Chapter 520: Modern Renovations

“Hi, I’m Rebecca. You asked me to come down to talk with you,” she said, introducing herself. “They said we had a new owner as of this morning.”

“I thought you didn’t work for the hotel anymore,” I told her.

She looked down at her feet before Rebecca said, “I’ve worked here since I was fourteen. Mom got me to clean rooms because I could do it faster than the other maids at the time and still do a better job. I took accounting in high school, which made perfect sense to me. One of the night managers was trying to close out everything at the end of the month. They didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I was off the clock and asked if I could see what was causing them problems. They had screwed up everything. In exchange for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I spent the weekend getting things cleaned up. I did it every month until school was out for the summer. The beds here sucked badly enough that the airlines threatened to blacklist us. I told the night manager that if he could get me hired as a temp bookkeeper, I would go through all the accounts to see if there was somewhere we could have something extra to help cover the costs. He paid me six times what I made as a housekeeper here. I looked at where the money went and found this account we put money into, but no one ever took anything out. It had millions of dollars in it. I called the number of the people who audit our books each year to ask about it. They said it was for renovations, under which the mattresses were considered a justified expense. I found a custom mattress maker with products rivaling the top mattress companies but at a quarter of the price.”

The controller walked into the hotel, annoyed that he had to bother coming to work for a meeting. He scowled at Rebecca as he walked up to us.

He commented, “You aren’t allowed to be in the lobby unless you are cleaning up a mess.”

I don’t like the guy, and I haven’t even been introduced.

He headed off into the back.

Rebecca told me, “Him getting pissed off about me cutting his brother out of the pipeline is only the hotel’s official story why they fired me. They didn’t want it to get out that he sexually harassed me. He started groping me when I wouldn’t let him do me, blow or jack him off. My mom and I didn’t have anywhere to go. If she got fired, we would have nowhere to live. He frequently got what he wanted from the women working here. The office staff knew what was going on but didn’t say anything. One night he held me down, ripped off my skirt and panties, and was all set to rape me. I screamed rape, and that got people into action. He had no clue I was fifteen and tried to say I was setting him up. When someone called the cops, his story changed. The hotel made a quick deal to keep me from telling the cops he almost raped me. Mom and I both got a raise, giving me my own room here. They covered the cost of all my meals for as long as I worked and lived here. That ass can’t have anything to do with procurement other than signing the check to pay them.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone about the renovation account?” I asked.

She giggled like a schoolgirl and had to get me to go outside with her until she managed to get herself under control.

It seems the controller had no clue about what money went for, only that he had to authorize the weekly wire transfers to the accounts. She got the annual audit done in a week, which usually takes two months. The auditors told her to keep her mouth shut about the renovation account after getting fired from her temp bookkeeping job. No one here ever bothered to read their reports, as if they could even understand them. The hotel management never asked her where she found the money.

Rebecca and I had a delightful chat until she said she needed to head to a staff meeting. It wouldn’t be cool if we walked in together.

Owners didn’t hang out with the housekeeping staff.

The controller came around the corner, buttoning up his shirt and fixing his tie.

A disheveled woman rushed toward the staff bathrooms. She had her panties and bra in her hand. She saw me looking and burst into tears. I slipped in behind her and locked the door. I had a washcloth soaped up while the woman had stripped, leaned against the counter, spread her legs, and cocked her hips to give me a sloppy wet target.

“I don’t think this is what you had in mind, but stay still, and I will get it done quickly,” I told her as I moved behind her.

I washed her sloppy pussy and recently fucked ass before gently drying her. I got her dressed in a clean uniform and then went to work on her hair. I didn’t need her to say anything to explain why it looked as if someone used her hair-like handles. She soon had a simple set of intertwined braids. It didn’t make her look like she had money to get her hair done, but she cared about having a professional appearance. Once done, I turned her around, held my arms open for a hug, and gently guided her head to rest against my chest. It was a long hug, but she needed it.

“You don’t speak much, do you?” I asked.

She shook her head no.

A few quick questions found that she loved sex, but not so much after that controller forced himself on her. He did her pussy and ass every day she worked in the morning. She had to blow him at the end of the day, or he wouldn’t approve her timesheet. It turned out that she wasn’t the only one.

Who would have thought that asshole could get it up that many times in a day?

She put her arm around my back and hip against mine as we walked into the conference room.

“You aren’t getting paid for this meeting because you were late,” he told her.

Under his voice, he said, “Tramp.”

I saw the surprised looks from the women here who noticed the happy glow on this woman’s face.

“Everyone, thank you for coming in on such short notice. I’m David Jones. I learned early this morning that I am now the owner of the holding company that owns the hotel. Before we can get down to why I called the staff meeting, I have to address an offensive matter because I learned about something happening that would open me up to lawsuits otherwise,” I told them. “I need you to raise your hand if the controller here has ever touched you in a sexual manner or in a way that made you feel uncomfortable. This request includes consensual sex with him.”

When the woman who walked in with me raised her hand, other women and some men raised theirs.

I asked them if they were minors in Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese when he started touching or having sex with them.

Of the maids, only Rebecca’s mom and two others were over eighteen at the time. They spoke only enough English to get their jobs done and understand him when he threatened to call Immigration if they said anything.

“Thank you for speaking up,” I told them as I asked the man-in-the-machine’s AIs to find any security camera footage that may be around.

The hotel did have top-of-the-line security cameras and dozens of DVRs. Their footage got backed up to multiple clouds simultaneously. At least one of those cloud storage locations required an arduous process for anyone wanting to delete footage. It made it not worth the effort to try.

Combined with the hotel security footage, the parking lot cameras behind the hotel, and feeds from nearby buildings, the cops wouldn’t need to speak to any hotel staff.

“That is preposterous! That tramp put you up to this, didn’t she,” the controller yelled.

This conference room doubled as a storage room, given that no one wanted to pay to use it all that often. The bedsheet did superbly tying the controller into a chair, and a pillowcase made an effective gag.

No one “saw” the controller’s chair magically fall forward and cause the controller to slam his face into the conference room table. Who could prove that he didn’t knock himself out versus me pulling the energy out of him that kept him awake? That bubble over the place in his head doesn’t need to last all that long.

I ensured he wasn’t bleeding, sat him up, and pushed his chair into the corner.

“Now, with that out of the way,” I told them. “Effective immediately, Rebecca is taking a permanent job as the hotel’s bookkeeper. I will hire someone to fill in as the temporary controller until Rebecca can get the schooling and training she needs to take over that job if she wants it. I suggest that any of you who wants to do so give her a big hug. She found the renovation account years back and used it to fund replacing the mattresses. Part of the net profits have gone into that account since the hotel opened, but the people who knew about it forgot to tell anyone else when they departed. Due to how the last owners of the holding company cut their profits, they took fifty-five percent of the gross revenue right off the top. After covering the hotel’s costs, most of what remained went into the renovation fund. While it seems that this controller is a child-raping bastard and was well paid, he managed to squeeze blood from a turnip to do some replacements over time. I won’t go into the details, as I don’t want you falling asleep from boredom, but I don’t need this hotel’s money. Unfortunately, I won’t get away with taking less than ten percent of the net profits after the hotel pays for everything else. I expect to be the last person or company to get my monthly check.”

That caused a stir.

“While I can’t seem to get what the hotel pays me to drop to nothing, I have come up with a system that makes all the employees happy for me to get my cut. You see, here is what is going to happen. First, come up with a list of contractors you would hire because they take pride in their work. Someone you would pay to gut and renovate your dream house if you won a hundred-plus million dollars in a lottery,” I told them.

One of the women asked, “I know many, but why ask me instead of bidding out the work? That is what businesses do.”

“Businesses, yes. Me, no,” I answered. “I suspect most of you are crashing in one of the hotel’s unused rooms when you can because you aren’t making enough to rent a decent place around here. I looked at the books for the hotel, and we rarely have all the VIP rooms booked at once. My room last night was shit. It gave me a clean place to sleep and get a shower, but that was it. I want each of you that needs a place to live to pick two adjoining rooms on the bottom two floors of the hotel at the opposite end from the pool, dining room, and other guest amenities. I want to hire these contractors to remove the wall between the two rooms you picked and then gut it. Each of you will turn your two rooms into your idea of a luxury suite. Someplace you would want to live.”

“That is pretty shitty to do to us, don’t you think, sir?” a man here asked.

“No, I don’t. While solid gold toilets that wipe your butt for you are a bit too much, I want you to go all out. You will use that information to have the top floor gutted to create three different room designs. As a group, you will vote on what you liked in each design and what doesn’t work for you. Once the contractors re-design the hallway for staff access only, you can move into the two-room suite you designed. Until that work is complete, you will move into one of the VIP rooms, providing you want to live onsite while working here,” I told them.

I expected the next question too.

“No, I won’t require you to live here. It is just a free benefit I’m offering you if you want to take it. I can guess what else you want to ask, so let me go over things first, and then we will see if you still have questions,” I explained.

I went through my whole rundown of how the hourly employees were all getting the same per-hour raise. It would have the newest employee making five dollars an hour more than anyone doing their job at the other hotels in the area. Salaried staff was getting the equivalent hourly rate increase based on a forty-hour workweek. Everyone got double overtime for regular days and triple overtime for holidays.

“Now, one thing I will not allow you to violate for any reason. Your birthday is a paid vacation day, and you will not be allowed to work that day,” I told them. “The hotel will put five percent into a 401k and match up to another five percent if you choose to put money in your retirement account. You will have total health and dental coverage at no cost to you and your children. I’ve found that the staff does an excellent job of ensuring everyone is doing their job to the best of their abilities or finds another place to work.”

One of the under-eighteen housekeepers asked, “Do we have to have sex with you or any other special favors? It sounds too good to be true.”

“I guess you won’t then believe that Rebecca will take twenty-five percent of the net profits, divide them by the total number of years the entire staff has worked here to provide everyone a monthly bonus. You will get that amount times the number of years you have worked here. I have found people employed there for decades at each of my hotels but who had long ago quit doing more than the bare minimum, as slowly as possible. I checked one room after a maid spent an hour cleaning it. I found dirty panties in the bed and rubbers stuck in her vacuum. The toilet still had barf all over it from a guest who got food poising in our restaurant. That was her cleanest room that day. Her co-workers had to keep going in behind her to do her job. The management paid her one week for every year she worked there as a severance package.”

A few questions, and then I told them, “If you are proud to say you work here and make good money doing a normally low-paying job, you want to do the best job you can. When you do a good job, our guests will notice. Once the hotel is fully renovated, we will charge more, have more guests, and make more money. When the hotel makes more, you get a better bonus each month. If the hotel does poorly, you get less. If it drops too much, no one gets anything extra. I am optimistic that you will ensure whoever isn’t pulling their weight gets any assistance getting back on the ball they may need. If they are sick, then they need to go to a doctor. Should they not want to give their best anymore, find out why or send them on their way with their severance package.”

“We were told there was a person of interest awaiting transport to East Saint Louis’s finest Graybar hotel. I hear he is the guest speaker at a conference about sexual harassment and underage sexual assaults in the workplace. It is going to a packed house. I know that our guests are excited to attend, so it would be inappropriate to keep them waiting. We still have to go by wardrobe, jewelry, and makeup before giving his speech,” one smart-assed officer said as he went to cuff the controller.

His rookie partner said, “Don’t forget that the guest check-in tends to be a real bitch. No way to rush through there. The photographers are such perfectionists.”

“Then you have the gray room for his speech coach to ensure our guest speaker doesn’t get tongue-tied or go off on a tangent,” the other officer replied.

The two cops kept up the banter as they ad-libbed the Miranda rights a bit.

“Probably want to wait to practice that speech until we get to the conference,” one cop said.

The other added, “It is your right to remain silent. Anything you choose to say can and will be used to roast you later in front of the critics. Good news, you get a speech coach, and if you don’t already have one, we will call one for you.”

“If you want to speak without having a speech coach, you can do that too. You can stop speaking and confer with your coach if you get a bit nervous. Did you get and understand all that?” the smart-assed officer asked.

Rebecca couldn’t leave well enough alone, so she said, “You perverted, child molesting, raping asshole have the right to remain silent. If you say anything from here on out, they can and will use it in court to nail your ass to the wall. They will get one for you if you can’t afford a lawyer. You don’t need a lawyer present if you want to answer questions, but you can stop anytime you want and ask for that lawyer.”

“You understand the rights you have here, buddy?” the younger cop asked.

“I do,” the ex-controller said.

“And you did,” Rebecca told him. “Got the videos to prove it.”

One of the women, who was barely fourteen when he gave her a job here, with daily fuck before a blowjob, asked the cops, “Can you come with me to his office, please? There is something else.”

The perp walked the controller to his office. The girl went to where he had some trophies, sports stuff, and a Chucky “doll” still in the box. She put on her cleaning gloves, turned the doll, and showed wires coming from the back. Using her cell phone camera in night-vision mode, she moved it over the eyes. You can see the cameras in each eye socket. On the wall in front of his desk, he had a sixty-five-inch UHD TV. The girl used one of his golf clubs to point out cameras, with microphones on the top two corners. The writing matched that going into Chucky’s box.

Next, she pointed at the smoke detector right over his desk. Finally, she pointed out six cameras hidden amongst the books on the bookshelves.

“What is this shit? You’re setting me up!” the ex-controller yelled.

She went to one of the two cabinets on the back wall. One held the safe, which wasn’t a secret. The girl showed the cops the code on her phone. Since she had gloves on, she went over, pushed in the code, and opened the safe.

The ex-controller cockily said, “What were you expecting to find? Those are the hotel’s books and fifty-thousand dollars in cash, as is required if we need to pay cash-on-delivery for something.”

“Yes. Rebecca needs to inventory that while police are present,” she said with a smile. “You wouldn’t have given the code and have the safe set up to destroy the contents after three wrong tries, or anyone tampers with it,” she replied.

We waited as Rebecca checked and found the ten stacks of hundred-dollar-bill were new and sequential. It didn’t take much to confirm it.

“I appreciate the thoroughness, but the money and cameras aren’t why you brought us here,” I said.

She gave me a big smile. Walking over to the other cabinet, she opened the front to show what looked like a minibar. A firm tug the shelf pulled it out from inside the cabinet. On the back was another safe. This one had wires from the cameras going into it. She didn’t have the code.

“My place, so I guess it is my turn to see what is in safe number two,” I joked.

Damn! I didn’t love how it got in my head, but this implant is great.

This one had a twelve-digit combination.

“Good luck with that, kid,” the ex-controller said with a sneer.

I smiled at him as I said, “Someone told me that if you are going to be arrogant and cocky, you better damn sure know your stuff. I don’t know much about safes, but I know one thing about them. Any with long codes and ways to destroy the contents usually have valuable items to you, but you don’t want them seen by anyone else. The people that make these safes know that too, so they code in back doors to them, just as they do all the room safes in most hotels.”

Near the wires went was a welded-in metal tag with the manufacturer, serial number, model, and phone number to call for service. I punched all of that into a “safe” app on my phone, and it returned a twelve-digit number. I texted that to the police officers before entering it. After a few clicks, it popped open. Inside were hundreds of high-capacity micro-SD cards, banks of high-capacity SSD drives, and high-capacity flash drives.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have. Really, you shouldn’t have. You so kindly organized and labeled with names, age, month, and year,” I said.

My implant was able to read them remotely to see that they did indeed have footage from all his office cams of his sexual assault of girls and women in his office. In my quick scans, I found that many of them had the girls and women saying that they would turn him in if he didn’t fuck them or let them suck his dick. It was always the same. A deaf person could tell they were all reading a script.

Bits are just data. It is easy to make them disappear, re-encoding and re-writing them when a second here is a year in a time bubble. I never had to touch them, but what I did to the media didn’t leave any signs of them ever getting altered. I don’t know how it didn’t change the electrical charges in a way that could get detected, but it didn’t.