"Welcome to GGCI, Mr. Kingsley," the first man said politely. "I am Richard. The admission booth let us know you were on the way up."
"Uh... thanks," Jake said, slowly stepping out.
Richard handed him a claim ticket. "I'll park your car in the visitor lot for you," he said. "Daniel here will escort you inside to the visitor check-in desk."
"Sure," Jake said. "Sounds good."
"Nice car, Mr. Kingsley," Daniel said with obvious sincerity. "It appears to be new?"
"Yes, I just picked it up the other day."
"You have excellent taste in automobiles," Richard told him. "And don't worry. I'll take great care of it."
"Thanks," Jake said.
Richard climbed behind the wheel and drove off with Jake's car. When he was gone, Daniel said, "If you'll follow me, Mr. Kingsley."
Jake followed him. They went through a set of doors and entered a spacious lobby. Once again, the impression was that this was a luxury hotel instead of a jail. There were no bars on any of the windows, no security cameras anywhere, no one in a uniform of any kind. All of the male staff members in view wore suits and all of the female staff members wore business dresses. Jake was led past a marble fountain to a desk labeled VISITOR CHECK-IN. PLEASE HAVE PICTURE IDENTIFICATION READY. The desk was staffed by a young, attractive woman in her late twenties. She gave Jake a friendly, professional smile as he approached.
"I'll leave you here, Mr. Kingsley," Daniel said.
"Okay, thanks," Jake said.
Daniel gave a polite little nod and then retreated back the way he'd come. Jake looked back at the woman.
"Good morning, sir," she greeted. "Are you here to visit one of our guests?"
"Yes I am," Jake said. "I'm here to see Matt Tisdale."
"Of course," she said politely. "You're Mr. Kingsley. I thought I recognized you. May I see your identification please?"
He pulled out his wallet and removed his driver's license from it. He handed it across to her and she quickly typed his name into the computer before her desk. She handed it back and then typed something else. After peering at her screen for a moment she said, "Mr. Tisdale is currently in Lounge C. I'll have one of our counselors escort you to him."
"You mean... I'm going inside?" Jake asked. "Isn't there like a visiting area where we talk to each other through glass and all that?"
She chuckled a little. "No, sir," she said. "We don't have anything like that here. We have an open visitation policy for our guests." She punched a button on her phone, waited a few seconds, and then picked it up. "John," she said into it. "I have Mr. Kingsley here to visit Mr. Tisdale, who is currently in Lounge C. Would you escort him over there? Okay, thanks." She hung up the phone.
Jake was now feeling considerable anxiety. They wanted him to go inside the prison? To be in the same proximity as the convicts? Was that safe?
A mid-thirties Hispanic man suddenly appeared beside him. He was dressed in the requisite three-piece suit. He had a polite smile on his face. "Mr. Kingsley?" he said.
"Yes," Jake affirmed.
"It's an honor to meet you, sir," John told him. "I've enjoyed your music for years."
"Thank you," Jake said.
"I'll take you to Mr. Tisdale. If you'll just follow me?"
"Sure," Jake said slowly.
John led him past the fountain again and to a doorway that was guarded by another suited counselor and a metal detection frame. Jake expected that they would make him empty his pockets out and then they would search him. They did no such thing. They simply had him walk through the metal detector and, when that triggered no alarm, John opened the door and led him into a lushly carpeted hallway lined with oil paintings.
"This is just too weird," Jake said as he followed behind.
They passed a bank of elevators, several offices, and several doors marked as storage or break room or things like that. Finally they came to a sliding glass door marked LOUNGE C. They walked through and Jake found himself looking at circular room about the size of a skating rink. Several pool tables, pinball machines, shuffleboard courts, and dart boards took up one side of the room. A bandstand, currently empty, stood on the other side. In the middle were wooden card tables of all shapes and sizes. There were thirty or so men that Jake was finally able to identify as prisoners in the room. They did not wear standard prison garb like orange jumpsuits or denim pants and shirts. Instead, they wore fashionable khaki slacks, tennis shoes, and handsome white polo shirts with GGCI stenciled on the breast. Many of the prisoners had visitors with them — dressed in standard street clothes like Jake — including women. Two or three of the suited staff skirted around the edge of the room, looking very subservient and non-threatening.
"This is a prison, right?" Jake had to ask John.
"It's a private correctional institute," John corrected. "We find the word 'prison' to be very offensive here."
"I see," Jake said, still tying to process it all.
John looked around for a few moments and finally spotted Matt near the far end of the room. He led Jake over to where his friend was playing a game of pool with three other men.
"I'll leave you now, Mr. Kingsley," John told him. "When you're ready to leave just have Mr. Tisdale lead you back to the door you came in through."
"Right," Jake said. "Thanks."
"Jake!" Matt said gladly, setting his cue stick down and walking over to greet him. "It's good to see you, brother! How the hell are you?"
"I'm good," Jake said, shaking with him. "How are you doing? It looks like you're doing some hard time here."
"Yeah," Matt said. "This place is something else, ain't it? Thank God I'm a rich motherfucker."
"Amen to that," one of fellow pool players said. The other two chuckled.
"Let me introduce you to the guys," Matt said, leading him over to the table. He pointed to a middle-aged man with graying hair. "Jake, this is Ernest Willington. He's a real estate developer here in Orange County."
"Nice to meet you," Jake said. "You look familiar to me."
Willington gave a chuckle. "You probably saw me on the news last year. It's nice to meet you, Jake."
"Ernie's the guy that got popped by the grand jury for bribing one of the county supervisors to get him to change a zoning law," Matt said.
"I told you, Matt," Ernest said with a humorous whisper and a slight jab of his elbow into Matt's side. "That was a campaign contribution. Fred just forgot to report it."
"I got them to change that zoning for you though, didn't I?" asked one of the other players, this one in his late thirties. He and Ernest both had a friendly laugh over this.
"And this," Matt said, indicating the man who had just spoken, "is Fred Basil, the county supervisor in question. He's doing some time for taking the bribe."
"Campaign contribution," Fred said with a grin. He turned to Jake. "Nice to meet you, Jake. I'm not much of a rock music fan, but your friend here is a breath of fresh air in this place."
"He does have a way of livening a place up, doesn't he?" Jake said.
Matt then pointed to a tall, skinny man in his early forties. "And this geeky looking motherfucker here," he said, "is none other than Bobby Smithson. Remember him from last year?"
"Oh yeah," Jake said, recognizing him now that he was looking at him. "I remember." Smithson had been the CEO of a major Orange County manufacturing corporation. The previous year he had been caught siphoning money from his company's pension fund into a private account in the Grand Caymans. In all, it was estimated that he had screwed his employees out of almost sixteen million dollars. He had pled guilty to grand theft and wire fraud and had been sentenced to a year in jail. And here he was, doing his time in this miserable place.
"It's nice to meet you, Jake," Smithson told him, shaking his hand. "Matt was telling me that you musicians don't have any sort of retirement fund."