Chapter 32

Friday, February 4th, 2022
Colorado Springs, Colorado

As I was headed over to Mary’s, John’s phone rang.

“Hello?”

“John? It’s Dad. I wanted to touch base and let you know that your Physical Therapist, Emily Stratton stopped by. I’m betting you forgot she was going to be here like I did. She understood about you not being available, and we went over some equipment she wanted us to consider plus some additional grab bars in all of the bathrooms that she said would be a good idea just for general safety. I’ve got a guy set to install those tonight. There’s nothing you need to be concerned about, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to add your two cents if you wanted to.”

I replied, “Nope, sounds like you have it all under control. Did she want to schedule time with me for tomorrow morning?”

He said, “I’ll ask. Hang on.”

A little later he said, “She’ll swing by around 9:00 am if that works for you.”

I said, “Perfect. Thanks to you both. I don’t expect to be home for dinner, so don’t wait for me.”

We said goodbye, ended the call, and I pulled up in front of Mary’s place.

I called her while still sitting in the truck, unsure if she was working today or not.

“Hello?”

I said, “Mary, this is Paul. How are you today?”

She replied, “I’m doing great. How can I help you today Paul?”

I asked, “Are you working at the hotel currently?”

She said, “I am. I’m scheduled to be here until 6:00 pm.”

I replied, “Okay, I’ll swing by in a little while. There are a few things we need to discuss.”

She said, “See you soon then,” and we ended the call.

I pulled up in front of the hotel and entered the lobby. Mary was working with customers and I waited off to the side until they left.

She smiled at me and said, “Paul, it’s good to see you again.”

I replied, “Good to see you too. Do you remember the last time we talked? We said something about coming up with a discreet way of letting you be certain you were speaking to me, regardless of how I looked?”

She said yes.

I said, “My abilities have expanded a little bit, and I can now use a little telekinesis as well. I could touch you somewhere we agree upon from across the room and nobody but you would know that I had done so. For example, I once pinched a girlfriend’s nipple without laying a hand on her. Would I offend you if I pinched your butt to let you know it was me?”

She smiled, “Considering my husband is on the prowl tonight I’m tempted to just say yes. But why don’t we ask him?”

I grinned and said, “Sure, give him a call.”

She got on her phone and I soon heard her side of the conversation.

“Hi Honey, how is your night going?”

“That sounds like fun. When do you expect to be home tonight?”

“Oh no, have a good time. I’ll see you in bed later, just save a little something for me. I did have a question for you though. You remember Brad, right?”

“Yes, that’s him. He asked if it would be okay if he pinched my butt on occasion as a secret way to let me know he was around. I told him I was okay with it if you were, but I wanted to be sure and ask you first.”

After a few seconds, she blushed, which isn’t always easy to see on a black woman, and said “Okay Baby. I’ll tell him. Oh, and tell her that tonight is her last chance with you. I think three dates is enough. When you leave tonight, you two are done. Okay?”

“Thank you, Baby. I’ll see you later.”

She turned to me and said, “He suggested you pinch anywhere you liked, as long as that’s all it was. He’s been a pretty happy fella lately and gives you a good bit of the credit for that.”

I said, “Okay, and how do you feel about that Mary?”

She smiled and said, “You go right ahead and pick your spots as you like. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.”

[Go for it, Carl.]

She squeaked and her hand shot between her legs as her eyes opened wide, then she laughed and said, “I should have guessed.”

I winked at her and asked, “Were you able to get the work done I asked about last time?”

She nodded and said, “Yes sir, I have everything worked out process-wise. Including an overseas server to store the information on. I have instructions worked out for agents and for intermediaries. I have a template for a bootable USB drive with a distro of Kali Linux that I can customize per agent with all of the tools they need. They can use almost any computer to safely create encrypted packets for safe transport with just a reboot.”

“In about 30 minutes, I can walk anyone with basic computer knowledge through booting from it and using it to create encrypted report files on USB sticks and either drop them off to someone else for uploading or upload them on their own if that is their only option. If they have zero computer knowledge it would take longer, but not a crazy long time.”

I said, “That sounds great. I have a couple of candidates for you to train. I’ll text you their contact info when I have prepared them to expect to hear from you. I want you to get a burner phone that you use just to contact these people initially and coordinate their training, as well as supply them to get started. I want you to keep the phone powered off when not in use. Maybe it’s paranoid, but nobody should be calling you so it’s an easy safety precaution.”

She replied, “I can do that. Now, let’s talk about what you want to get out of the other end of this. What kind of data are we going to be dealing with?”

I said, “Well, we aren’t going to be hiding government secrets. We’re going through the hoops to obfuscate the questionable activity that I’ll be asking my agents to do. We’re asking them to do things that might lose them their jobs, so secrecy is warranted. Specifically, I’m going to have some police writing reports about the status of high-profile crimes. Certainly Homicides, but perhaps also someone in narcotics or vice will be reporting on drug activity. This will be for the purpose of helping me try to make the world a better place and righting some wrongs. Potentially it might be an income stream as well if we handle it carefully.”

“I’m going to be having people who swim in the waters with the whales write reports about who has big money and might be in the market for interesting things. These will be potential customers for me. I’m not sure how this will work out, but I plan to find people who want to give me lots and lots of money for helping them with my special skills.”

“Also, I’m going to have some case managers from cancer hospitals around the country keeping an eye out for wealthy potential customers, and potential charitable work too. All of it will need to be compiled and made into a legible concise whole that I can look over and pick and choose my next steps from. We may end up getting you some assistants to help compile all of the data. I can easily see eventually having several hundreds of agents writing regular reports at some point. We’ll see how it goes, but it might end up being a full-time job for you and however many subordinates you end up needing.”

I looked her in the eye and said, “And speaking about full-time jobs ... we never did discuss what I was going to be paying you. Have you given it consideration?”

She said, “Well, I hadn’t considered the scale you were just talking about. So far I’ve put in a good bit of research and work. I think we should work out a start-up fee of whatever amount you think is appropriate. Frankly, I think the $1,000 signing bonus you already gave me is sufficient for what I have already done.”

I told her, “ENNN, wrong answer. You suck at arguing for your salary by the way. I’ll agree to another bonus of the same size. We are going to have to give serious thought to making you a real job offer at some point and I’m getting closer to figuring that out. However, in the meantime keep track of the hours you spend compiling information or working on my business, also the number of agents you set up.”

“Starting next Friday night, every week I want you to take $30 per hour for doing my business and $100 per agent trained. Anytime you get below $10K on funds I’ll add another $10K, just let me know when it’s getting close. We will re-evaluate your salary after the first month. I expect you’ll either be getting a raise or I’ll have a real job offer for you by then.”

“I want you to be careful about depositing those funds. You can do smaller deposits totaling less than a thousand a week, but don’t do more than that. Use the cash for groceries and expenses where you can and otherwise keep it locked up in a safe place. Talk to me if the amount gets out of control. Maybe get a gun safe at some point. If you do, keep all the money in there, just use separate containers as appropriate. Do you have any questions for me?”

She shook her head.

I asked, “How have things been with your home life?”

She replied, “Fabulous really. We are both talking about things openly and frankly, the sex has never been better. He’s really attentive to me when we are together and we’re both having fun picking and choosing conquests. I really expected to be jealous, but it has not been a problem for me. I know he will come home when I tell him to, I have no doubt about it at all. Surprisingly, the better looking the women are, the more we both like it in general.”

I said, “I’m glad you are happy, Mary. If anything changes, please let me know. I do have a few more things I want to take care of tonight, so I’m going to head out unless there is something else we need to address.”

She said that she was all set and I headed back to the truck.

I pulled up in front of Jan’s place and knocked on her door.

Meghan answered my knocking and gave me a hug as she let me in. She called out to Jan that I was here. She came running and jumped in my arms in the hallway. I laughed as I spun her a bit and we kissed as I set her down.

She said, “It’s so good to see you up and about again. I’ve missed holding you.”

I replied, “Me too, baby.”

The three of us sat all together on the couch. I talked about getting out of the hospital this morning and we went over my expected recovery timeline. I wasn’t really expecting any visitors, but I would be basing myself out of John’s father’s house for the next couple of months anyway.

The girls updated me on the business status and I asked about their opinion of having employees.

I said, “What do you girls think of the idea of establishing at least a virtual office and hiring an employee?”

Jan asked, “Do we need one already?”

I said, “Well, we are going to need someone to answer phones if nothing else. However, I’m gearing up for laying the groundwork for really growing the business already. We don’t want to hold off too long.”

I explained about Mary and everything I had already asked of her, as well as how I saw things progressing. I mentioned wanting a legitimate way to provide at least an explainable living wage for her. Plus, we would need to have the structure to pay ourselves sooner or later anyway.

I finished up by saying, “Most of Mary’s value will still be behind the scenes. But I think it is wise to have at least a virtual address, phone number, etc. so we can have business cards made. I want you guys to talk it through with Charlie and his folks. They may have some suggestions for the where and how of it. I doubt it will make sense right now, but at some point, we are going to need a physical office space.”

“I’ve sort of pictured the two of you jointly managing that side of the business. In fact, possibly the two of you and Mary might need to work together to vet and compile the information. Let her handle all of the spy work, but you three should definitely get your heads together on sorting the data and finding the best options for us to pursue. I’d like to have regular planning sessions for all of us on Mondays to roughly map out the week ahead, at least to start.”

“I want us to make slow but steady progress during these first few weeks as I settle into John’s life, but at some point, I’m going to want to hit it hard for a month or so to get the business established and have some breathing room on the balance sheets. Then I’m going to want to cut way back and focus on finding a life/work balance we can all be happy with. You guys were worried about earning your keep earlier, this is kind of how I envisioned it working.”

Meghan asked, “Do you see us sitting in on meetings with clients?”

I said, “Yes, I would prefer that, as well as traveling with me as I grow the network when it is feasible. I need you to have a good understanding of the work I’m doing, and I would prefer it to be first-hand knowledge where possible. You guys will have to decide how much attention you want to spend managing the office and how much you want to spend out in the field with me. Maybe Mary becomes the office manager and has a team under her instead of you guys doing it.”

“I don’t know if you are going to want to do the groundwork with me or not. I’m going to have to visit Cancer hospitals across the country at least initially, and it makes sense to hit a few places in each of those cities for other reasons at the same time. Like the big country clubs and the Chief of Police. Maybe I should visit the Mayor too. Eventually, I’m going to want to hit all of the major cities in the US, but we don’t have to plan on all the stops right now. Hell, maybe we will hit New York, LA, and Vegas and we’ll have more work than we can stand for the next 5 years.”

Jan said, “Let’s do some research and find the top handful of Cancer centers in the country and plan out that trip. If I understand the process correctly, you are probably going to want to take Mary with you to train the people who will be reporting. Unless you want to get Mary to train you and then you can train them without her.”

I said, “Hmm, that’s a good suggestion. I’ll need to get with Mary about that possibility. Actually, maybe she should be part of this discussion. What do you think about inviting her over for dinner tonight?”

Jan and Meghan looked at each other and shrugged then Jan said, “Sure. I’ll get that list of Cancer centers together while you call her.”

I called Mary and she answered, saying, “Hello Paul. What can I do for you?”

I replied, “Did you have dinner plans for tonight? It sounded like you were going to be alone.”

She said, “I was just going to heat up leftovers. Dinner sounds lovely. Do I need to change?”