“A lot of the girls on my team live in families where mothers are working sixty hours a week without overtime pay on just that wage. They may be in your warehouse, or your store on Ninety-fifth, Mr. Bysen, or at the McDonald’s, but, I assure you, they are working hard, harder than me, harder than you. They aren’t on street corners looking for a handout.”
William tried to interrupt me, but I glared at him at least as fiercely as his father ever did. “Let me finish, and then I’ll listen to your objections. These women want their kids to have a decent shot at a better life. A good education is the best chance these young women will have for that kind of shot, and athletics are a key factor in keeping them in school, maybe even giving some of them a chance at college. For you to fund a program that would give my sixteen teenagers access to proper equipment, proper coaching, and a facility where they didn’t risk a broken leg every time they tried a fast break, would be a great act of charity. Its cost would be down in the noise even for your South Chicago store; for the company as a whole, you’d never notice it, but the PR opportunity would be enormous.
“I just heard Mr. Roger Bysen—persuade—some manufacturer or other to supply you with something at six cents a piece less than they wanted to. Mr. Gary Bysen is annoyed that an employee bit her tongue off because she was locked in overnight. When these things are reported, they make you seem like the Scrooge of North America, but if you rolled out an important program in Mr. Bysen’s own neighborhood, his own high school, you could look like heroes.”
“You’ve got ten kinds of nerve, I’ll hand you that,” William said in his weedy baritone.
Bysen’s thick eyebrows met across his nose, so deeply was he frowning. “And you think fifty-five thousand dollars is ‘down in the noise,’ hnnh, young woman? Your own business must be very successful indeed if that sum seems trivial to you.”
I scribbled some calculations on the paper in front of me. “Your guy Linus will get my numbers for you, I’m sure, so I won’t detail them for you, but if there were a way to cut a dollar into forty thousand pieces, one of those forty thousand pieces would be the equivalent in my operation to fifty-five thousand dollars in yours. I think that’s trivial. And that doesn’t even include the tax benefits. Nor the intangibles, the PR benefits.”
Gary and William both tried to speak at once; Linus Rankin’s cell phone rang at the same time, and Bysen himself was starting to roar when Marcena pushed open the conference room door and danced in.
She gave me a quick wink, meant to be too subtle for the men to notice, and turned to Bysen. “I’m with Ms. Warshawski—Marcena Love—your Pete Boyland was talking to me about procurement and I got held up. Is that you next to the Thunderbolt on the wall out there? My father flew Hurricanes out of Wattisham.”
Buffalo Bill broke off midsnort. “Wattisham? I spent eighteen months there. Hurricane was a good ship, good ship, doesn’t get the respect it deserves. What was your father’s name?”
“Julian Love. Seventy Tiger Squadron.”
“Hnnh, hnnh, you and I will have to have a talk, young lady. You work with this basketball gal?”
“No, sir. I’m just visiting from London. I’ve been touring South Chicago, actually with one of your lorry drivers, I mean, truck drivers. Sorry, I can’t get the American lingo quite right.”
Marcena’s accent had become more pronounced the longer she spoke. Bysen was bathing in it, but his sons weren’t as enthusiastic.
“Who is letting you in the cab of one of our trucks?” William demanded. “That is against the law, as well as against corporate policy.”
Marcena held up a hand in a fencer’s stop. “I’m sorry. Are you in charge of the trucks? I didn’t know I was breaking any laws.”
“I still want his name,” William said.
She made a rueful face. “I have put my foot in it, haven’t I? I don’t want to get some bloke in trouble, so let’s just say I won’t do it again. Mr. Bysen, is there any chance I could meet with you before I go back to England? I grew up on my father’s aerial battles; I’d love to hear your version of those years; my father would be thrilled to know I met up with one of his old war buddies.”
Bysen preened and snorted a little and told Mildred to figure out a free time slot some time in the next week, before turning to glower at me. “And you, young woman, with your fancy cutting dollar bills into forty thousand pieces, we’ll get back to you.”
Linus had been talking on his cell phone during Marcena’s performance; he got up now to hand a piece of paper to Bysen. The old man scanned it, and scowled at me even more fiercely.
“I see you’ve destroyed a number of important businesses, young woman, and you’ve meddled in affairs that were none of your business. Do you always butt in where no one wants you, hnnh?”
“Young Billy wants me meddling in girls’ basketball, Mr. Bysen—that’s good enough for me. I know he’ll be eager to hear how our conversation went.”