The Chauffeur (#45) John and Dallas

The Chauffeur (#45) John and Dallas

By PABLO DIABLO

Copyright 2019

CHAPTER 1

The trip to Seattle was fun and exciting. It’s not that I wanted to get the three district managers to quit, but I was very glad to have plan B ready to go at a moment’s notice. Now, I’m going to head to Dallas once again. Plan B needs to be ready as their numbers have not improved since Jill and I were there before. I also checked the Pinetree that we stayed in, the one that I had met the President of that division. I don’t see very many district manager reports on visiting other Pinetree’s in the area. Something that I had asked for, yet apparently it isn’t a big issue, something that I will fix with this trip.

Dakota’s idea of John acting as my assistant made me smile. I don’t know if John can pull this off, but I want to give him the opportunity to at least try.

When I woke up, I did my usual morning ritual, but this morning I decided that I’m going to stay home and start the whole process of John being my assistant for a day before we head towards Dallas.

After I head out to the kitchen, I see John eating yet another bowl of cereal. This time he’s eating the end of the Froot Loops.

“John, I have a favor to ask of you. Care to hear it?” I say to him.

“Um, is it about me handling you for a week as your assistant?” he asks me. This really stunned me. I know only one person must have told him this, but I’m OK with it as I really want him to show me what he has learned from Dakota.

“Well, I guess that favor is blown all to hell,” I say to him.

“No, it’s not. Dakota prepped me to start thinking about what you will need. She mentioned that you might be wanting to take me to Dallas,” he tells me.

“Well, she’s right. Dallas is still doing poorly, even though I met with the President of the Pinetree as well as the district managers of the restaurant group,” I tell him.

“When would you like to go?” John asks.

“How about tomorrow, we’ll take the jet, but bring an overnight change of clothes just to be safe,” I tell him. Although he never looks up from his cereal, I know that he heard me and is thinking about what needs to be done.

I like working from home. I tend to work at a leisurely pace, but more importantly I sit around in a pair of shorts and a tee shirt. Of course, my little Dakota will wear one of my white tee shirts and no panties and tease me repeatedly, which always makes me smile. She and I had a delightful time on a quick trip to Seattle.

“John, I’m going to stay here and work from the house today, so feel free to wear some shorts and a tee shirt if you want,” I tell him. I see him smile as I know, he likes being like me and wearing shorts makes him more relaxed.

I take my laptop out of my bag and open it up at the kitchen table. John pours me a glass of pineapple juice, which feels a bit weird as usually, it is Dakota or one of the ladies who take care of that for me.

When I log on to the email portal, I see an email from the guy I promoted in Tampa asking where I want him to travel next. I take a few minutes and look at the top 1% of the restaurant group. I like what I’m seeing out of the Boston group and send him there for the next couple of weeks. I tell him in the email, that I would like him to visit three or four restaurants there and pick one that might be a good candidate for the project. I also asked him to stay at a Pinetree and give me his opinion of the stay.

I see another email from Roger. He once again wants me to hire the four guys from the Secret Service to act as a protection detail when Jill or I are out of the Chateau. Roger knows that the windows have all been replaced because John sent him pictures of the work. I told Roger that when I return from Dallas, I’ll have a sit down with them.

John interrupts me.

“David, since we are going to Dallas, should I set up a meeting for you with the tire recappers? The plant is just outside of Dallas, and I thought you might like to see it,” John tells me. I like the idea and tell him to make the arrangements, but don’t list a specific time as I’m not sure how long firing several district managers will take. Although, the young lady that we promoted last time I was there was doing well. Her numbers were not stellar, but they were much better than the entire rest of the market in Dallas. Looking at the Dallas numbers, made me think about the Las Vegas restaurant. Their numbers were doing well, not at the top of the chain, but certainly still in the top 10%. I shot them a short email noting to them that I was still proud of their work.

The more I thought about the tire visit, made me smile. John had anticipated a need of mine and took care of it. As I was sitting at the kitchen table, I could hear cursing and swearing coming from upstairs. I left the laptop open on the table and headed upstairs. I followed the voices to the office. Jill and BJ were frustrated, mostly with the federal codes put forth by the SEC. When I peeked my head into the office, I got just a hand up telling me to ‘mind my own business’. I blew Jill a kiss and headed back down to the kitchen.

When I got to the kitchen, Sammy asked if I had any ideas about what I would like to have for lunch and then for dinner.

“How about just some BLT sandwiches for lunch and maybe some grilled steaks for dinner, but with a salad available for the ladies please,” I tell him.

“Would you prefer a couple of my cakes or something else for dessert?”

“Your cakes are delicious, feel free to make a couple of them, please,” I say to him. He just smiles and goes back to work. Amy comes into the kitchen. I ask her about how running the house is going now that we have Patrick’s service handling many of the issues. She tells me that things around the house are so much easier now that we have a service to handle such things as laundry and cleaning.

I see John on his tablet, which makes me smile.

I go back to working on my laptop. As usual, I eliminate the duplicate emails which reduce the total number down by about 25%, but there are still several ‘read-only’ emails which I dread.

Looking over the group of my emails, I see one from Tina. She wanted to thank me for hiring her and her Mom as they could certainly use the income. She sent me a couple of email attachments one about the dial building and some suggestions about how to make it a bit more appealing. The other attachment was showing the progress of the building under construction. Tina’s Mom mentioned that Phoenix has a rich history and some of it should be incorporated on the inside of the lobby. I liked the idea and sent a reply email asking for some artwork that they think would be nice choices.

I was very glad to hear from Tina. Hopefully, putting her and her Mother on salary, will help them and give me two sets of eyes watching the two buildings that we acquired there.

There was an email from our casino general manager in Oklahoma. He tells me that he has had to contact the Treasury Department as they have had several thousand dollars of counterfeit bills. I copied the email to the other three casinos to be on the lookout for bogus bills.

As usual, all the ladies were dressed and headed towards the garage to take their vehicles to work. I thought a bit about taking John’s vehicle out of the mix for today’s ride to the Hawk. However, none of the ladies seemed to mind.

Many of the ladies gave me a kiss on the cheek as they poured themselves a cup of coffee to take for the trip. Just to be cute, Dakota came over and plopped herself down on my lap.

“Good morning Daddy. Did you sleep well?” she asks.

“Yes, my darling I slept very well. How about you?” I ask her.

“Well, I didn’t sleep with my Daddy, but it was OK,” she says smiling at me before she leans in and kisses me.

As usual, my Dakota wasn’t wearing any panties and she kept wiggling her ass on my lap, knowing what it does to me. When Sammy had a new pot of coffee ready, she got off my lap, poured herself a cup and headed out to the TV room, where someone had left the TV on to the morning news. Dakota asked me if I had seen the stock price at close yesterday. When I told her no, she giggled her cute little giggle and told me that our stock price broke $300 for the first time ever. I began to consider maybe a 2 for 1 split sometime after Jill does the stock conversion.

Dakota changed the channel to something that she wanted to watch. John went into the TV room and checked on her just to make sure she was OK.

Continuing to look over my emails, I began to read the ‘read-only’ ones to eliminate them. It took me a couple of hours before I managed to clear out several of them from the group. I did notice an email about bonus checks. I read the email that was addressed to me and pondered what it had said. I replied that I wanted all the bonus checks of my group sent to me and not Jill as she was tied up on a project and didn’t need to be disturbed.

There was an attachment to the email. I opened it to see some of the bonus totals. The one that amazed me the most was the two for Jill and I. Because of Mom, Jill and I have made quite the bonus for this year. I scanned down the list and found Jennifer’s name. She had a bonus of more than $120,000. She got the $10K for each of the six towers she arranged for us to purchase, but where she really made her money was the disposal of all the small district offices in Tampa, Washington DC, Toronto, and of course here in LA. Bonus checks got me to thinking about who else needs to be compensated for their hard work.

I went through my group. Amy, of course. Diane, naturally. Sharon, by far. Maddie, yes. Paula, yes. Donna, yes as well. Then I thought about the great job that Sammy and Bobby have done for me at the house. From there, I thought about my darling Tina and her Mother. They have done a great job for me and I need to send them a bonus check as well. Then it hit me, there are lots of people in my group that need to be financially rewarded, such as Fred. Of course, in my head, he’s getting a bonus practically nightly with him and Mom playing together.

In my head, I thought that maybe putting the bonus checks into something would be a nice idea. However, I couldn’t even believe the number that was attached to my name or Jill’s name. Thinking about Jill, also made me think about BJ and Danni as well.

I saw another email from Roger Johnson. He wanted to let me know that he would be in Detroit for about two weeks working on a couple of Pinetree locations that needed severe upgrading on security.

John told me that he has notified the jet crew that we would be heading to Dallas tomorrow, early in the morning. I was thankful that he took care of that for me.

I realize that Dakota is here, but I haven’t seen him go near her as if he was asking her advice on what to do. So far, he seems to have risen to the task, but then again, we are still home.

John is making phone calls, for what I don’t know. I summon him over to me and ask what phone calls he is making.

“I’m setting up interviews for you with the four Secret Service guys. I think that Roger is probably right in that you and Jill need two of these guys to go with you when you leave the house,” John says to me.

“Thank you,” I tell him.

I see Dakota watching to make sure that everything is going smoothly, which it is. So far John and I are expecting to head to Dallas. I am all set with Plan B for the Dallas group just as we had for the Seattle group. John asked me if it would be an overnight stay or a turn around in Dallas. I let him know that I expected that the trip is just a turnaround. He grabbed his bag and set it by the front door. I went down the hallway and grabbed my bag as well.

John tells me that the limo is here, complete with Fred driving. I picked up my bag and headed out to the limo, where Fred took my bag and put it in the trunk. John came out of the house with his own bag, which Fred put in the trunk. We got into the car and Fred took us for a ride towards the airport.

When we arrived at our jet, Fred retrieved our bags from the trunk. Each of us went up to the steps into the jet ready to travel to Dallas.

Once we were inside the plane, both John and I retrieved a set of earbuds to watch a movie. I chose Seabiscuit with Tobey Maguire. It’s a nice movie, one of my wife’s favorites.

Up to this point, John has been a good assistant. He listens, he contemplates things and so far he has anticipated my needs. As the jet roars down the runway, I think about Heidi and Patrick. Hopefully, they will really hit it off. Of course, bringing them over to the house, for a play session, seems like a good idea, at least in my head.

I think about Heidi’s slender body and wonder if she wants to enjoy our playgroup.