Human Commodity (4 page)

While Phillip outlined briefs and protests, Eddie outlined equipment and facilities, and Mason ran between both walls scribbling ideas.
 
A mild tranquilizer, courtesy of Eddie’s traveling pharmaceutical collection, calmed Mason’s eye twitch down enough to send him off to work, but it stayed in constant motion while he filled in his boxes.
 
The ‘Employee Compensation’ wall was specifically his, and Phillip and Eddie did not make an issue out of letting Mason collect all the funding for their new firm.

Mason took out the latest accounting memo and he looked at the top associate’s commission.
 
Knowing the man was also collecting from J and C, Mason entered five times the amount next to his name.
 
Very few people escaped his red marker, and most of those that held promise for affording him no opportunity to blackmail them, made their way over to his new firm’s column on the other wall.
 
There were a few with no dirt that Mason did not bother with, because their sales figures were as dull as their lives.
 
There were also a few who made it to the new empire, because the dirty dealings they committed were unethically legal… perfect leadership qualities for SHCI.

Only Mr. Dugan’s figures were left blank for the moment.
 
A side sheet next to his employer’s sheet was scribbled with the newest Mrs. Dugan’s name.
 
Mason would approach her as if he was the one who had hired the investigator, and collect the panicked woman’s fee.
 
Mr. Dugan would be the last one he collected from… and he would pay the most dearly.

Thank goodness for cell-phones with cameras, and Mason returning to the mailroom early.
 
If that sweet little bookkeeper had not gushed such loud, faked passion, Mason never would have been able to edge his arm around the slightly opened door to catch the two of them abusing poor ‘Lance’ with their thrusting.
 
The poor metal dude was banging into the wall, while Dugan banged into young pussy.
 
Mason figured that the Dugans would be in divorce court before they realized he had duped both of them.

Phillip and Eddie could not wait the month, and they were both residents of the Big Apple in two weeks.
 
Nancy agreed to the amicable divorce and she reclaimed her maiden name.
 
She was convinced that her doctor husband had finally succumbed to a nervous breakdown when he simply left the office one Wednesday afternoon and never returned.
 
As his partner in the practice, as well as his wife, he stuck her trying to cover appointments he had left hanging.

Nancy hurriedly signed the divorce agreement to take the paid off house, the two hundred thousand dollars in the bank, and one hundred percent ownership of their medical practice.
 
She felt lucky, because some of her divorced friends whose marriages had not survived the financial unrest… hell, some of her married friends whose husbands were now unemployable… were stuck working menial jobs to try to slow down the loss of their once comfortable lifestyles.
 
At least she had been smart enough not to go to college just to find a husband.
 
She had met Eddie when he switched from economics to medicine, and they graduated together.

Eddie was hosting the evening meeting of SHCI as the final screws were tightened.
 
He looked at the spare bedroom walls and he laughed at the papered tiers of planning.
 
Mason’s long used strategy of organizing his life had become an obsession for the doctor, and he remembered when the wall in Mason’s college bedroom had been a source for their jokes.
 
Not now… now, it made perfect sense.
 
When asked in the old days, Mason had told them, “Make it larger than life.
 
Make it obsessive… make it
consuming
.”

Poorer nations were slowly straightening their buckling knees as they became shakily solvent, and it was only the top ‘civilized’ countries that had not legalized sales in women, that were no longer able to devise a plan or wait out a financial rebound.
 
The crass street term ‘slave-trade’ had been replaced, when even the radical feminist Preservation of Humanity Organization began filing litigation under the title of ‘Opposition to the trade of human commodities’.
 
Phillip let it sit for a month, and while he began legal manipulations in Washington, Eddie searched for a building engineer and Mason was visited his pals at the office.

Mason ended up within thousands of the millions he had counted on, and the surprised snarling men had paid without a hitch… except for one guy on the twentieth floor who chose suicide over the possibility that Mason might tell his family about his affair even after he had paid.
 
Mason
did
blackmail his wife after putting ‘Mrs.’ in front of the associate’s name tacked on the wall.
 
He had a budget to keep.
 
‘Mrs.’ Associate begged and pleaded, but finally paid to save their good name.
 
It was not so much the affair that she could not have survived… it was the fact that it had been with a man.

Phillip took the funds that Mason brought in, and he bought twenty percent of Dugan Securities under the SHCI firm’s name.
 
Ten percent were purchased under Commodity Investment Law Firm, ten percent under Commodity Training Compound and three percent in each of their individual names.
 
They now owned forty-nine percent of the firm… and Mason’s days in the mailroom were numbered.

Mason poured himself another scotch, and he realized that the girl’s hair was getting damp from her lengthy chore.
 
He finally rewarded her tired fingers with a slight tightening.
 
Shit, he was not some high school kid who blew at the touch of a girl’s hands or mouth.
 
The girl probably did not know any better… if she had any experience through high school.
 
Who the hell knew what the trainer had her expecting?
 
He reached over and tugged at a nipple clamp.
 
Pleased with her resumption of attentions, he continued his musings.

Mason had already determined the way the commodities would be presented on the exchange.
 
It would allow him to advertise his product, while simplifying the system for investors.
 
Eddie and Phillip thought he was brilliant… which, of course, he was… when the terminology had already been set for Phillip’s presentation.
 
Eddie was hosting the event, and he had aggressively adopted Mason’s method of focusing on the plan by keeping the notes on the wall… an ‘in your face’ reminder.

Phillip had needed the terms from the meeting to fill in the blanks.
 
He expected little opposition, but conservatives would have to balk to save face.
 
Ultimately, the politicians would be relieved to finally rally their constituents with positive financial news.

Mason stared at the wall and jotted US on the sheet of paper at the bottom, and he hoped that it would be rising soon.
 
Firmer placings were filled in with HL - Holland; SP - Spain; NW - Norway; JP - Japan, and the other countries that were already players in their prospective new commodities market.
 
They all agreed age should be next, and then abbreviations for hair color… B - blonde; R - redhead; A - auburn; N - Brown.
 
Eye color was last with B - blue; N - brown; H - hazel; G - green.
 
A SP20NN was a twenty year old Spanish girl with brown hair and brown eyes.
 
Not only would the commodity have a prescribed abbreviation, but also a quick description of the girl would be easily determined.

With the three of them brainstorming projections on realistic financial returns, a promised majority holding on a long term reputable Securities firm, and the stressed implications that the practice had been referred to as ‘trade’ and ‘commodity’ for over six months… and was even recognized as such by POHO… the predictable squabble by conservatives had been minor.
 
SHCI was a legalized brokerage, and free to do business in overseas commodity trading of slaves.

Mason strode through the offices pushing his squeaking mail cart and tossing mail on the hundreds of desks.
 
At the bottom of the pile of correspondence were two separate cards with the new SHCI logo.
 
The recipients were either invited to show up at the meeting in the company auditorium at nine the following morning, or they received the second card that read ‘YOU’RE FIRED’.

The first card was discovered by a secretary on the seventh floor three minutes after Mason strolled into Mr. Dugan’s fifty-seventh floor office.
 
His employer had allotted the kid five minutes before he had to hustle to his golf match.

Dugan missed his tee-off time.

The money to keep the one time fuck affair with the little bookkeeper quiet, really pissed him off.
 
If the sniveling blackmailer had waited two weeks, the newest Mrs. Dugan would have been an ex.
 
When the courier arrived with the package and he signed over his twenty-five percent share of the company, the money was still the focus of his anger.

Dugan was tired of the hands-on bullshit of trying to save the company his father had founded in 1935.
 
Shit, forty-nine percent was still owned in the field, and his brother and stepsister controlled twenty-six.
 
Dugan snarled, “Okay, asshole, see how it feels to have the fuckin’ heavy ass of a white elephant securities firm squeezing your balls.”

Mason continued to sit across from him, looking bored and studying his nails.
 
“Funny, that’s almost exactly what your brother and sister said to me when I purchased their shares this morning.”

Dugan’s mouth dropped open like the hinges on his jaw had broken, and Mason stood.
 
He laid card number two upside down on his desk, and said, “I’d appreciate you vacating the premises by morning.”

Mason glanced at the living quarters suite that compromised all but the office and receptionist foyer across from the elevator.
 
He tossed a card onto the shrew’s desk, and while he walked onto the elevator thinking about how the new digs would suit him fine, a ghost-white receptionist in an expensively tailored dress stumbled into Mr. Dugan’s office just as the shot rang out.
 
Fuck me
.
 
Mason hoped that the blood would wash out.

Mason tapped the girl’s sweating head to get her moving again.
 
He heard her whimper, and enjoyed the sensation of the vibration along his shaft.
 
She was swaying a little. and he glanced at his watch.
 
Less than half an hour had passed.
 
Shit!
 
The trainers were costing him a fortune in salary and luxury accommodations, as well as one percent profit on the sale of their trained slut… minus the cost of housing her and her trainer’s salary, of course.
 
Mason looked down on the former US Midwestern teenager.
 
His cock twitched as he remembered the wait before Phillip managed to coerce a Senator into buying an overseas commodity when his campaign was floundering.
 
Morietti was re-elected and put in charge of the finance committee.
 
He helped SHCI’s bill pass within his first month on the job… with a bribe of the very IT20 he had originally gambled his campaign on.

After things were in place, it took three months before the final countries legalized the practice.
 
Senator Morietti had accepted accolades for a slight reduction in the deficit, but when it had ‘inadvertently’ leaked to the press that the funds were derived from the enormous gain from the sale of IT20NN, a minor faction headed by POHO screamed and fired off threatening e-mails.
 
An overwhelming majority saw a beam of light through the thunderheads and dismissed the gains from the sale of the Italian girls.
 
The sale of women eighteen and older was legalized in all countries before the end 2017.

The Building Engineer added suggestions to Eddie’s plans, and he became a solid player in the organization.
 
Training Compounds would be built in each of the seven countries where they had offices located, and Mason had handpicked the managers of these outposts through his careful review of Lance’s paper trail gossip.

Mason had learned more about psychological management manipulation through chats with his metal friend than he could have gained through a masters degree in college.
 
Twenty years later, he would still keep the legal sized paper tray from the machine on his desk.
 
It would be beat-up, battered, chipped and stained… and totally out of place in the opulent setting… but Lance would remain one of Mason’s favorite comforts for reflection.
 
It would hold the corner opposite his fickle digital clock.

With the legalization of Human Commodities in the US, Eddie could finally open his training compound.
 
Phillip had drawn up the contracts so explicitly that they would hold up to any court scrutiny.
 
A woman could break the signed contract, as long as the money was returned.
 
As the money was issued as soon as the ink dried and spent almost as quickly, for practical purposes the Commodity Training Compound was dealing on a ‘No Refund - No Return’ basis.
 
Added to that, the courts upheld the decision that parents could sign over daughters up to the age of twenty-one.
 
Without the slave contract financing, young women were languishing under their parents’ financially depleting roofs.