"Nothing," Jake said. "Don't worry about it."
Shaver nodded. "Okay then," he said. "Let's talk damage control. My suggestion is that when the press calls to ask about this we simply tell them that you and Ms. Snow are nothing more than friends. You met initially at her movie premier, correct?"
"Yes," Jake said.
"You decided to get together and go to the beach after that," Shaver said. "My understanding is that there are no... well... compromising pictures. About the worst they have are the shots of you holding hands and rubbing oil on each other. That's something that two people who are friends would conceivably do, right? Of course, we should touch bases with Ms. Snow's agent and let her know the pictures are coming out as well. That way, we can coordinate the story so it matches. I can't imagine Ms. Snow's people will have any problem with the denial."
"Right," Jake said. "Sounds good. Do it."
Shaver seemed surprised. He had obviously been expecting some sort of a fight over this. "Really?"
"Really," Jake said. "I'm sure you're an expert in this sort of thing. I don't give a shit if the whole world knows I'm dating Mindy, but I don't want to hurt her career. But don't contact her or her agent until I get a chance to talk to her."
"When will you do that?" Shaver asked.
"As soon as she gets home. That should be in about forty minutes or so."
"Uh... okay," Shaver said. "Can I wait with you until..."
"No," Jake said. "I don't want to look at your lying, cheating face any more than I have to. I'll call you at your office."
Shaver looked like he wanted to say something but decided not to. Instead, he simply said, "Okay, I'll do that."
"One other thing, before you go," Jake said.
"What's that?"
"How did that paparazzi prick know we were going to be at that beach?"
"We don't know," Shaver said. "You can be sure that nobody at National tipped him off. They were horrified when they heard about these photos. I suppose its possible that it was nothing more than bad luck. You know? That he just coincidentally happened to be there for reasons of his own and saw you with Mindy."
Jake shook his head. "No way. That's an isolated beach out in the middle of nowhere. The only way he could've just happened to be there at the same time we were was for someone to have told him we were going to be there. Now who might've done that?"
Shaver shrugged. "I see where you're coming from, but who would have the motivation to do that? It doesn't make sense."
"No," Jake said. "It doesn't. But someone called him up and tipped him off. Someone wanted pictures of us together."
But as hard as they stretched their imaginations, neither could think of a single person who had anything to gain by having the relationship go public.
Shaver left — or was rather ejected from the premises. Jake sat and finished his drink. It was the first alcohol he'd had in two days and it imparted his body with a slight buzz. He stood up, taking his empty glass, and walked into the kitchen, where Manny was chopping up onions.
"What you making, Manny?" Jake asked him.
"Chicken Bourgeois," he said, over-pronouncing the French. "It's a casserole with..."
"Cool," Jake said, setting his empty glass down next to the cutting board. "How about you fire me up with another drink?"
"Uh... sure," Manny said, a funny look on his face. Generally if Jake came in and found him busy with something he would make his own drink, or fetch his own cigarettes, or do whatever other minor task he wished done. "As you wish."
"And hang out in the living room when you're done," Jake told him. "I need to talk to you about something."
"Yes, sir," Manny said, the funny look turning to a slightly troubled one.
Jake left him and went into the office. Here, in addition to a desk, a filing cabinet, a phone, and a water cooler, was a wall safe. He dialed the combination from memory — a number that Manny knew as well — and opened it. Inside was half an ounce of premium marijuana, a few pill bottles with things such as Valium and morphine and codeine in them (items that Jake never bothered with), and a gold plated case that contained several grams of cocaine and all of the paraphernalia for ingesting it. He took the case down and set it on the desk.
He sat down in the chair and opened the case up. He didn't use cocaine very much now that he was off tour. Realizing how dangerous the stuff was, how he had come to rely on it to get him awake in the mornings and to get him into the mood for the nightly festivities, he had made a conscious and successful effort to slow way down on the white powder. These days he used it maybe once a week, sometimes less, imbibing only when he was going out to a club or when he was having a party. But he needed some now to fortify himself for his coming discussion with Manny.
He dumped out two small lines on the mirror, crushed them up into a fine powder, and then snorted them with the gold plated straw that was part of the kit. He sniffed a few times and then closed up the kit and put it away. By the time he was done with this task he could feel the drug surging through his system. Though not quite as good as Shaver's Bolivian flake, it was still, as the saying went, some pretty good shit, lovingly produced in the illicit warehouses of Columbia, smuggled across the border in shipping containers, and delivered to Jake's safe completely uncut. His aches and pains faded away like an afterimage, his fatigue disappeared and was replaced by elation and energy, and his heart rate, which had been chugging along at a sedate seventy-two beats per minute, kicked up to a hundred and twenty. He felt good, like he could take on the world, which was the proper frame of mind for what needed to be done.
He found Manny sitting on the couch expectantly, as ordered. His fresh drink sat next to the ashtray. Jake sat down and lit a smoke, taking a few deep drags. He then turned to Manny and stared at him.
Manny grew nervous under his gaze, as was the intent. "What's the matter, sir?" he asked. "You seem... uh... upset."
Jake took a sip from his drink and another drag from his cigarette. He blew the smoke directly in Manny's face and then set the smoke in the ashtray. "You tapped my phone for them, didn't you?" he asked.
Manny managed to look appalled by this accusation. "Excuse me, sir?" he asked. "Tapped your phone? I would never do anything like that."
"Then how did the snooping little fuck they hired to follow me around know when and where Mindy would be picking me up? How did he just happen to be there when I climbed in her car?"
"He probably staked you out," Manny said. "That's what people like that do."
Jake chuckled a little, though it was far from a friendly chuckle. "You just made your first mistake in the interrogation, Manny," he told him. "You should've asked what sneaking fuck I was talking about, shouldn't you have? After all, you weren't in here for any of the conversation about him. So how do you even know about him unless the people who pay you told you about him?"
Manny blanched as this was pointed out to him. He did recover quickly though. "Mr. Shaver told me about it," he said.
"Uh huh," Jake said. "I believe that about as much as I believe in Santa Clause. But that's not my concern at the moment. My concern is the tap that has been placed on my phone. I want you to show me where it is and then to show me the tape recorder or whatever you're using that is capturing everything I say."
"Jake," Manny said. "You're being paranoid. I would never tap your phone."
"Well somebody has," Jake said. "I might be able to believe that the private eye was staking out my building to follow us when we leave — just maybe — but I can't buy that he just happened to have been in position yesterday when Mindy picked me up at the warehouse. Sorry, that ain't gonna fly. Someone told him that we planned to meet there and the only way that information could have gotten to him was for someone to have been listening in on our phone conversations. Now I know you didn't do something so amateurish as picking up the extension and listening in that way. I was sort of expecting that and listening for the click and it never came. That means there's a tap somewhere."