“Mister Bysen,” she said with heavy emphasis, “will explain what he needs you to do.”
When we were all back inside, I introduced Bysen to Morrell, and offered refreshments.
“This isn’t a social visit, young woman,” Bysen said. “I want to know where my grandson is.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. If that’s all you wanted, you could have saved yourself the drive from Barrington by letting your fingers do the walking.”
Mildred sat herself back on the couch next to Bysen and opened her gold leather portfolio, pen poised, ready to take a note or order an execution at a second’s notice.
“He talked to you on Thursday. You called him, and he talked to you. Now you tell me where he is.”
“Billy called me, not the other way around. I don’t know where he is, and I don’t have his cell phone number. And I promised him I wouldn’t look for him as long as I believed he was safe and not being held against his will.”
“Well, that’s just fine, you talk to the boy on the phone, and you know he’s safe and sound, hnnh? You met him two times, and you know him so well you can tell from his voice on the phone that he’s safe? Do you know how much a kidnapper would like to get hold of one of my grandchildren? Do you know what he’s worth? Hnnh? Hnnh?”
I pressed my right fingers against the bridge of my nose, as if that would push thoughts into my brain. “I don’t know. I’m guessing the company’s worth around four hundred billion, and if you’ve divvied it up evenly—you have six children? So sixty-seven billion a head, and then if young Mr. William is being fair with his own kids, I suppose—”
“This isn’t a joke,” Buffalo Bill roared, pushing himself to stand. “If you don’t produce him for me by this time tomorrow, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Cut off my allowance? It may not be a joke, but you’re turning it into a farce. Your son hired me to look for Billy, and in a thoughtless moment I agreed. When Billy learned about it from someone on the South Side, he called and told me to tell Mr. William to lay off or he, Billy, would start calling shareholders.”
Buffalo Bill scowled and sat back down. “Hnnh. What did he mean by that?”
My lips moved into an unpleasant smile. “It seemed to mean something to your son, so I presume it means something to you.”
“It could mean any of a dozen things. What did it mean to you? Hnnh? You didn’t ask him what he was going to tell the shareholders?”
Was this the real reason for this absurd trip from the gated splendors of Barrington Hills to my four-room apartment? “If you wanted to discuss this with me, why not just phone me, or ask me to come out to your office? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a really, really long day and I’d like to go to bed.”
Bysen’s scowl deepened and his heavy brow contracted so tightly that I couldn’t see his eyes at all. “Grobian called from the warehouse yesterday. He said he’d seen Billy on the street, over on Ninety-second Street, his arm around some Mexican girl.”
“Then you know he’s safe.”
“I don’t know that at all. I want to know who that Mexican is. I won’t have my boy taken in by some wetback’s hard-luck story, marrying her, promising her diamonds or whatever she thinks she can squeeze out of his grand-daddy’s fortune. You’ve met Billy, you see what he’s like, he’s a sucker for other people’s troubles. Boy even hands out dollar bills to panhandlers with their Streetwise papers. Can’t do a real job, and they cadge dollar bills from naive boys like Billy.”
I sucked in a deep breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Morrell give his head a tiny shake—a little warning—go easy, V. I., don’t go straight for the guy’s jugular.
“Unwise marriages are such a regular feature of daily life, if Billy’s taken up with someone unsuitable I don’t think I can stop him, Mr. Bysen. But he seems to share his grandmother’s religious values; if he gets involved with someone, my guess is it will be a churchgoing young woman. Even if she’s poor, she probably won’t be a gold digger.”
“Don’t you believe that for one second. Look at that creature Gary brought home, claimed to be a Christian. We should never have let him go so far away to school, but Duke seemed like a place with lots of good Christian boys and girls, and she was part of the Campus Fellowship.”
Mildred murmured something in his ear and he broke off, turning to glare at me again. “I want to know who that girl is, that girl who’s attached herself to Billy.”