“My preference?”
“Yeah, you know, do you like young guys, old guys, girls? Whatever you’re into, he’ll find it. You just need to let him know.”
“I’m involved in a relationship,” she said, appalled.
Homer simply shrugged. “What happens on the road, stays on the road,” he said. “Nobody’s gonna tell Jake what you do out here.”
“I don’t want to do anything!” she said.
That earned her another shrug. “That too is your right,” he said. “Just don’t put your request in and Ron won’t bring you anything.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “Is that what you did?”
“Yeah,” he said, taking another swig of beer. “I’m married.”
“That’s good to hear,” she said. “So, you just sit it out every night?”
“Well ... not every night,” he said. “I’ll usually have him bring me something cute and nasty once a week or so.”
“You cheat on your wife out here?” she asked.
“Cheat is a strong word,” he said. “I prefer to think it as relieving the tensions of the road by using the resources available to me. You should give it a try some time.”
“I most certainly will not!” she assured him.
Another shrug. “Think it over before you decide,” he said. “Remember, what happens on the road, stays on the road.”
Chapter 15: Blasts from the Past
Over the Gulf of Santa Catalina, off the coast of southern California
June 25, 1993
The morning sun was still ascending into the sky to his left when Jake flew his plane out of the Class B airspace that extended twelve miles offshore of Los Angeles and its suburbs. He was flying almost due south at an altitude of 5500 feet. The calm, blue Pacific Ocean stretched out all around him. Rising from those gentle swells, directly ahead, was the rocky island of Santa Catalina, its northern shores some twenty miles distant. Sitting next to Jake, in the copilot’s seat, was a man named Emery Wilkens, who liked to be called “Em”. He was a professional camera operator for NVC Studios and he had a portable Sony video camera in his lap—a camera with a 150-millimeter zoom lens that was capable of reading newsprint from a hundred yards away and probably cost more than the average movie consumer made in a six-month period. Thanks to union regulations that covered things like hazard pay, work before 9:00 AM, special assignments, and weekly overtime, Em was getting paid more for each hour of this mission than KVA Records paid Dexter Price for each hour of blowing his horn. But it was NVC Studios that was footing this particular bill. They were also paying Jake ninety dollars an hour, plus fuel expenses and a stipend for wear and tear on his aircraft. And even with all that, the union rep for the production crews had thrown a major bitch because Jake was not a member of any labor organization.
“You see anything yet?” Jake asked, his voice transmitted through the microphone and going into Em’s ears.
“Just a whole lot of ocean down there,” Em replied with a yawn. He was a bit tired. The lack of restroom facilities aboard the plane had kept him from enjoying his normal two cups of strong and black prior to going to work. True, there were urinals aboard in case of emergency, but there was no way in hell he was going to whip out his Johnson with Celia Valdez sitting just behind him.
“This is the meeting spot, right?” asked Celia, who really had no business related reason to be on this flight, and was therefore not getting paid for it, but who had come along because it sounded like fun, fun enough for her to put aside her fear of flying—that and she really wanted to see an old friend again.
“This is the place we agreed on,” Jake said. “They’re out there somewhere. Look just below us. She said they’d be at five thousand feet and that they would be circling ten miles off the north coast of the island.”
“Ah...,” said Celia as something occurred to her. “Then the reason we’re at five thousand, five hundred feet is so ... you know...”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “So we don’t find them the hard way. It seemed a prudent precaution.”
“Makes sense,” Em said, wishing he could at least smoke in here.
Jake spotted what they were looking for two minutes later. He saw a glint of sunlight and, after staring at the spot, was able to make out the tiny form of a single engine aircraft just below them and about three miles away. Once he was able to focus on it, he saw it had an overhead wing and fixed tricycle landing gear. A Cessna 172. Exactly the type of aircraft they were looking for.
“I got them,” Jake said. “Two o’clock low, moving parallel to us.”
Em and Celia both peered in that direction. Celia was unable to spot it, but Em found it after a few seconds. “I see it,” he said. He made no move, as of yet, to bring his camera to bear.
“Let me get them on the radio,” Jake said. “I gave her a frequency to monitor when we talked on the phone. Hopefully she wrote it down.”
“I’m sure she did,” Celia said.
Jake dialed up the frequency—one that was not used for anything else within four hundred miles—and keyed up. He had the tail number of the Cessna 172 that belonged to Brody Flight School—an aircraft he had loaned the down payment money for so the school could purchase it—written on his kneeboard. “November-Tango six-three-seven,” he said into his microphone, “this is November-Tango four-one-five. We’re at five-five-zero-zero feet and I believe I have a visual on you from about two miles back. Confirm you’re heading roughly one-eight-zero?”
There was a click in his ears and then, suddenly, an intimately familiar voice was speaking to him. “This is six-three-seven here,” Helen Brody told him, her tone calm, cool, professional. It was her flight voice, the one she’d used when she’d been teaching Jake how to fly, the voice she always used when in command of an aircraft. “We are currently on a heading of one-eight-zero at five-zero-zero-zero feet with a speed of one-one-zero knots. I’m thinking that the aircraft you have in sight is probably us as long as you’re in the vicinity of the agreed upon location. How about I give you a wing waggle to verify?”
“Sounds like a plan, six-three-seven,” Jake said. “Go ahead with the maneuver.”
Jake watched the plane before him. It banked first to the left, then the right, then back to the left again, using no rudder. It then leveled off. “I’m going to call that a positive identification six-three-seven,” he said. “We’re currently heading one-eight-four degrees and moving at one-six-zero knots. Maintain your current heading and I’ll come down and form up on your left wing.”
“Sounds good, four-one-five,” Helen said. “Are you using flight following?”
Jake smiled. “I am,” he said. “Someone taught me once that it’s always a good idea to have The Man keep an eye on you while you’re up here.”
“You must have had a good teacher,” she replied, the slightest hint of a smile in her tone. “In this situation, however, you’re going to want to discontinue it or we’ll set off a TCAS alert when we close with each other.”
“Okay,” Jake said. “I’ll let Center know.”
“Be sure and explain why to them,” she said. “They won’t have a problem with what we’re doing, but it’s the sort of thing they like to know about.”
“Will do,” Jake said. “I’m going to pop back over to the Center frequency and then I’ll start my approach.”
“Sound good,” she said. “Be careful, Jake. Formation flying is not as easy as it seems. It doesn’t take much to screw up and have a midair. Maintain at least five-zero feet of horizontal separation from us at all times.”
“Will do, Sensei,” he said, calling her by a name he hadn’t used since he had been her actual student.