Chapter 395: After the Explosion

Who is this arriving like they are looking to make a quick deal and flee before I notice I’ve gotten screwed?

A Mercedes SUV pulled up like they owned the place. Out came a woman and man in their thirties. It took a few tries for them to get directed to me. Paula figured out who they were, so she stepped back off to the side with Molly.

“Mr. Jones,” the woman said. “We are adjusters sent on behalf of your insurance company. If you permit us to enter, we will survey the damage and cut you a check to allow you to start repairs immediately.”

Yes, they are here to screw me. Or can at least try. I didn’t plan to file a claim.

While they were doing their thing, a Mercedes sedan arrived, but no one got out. Not even ten minutes after the adjusters went inside, then they returned to where I was sitting.

“We’re sorry, Mr. Jones. Our assessment classifies the damage as an act of terrorism. Your policy doesn’t cover terrorism or acts of God. As a result, we must reject your claim,” the man said, doing his best to sound human.

I replied, “While you think you are dealing with a stupid teenager playing around with Daddy’s money, you are wrong. Your statement is complete bull crap, and we all know it. I happen to know that I am paying more each month in insurance premiums than you make two make in a year combined. I get that you are doing your job of finding a way to keep the insurance company from having to pay a dime, but I’m not about to believe anything you are saying. I need to hear this face-to-face from someone above you.”

They stepped away to make a phone call. A man in his fifties got out of the other Mercedes to come over to talk with me. He introduced himself as someone from a regional office who could discuss my coverage problems, which caused my claim to get denied.

I haven’t even filed a claim.

“I have reviewed your insurance contract where we define what we consider terrorism and that those acts are not covered,” he said.

He handed me the forty-page contract printed in a font size that fits on the front and back of five pages.

Paula walked over with a much larger version printed on the front and back of forty legal pages.

“Where do you wish to begin justifying your position on the policy coverage?” she asked the older man. “Why don’t we discuss how you have defined terrorism.”

The younger two were off to the side, making yet another phone call.

The older man was trying his best, with the help of the younger man and woman, to go head to head with Paula regarding the legal definitions in the contact.

A large sedan drove up, and the chauffeur let out a pair of grey-haired men that wore suits screaming corporate lawyers. An older woman got out last. She was dressed more like senior corporate management.

The older of the two men went over and said, “Little girl, you need to let the adults discuss legal matters. Why don’t you run off and take a selfie or whatever kids do these days with their phones?”

I saw the other lawyer realize who had spoken to as a tween, and he kept walking over to me. So did the woman.

“If I had known you were bringing along a comedian, I would have arranged a better venue,” I joked.

Paula wasn’t quite the same as before, but she still had enough of the old Paula to make the old man cringe when she said, “Sir, I will have you know that I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and Yale at twelve years old. I passed the bar exams in the lower forty-eight states when I was thirteen. Your behavior is inexcusable. You are well aware of these facts. It was at your insistence that your alma mater signed the non-disclosure agreement I provided them in exchange for permitting them to announce those details upon my turning eighteen. Are you even capable of discussing this matter with me if your mental faculties have degraded to the point of not remembering such an incredible feat by a barely teenaged female?”

Damn. That was harsh, even for Paula. You made Molly smile.

To the man that had been arguing with Paula when the lawyers arrived, he asked, “Where does she have us bent over a barrel?”

“She doesn’t agree that this event meets our definition of terrorism and why we have denied any coverage of this claim,” he replied.

The lawyer looked up at the sky and shook his head before saying, “From what I read on the way over here, she has us on that point. If this were terrorism, they would not have only blasted open walls to access the chambers behind. Given the uniqueness of this situation, we have no way to ascertain if anything was stolen, but it is a similar form of damage to that of someone using explosives to access a bank vault.”

“That is covered under the section regarding man-made damage to the building. The wording does not specify the nature of which damages get excluded. That section makes all actions inclusive except for those specified,” Paula added.

She enjoyed bantering with the older lawyer as he tried to argue various sections and provisions in the insurance contract. Some he won, some she did. Either way, he agreed that the insurance company would cover the costs to repair the building. As the apartments and showers were part of the structure, even if hidden away, they too were covered.

The two adjusters made a quick exit as their supervisor came over with the older lawyer and Paula.

“Mr. Jones,” the older lawyer began. “Further discussions regarding the legal interpretations of the insurance contract do not classify this action as terroristic. We will honor the terms of the agreement. It covers all expenses up to the rebuild costs and those covering the items within the structure. If you can provide us with the initial estimates from your chosen contractor, we can pay them the initial fees required to begin reconstruction.”

The corporate executive woman said, “fuck!” when Molly walked up, holding Paula’s tablet.

“Hello,” she said, offering the flummoxed woman her hand. “I’m Molly.”

She asked the woman to come over to a table the staff used to take breaks. Saying only a few words, Molly went over what it would take to do the repairs required to return the place to exactly how it was, including the locker rooms and apartments, to their state before today. Well, how it was less the bodies in the locker room.

“Your estimates seem a bit high,” the older woman said.

Molly just pulled up the insurance company’s appraisal system to show the same set of details. The insurance company’s software was thirty-one percent higher.

Next, Molly presented her way. She had built in a toilet, sink, and dressing area along with the shower stall. It had the place gutted down to the bare structure and supports. She kept the showers but designed them in a way that would only let one door be open at a time with only enough space for one person be in the room between the lockers and the shower area. Even if two people could manage to get squeezed into the first section, there just wasn’t enough room for more than one person. She ensured that we wouldn’t be at risk of transgender lawsuits by having one shared locker room and made all bathrooms unisex. Her plans included four individual bathrooms. She also had one large area with sinks and stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors. All were handicapped accessible.

The kitchen she reworked to have at least two of everything, with one side of the kitchen being a mirror image of the other. Her entire setup was the model of efficiency and ensured that it took an effort to cross-contaminate things.

I would never have considered a salad prep station that pre-portioned each item from the containers in the integrated refrigerator.

“How can your plan to gut and rebuild cost less than repairing what was damaged?” the older lady asked.

Molly proceeded to show her the side-by-side costs. Removing the old equipment, tearing it down, cleaning everything, reassembling it, reinstalling it, and then having it certified cost three times more than a new one. There was the possibility that the repair crews could find asbestos, which would halt everything, require days of inspections to determine what must get removed, and then the hazardous waste teams to come to remove it. Molly’s way hired those people right off the bat to gut the building. This cost many times less than having to remove it if found. Either way, the cheapest method was still in the millions of dollars.

“I approve your proposal to gut and rebuild, Molly. Who do I need to have paid to begin the process?” she asked.

Molly pointed to me and said, “David must approve.”

“I’m glad you see things Molly’s and Paula’s way,” I told the older woman while the rest of the insurance people listened in. “I already planned to gut the part of the restaurant I knew about before today and redo it all from scratch out of my pocket. Now things are interesting. Look, we know I have your company over a barrel. If you are willing to work out a contract with Paula, I have an alternate proposal. I recently gave all the staff a significant raise, including the wait staff. I will let you and Paula hash out the specifics. I propose that your company picks up the cost of paying my workers, including their estimated tips and benefits, until we finish doing as Molly proposed. That would cost your company a lot less than picking up the bill for my remodeling.”

Yes, I saw that look on your faces. Go ahead and ask.

“Why would you do something that puts the financial burden on you when it is our responsibility to cover those costs,” the old lawyer asked.

I smiled when I said, “I didn’t make the deals around what each of the businesses that I found I now own pay me from their net profits. This one, for example, has to pay me ten percent of their net each day. Others are between one and ten percent. Even with the raises and renovation costs, I will still be making money. I can’t have them not pay it to me, so I am trying my best to keep as much staying at the business as possible.”

One of the cops came over to say, “He ain’t lying. My wife works over at the commercial bakery. Last fall, David gave everyone raises, did all he could to upgrade everything, gave us zero out-of-pocket healthcare, vision, and dental, plus matches her 401K up to ten percent. My wife said her friend showed her the books, and David is still making at least a few million a month. The best thing is that my wife gets up each morning and wants to go to work. If I weren’t close to retirement, I would quit and be a househusband. She is making three times what we used to make together.”

Paula, of course, had something already written up and bullet-proofed to go over with the insurance people.

I took the time to use the place in my head to remove all the bones, wires, pipes, people inside, and other things that should be there to look for what shouldn’t. I got a big surprise. This place had a basement. One area I found packed with gold, cash, jewels, and things I didn’t recognize but knew were worth a lot of money. That area looked to have gotten walled off about the same time as the locker room upstairs. That didn’t surprise me. Neither did the room off the stairway that held fake IDs and passports for all of those whose bones were in the locker room. That only had a locked door. Not even the vast selection of nasty things they used to disfigure and hurt people was a shock.

No. It was the big holding area, currently packed with two people in every cell. Those were designed only to hold one person. I found security cameras down there, so I had the man-in-the-machine’s AI try to figure out who these people are. None of them had any signs of being toys for these sick fuckers.

It took a while to get things sorted out, but I soon found that the man-in-the-machine’s androids hadn’t been the ones to blow out the walls last night. It was someone looking for the holding area. They were looking for the cache hidden away behind that basement wall. Finding the bones gave them a clear message to stay the fuck away. They left in a hurry and were already heading out of the country. The people in the holding area hadn’t been there very long, but I did see signs of someone using this area to keep doing the same sick shit that got those men upstairs killed.

My implant pinged me, and when I let it connect to the place in my head, I saw an older version of Irene with a man that looked a bit younger than her, but not by much. They were entering a building three blocks away. The place in my head showed me that they had a tunnel from that building to the holding area under the restaurant. I had no trouble slipping away to make a phone call.

I got Corwin’s mother on the line and asked, “Are you sure that your older brother is dead? Irene seemed to indicate that he was able to slip away before what happened in the locker room.”

“No one has seen him since that time,” she told me.

“Do you know where your older sister is right now? Is she still locked away in her part of your father’s estate?” I asked.

I heard her make a call only to find out that her older sister had vanished, and no one knew where she went.

After making sure no one had snuck up on me, I told her, “I’m pretty sure that she and your older brother just went into a building three blocks away. Someone blew out the walls looking for something. Did you know that there is a basement under the restaurant?”

“No. How do you know there is one?” Corwin’s mom asked.