“Uh ... sure.”
He recited it to her and then had her read it back to him. “If you have any trouble finding it, call back here and Nerdly can help you. I’m going to call Elsa and then I’ll be on my way to the airport and out of communication until I get back on the ground. Don’t linger in the apartment. Pack what you need and get over to my place as soon as you can.”
“I will, Jake,” she said. “And you be careful.”
“I always am,” he assured her. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
“Okay ... I ... I love you, Jake.”
“I love you too,” he said. “And don’t worry too much. Things are going to be okay.”
He hung up the phone and looked at the Nerdlys and Celia, who were all staring at him, various versions of alarm and concern on their faces. He could only imagine what they were thinking from having just heard his end of the conversation.
“Trouble with Laura?” Celia asked carefully.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Her dentist apparently didn’t take the breakup very seriously. He was waiting for her in her apartment after she got home from a school meeting. He tried to ... to rape her.”
“Madres de Dios!” Celia exclaimed. “Is she all right?”
“She’s physically fine,” Jake said. “He didn’t get very far in his attempt thanks to Phil, who did a little ass-kicking on her behalf.”
“Thank God,” Sharon said.
“Thank Phil,” Jake corrected. “Anyway, she’s kind of rattled, so, as you undoubtedly heard, I’m having her go to my place to stay for now.”
“A wise move,” Nerdly said approvingly.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “And I know we’re planning to dive into the mixing tomorrow, but I’m gonna have to take a sick day for that. I need to fly home right now and deal with this guy so this doesn’t happen again.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Jake?” Celia asked.
“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in quite some time,” he said.
“Do you plan to pursue a course of violent intimidation against him?” Nerdly asked. “If so, I must ask you if you’ve considered the ramifications of such an endeavor.”
“I don’t think I’ll need to resort to violence,” Jake assured them. “I’m just going to have a little talk with him, but I need to roll now if I’m going to make it to LA in time to have that discussion today.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Celia asked him.
“I am sure,” Jake said. “Now let me call Elsa and then I gotta roll.”
Jake drove quickly and almost recklessly to the airport, arriving there at 12:55. He hurriedly filed an IFR flight plan and then made a phone call to the limousine service, asking them to have a car and driver at Santa Monica Airport when he landed. They promised they would. After that, he called Pauline. He briefly explained the situation to her and asked her for a certain piece of information she’d dug up for Laura a few months back, when her dentist had refused to return her calls. She provided the information and then expressed the same concerns everyone else had expressed so far.
“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”
“Probably not,” he assured her.
“Jake, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”
“No? Well, I do. Anyway, I got to go, sis. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”
“I certainly hope so,” she replied.
He then went out to the tarmac and had a fuel truck pump his tanks two-thirds full. That would be enough to get him all the way to Los Angeles with fuel to spare for emergencies, but would not be enough weight to slow him down, particularly with no passengers or luggage in the aircraft.
He forced himself to go through the preflight checks carefully, using his checklists and not cutting any corners. Finally, he taxied to the runway and lifted off into the overcast sky at 1:31 PM. His assigned altitude was nineteen thousand feet. It took him thirteen minutes to climb that high and then, once leveled out and on course, he did not retard the throttles as he usually did for cruise flight. Instead, he kept them at the climb-out level, so both engines were sitting just below the red line on the tachometers. His airspeed settled at 220 knots, about 260 miles per hour, fifty miles per hour or so faster than he normally cruised at. It was not the most fuel-efficient way to fly—in fact, it was sucking up that kerosene like no tomorrow—but with 812 air miles to fly, he would get there in time as long as nothing delayed him.
“Come on, baby,” he said softly, patting his control panel affectionately. “I got a dentist appointment I need to get to.”
Dr. David Boulder, DDS, was in a foul mood as he left the practice at 5:35 PM that day. His right eye was swollen and surrounded by a large purple bruise. It throbbed and he had a bit of trouble seeing out of it. He still could not believe that goddamn fudge packer had actually hit him. Of all the nerve! He still had half a mind to call the police and have him arrested. Only the thought that they might have to call or visit his house at some point for some sort of follow up and, as a remote consequence, his wife might find out the details of the assault, kept him from actually doing it.
It’s a good thing I’m good at coming up with cover stories, he thought as he walked out to his 1991 Dodge Ram four-wheel drive. The way everyone looked at me when I came back from lunch ... Jesus Christ, what a mess.
His cover story for them was an oldie but a goodie. “I was walking into the deli to get my sandwich and someone opened the door in front of me and it hit me in the face.” Simple, succinct, to the point. He was pretty sure everyone had bought it, which was a miracle in and of itself since that stupid twit piece on the side of his had actually told Alisa who she was when she’d called yesterday. What a dumb cunt! That had not been easy to explain, although he had managed to come up with something. “Laura Best is Mrs. Carmello’s niece,” he’d told Alisa. “She has kind of a strange sense of humor. I think she thought she was being funny.”
“That makes perfect sense,” Alisa had told him with a nod.
Thank God for dumb-ass receptionists. It seemed this whole Laura situation was still under control—at least as far as his wife or his colleagues and staff finding out about it. There was still the problem with Laura herself, of course. Had she seriously hooked up with Jake Kingsley, as she claimed, or was that just some sort of story she was making up for purposes of her own? He kind of suspected it was a story—probably to make him jealous, to try to push him into leaving Barbara and marrying her (like that was ever going to happen). Jake Kingsley could have any woman he wanted. Why would he go after the meek little redhead? Did she really even know Jake Kingsley? Was this whole thing with Celia Valdez a lie as well? When you thought about it, her getting a job playing her little saxophone for either one of them seemed kind of farfetched, didn’t it?
As he approached his huge pickup truck with the oversized tires and the lift kit—he had needed to have a stepping rail installed just so he could get into the thing—he noticed there was a limousine parked out near the back end of the professional complex his practice was located in. He glanced at it for a moment, thinking that its presence was a bit odd, and then dismissed it, his mind turning back to this little tiff he was having with Laura. Perhaps not calling her the entire time she was away had been a mistake? True, she was dumb as a rock and naïve as a seventeenth century pilgrim girl in modern New York City, but still ... everyone had their limits, he supposed. He might have crossed over hers just a bit. That was undoubtedly what had led to this whole we’re through fit she seemed to be in the midst of. He just needed to let her cool off for a few more days—the amount of time it took for his eye to heal, perhaps—and then he would go back over to her apartment on one of his lunch breaks and smooth talk her a little, put on the bullshit extra thick.