It was Tuesday morning, when Jake returned to the recording studio to start the new week, that he found out their little love nest was not as isolated as he'd thought. Crow called him into his office about ten o'clock, interrupting his session at the microphone.
"What's up?" he asked as he sat down in the chair before Crow's desk. Crow did not look happy.
"I just got a call from Shaver," Crow said. "The American Watcher just contacted him, enquiring about pictures they reportedly have of you and Mindy Snow swimming naked at Lake Casitas this weekend."
Jake was shocked. How the hell had they gotten pictures of that? There had been no one anywhere near them!
"It seems," Crow explained, "that they have shots of the two of you walking around naked on the deck of a cabin cruiser, jumping naked into the water, splashing and playing and throwing each other's naked bodies into the air, and then having a serious make-out session next to the boat. Although they can't print an unedited picture of this, they do have a shot of you climbing back into the boat after her, still naked, and with a 'raging erection' as I'm told."
"Jesus," Jake said. "This is kind of embarrassing."
"No shit," Crow said. "When they print those pictures and release the story of what was seen next Friday, there will no longer be any doubt whatsoever that you and Mindy are getting it on."
"No," Jake said. "I don't suppose there will be."
Crow started to get mad. "Is that all you have to say?"
Jake shrugged. "What do you want me to say?" he asked. "I'd rather not have my dick or my girlfriend's naked body plastered all over the fucking Watcher, but what's there to do about it? Who took the shots anyway? The only place someone could have been close enough was that island."
"I don't know who the fuck took the shots!" Crow yelled. "What the fuck difference does that make? I want to know what we're going to do about this!"
Jake longed for a cigarette, but since he was singing today he resisted the temptation. Instead, he took a piece of gum from his pocket and put it in his mouth. "Let me talk to Mindy," he said. "But I think it's probably about time that we just go ahead and tell the truth."
"Are you mad?" Crow asked, appalled. "The truth? You want to admit that you're having a sexual relationship with the girl from The Slow Lane? That will destroy both of you!"
Jake hummed the verse from Que Sera, Sera and then sang softly, "Whatever will be, will be."
This did not make Crow feel any better.
At lunchtime Jake called Mindy. She already knew about the shots. Georgette had called her about an hour earlier after a reporter from American Watcher called her.
"We're totally busted," Mindy agreed. "And there's nothing to do now but come clean. Even Georgette agrees with that."
"Yeah, Shaver pretty much said the same thing," Jake said. "When do we do it?"
"We wait until after the next issue comes out," Mindy said. "Then we have Shaver and Georgette admit our involvement. We throw in a bunch of stuff about how we're appalled at the lack of privacy and all that."
"Why do we wait until after the issue comes out?"
"It gives us a little of the moral high ground," she said. "We can claim we were only trying to be a normal couple and that the evil press forced our relationship into the light."
"Ahh, I see," he said. He sighed. "I'm sorry about all this, Mindy. If I would've known it was going to cost you movie rolls to be involved with me, I never would have done it."
She remained cheerful. "Don't worry about it, Jake. Things will work out. They always do."
The rumors and reports of the next issue of American Watcher began to circulate before the end of the day. Every publication, every news channel, every gossip network began to talk about naked pictures of Jake Kingsley and Mindy Snow.
When the actual issue came out on Friday morning, it broke all previous sales records within hours.
The headline, printed in huge typeface, read: JAKE KINGSLEY AND MINDY SNOW CAPTURED IN THE BUFF AT SECLUDED LAKESIDE LOVENEST!! The picture on the front was one of the two of them against the boat, kissing with open-mouthed passion, their naked shoulders sticking up, the top of Mindy's obviously naked breasts just visible. The inside shots were a collection of near pornographic images that had been carefully censored to avoid obscenity charges. There was one of Mindy standing on the edge of the boat, about to dive in. There was one of Jake throwing Mindy over his shoulders. There were several of the two of them kissing hotly next to the boat. There were two of them climbing out to get back in the boat. In all of the shots black lines had been added to cover butts and genitals and Mindy's breasts, but what was shown left little to the imagination. There could be little doubt — especially in light of the previous sightings — that the two of them were very intimate with each other.
Jake had been expecting all of this when he opened the issue at the recording studio on Friday morning. He knew what the two of them had done and the angle of the shots did nothing but confirm his suspicion that they had been taken from a hidden enclave on the island they'd anchored next to. What he wasn't expecting were the words in the article that accompanied the photos.
World renowned photojournalist Paul Peterson, acting on a tip, followed the two lovers to their secluded love nest and took a series of shots of the two of them frolicking naked in the placid waters of Lake Casitas.
Paul Peterson? He had taken the shots of them on the beach too, had supposedly just happened across them by coincidence. And now he had just happened to receive a tip that Mindy and Jake were going to be at this particular lake?
"Something smells funny here," Jake mumbled.
"What's that?" Crow asked.
"Jake!" Matt yelled from his own copy of the tabloid. "These are some premium fucking shots, brother! Do you think you can get your stinky little hands on some copies that don't have these fucking lines across her snatch and titties?"
Jake ignored him. "I need to go," he told Crow.
"Go? What are you talking about?"
"I'll come in on Sunday if you want and make up for the lost time, but I need to take the rest of the day off."
"For what?" Crow yelled. "Jake, we have a crisis here!"
He said no further. He left the building, climbed in his Corvette, and started heading towards the freeway.
Chapter 11A: The Razor
Jake stopped the Corvette before the closed gate that guarded access to Mindy's property. There was a mailbox, a newspaper delivery box, and a small intercom box that could be used to communicate with the inside of the house. Jake pushed the intercom button, holding it down for several seconds.
He hoped he was wrong about what he was thinking — he hoped that sincerely and with all his heart — but he rather suspected that he wasn't. No matter how hard his brain tried to twist and distort the information into something favorable, there were still two irrefutable damnations it could not get around. Mindy was the only person who had known that she and Jake were going to be at Point Dume and she was the only person who had known they were going to be at Lake Casita. And Paul Peterson, the "world renowned photojournalist" had somehow shown up, camera in hand, at both places.
It was conceivable that coincidence was at work here. Peterson might have just happened to be on sabbatical at Point Dume at that particular moment in time and it was within the realm of possibility that one of the boat rental employees had tipped him off about Jake and Mindy renting a cabin cruiser and heading out onto the lake. If Jake were trying to prove his suspicions in a court of law he would certainly be shot down at the preliminary hearing stage. But this was not a court of law. This was real life and in real life Jake believed in a thing called Occam's Razor — a concept which stated: when presented with two (or more) possible explanations for an event, and with all other things being equal, the most likely explanation is usually the correct one. It had been the application of this concept to the question of how National Records' private snoop had been able to follow Jake and Mindy around that had led Jake to the correct conclusion that his phone had been tapped and that Manny had not just assisted in the placement of this tap but was also actively monitoring it. And when he applied Occam's Razor to the question of how Paul Peterson was mysteriously finding his way to the secluded meeting places of Jake and Mindy — meeting places that only Mindy knew about in advance — the simplest and most likely explanation, and therefore most likely the correct one, was that Mindy herself was contacting the photographer and tipping him off. Jake had no idea why Mindy would do such a thing but that was irrelevant to Occam and his razor. The why would be answered later perhaps.