He took a swallow from his coffee and Sarah rubbed her hand across his right forearm. She said quietly, ‘Times sure have changed.’
‘Shit, yes, they sure have,’ Randy said. ‘Time was, contract negotiations like this would take up an afternoon. Me and a couple of guys and the General and his accountant, we’d have a catfish barbecue, drink a few beers, and by the time it got to cigars and cognac we had a contract. Shit. Didn’t even have to sign any paper that night. Just a handshake, that’s all. Worry about the details later, and you know what? Didn’t have to worry about the details. The General’s word and handshake were his bond.’
‘Still are, aren’t they?’
He shook his head. ‘Back when we flew from Memphis to Seattle, Memphis to LA, and Memphis to JFK. Back when the aircraft we used were one step away from being sent to a boneyard in Arizona. Back when payroll was sometimes met when the General maxed out his credit cards. That’s when his word was bond. Now…Christ, the goddamn number crunchers and pencil pushers are in charge. The General’s forgotten what made him rich, what made the company work. It wasn’t the pencil pushers. It was us.’
Sarah stroked his arm again. ‘So what happens next?’
Another shrug. ‘The talks will break down. Today or tomorrow.’
Sarah said, ‘And what then? Take a break? Begin again?’
Randy looked down at the coffee cup, with its bright and cheery logo for a company that he had helped found, all those years ago, and whose success had been due in part to some very long working hours, some very hard dedication, and even a little blood, here and there, spilled onto aircraft tools and hangar floors.
‘No,’ he said, his voice just a tad shaky. ‘No. The talks won’t begin again. And we won’t take a break.’
Sarah was one bright woman, and he was sure that she already knew the next answer. But she pressed on, like she needed to hear those words.
‘Then…what will happen?’
‘Strike,’ he said. ‘We’ll go on strike. And AirBox will be grounded.’
Sarah brought her coffee mug up to her face, stopped, and then lowered it to the kitchen table. ‘I read the news-papers, Randy. That might drive AirBox out of business.’
‘Then that’s what’s gonna happen. AirBox will go out of business.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘Over teeth.’
‘Yeah,’ Randy said, looking out the bay window, to the brightening sky in the east. ‘It’s all about teeth.’
In his sixth-floor office Brigadier General Alexander Bocks, US Air Force (retired) sat behind his desk, looking across its clean and shiny expanse at the man he had depended on these past six months, and a man he admired for his intelligence, tenacity and imagination. And, also, a man he had come to despise.
Frank Woolsey, his chief financial officer, crossed his legs and said, ‘Alex, you know and I know there’s no way around it.’
He looked at the lean man who — even at this early hour -looked like he had been well-dressed and groomed since two a.m. Outside there was the faint gray of an approaching dawn, and Bocks heard the low-pitched hum of his airfreight empire out there, bringing in and sending out packages, flying hither and yon across the United States. Right now, as his CFO sat before him, this whole empire was being held up by fraying black threads, ready to part and toss everything down to disaster.
Bocks said, ‘I know you’re making sense. I just hate hearing it again.’
Frank looked down at a yellow legal pad and said, ‘The numbers are what they are. To keep AirBox flying and working, you’re gonna need to expand. And if you’re planning to expand into the Pacific, you’re gonna need investors. And you’re gonna need investors who have confidence in what you’re presenting, what you’re planning, and how you’re gonna deal with your mechanics’ union.’
Bocks eyed his sharp-eyed and smooth-shaven CFO, knowing that the bright little bastard had been passing one test after another. Bocks knew his strengths, knew his weaknesses, and one particular strength was that he knew he got his best ideas and best output early in the morning, while everybody else dozed or worked-out or grazed through their morning breakfast. He had thought Frank here would have bulked at getting his gym-buffed body out so early, to break bread with the company president and CEO, but the sharp little guy had done it without complaint.
‘“You”?’ Bocks asked. ‘What do you mean, “you”?’
‘Excuse me?’ Frank was questioning but he wasn’t rattled. It was like he had the supreme self-confidence of either knowing the answer to the question instantly, or knowing that he had the answer’s source.
‘What you were saying, back there,’ Bocks said, leaning slightly back in his chair. ‘You kept on saying “you”. What you’re planning, what you’re going to need. There was no “we” spoken, Frank. Don’t you think you’re part of the team?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Not saying “we” doesn’t give me a good feeling.’
A brief pause, and Bocks knew what the man was thinking. Frank was the outsider, the one member of the AirBox hierarchy who had never served in the military, had never belonged to a group that looked out for each other, who were part of something bigger. Bocks hadn’t wanted to hire Frank in the first place, but the financial crisis he and the other airfreight carriers were still facing — thank you very much, al-Qaeda, you fuckers — meant that something drastic had to be done. Like hiring a sharp outsider and number cruncher who could come up with the tough recommendations.
Still didn’t mean he had to like it.
Frank said, ‘Nothing implied there, Alex. Just the way the words came out.’
‘Yeah,’ Bocks said, leaning forward now in the chair. He rubbed at his chin and said, ‘What’s the latest on the labor committee?’
‘The contract negotiations are probably going to collapse today. Over the dental-plan issue.’
‘And our fallback?’
Frank’s gaze was steady. ‘Once the union goes on strike, we give them one last chance. Then we bring in the contract force.’
‘Scabs, then.’
Frank said, ‘Scabs that are going to save this company. Scabs that will ensure that you still have a job, the AirBox drivers and package handlers still have a job, and the pilots and the ground crews. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, Alex. Surely you know that, because of your history.’
Bocks felt his hands clench into fists. He took a breath. ‘Frank, in the time I’ve known you, I’ve come to admire your skill, your fortitude and clear-thinking.’
A slight nod of appreciation, it seemed.
Bocks said, ‘But if you ever again try to bring in my military experience of life-and-death decisions to try to score a point about some budgetary problem, then I’m going to punch out your fucking lights, and then fire you. And no doubt you’ll come back at me with a civil complaint of assault and a lawsuit for improper dismissal, and I will gladly mortgage my home here and my vacation place up in Maine to settle it. Just for the satisfaction of punching you out and firing your ass. Have I made myself clear?’
‘Quite,’ Frank said.
‘Good. Now get the hell out of my office.’
And when Frank left, Bocks slowly swiveled his chair, to look out at the aircraft arriving that were part of his empire, an empire that was slowly crumbling away.
Damn this day, he thought. Damn these times we live in.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Adrianna Scott emerged from her third shower in as many hours, carefully wiping down her body with the towel, checking underneath her fingernails and examining her body carefully to make sure that there was not a shred or piece of anything on her — tissue, blood spatter, even dandruff — that had once belonged to the late Henry Spooner, whose flaccid body was no doubt still cooling down at the motel about twenty miles away.