Chapter 24

Steve

Thursday

Tiny, Sue's dad Ben, and I were in the helicopter shop with Bret and Carter. Tiny handed each of the two men a check and said, "That's exactly half each of all the numbers we agreed upon. If you two have some cross debt, handle it yourselves. We can put a fork in this deal."

Bret said, "You should have heard that asshole from Alcam when I told him I'd already sold out. He cussed and threatened me until I finally hung up on him. He called back and demanded to know who bought the place so he could call them to buy it. When I said, S&S, he just hung up. He knows you're not going to sell."

Carter said, "We've cleaned out our desks. I think we've both damn near given away our houses, so we are out of here. I'm on my way to a rental in Key West. As soon as I can find a place to buy, I'll be a permanent resident down there. I might even look for a boat, a small one like you have, Steve, a sailboat."

Bret said, "I'm going to Hawaii to work for S&S over there. Since you're going to handle helicopters over there, you need me. In the meantime, I'm going to find a cheap little grass shack and lay in the sun."

The two men, the former owners, got up and left. Ben said, "It's crazy to watch you, Steve. You just expand and take on new responsibilities constantly. I hope you make this work. You know you have to learn how to fly these things now."

I said, "I already have John looking for an instructor or two. I think there are a lot of us that will learn, and of course, we have to learn how to make more money with these crazy aircraft. Taxi service is fine, but there's more that we can do. I know those great big helicopters are expensive, but you can make good money lifting stuff to the top of buildings. I'll have to price some of the big ones."

Tiny thanked Ben for coming, then said to me, "Let me go over the numbers for this place with you. We should be able to keep this place black if we just do maintenance on the contracts we have. Let me show you."

We worked for an hour, then I called Jan to find out if they had any information about the men who had tried to sabotage S&S aircraft. Jan said, "Neither man is talking except to ask for their lawyer. Since they are both charged with murder and attempted murder of a federal judge, there is no bail. Their attorney can't even argue. We'll work on them every day until we get something. We do have some information on the driver that died. He is an employee of Alcam Helicopters in Orlando. The car is actually theirs and was assigned to the guy. The driver was supposed to be a chauffeur for the executives."

I asked, "How about the guy that I hit in the head?"

"He lived near Orlando, in Longview, but we can't find out too much about him. The office over there is pulling a warrant to search the house. The guy that you caught inside your building was a former employee of Alcam, but has been working out of the country in Panama for a couple of years. He's an experienced pilot and aircraft mechanic. He left the country to work down there after he was released from being held for suspicion of murder. Someone saw a helicopter drop a couple of things that looked like bodies out in the Atlantic. The chopper was identified and the log reflected this guy was flying. They never found a body, but that wouldn't be unusual, as it was when the sharks are in and feeding. Nothing could ever be proven. The more we investigate, Steve, the more this group over there is looking like we need to tear them apart."

"Thanks, Jan; I'm going to continue extra security for out here and at home. Get rid of those people for me. I don't need bullshit like that."

"The extra security is a good idea, Steve. I'll keep you posted. I know Chuck's group is working on the case with us as well. They go about it differently, so they might turn up something."

In the charter office, DeDe, sitting in her wheelchair, said, "Chuck took those two couples to Vegas for us this morning. He said he would combine some of his business too. He told me to solicit another fare coming back this way. I'm working on a few people in L.A. that are going to Key West. Hopefully, Chuck can pick them up and make some extra money for us."

"Chuck is really funny. He loves to fly, but he loves his job too. The guy will do about anything for anyone. Just look at his women, they idolize the guy."

"No different than your women, Steve," DeDe said.

"Yeah, but look how many he has. I only have four."

DeDe laughed, "You would have a dozen if you'd let Sue and Mercy have their way. You just don't want to have any more. I think Chuck just let it get out of hand before he knew what was up. He has an uncanny way of making people feel good about being around him. I'm even a groupie of his. Have you watched John? He loves Chuck as much as his lady does. They think he is really special."

"He is special, DeDe. I'm one of his groupies, along with all my women."

"Queer for him, huh?"

"No, but if I went that way, he would be high on my list," I said, almost laughing at how silly the conversation was getting.

DeDe asked, "I heard he might move out to the park, is that right?"

"Yep," I said, "I think they agreed to buy some land and build out where the other houses are. Chuck has a huge group that lives with him, so he feels he needs a giant place. He could probably do with what Sue and I have, but I think he's a house person."

"That'll be cool; I really like the women that hang around with him. It will also put Lisa closer to here again. You know Chuck stole Lisa from the nudie park, don't you?"

"I didn't know that. How did he steal her?"

DeDe smiled, "He wiggled into her heart while she wasn't looking. She was flying him all the time and she was giving him lessons. That's all it took. She was a goner as soon as they began playing music together. She used to live with a pretty loose group of women and the guy that owns Park place. She's still friends with all the women, but isn't real tight with Tom Parks. Tom's wife said that Lisa was never really into men until she met Chuck."

I asked, "Tom Parks wife is that lady named Zena, right?"

"Right," DeDe said. "She's good looking and so is that redhead that lives with them. I think Tom is like you and has a couple of women. You see that tiny blonde, Joanie, out at Park Place all the time. She is one of Tom's and Zena's women."

"Interesting," I said, not really all that interested. I have enough going on without knowing more about Tom Parks.

I walked over to Wes' office to see how he was doing with his design. He was waiting while a huge blueprint printer was finishing a giant sheet of paper. Wes said, "I have all the plans for the first two designs so Jeff can get started. I went over the plans with him to get his opinion of stress levels and additional support. He agrees with me and according to all my calculations, these little birds should be tough ones."

"Besides the air coupe, what do you have?"

Wes showed me a couple of drawings and said, "This is sort of like that LSA that is some type of camper. I'm making it stronger, lighter, and with more things to make camping easier. I'm putting hydraulically settable pontoons on it for guys that might go fishing. We are going to be close on weight, but it just won't have a large fuel capacity when it's fully loaded. I've made it very flyable. It should have a great glide distance and should be easy to set down on water. It won't handle high winds on the water, but then, LSAs don't handle high winds well anyway. They're just too light."

"Wes, did you rework the biplane plans? Jeff said you wouldn't let him start on the casting and molding until you modified some things."

Wes said, "I did. I never did like the way the wing braces are designed. Now I have both wings centrally supported with the fuselage setting on a wing that is continuous from end to end. The top wing comes in two pieces, but the bottom wing is all one piece and can come off the fuselage for transport. The new plans for the plane makes it simpler, have fewer parts, and it should be more aerodynamic. I can't wait to see how low the stall speed is. I'll bet with any wind at all we can get it down to about twenty knots ground speed." (Note: In reality stall speed only has to do with airspeed and is not affected by wind.)

"Wow," I said, "That's really slow. Hope it works out."

Wes said, "I want to fly one with one of Abe's bigger engines. I'll bet the plane is a rocket. Probably really fast and should be able to do cartwheels if we want. The aircrafts I design are strong and can take some heavy stress for aerobatics."

"Well, we'll all have to be careful with these things and make sure we don't get too crazy."

Wes said, "Yeah, we will. Hey, these are all printed out. I'm going to run them over to Jeff."

I said, "I'm going that way. I can take them if you want."

"Naw, I have to talk him into doing the camper. I didn't tell him about it yet. Since he likes to fish, I'll bet he'll want to learn to fly just to use one like it. If nothing else, it will be a great kit plane."

I went into the maintenance hangar and found Jimmy with a bunch of men around him. He was showing them how to do a maintenance procedure on a turbine. He had his old and new men, plus the guys from the helicopter shop. I guess Jimmy has found his niche as a leader and teacher. His dad would be real proud.

Since it was close to lunch time, I stopped at home for lunch and the gym. Sue met me with a loving kiss, saying, "Kathy and Mercy are with Chuck's women. His ladies all took off today to work on designing their new house. What they showed me may take more than the six lots you said you would sell them."

"He's on the end nearest the lake so he could probably have another two lots wider, and as many as ten deeper, if he wants. I just didn't want to have a big fence that close to the natural area where the cypress swamp begins. You know he's going to want a big fence. His ladies spend a lot of time in the sun nude. I'm glad we're getting him and he's not building a place in the nature park."

"Me too," Sue said. "I'm really glad to have his ladies out here. With them all having babies, we'll be getting a second batch around here soon. Kathy said she thinks Angie is pregnant. That will be cool to have more babies around."

"It would be lonely without the kids. We have so many that I'm always afraid I don't spend enough time with each of them."

"You do fine. They all know we love them. They all snuggle up to you, even your rough and tough boys. The girls are all daddy's little girls, but they are all so very independent. I suppose they take after both of us."

"I hope that's a good thing," I said, as I ate lunch.

I asked, "How's your new accountant working out with Henry, the Moleson guy?"

"He's doing great. He just about has the military invoices straightened out. He said we needed to invoice in smaller increments so the supply folks can pay us with credit cards. That way we can be paid faster and there is less hassle from everyone. He has us almost caught up. He should be less than thirty days by this time next week."

"Wow, that's great. That'll really help the cash flow. Now that you have Wal-Mart, Sears, Penny's, and Dillards up to date, you must be cash rich. Time to start another factory."

"Nothing right now, Honey. We're going to just expand our production on what we make good money on right now. If we do this right, everyone keeps on working and we can keep training new people to just handle the normal turnover. Everything is running so smoothly, it's time for us to take another long vacation. I'm getting anxious."

"It would be nice to do right now, but we have some problems with some folks on the other end of I-4 that we have to work out. Chuck and Jan are working on it, so it shouldn't be too long. We'll know something soon."

Sue kissed me, "Well start planning, Husband. The kids even said it's been too long since we've been sailing. If nothing else, we need to take a boat out for a long weekend."

"That we can do, but it's so much work for just a couple of days," I said. "It's like we just get going and its over."

"That's why we need the long vacation, Honey. It's time. Get this thing in Orlando handled. If you can't do that, go buy them out and tell them to go to the islands. Maybe that's what you should do anyway. Confront them, say boo! And see if they flinch."

"I'll wait to see what Jan and Chuck find out."

We went to the gym and took the time to go up to the pool and gossip with the ladies. It's always fun to hear the latest inside the park gossip. Everyone has fun talking about what they know about someone else. Nothing gets past all these women. Together, they have a better intelligence network than the CIA.

My day was going pretty good.

Back in the shop, I got with Abe to go over his tests on the composite plates Jeff had been making. The comparisons were for weight, bulk, durability, and our quest for making them bulletproof. Abe showed me four separate plates. All four were fairly thin and light. A lot lighter and thinner than I figured we would develop.

Abe set up the four plates and explained, "Each plate was fired on from four hundred, two hundred, and one hundred yards with a fifty caliber. You can see this one has a hole in it at two hundred yards. It might be a weak spot, but we'll toss this one anyway. The other three all withstood the round at the three distances. This one with the least indentation was additionally tested with a forty-four magnum from ten feet. It deflected the round, with a dangerous ricochet. Jeff made me a Humvee body out of this material. We took it to the range and shot the hell out of it.

We strapped some glass jugs of water in the engine and passenger compartments, then blew up what would be considered a strong IED under it. The glass jugs remained intact. I think we're ready to propose that we make the bodies for whoever has the contract for building vehicles."

I thought for a few seconds then said, "Let's get Phil to go sell our product. He needs to get them down here so we can do the same demonstration for the buyers. If no one works with us, we'll build a vehicle and try to sell it to the military ourselves. How expensive is it to build a Humvee body out of that composite?"

"More than regular fiberglass, but cheaper than you would think. Jeff has this down to a science. He says the little girl studying metallurgy at USF is really sharp and helped him put the correct fibers together. They're working together, even while she's still going to school. She's going to be valuable."

"That's good to know, Abe. It's great to begin having some new blood, new talent coming along. Just look at Ben; the kid is really smart and just loves working with Dennis in R&D."

Abe said, "He has some neat ideas on engines too. I think he and Mark have the answer to one of my turbocharger problems. The kid has a head on his shoulders."

I left Abe thinking we could really hit a home run with some product like Jeff had developed. We could also build bodies for those drones that fly over areas of high ground fire. This would allow the drone to fly lower and slower, getting even more pictures and getting better targets. Yes sir, we need to get to the manufacturers right away.