Chapter 411: Re-Briefing

Wander off somewhere I shouldn’t go? Really? Does this building have any areas like that?

When the two female agents got me into what they used as a locker room to change for missions, one of them stripped, but the other was in pain but doing a good job not showing it.

“You need to learn how to do this yourself, but Julie said that David had a lot of medical experience and could keep me from having to go to the hospital. I’m tired of the comments of other agencies that women are too weak to do this job, especially by those unable to stop the suspected counterfeiter from getting past them to where I had to take them down,” she told us.

Her shoulder got dislocated, but this isn’t the first time, and if I do it the right way, she will only need to take it easy for a few days.

I smiled at her as I said, “I can’t promise you that this won’t hurt, but I do know how to reset your shoulder. I can only hope that the worst it gets is when we are getting your vest and shirt off.”

“That would be nice, but I can handle the pain. This isn’t the first time and probably won’t be the last,” she told me as the other agent started getting her undressed.

As we gently got her stripped above the waist, with her sports bra causing her the most discomfort, the implant was showing me how to relocate her arm back into the socket. It added areas in her shoulder that I needed to “encourage” to help keep her from getting it knocked out of place as often. Once she had the sports bra off, I moved her arm in a way that had it ready to go back into place and then did a pull with a twist that slid it back in without her even noticing.

I moved her arm through some gentle movements as the place in my head pulled stem cells to the area and then asked, “How’s that?”

Now I trick the stem cells into fixing the damage to the area and re-adding some cartilage.

“It doesn’t hurt if that is what you mean. Let me know when you are going to put my shoulder back in place,” the agent told me.

I smiled and said, “I already did.”

The agent stared in disbelief as she moved her arm around and only felt some minor discomfort. It seems that part of what the place in my head did was to reduce the swelling as it did something to repair the torn muscles and stretched ligaments.

“Julie wasn’t lying about your knowing your stuff and that you aren’t gay, even if she was drunk and horny last night,” the agent said.

I laughed as I started to strip to get showered off and said, “I think I have a pretty good idea how to handle horny. It is the drunk part that is the problem. If I have my first time with a woman, I want her to remember it in the morning and not puke right in the middle of the fun. Agent Summers is a great person that doesn’t deserve just to be used as a pussy to get off because she was too drunk to do anything about it. I’ve never met people who are taking care of me for some unknown reason, so I took care of her. It was my fault because I couldn’t resist showing that sushi place that they couldn’t feed the Davidzilla.”

“That is an example of why Julie said that he is a great guy who stopped being jailbait two days ago. In all the years that I’ve known her, she has never gotten drunk. I know that she hooked up a few times to scratch that itch when it became unbearable, but never let any guy into her apartment,” the other female agent said. “You read the file. This kid is the richest man in the world, and he doesn’t want anyone to know it. How many kids do you know that get money and do their best to spend it on others? He puts tens of millions of dollars a month into that orphanage and a foster care complex he built. According to the guys over at the IRS, he didn’t claim any of it on his taxes.”

One of the guys had been over on the other side of the area and said, “You forget that he is getting that state foster care money for each child at his complex, so it doesn’t cost him as much as you think.”

“You didn’t read the memo, again,” the woman whose shoulder I put back into the socket. “There was a supplement to that report. The state audited his financial records. Every dime that the state pays for a child in his care goes into a savings account in that child’s name. Through that audit process, they uncovered that his staff gets paid twice the average salary they would make anywhere in the world. He puts another ten percent of their salary into their 401K and matches up to another ten percent that they contribute. The facility has its own fully stocked hospital with psychiatric care. They even have the option to move in there with their families free of charge. They and their families have full access to all resources available, just as do those in his care.”

They went back and forth as the women and I stripped to get a shower.

I finally got to add, “However, whoever did this stuff, they had a good idea about how I am and made it so that I couldn’t give most of the properties away. None of these companies will let me make them stop paying the set percentage off their net profits. I tried. I can’t just close them down, and if I sell them, they still pay the percentage of their net profits to me. Well, except for some toxic assets that some people snapped up at a bargain-basement price. Everything I’ve done so far to make that as small an amount as possible is backfiring. I tried doubling how much I paid everyone, including the slackers. Those who didn’t want to do the job or did it poorly were fired, and now I have staff that works their asses off because they get paid better than they can get anywhere else with their limited skillsets. I found out by accident that gymnastics teams, and other groups like them, didn’t have the money to travel to competitions and cover the hotel costs of enough rooms. They were putting ten or more kids in the same hotel room to sleep anywhere there was space. That hotel had two floors or suites sitting unused because no one could afford them. I told the staff, if that happened, to move the groups up to the suites. Depending on the size of the kids, they would spread them out so that there were no more than three kids per king bed or two per queen. When the suites were assigned, the staff would spread out the others into the new vacant rooms to give them more space. Yeah, that backfired, too. Now those hotels are on the preferred list as the first places to book with the best pricing. I thought that by offering the groups in the most financial need free meals in the restaurant, I could eat the profits. It didn’t make a dent because we were getting other groups with more than enough money to pay for no more than two guests per double-queen room. Renovating with the top of the line everything? Nope.”

“Such a burden,” the guy yelled over the wall. “I saw your mansion.”

One of the women retorted, “The one sitting empty waiting for him to use it whenever he wanted? He told those people that came to pay their debts that he didn’t see any reason to move or replace his piece of shit car. With a Maserati in the garage, he drives a twelve-year-old, beat to shit Camry as his car of choice. When was the last time you stepped in front of a bullet meant for someone else? There is nothing in it for him. You heard the AIC. David was here, so he offered to help. If you hadn’t been checking out the tits on women in the glass room, there were have been no injuries due to one of them trying to escape. Instead of a firefight, the likelihood that all the evidence would be destroyed and suspects killed was a cakewalk. Have you ever heard of suspects willingly stripping to their underwear and being cuffed so that no one would get an itchy trigger finger? They even put all their things in bags with their names on them. Think what you want about David, but he is a good person in my book.”

That shut him up. I might as well get him off the hook a bit with the women.

“Hey. You need to swallow your pride and take the medical leave to get that knee fixed before the doctors don’t have enough bone left to screw the knee replacement. Your teammates will only cover for you so many times. If you can’t afford it, I will pay to have the best orthopedic surgeons in the world flown here as soon as I get out of the shower, and you can have it done first thing in the morning, at no cost to you. Before you ask, I am willing to do that because I don’t want you to get any of your teammates killed because you are too worried about being pulled from the team to take care of yourself. If you take another hit to that knee, you are done anyway,” I told him before getting into the shower.

The women wanted more than me to wash their backs and hair, but that is all they got. I could see the respect in their eyes when we were getting dressed. I knew they both wanted me as much as Julie did last night.

“I see the ninja’s grabbed my gear to take it off to wherever they hide it until I need it again,” I joked.

No one had seen them come in, heard them pack it up, or saw them leave. I knew the cameras didn’t record anything.

“Where is Agent Erickson?” one of the women asked. “David is going to get his knee fixed, finally.”

The AIC said, “Too late to make good on that promise. Someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, and they were damn underhanded about it. His mom and wife were waiting for him when he headed out to get lunch. Someone David isn’t paying is putting him under the knife within the next hour. You’ve met them both at the picnics, and they are non-confrontational wallflowers. Both were pissed. I did get an anonymous email that wanted to thank us for having David try to handle things before deciding to do things by the book. The sender apologized for Agent Tate getting injured and said they wanted to show our team that they have no hard feelings about the operation today. I have no way to verify if this is the case, but I suspect that Agent Erickson is having this surgery at their expense.”

“Before I cause any more trouble, I think I probably need to go call my travel agent,” I said as I headed out the door.

They are stuck in a debriefing for the next few hours.

I called my parents and told them, “Another school board meeting, of sorts. This time Mr. Smith came by to clear up some of the questions from a bunch of half-cocked morons who showed just how bad they are at their jobs. I hung out with Agent Summer from the U.S. Treasury Department last night and crashed at her place. She is a Saki lightweight. I got to meet her teammates, but they had a meeting they couldn’t miss, so I’m looking to find a way to head home.”

“No need to rush back. The house is empty again. Your aunt, uncle, and cousins got on a plane to Hawaii at seven last night. They landed at seven in the morning our time, but noon in Hawaii. They slept most of the flight. Once Olive’s adrenaline wore off, she crashed. Of all the things you bought her, she was the most excited about her new glasses. Her parents scolded her for not telling them that her vision had worsened since her last eye exam. They told me that they appreciate you taking good care of Olive as you always have, even when not knowing you were doing it. Clothes aren’t cheap, and with her growing so fast, they were struggling to keep her in underwear and what they could find at thrift shops. The rest of their kids were picked up and taken to a summer camp for the next month. I suspect you had something to do with that, too, even if one of your helpers did it without asking you first. Both had been interviewing for new jobs after finding that kids coming in off the street are making more than they are and have better benefits. Their bosses told them to go somewhere else if they disliked it, but they couldn’t risk ending up on the street with their kids. It was why Olive came to stay with your cousins. Both are taking offers that have been on the table for months until they are ready to take the risk that something may not work out. They went in last night and cleaned out their desks. Today they are giving their two-week notice but expect that they will get fired on the spot. They didn’t want to give their supervisors the pleasure of having security escort them out without their items,” Dad told me.

Mom said, “April’s mad and doesn’t understand why you went on a trip without her. I think Molly explained it in a way April understood, but she is still mad. You better go find her some trinkets and shirts from wherever you are to make up for it.”

That I can do. I know what April likes.

I got rideshare to the national mall and headed to the Air and Space Museum. I got my brother and sister things that had blinking lights and made sounds while April got a stuffed bear, t-shirts, a hat, and sunglasses. A vendor in front of The Museum of Natural History was selling the pedal-less bikes for three to five-year-olds. For each one purchased, they donated one to inner-city preschools and daycares in the lowest income parts of the country.

“I’m in trouble with my three-year-old for not bringing her on my trip this time. I don’t see anything other than black, green, and orange. Do you have any other colors available?” I asked the tween kid stuck there while their parents tried to sell the bikes.

He was very polite as he said, “No, sir. Those are the only colors that we have available to sell. The company that makes them had these sitting in a warehouse and was not selling because they were their older design. Someone helped us out when I was little and sick all the time. I overheard a man saying they were going to throw them all in a junkyard. I was only joking when I asked if I could have them to sell to help my parents pay off my medical bills. We donate one for each we sell. He told me that they would let us have the inventory for free if we could sell them. My dad talked to them to be sure they were not playing some trick and got them to agree to give away one of their latest models to schools, daycares, and youth centers where they are needed the most. We only pay the cost of shipping for both bikes. The rest we can keep.”