Chapter 7: Dreams and Schemes and Circus Crowds

San Diego, California

July 11, 1996

After the two-and-a-half-hour flight from Los Cabos International at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula, the Avanti touched down gently on Lindbergh Field’s Runway 27 at 2:05 PM, three minutes ahead of schedule. Jake was in the pilot’s seat, Suzie in the copilot’s seat, Laura sitting behind Jake. Celia had remained behind in Barquisimeto to continue visiting her family. The approach had been a little harrowing—at least to Jake—with a steeper than normal glideslope, some tricky wind shifts, and the uncomfortably close proximity to the downtown skyscrapers, some of which were higher than the final approach altitude. The slope brought them uncomfortably close to a parking structure located just eight hundred feet from the runway threshold, but Jake had pretty much learned to trust his ILS approach system by this point and had resisted the urge to pull up and go around. They had cleared the garage by more than two hundred feet, though it had certainly looked like less than that.

“Another nice one,” Suzie commented as they rolled out. “It’s almost like you know what you’re doing now.”

“Almost,” he said with a chuckle. He was exceedingly grateful that Suzie had been along for the ride on this trip, was convinced he would not have been able to do it without her. He really had not thought the trip through when he had first planned it, had not really thought about the fact that he would be flying from busy international airport to another busy international airport, usually through legitimate IFR conditions due to the tropical cloud cover, skirting the occasional thunderstorm, and consistently having to choose between making a nearly blind ILS approach or not flying at all. Suzie’s presence had been a last-minute suggestion when Celia offered to meet them in Caracas and he now knew that without her by his side to talk him through the flights and the landings and to gently goad him into working on unfamiliar skills, he likely would have just ended up hiring someone to fly the plane home after all. But now, he had more than fifteen hours of challenging flying and six challenging ILS landings (including two high altitude airports) under his belt. He was much more comfortable with his new airplane and had already decided to embrace all of its capabilities now that he had some experience.

“Now it’s time for the interrogation,” Laura said sourly from her seat. She had slept almost the entire flight and had only awakened when she heard the flaps being lowered for approach. She was still a little groggy and out of sorts.

“Undoubtedly,” Jake said with a sigh as he turned onto the taxiway and started heading for the international terminal, where the general aviation customs checkpoint was waiting for them. The interrogation was something that had happened each time they had crossed an international border: in Caracas, in Panama, in Guatemala City, and in Mexico City. The aircraft they were flying on was flagged in pretty much every nation in the western hemisphere and everyone wanted to give it and its occupants the onceover. They had no reason to believe that San Diego would be any different.

It turned out it was a little different, but not in a good way. Instead of only customs agents and a drug-sniffing dog, there were two additional armed men waiting for them. These men were dressed in tactical gear. They wore baseball caps on their head with the letters DEA on them.

“This is going to be fun,” Jake remarked sourly as he went through the shutdown checklist.

The customs agents were polite, as they had been in every previous country. They looked at everyone’s passport, paying particular attention to the stamps, and then asked Jake what his business had been in South and Central America and Mexico. They listened to his explanation attentively, as if they did not already know what his business had been. The DEA agents stood back a few feet during this phase, unintroduced and saying nothing.

“Why did you pick the route home through Central America and Mexico?” one of the customs guys asked after Jake told his story. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to fly directly to Miami and then work your way home from there?”

“Maybe,” Jake allowed, “but that would have been a long, overwater flight during thunderstorm season in an aircraft I am not all that familiar with. I have never done an overwater flight of that distance before and I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. I was more comfortable with shorter hops that were always within a hundred miles or so of land.”

The agents nodded, giving no indication whether they believed him or not. They then moved on to the second part of the ritual: opening up the suitcases and having the dog sniff them before rifling through their belongings. Like every other team of customs officers, they seemed to find something particularly interesting about Laura’s panties.

The agents then boarded the aircraft with the dog for their inspection and walk-through. While they were doing that, the two DEA agents finally stepped forward and introduced themselves. They were Special Agents Markley and Mendoza.

“We’re assuming that you understand our interest in you and your aircraft, Mr. Kingsley?” Mendoza, who seemed to be the leader, asked him.

“I do,” Jake said. “This plane used to belong to Eduardo Gomez, who is allegedly a particularly successful exporter of yeyo from South America.”

“That is correct,” Mendez said. “How well do you know Mr. Gomez, Jake? May I call you Jake?”

“You may,” Jake said. “And I don’t know Gomez very well at all. I had never even heard of him until my accountant discovered that he was trying to sell the very plane that I was interested in buying. And I had no reason to believe he was an international drug dealer until after I had already closed escrow on the plane and started working my way home with it.”

“But you’ve socialized with Mr. Gomez,” said agent Markley. It was not phrased as a question, but stated as a fact. One or more of the previous customs agents had undoubtedly been in contact with him.

“That is correct,” Jake said. “When I flew to Colombia back in May to inspect the aircraft, he made a point of coming to meet me. I’m sure you’re aware that I’m somewhat of a celebrity, right?”

“Oh yes,” Mendoza said. “We are aware of who you are. Intimately aware, you might say. And we know you have had some previous experience with yeyo yourself.”

“Yes, I used to snort a little coke back in the day,” Jake allowed. “Everyone who picks up an entertainment rag or reads the headlines in the supermarket knows that. But I haven’t used any in years now, not since the last Intemperance tour back in 1990.”

“Would you be willing to submit to a drug test?” asked Markley.

“No,” Jake said simply.

“Why not?” Markley asked.

“Because what is in my pee is none of your business,” Jake explained.

“If you’re not doing any cocaine, why are you unwilling to submit a sample?” asked Mendoza.

Jake sighed. “If you know me as well as you say, then I’m sure you’re aware that my father spent his career as an ACLU lawyer. Giving you my pee just to satisfy your curiosity kind of goes against the grain of how I was raised. If you want my pee, you’re going to need to get a judge to sign an order compelling me to give it. Good luck with that, gentlemen.”

The two agents looked at each other for a moment, passing some kind of silent communication back and forth. Mendoza then looked at him again. “You know,” he said, “it would be perfectly within our rights to impound this aircraft pending an investigation into whether or not it was purchased with drug money.”

“You think I purchased it using drug money?” Jake said with a laugh. “Seriously? I am a multimillionaire, gentlemen. I have money falling out of my asshole, all of which can be traced back to my primary income stream, which is KVA Records, which gets its income from the sale of music produced by myself, Celia Valdez, and a little group called Brainwash. I don’t know if you’ve checked with your friends over at the IRS yet, but I can assure you that everything is in order and there are no questionable income streams.”

“We’re not talking about your purchase of the plane, Jake,” Mendoza said. “We’re talking about Eduardo Gomez’s purchase of the plane. If he bought the plane using drug money, then it doesn’t matter that you bought it with clean money. It was still originally purchased using tainted funds.”

“We do not need to prove the matter in a court of law,” Markley added. “We only need to have reasonable suspicion in order to impound the asset.”

Jake was starting to get angry now, but he kept his temper in check and his voice calm. “If you want to go down that road, you had better be prepared for a fight,” he said. “The title on that aircraft is quite clear. The bank that financed it for me did a very thorough investigation into the title—an investigation that they charged me nearly fifteen thousand dollars for, I might add. They were satisfied that the funds Eduardo Gomez used to purchase the aircraft from Piaggio Aerospace in Italy were from legitimate and legal sources of income.”

“Yes,” Mendoza said, as if he were talking to an idiot—which he probably thought he was. “That is because that money was laundered and made to appear legitimate through accounting practices that relied on Gomez’s coffee export business to disguise the actual source of the income.”

“I guess they did a pretty good job then,” Jake said, “because Piaggio Aerospace and Security Pacific Bank both signed off on the transaction. They would not have done that if there had been any questions about the source of the original funding.”

“Any provable questions,” Mendoza said.

“A fair point,” Jake allowed. “Do you have any provable questions that Piaggio and Security Pacific were unable to uncover?”

“We haven’t opened the investigation yet,” Mendoza said.

“Well, by all means, open the investigation if you think you need to,” Jake told them. “But if you impound my aircraft while you’re doing it, I’m going to come after you—both as an agency and personally—with every legal means at my disposal. And believe me, gentlemen, when you have as much money as I do, there are a lot of means. Not only will I hire the best, most specialized law firm to come after you, but Security Pacific will do the same. After all, you’re threatening to cause a default on a loan of more than three million dollars they just made, because you can bet your ass that if you impound this plane, I’m not paying a dime of the monthly payments.”

The two agents shared another look, this one a little more doubtful. It seemed they were starting to realize that Jake was not someone they could just intimidate into doing what they wanted.

“Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot here, Jake,” Mendoza finally said.

“Perhaps we did,” Jake agreed. “Look, guys, I’m not involved in the drug trade. Not in any way, shape, or form. I am willing to concede that Eduardo Gomez might be involved in it, but I had no knowledge of that when I entered into this agreement to purchase the plane with him. I used my provably legitimate income to make this purchase. The aircraft manufacturer and the bank that funded my loan have no questions about the source of the income originally used to purchase the aircraft. The title is free and clear and has been approved. All of the paperwork is in order. That is all I have to say. If you wish to speak to me further about this matter, you will have to make an appointment and I will make sure I have an attorney present. If you want to open a huge can of worms—worms that will have teeth—then you go ahead and impound the aircraft.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Jake,” Mendoza said politely. “We will, of course, continue to look into this, but we have no further questions for you at this time. As long as the customs agents do not find any irregularities, you are free to keep possession of the aircraft for now.”

“Fair enough,” Jake said.

The two agents walked away, heading for the entrance to the plane.

“Wow,” Suzie said as they walked away. “That was pretty intense.”

Jake simply shrugged. “It’s the life I chose,” he said.

Meanwhile, just over a hundred miles to the north, a serious breach of patient confidentiality was about to take place—again. This was a breach that would be investigated extensively and the perpetrator of it fired from her job and sued in civil court by her victim. It was a breach that would be mentioned in the United States House Chamber as the 104^th Congress debated the final details of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act—which would become known as HIPAA—and would serve to sway a few members who had previously been hesitant to vote aye.

The perpetrator of this breech was a registration clerk at the Women’s and Children’s Center on the campus of Covington Medical Center in Santa Clarita. A large, modern hospital that had opened for business only five years before, it was where Mindy Snow had chosen to deliver her baby when the time came. And the time was nearly here. Though her actual due date was not until July 21, her doctor had arranged to have her admitted for a non-emergency induction on the morning of July 12, more than a week early.

Darcy Grover was the thirty-year-old clerk who took the call from Dr. Jonas Steinberg’s office regarding the admission and induction. She was not a nurse but had been working in this position for six years now and she knew that planning a routine induction more than a week before the actual due date was unusual indeed. Darcy had access to Mindy Snow’s chart and could see that there was no medical justification for such a thing. Mindy did not have gestational diabetes and the fetus was not overly large. There were, in fact, several medical reasons not to do an induction early. She smelled something sour here, something that probably had to do with Mindy’s Snow’s celebrity status, but she could not figure out what it was.

It should be noted at this point that Darcy Grover had a fairly intense dislike for Mindy Snow. Though she had never met her, she was a regular follower of celebrity gossip and knew that Mindy had been responsible for the breakup of Greg Oldfellow and Celia Valdez, who had been her absolute favorite celebrity couple. She thought that Greg was the most handsome man and often fantasized about him when she masturbated. And Celia was her favorite singer and favorite female celebrity of all time. She had a beautiful voice and seemed a very realistic person. The two of them had been natural together, obviously soulmates. And those vicious stories about Celia having sex with that lesbian pilot simply could not be true—just like those stories about Greg routinely cheating on her when they were married.

After putting the hold on the birthing suite for the next morning, Darcy went and talked to the day shift charge nurse to let her know that a VIP would be checking in the next day.

“Mindy Snow, huh?” Lynda Rogers, the charge nurse in question, commented when she was told. “I heard that she would be delivering here.” She sighed. “I guess we’ll have to pull out all the bells and whistles.”

“I noticed that her EDC is not until July 21,” Darcy said. “And she has no medical reason for early induction. Isn’t that kind of strange?”

Lynda, who had been working in labor and delivery departments in the greater Los Angeles area for more than twenty years simply shook her head. “Not with these celebrity types,” she said. “It’s a body thing.”

“A body thing?” Darcy asked, confused.

“How does Mindy Snow make her living?”

“With her acting,” Darcy said.

“That’s part of it,” Lynda allowed, “and I’m not suggesting that she isn’t a great actress, because she is, but it’s her looks that are the most important thing. She is a beautiful woman, and she needs to stay that way if she wants to keep getting roles. I’ve seen this time and time again with women who rely on their looks to get them through life. They eat a restrictive diet and exercise obsessively so they won’t gain any weight while they’re pregnant. They rub imported Greek extra-virgin olive oil on their bellies four times a day. And they want the baby out as soon as it is reasonably safe to do so. This all helps prevent stretch marks on their precious skin. And they want it out by induction instead of C-section. Induction doesn’t leave a scar on her their little flat bellies.”

“That is appalling!” Darcy said, outraged. “They would risk their baby’s health just to prevent a few stretch marks?”

Lynda simply shrugged. “It’s Hollywood,” she said.

“And Dr. Steinberg goes along with this?” She had always liked and respected Dr. Steinberg before. But now...

Another shrug. “It’s not really all that dangerous,” Lynda explained. “There’s a slightly increased risk of lung issues, but it’s only a small risk. If Steinberg didn’t do it, she’d find someone else who would.”

“Hmph,” Darcy grunted, shaking her head. “I think it’s disgusting.”

“Yeah? Well, what can you do?”

Darcy returned to her desk and continued to fume about this. What could she do? Well, maybe there was something that she could do. She could expose Mindy Snow for the heartless bitch that she was. Anonymously, of course.

She got off work at four-thirty that afternoon and drove home to her modest apartment in North Hollywood. After feeding her two cats and playing with them for a few minutes, she went to the kitchen and looked at the stack of this week’s LA Times copies that were sitting next to the garbage can waiting their turn to be taken to the recycle bin. Her absolute favorite entertainment reporter was Bernadette Tapp, who had been the one to first break the story that Greg and Celia were divorcing and who had covered their breakup extensively since. There had been an article penned by her a few days ago on that very subject. It had to do with the final paperwork filing of the uncontested divorce.

It took her a few minutes of digging around before she found the story again. She did not re-read the article. Instead, she went to the bottom where Tapp’s office number and email address were printed. She debated giving a call but decided that she would probably only get voicemail and God only knew how long it would be before someone listened to it. So, instead, she turned on her computer and opened up her email account. She put Tapp’s email into the sender box and then typed out a brief message.

I have some very interesting information to share regarding Mindy Snow’s upcoming delivery of her child. If interested, I will be home all evening and will answer the phone if you would like to discuss this.

She signed her email “an anonymous source” and then put in her phone number. She then sent the email from her account (her email address was an AOL account, with username Darcy_Grover). She then sat back on the couch to watch television, eat leftover pizza from last night, and drink chardonnay from a box in the refrigerator.

Less than an hour later, when she was three glasses in, the phone began to ring.

It was Bernadette Tapp on the other end.

They had quite the conversation.

Jake and Laura spent the night in Oceano after flying from Lindbergh Field to San Luis Obispo Regional Airport in the city of San Luis Obispo. The airport was fifteen minutes further from their home than Oceano Airport, but the runway in Oceano was not long enough to accommodate the Avanti so they were now renting a hangar at SLO, hoping that the faster aircraft would cancel out the longer driving distance. In the next week Jake would put the Chancellor on the market for the asking price of two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

On the morning of July 12—a Friday morning—he got his first opportunity to check the timeline of his commute in the new plane. His band—the members of Lighthouse—had been hard at work rehearsing up the basic melodies of the set he planned to play at the TSF and he was going to check on their progress before they knocked off for the weekend (he had given them all weekends off until the festival itself). On Monday, he would jump right back in with them and they would hopefully start to polish things up into something that did not suck. Of course, he still did not have a piano player or a synthesizer player or a violinist, so those were things he was going to have to start working on as well.

He roared into the sky just after eight o’clock, climbing out toward Morro Bay before turning south toward the San Fernando Valley. As he left the airport, his engines turning at ninety percent thrust, hundreds, if not thousands of people who lived or worked in the vicinity of the egress path of SLO Regional looked up as they heard the grating, irritating, loud whine of those rear-facing turboprop engines. Though the Avanti was extremely quiet inside the fuselage, outside was another story completely. Many of them pondered the strange aircraft that was generating the noise. It looked quite peculiar, like something out of a science fiction show. They then mostly forgot about it. For the time being anyway.

Jake leveled the Avanti at 11500 feet, flying under VFR conditions and reaching his target altitude in less than five minutes. After entering cruise flight, the aircraft easily achieved a ground speed of 330 miles per hour, bumping lightly over the spine of the coastal mountains. He began his descent only sixteen minutes later and then circled into the landing pattern of Whiteman Airport, touching down at 8:37 AM. It took him another ten minutes to secure the aircraft and make the walk to his hangar, where his F-150 was hooked to a trickle charger, patiently awaiting him.

As he drove from the airport to the studio, he passed quite near the Covington Medical Center campus. His aviator’s eyes noticed that there were several helicopters circling around the fifteen-story building, which was kind of strange, but he dismissed the thought as soon as it was no longer in his sight. He arrived at KVA Records at 9:07 AM, only seven minutes after the band had started their day.

The Nerdlys were not there—they were up in Oregon with Brainwash, starting the process of laying down the rhythm tracks for the ten tunes that had been selected for the next CD—so the soundcheck was nearly complete (although, in truth, they did not sound as good as when the Nerdlys were supervising it).

Everyone was happy to see Jake.

“How’s the new plane?” asked Ted.

“Everything I hoped it would be,” Jake told him.

“Did I ever tell you about the plane crash I was on back when I worked in Riverside County?” he asked next.

“No,” Jake said. “And I do not want to hear about it, if you please.”

“It’s a good story,” Ted said, just itching to spin a tale of death and destruction.

“I’m sure it is,” Jake said, “but I’m going to take a pass on this one.”

“All right,” Ted sighed, clearly disappointed.

They finished their sound check and showed him what they had accomplished. It was a lot. When he had left for Dallas nearly two weeks ago, they had been in the very beginning stages of learning his melodies. Now, they were able to perform respectable instrumental versions of every one of the sixteen songs on the setlist. Of course, they still needed to work on the bridges, intros, outros, and the mixing with Jake’s vocals, but they had made good progress while he was gone and his confidence that he could pull this off began to rise.

Nobody had listened to the news today or had read the LA Times. For that reason, nobody knew that a media circus was currently in progress just a few miles away. The first that Jake heard about it was when the band broke for lunch and Jake used his cell phone to call Greg Oldfellow. Greg was staying in LA these days because Palm Springs was too hot for his taste this time of year. The two of them had made plans to have dinner today as they had not seen each other in more than a month now.

“We still on for Remington’s?” Jake asked the actor when he answered his phone.

“Are you kidding me?” Greg asked. “I’m not leaving this house until all of this blows over.”

“Until all of what blows over?”

“You haven’t heard?” he asked.

“Heard what?”

“Mindy is having her baby today,” he said. “She’s in the hospital right now.”

“Oh ... I didn’t know that,” Jake said, still not understanding what the issue was. Why was Greg the least bit interested in the birth of a child he had been tricked into fathering and had publicly renounced a relationship with?

“I have reporters and paparazzi clustered in front of my house and at least two news helicopters circling over the top of it. It’s insane.”

“Why are they bothering you?” Jake asked.

“Because I’m the father,” he said. “Johnny, my agent, tells me they have been harassing him since last night. First it was Bernadette Tapp for the LA Times. She’s the one that broke the story that Mindy was being induced today. And then, once the Times came out this morning, all of the other gossip trolls started calling and showing up in front of my house.”

“I don’t understand their interest in any of this,” Jake said. “She’s just having a baby. An ordinary, everyday baby. It’s not like she’s a virgin birth or something.”

“A truer statement was never made,” Greg scoffed.

“Why the helicopters and the pap and all that? I don’t get it.”

“It’s because Mindy is being induced more than a week before her due date,” Greg said. “Somebody at her doctor’s office or the hospital leaked that information along with the speculation that she is doing it for vanity reasons.”

“Vanity reasons?” Jake had no idea what he was talking about.

“That she’s getting the baby out early to avoid stretch marks or a C-section scar. This same ‘anonymous source close to the case’ is also claiming that Mindy was starving herself the entire pregnancy to avoid weight gain. The press has already been painting her as a heartless manipulative slut.”

“That’s what she is,” Jake reminded him.

“I know that,” Greg said, “but now they’re painting her as an unfit mother, willing to risk the health of her child for her own vanity. The article brings up the fact that she had an amniocentesis that was not medically necessary just to DNA type the child as being mine. The anonymous source is claiming that there was no medical reason at all to induce the baby early and plenty of reasons not to.”

“I see,” Jake said. “And they’re trying to drag you into this for what reason?”

“They’re asking Johnny crazy questions,” Greg said. “They want to know if I’m going to step in and try to stop the induction. They want to know if I’m going to try to obtain full custody of the baby to keep her incompetent hands off of it.”

“And you’re not going to do any of those things?”

“Of course not!” he said. “My position is unchanged. Mindy made this bed, now she can lay in it. I just don’t want to deal with those reporters and this media circus. I’m holing up in here until this all blows over.”

“Didn’t you say you were going to head up to Coos Bay soon?” Jake asked. His golf course was now complete and would be ready to host its first players on July 20. Greg planned to be the very first golfer to swing a club on the course. And it was intended to be a high-publicity event to serve as advertisement for the posh course.

“I will be there, one way or the other,” he vowed. “I still have a week to figure it out. Maybe this will have died down by then.”

“I doubt that,” Jake opined. “Listen, I have an idea.”

“An idea?”

“I’m flying back to Oceano after rehearsal today. Going to stay the weekend. Come with me. You can see my new plane and then hole up at my house where the reporters can’t get to you. On Sunday morning, I’ll fly you up to Coos Bay and you can hole up there as long as you want.”

Greg thought this over for a few moments and then tried to dismiss it. “It won’t work,” he said. “They’ll just circle your house in their helicopters instead of mine. They’ll just send the mobs to your front door instead of mine. And then they’ll just follow us to Coos Bay.”

“Well, they can’t show up at my front door,” Jake countered. “My property is secured. The most they could do is cluster around the access road where it comes off of the PCH, and I don’t think the SLO sheriff’s department and the highway patrol would be very keen on that.”

“There’s still the helicopters,” Greg said. “Do you really want two or three of those vultures circling over for hours every day.”

“Not really,” Jake admitted, “but I think there’s a way we can avoid that as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“They won’t show up at my house if they don’t know you’re there.”

“How would we keep them from learning that?” Greg asked. “If you pick me up, they’ll just follow us to the airport with their helicopters. Even if they don’t see us fly off, they’ll know I’m with you and they know where you live.”

“Then I should not be the one to pick you up,” Jake said.

“Who is going to pick me up then?” he asked. “A limo? I will still have to fight my way through the horde in order to get inside.”