“I’ll be sure to pass that along to them,” Brook said. “Before we start opening negotiations, however, how about we go in and take a look at the land? Maybe you won’t like it and this discussion is all for naught.”
Jake nodded. It was a reasonable suggestion. “Let’s do it,” he said.
Brook unlocked the padlock with a key he carried and swung open the gate. It creaked quite loudly as he did this. He returned to the car and they bounced and bumped their way down the road a little further. As soon as they passed the last hill, they were on a broad, flat plateau, roughly half-oval shaped, covered with scrub brush and tall grass that waved in the wind. There was an unobstructed view out over the blue water of the Pacific Ocean. A few fishing boats could be seen a mile or so offshore. Much further out, the ghostly silhouette of a large ship—probably a container ship heading to LA or Long Beach—could just be discerned.
“Beautiful,” Laura breathed, taking it in.
“It really is,” Jake said, starting to fall in love immediately. “How far above the water are we?”
“Almost a hundred and fifty feet,” Brook said.
“High enough that a tsunami won’t hit us?” Jake asked.
“More than high enough,” Brook said. “The topography of the land here is such that even the worst tsunami would wash out to the north and south of this point of land. Water takes the path of least resistance, and that cliffside is a pretty formidable piece of resistance. The wave would swamp the dunes to the south and the estuary of the river to the north and leave this plot sitting high and dry.”
“That’s good to know,” said Laura.
They reached the end of the gravel road. They were still well over a hundred and fifty yards from the edge of the cliff. Brook shut off the car and the four of them got out. There was a steady wind blowing over them from the ocean and the sound of waves breaking could plainly be heard. Seagulls and the occasional cluster of pelicans flew overhead.
“What are the boundaries of the property?” Jake asked.
“It’s two hundred and twenty acres,” Brook said. “The terms offered on it are that the entire plot will be sold in one piece. It stretches from the gate behind us all the way to the high tide mark on the water’s edge, although that’s kind of a meaningless designation because at high tide what little beach there is down there disappears and the waves crash against the cliff itself. To the south, the property goes to the base of that dune.”
Jake looked south and saw a sand dune rising up. It was perhaps a thousand feet from where he now stood.
“And to the north,” Brook went on, “the property extends to that rock formation.”
Jake looked over there and saw a huge protrusion of black rock rising at least three hundred feet above the plateau. It was perhaps five hundred feet away from them. The land contained within those boundaries was more than enough for his needs, especially since he would not be building an air strip. “I like it,” he said. “Let’s take a little walk around.”
They strolled the plot, walking first to the edge of the cliff to take in the view of it. It was currently low tide and there was a narrow stretch of beach visible down there, perhaps twenty yards wide. The cliff face was steep and rocky and it appeared that one would try to climb down to that beach only if one had a death wish. That was okay with Jake. If one could not climb down there, it was unlikely that unwanted visitors would be able to climb up here.
They then walked around the entire perimeter. This took the better part of forty minutes to accomplish, partly because they walked slow, partly because the ground was uneven. When they finally made it back to the car, Jake turned to Laura and asked what she thought.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “The air is clear, it’s private, there’s the sound of the ocean. I really like it a lot, Jake.”
“Think you could live here?” he asked.
She smiled and then leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips. “Yeah,” she told him. “I could live here.”
Laura was easy to win over. Now for the hard part. “And what do you think?” he asked Jill.
“Well, you know overall how I feel about this whole endeavor,” she said.
“I do,” Jake agreed. “But let’s go with the assumption that I’ll be disregarding your advice, because I will. What do you think otherwise?”
“It’s a nice plot of land,” she said. “If it checks out, I think it will meet your desires.”
“I agree,” Jake said.
“You’ll note that I said, ‘if it checks out’,” Jill said firmly. “And there’s a lot of things that need to be checked out. We need to get a survey team in here to assess the property. We need to make sure there’s sufficient groundwater here for you to have a well. My understanding is that, in many cases, you cannot get potable water out of land on the coast. That’s the number one thing. We need to look into how much it will cost to run power to the property. We’re close to half a mile from the main road here. I’m sure it won’t be cheap to turn on the lights. We also need to make sure the land itself is suitable for building a structure.”
“Right,” Jake said. “All the shit we had to do before we built the place in New Zealand. You’re familiar with the procedure, right?”
She sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m familiar with it.”
“I want to put in an offer,” Jake said. He turned to Brook. “I understand the asking price for this plot is six million dollars?”
“That is correct.”
“That’s a lot of dinero,” Jake told him. “What do you think they’ll accept for the land?”
“Uh ... well ... in my dealings with the Heliodorus family, I’ve always found that what they offer is what they mean. If they say six million dollars, that’s what they want.”
“Uh huh,” Jake said. “I like this place, and I’m willing to pay good money for it, but not six million, not for land that’s been sitting here empty forever and that no one has even looked at in the past ten years. What’s your commission on a sale like this, Brook?”
“Three percent is the standard rate,” he said.
“I see,” Jake said. “So that means if this sale falls through because of games with what the fair market value is, you’d be missing out on a pretty hefty chunk of change, right?”
“Uh ... right,” Brook said slowly.
“Then it would behoove you to answer my question honestly,” Jake told him. “What do you think they’ll accept?”
He sighed. “If you offer five million, they’ll probably counter with five point seven five and you’ll likely be able to meet in the middle at around five and a half.”
“Very nice,” Jake said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He turned to Jill. “I want you to offer five million tomorrow and set a hard ceiling of five point five. Sale dependent on a satisfactory survey, naturally.”
Jill looked downright miserable. “Are you sure, Jake?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything,” he told her.
On the 22nd of April, 1994, the first promoted cuts from Celia Valdez’s new album, Small Talk, and Jake Kingsley’s new album, Living in This World, began to get pre-release airplay across the nation. Directed by Jake, who was KVA’s promotion guru, the first promoted cuts were Should We Believe? for Celia and Breaking Down Fast, for Jake. Both cuts, within forty-eight hours, were the most requested nationwide on both the hards and the pops and the release of the respective albums was highly anticipated. And, as expected, Celia’s cut was generating criticism and even protest due to its purported anti-Christian theme (although if one actually analyzed the lyrics carefully, one would find the overall message was to keep one’s faith in the face of disbelief).