wanted to do to and with her. She and Suzie (as well as Suzie and Laura) were still maintaining their normal flirtation and teasing but had gone no further than that. Was it maybe time for that to change?

After all, she was single now. She no longer had that issue of fidelity to worry about.

After returning from their ten-day trip to New Zealand, Jake and Laura left the two sets of parents in Los Angeles to get in a little more visit time with their respective grandchildren but they themselves flew back to Oceano to enjoy some alone time before Laura had to leave again for another three months on the road.

On April 23, 1996, the Celia Valdez tour was scheduled to start its second leg with a show in Boise, Idaho. From there, the tour would take advantage of the spring and early summer weather to pound out dates across the northern portion of the United States, and not just the big cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit. The practice of charging market value for concert tickets had suddenly made it profitable to perform in small cities with small venues that otherwise would have been overlooked. As such, places like Cheyenne, Butte, Helena, Billings, Fargo, Pierre and Madison were on the schedule. After working their way to upstate New York and New England, they would pause for another break and then work their way back to the west, hitting all the major and minor Canadian cities just north of the US border until wrapping up the final date in Victoria, British Colombia.

The couple spent much of their time just enjoying the life they had built. They had coffee together in the mornings and then ate whatever breakfast Elsa had concocted. They went for long walks on the cliffside, usually working their way down to the dunes of Pismo Beach to sit on the beach for a while before climbing their way back up and heading home. In the evenings they would eat Elsa’s dinner and then sip wine out on the deck or smoke a little ganga out in the hot tub (or both). They would then go to bed and fuck, sometimes quickly, usually a longer session, before drifting off to sleep in each other’s arms. It was a good week in which they felt almost like a normal upper crust married couple living a normal upper crust married life. They bickered little but when they did it was usually over a trivial matter with a tone more good natured than one of real conflict.

But the togetherness had to come to an end. It was part of the life they had chosen.

On the late afternoon of April 21, they drove back to Oceano Airport and climbed back into Jake’s Chancellor for the flight back to Whiteman. Forty minutes later, they were back in LA. They spent the night in the Granada Hills home, eating a few of the freezer meals for dinner, drinking a lot of wine, and then engaging in a lengthy session of sexual congress, knowing it would be their last for a while.

On the morning of April 22, Jake drove Laura to Van Nuys Airport, where Celia and the rest of the band were waiting, along with Suzie, Njord, and the King Air aircraft that would take them to Boise to start getting ready for the first show of the new leg.

“How are you doing, C?” Jake asked the singer as Laura reported to the pilots for the weigh-in of herself and her travel bag.

“I’m doing well,” she assured him, and indeed she looked like she might be telling the truth. The haggard look on her face had pretty much faded away and the lines on her face were no longer prominent. The bags on her eyes were gone as well. “Ready to get back to the grind.”

He passed a few words with everyone—shaking hands, giving hugs, offering words of encouragement and friendship—except Njord. He had not done much to conceal the fact that he disliked the copilot when he had hung out with the band back in February. Njord had picked up on this and tended to keep his distance.

Finally, he watched as everyone loaded into the plane. Laura was the last to board. He gave her one last hug, one last kiss, told her that he loved her, and then watched the aircraft swallow her up. He stayed on the tarmac, watching as the King Air’s engines fired up, as it taxied away onto the airfield itself, came to the head of Runway 34L, and then roared into the air and headed off to the north. He watched until it disappeared into the distance and then climbed back in his truck and drove back to Whiteman.

Thirty minutes after that he was back in the Chancellor. An hour after that, he was back home in Oceano, alone except for Elsa. He missed Laura already.

Two days later, just as he was settling into the routine of nothingness and starting to think about getting to work on some new material (his guitar had never come out of its case the entire time he had been in New Zealand), he returned from his morning run and was told by Elsa that Jill the accountant had called and wanted him to give her a call at her office as soon as possible.

Wondering what this was about—they had already filed his 1995 taxes and made adjustments for the next quarter—he put off his shower for now and went immediately to his office. He opened the phone book next to the phone and flipped through to the Y section, quickly finding the number for the offices of Yamashito, Yamashito and Yamashito. He dialed a one, the area code 916, and then the seven-digit number.

The phone rang twice before being picked up. The Yamashitos employed no receptionist or secretary so it was John Yamashito, Jill’s father, who’s voice he heard.

“Hey, Mr. Yamashito,” Jake greeted. “It’s Jake Kingsley.”

“How are you doing, Jake?” John asked politely.

“I’m doing good. Living the good life here on a cliff over the ocean.”

“Ahhh yes,” John said. “Your multi-million-dollar home that you did not really need.”

“Life is too short to just focus on needs, Mr. Yamashito,” Jake told him. “You have to go after some wants as well.”

“Perhaps,” John said, although he did not sound even remotely convinced of this.

“Anyway,” Jake said, “I got a message that Jill called for me.”

“That is correct,” John said. “I’m afraid she has some bad news to share with you.”

Jake felt a little sinking in the pit of his stomach. Bad news? What kind of bad news could an accountant share? There was only one thing he could think of. “Am I being audited?”

John chuckled a little. “No, nothing like that. This is bad news of the nature that you will consider good news, I’m sure. You are just unaware that it is, in fact, bad news.”

Jake blinked. What kind of Zen-Buddha shit was this old Japanese guy spouting? “Uh ... I’m not sure I’m following you, Mr. Yamashito.”

Another chuckle. “I’ll let Jill share the news with you,” he said. “Hang on. I’ll put you on hold.”

The phone clicked and went silent. There was no on-hold music to keep him entertained while he waited, probably because the Yamashitos were too cheap to pay for the service. Jake did not consider this to be a bad thing. The only on-hold music he had ever enjoyed were the cuts that had Laura playing sax in them, and those were few and far between these days.

The phone clicked again, and Jill’s voice was suddenly in his ear. “Hey, Jake,” she greeted. “Thanks for calling me back.”

“I always call my accountant back,” he told her. “What’s up? Your old man says you have bad news for me.”

Jill chuckled this time. “He would say that,” she said.

“It’s not bad news?”

“From the perspective of the accountant, it is bad news. From your perspective, it will undoubtedly be great news.”

“I’m not following you, Jill,” he said. “Can we get to the point?”

“I guess we can,” she said. “I’ve found a used 1993 Piaggio P-180 Avanti aircraft for sale.”

Jake suddenly became excited. He had been searching for one of the limited-edition Italian aircraft ever since he had ridden in one (and got to take the controls for a bit) from Phoenix to Denver back during the last Thanksgiving break. The problem was that it was such a fine aircraft, such a recent aircraft, and there were so few of them in existence, that no one wanted to part with them. But now Jill was claiming to have found one. And a 1993 as well! Only three years old!

“No shit?” he asked her.

“No shit,” she confirmed. “I’m told it has the original engines with only two thousand, three hundred and twelve hours on them. The avionics package is the premier level that was available then and has since been upgraded to include the integrated Garmin GPS-155 panel mounted system for navigation. The aircraft has been maintained to standards recommended by the manufacturer and all required and recommended upgrades have been done.”

“Out of freakin’ sight,” Jake said. “Where is this airplane? Where can I see it?”

“I have pictures of it sent from the seller,” she said. “I’ll send them to you in today’s mail. As for the aircraft itself, it is currently based at Guaymaral Airport in Bogota, Colombia.”

“Bogota, Colombia?” Jake asked incredulously.

“That is correct,” she said. “The current owner of the aircraft is a Colombian businessman by the name of Eduardo Gomez. He purchased the plane new from the factory in Italy and used it for personal transport—with a professional pilot flying it as he, himself, is not a licensed pilot. He is now upgrading to a Cessna Citation business jet and is selling the Avanti.”

“A Colombian businessman, huh?” Jake said carefully. “Do we know just what kind of business this Eduardo Gomez happens to be in?”

“I was told he is in the import/export business,” she said blandly.

“Import and export of what?”

“I was not given that information,” Jill told him. “And ... well ... I got the distinct impression that I should not enquire too deeply on this subject.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jake said, shaking his head. “He’s probably a Colombian drug lord.”

“That is a distinct possibility,” she allowed. “Would that make this a ‘deal breaker’, as you like to term it?”

He considered for a moment. “Well ... maybe not. It will make me a little more careful about this deal though. Will Mr. Gomez’s occupation cause any snags with the transfer of title on the aircraft?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Jill said. “I haven’t looked that deeply into this offer just yet, but I imagine that Mr. Gomez, if he is, in fact, a Colombian drug lord, has managed to build a wall of legitimate business around him to cover for any illegal activities. Since he purchased the plane from Italy and had to wire funds internationally in order to obtain the title in the first place, I have no doubt that the money he used was very well laundered in the eyes of the authorities who track such things. And I seriously doubt he would have used his personal plane to smuggle any cocaine or other drugs.”

“That makes sense,” Jake said. “It makes a lot of sense, really. How much does he want for it?”

“His original asking price was five point five million United States dollars; an amount that is considerably above the fair market value for such an asset.”

“Five point five, huh?” he said slowly. That was an awful lot of money.

“I took the liberty of doing a little negotiating for you,” Jill said.

“You did?” Jake asked, surprised. “You haggled with a Colombian drug lord?”

“Alleged Colombian drug lord,” she said. “For all we know he makes his money in coffee or fresh flowers. Those are the biggest exports from Colombia after crude oil and cocaine. In any case, business is business. And I did not talk to Gomez himself, but one of his accountants.”

“Ahhh,” Jake said. “A fellow bean counter.”

“We spoke the same language,” she said. “Figuratively as well as literally. Anyway, I made the gentleman I spoke to aware of the fact that Jake Kingsley was a man who did not appreciate being taken advantage of and that attempting to charge more than fair market value for the asset would likely result in the failure to consummate the deal. He appreciated this position and lowered the asking price to four point eight million. That is still a bit above fair market value, but not by much.”

“So ... it’s a reasonable price then?”

“It’s an outrageous price for anything,” Jill told him. “You’re insane to even consider buying a depreciating asset for that much, but to answer your question, yes, that is a reasonable price for an asset of this magnitude.”

“That is a lot of money,” he said.

“Could it be you are finally seeing reason?” she asked.

“Not necessarily,” he told her. “I’m just trying to wrap my brain around it.”

“Let me help you do that,” she said. “Knowing that you would be unlikely to listen to reason, I took the liberty of crunching some numbers and enquiring about financing. I have the figures right here in front of me.”

“All right,” Jake said. “Lay them on me.”

She laid them on him. “With your credit history and assets, Security Pacific Bank, who holds the construction loan and the mortgage on your current domicile and your current parcel of land, will give you a twenty-year loan for the purchase of the aircraft at an interest rate of six percent if you put down twenty percent of the value of the asset. This would give you monthly payments of twenty-seven thousand, five hundred and ten dollars and thirty-five cents. Yearly insurance rates for the lender-required full coverage on the aircraft would be eleven thousand, eight hundred and six dollars and fourteen cents.”

Jake whistled. “That’s a lot of money,” he said again. “Twenty-seven big for payments.”

“As I said before,” she said. “It’s an outrageous amount for what is really nothing but a big toy for you.”

“It does have a bathroom though,” Jake said, perhaps a little defensively.

“I would hope it has a fucking bathroom for four point eight million dollars,” she said, using the F-word for the first time in Jake’s recollection.

“Still, I can afford this, right?”

She sighed her sigh of frustration, transmitting it over the telephone line quite easily. “Yes, Jake,” she told him. “You can afford twenty-seven-thousand-dollar monthly payments and twelve thousand a year in insurance payments. It won’t even hurt you that badly as long as your revenue stream stays consistent with what it has been these last two years.”

“That should not be an issue,” he said. “Tour revenue is pouring in from Celia’s tour and both of our album sales. And we’ll be putting Brainwash back in the studio this summer and releasing their new album before the end of the year. There is no reason to think it won’t sell as well as their first album.”

“But this is a twenty-year loan, Jake,” she said. “How do we know what will be happening eight years from now, or ten, or fifteen. This is a long-term commitment. And, as I pointed out before, an aircraft is a depreciating asset. It is not like your home, which will always increase in value as the years go by.”

“I am an increasing asset as well, Jill,” he told her. “Every year, I make more money and am worth more. I plan to keep that trend up.”

“Then you want me to move ahead with this acquisition?” she asked.

“I do,” he said. “I’d like to fly out and see the plane, have some mechanics go over it, have them examine the maintenance and repair records. How soon can we start making that happen?”

“I’ll start making those arrangements today,” she said with another sigh. “Are you sure you shouldn’t talk to Laura about this before making a decision?”

“She told me to upgrade my plane to one with a bathroom,” he replied. “That’s all I’m doing.”

“Did she know it was going to cost four point eight million dollars to do that?”

“We never talked about that part,” he admitted.

“Perhaps you should?”

“She’s out on tour right now,” Jake said. “In the middle of the grind, you know. I don’t want to bother her with trivial details.”

“Trivial details?” Jill nearly screamed.

“Don’t worry about Laura,” Jake said dismissively. “That’s my job.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” he said. “Now, about that twenty percent down payment. How much are we talking for that?”

“You can’t do that math in your head?” she asked, irritation and disbelief in her tone.

“I’m sure I could if you gave me a minute, but since I know you have the figure right in front of you, go ahead and lay it on me.”

“Twenty percent of four point eight million dollars is nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars.”

Jake nodded thoughtfully. “That is a lot,” he admitted yet again.

“Yes, it is. A little more than you can just pull out of your wallet and slap down on the table. In order to come up with a lump sum like that I would have to cash out a number of your certificates of deposit, some of which may not be at their maturity date yet since I recently had to do that in order to put down the outlay costs for your home.”

“And that means I would have to pay a penalty, right?”

“That is correct,” she said.

“Hmmm,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s kind of a bummer.”

“Not exactly the word I would have used,” she said.

“Oh well,” he said. “Go ahead and start moving forward on this thing anyway. I’ll find a way to come up with the down payment without you having to cash anything out.”

“How are you going to do that?” she asked.

“By swallowing my pride,” he said.

“Come again?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just get the ball rolling. I have nothing going for the next few weeks, so if you can arrange for us to go to Bogota to check out the plane, this would be the ideal time.”

“Us?” she asked. “You want me to go with you?”

“Haven’t you always wanted to go to Colombia?” he asked. “I hear it’s beautiful there.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve never wanted to go to Colombia.”

“But you will, right?” he asked gently.

“Yes, Jake,” she said, resigned. “I will.”

Ten minutes later, the phone rang at Pauline’s house. She was just finishing up her own breakfast and watching Tabitha—aka Satan’s Master—chomp down her pancakes with maple syrup. She answered the phone herself.

“Paulie,” her brother’s voice said in her ear, “it’s Jake.”

“Hey, bro,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I’ve had a change of heart,” he said.

“About what?”

“About the Tsunami Sound Festival.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised. Her brother rarely changed his mind about such things. “What brought this on?”

“A Colombian drug lord,” he told her.

She raised her eyebrows. “How’s that?” she asked slowly.

He chuckled. “Never mind. It’s a long story. Anyway, call that suit up and tell him that if he’s still willing to pay me one point two million to open for Matt Tisdale ... well ... I’m in.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll do that. I’ll do it as soon as Tabs if finished eating her breakfast.”

The End of Book IV