The City Council meeting ended with a unanimous vote to have Lenny Parson draw up a plan for bringing the homeless back to Portland to staff the restaurants, fast food places and other jobs that had been neglected. He was given until January fifteenth, which was the time they would reconvene. Lenny was delighted to be the one doing the planning. He had a building company and would be able to keep his company busy for a few months with this plan. He decided to present to the city council the plan for three high rises, as this would take less property and hence less initial money to purchase than if he had designed fourplexes or duplexes. Each of the high rises would have a large park on site with a playground his own children would be jealous of and a nice swimming pool. After the presentation on January fifteenth, the actual building of the properties would commence immediately, if approved. Then they could be completed by mid May to provide housing for the staffing of the fast food establishments for the summer tourists!
Lenny knew things didn’t always go as planned and there were likely to be delays, so he prepared himself for any eventualities. He got pretty excited about this project and had his secretary looking into prices on lumber, rebar and all of the many other necessary items they would need. He started looking for and pricing properties, himself so he would have that to present to the city council. He actually hired an interior decorator to find inexpensive furnishings for the apartments and a contractor to do a price check on appliances. Getting all of these estimates ahead of time would enable him to have a jump on any other contractors who might be also considered. Yes, he was pretty sure he had this whole thing in the bag!
Lenny also planned to put shops around the bottom of the apartment buildings, which included a grocery store, a place for free childcare and other shops so the only transportation the ex-homeless would have to work out would be their rides to and from work. In his proposal, the rent would be only $800 per month, which would prevent the homeless from looking elsewhere and assure that they would stay put in these new apartments, as rent was considerably more anywhere else in Portland. It was important that they didn’t resort to homelessness anymore.
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Lenny knew building these apartments and buying the properties would be pricey, but planned to present the council with how much they would save on paying the personnel on the cruise ship, food on the ship and also the cost of transporting all of the food and supplies to the ship. Once the ship was moved to LA, and the people moved into the apartments, each of the ex-homeless would be paying their own way! He felt like this was a win-win situation and that the committee would jump at his plans!
Meanwhile, in Alaska, Jim and Donald were discussing Max and his situation. Jim said, “Donald, you know we can’t keep Max tied up here forever.”
Donald said, “I know that, Jim, but any decision we make is going to affect not just him, but all of these elderly people. We could set him free and it could come back to bite us, because he might decide to kill all of our friends. Or he could turn us in to the ones who are executing the elderly.”
“Or, he could do just what he said he would do and leave us alone and go back to his FBI job and we could never see him again,” Jim added. “Granted, it would be taking a huge risk. I have a feeling in my gut, Donald, that he is telling the truth.”
“Yeah, but what if you are wrong?” Donald asked.
“Working on Wall Street, you had to have discernment and you had to trust your gut or you simply wouldn't make it out there,” Jim said. “I have the feeling I used to get when a big deal was about to go my way. I don’t think I am wrong.”
“I want to think it over tonight, Jim. We can get back together tomorrow.” Donald said.
Jim stood up and stomped out of the room. He went outside to cool off. He didn’t know how to get through to Donald how he was feeling. He did cool down, but was still bothered and didn’t know what to do.
Later that night, Max, who had been moved to a recliner, needed to go to the bathroom. He reached for the walkie-talkie and was suddenly wide awake! He was not tied up as tightly as usual. He felt around and was able to untie himself. Max moved quietly to the bathroom and thought, “Now I can put my plan into action!”