Broken Song (19 page)

Then a huge man, possibly six foot four or five with silver hair, chiseled looks and an imposing physique walked into the room.  His silver grey eyes that looked a hell of a lot like Sandra's, held a look of severe intelligence as he assessed me as he approached.

I was a little shocked to see the same calculating spark in them as Sandra had, he was no doubt trying to figure out what my angle may be.  My eyes flicked to the ragged scar above his left eye that flowed down onto his cheek giving a streak of color on his pale complexion.  There was no doubt he was Sandra's father, but I found it a bizarre contrast that such a huge mountain of a man could have such a tiny, graceful daughter.

I couldn't help but approve of the fact that he didn't have plastic surgery to remove that blemish on his ruggedly handsome features,  he definitely had the means.  I took in the fitted suit that made Tip's look like it was off the rack, as Alistair Callahan offered a hand to me.

“
Ms. Franklin,” his voice rumbled deep with a strong bass.  His huge paw simply dwarfed mine. Now I'm not a tiny woman like Sandra, but he made my hand look like that of a child.

I nodded to him. “Mr. Callahan.”  I acknowledged him and then said, “Please call me Penny.”

He nodded and motioned toward the chairs and spoke cautiously,  “Very well, Penny.  Then feel free to call me Alistair.”  He waited for me to sit then sat in the chair beside me without turning his calculating gaze away.  “Tip tells me this meeting has something to do with my daughter?”  His voice held a dangerous tone, and I had no doubt this man loved his daughter, which struck me as counter intuitive and in contrast to the reason I was here.

I took a breath.  What was I going to say?  I had no clue.  Almost two weeks waiting for this meeting and all I knew is that I owed this to San.  I looked at the man.  “Well Alistair, I have had the pleasure to get to know your daughter.  She is one of the most spectacularly amazing people I have ever met.”

He was shifting in his seat and squinting his eyes.  I continued. “But she has this shadow hanging over her, for all the good things she is accomplishing, do you know the single most important thing in her life?  The one thing she wants and the one thing doesn't have?”  I raised an eyebrow in question.

He looked at me suspiciously. “Please Penny, regale me with what my princess needs.”

I squinted and looked at him accusingly.  “The thing that drives her is that she needs to make you proud of her.  She has such pride in what she does, yet she looks to you and you are not there.”

His voice rose though I could see him keeping a no doubt volatile temper in check.  “How dare you. I love my daughter more than anything.  One day she will come to her senses and come home to run the family business.  I'll surround her with advisers to do the heavy lifting for her.”

I looked at him in shock. “What?  You don't even know what she is doing and how many people depend on her.”

He snapped, “Bullshit.  I know she is playing around with her animals and homeless people.  She's dumping money into it all the time, month after month.  When she gets tired of it, she'll come back home where she belongs.  She's... special... Penny, I'm sure you've seen.”

It was my turn to snap.  “Playing around!?  My God!  You are even more out of touch than I thought!  Do you have any clue how important her work is?”

He shook his head incredulously.  “Her work?  She's just bleeding money to people who should be getting jobs!  My money!  Her money!”

I took a deep breath to calm down.  “I know you love your daughter, Alistair.  But why don't you support her?”

He snorted.  “I do support her, where the hell do you think all the money comes from?”

I shook my head.  “Money is not the same thing, and she doesn't use a penny of that money on herself.  She works two jobs to support herself.  She wants you to see that she can take care of herself.”

Before he could say anything. I rushed on and said, “If you support her, then why, in all the years that she has lived in Seattle have you not visited her?  To see what she is really doing?”

His voice was raising again.  “I see her every Christmas when she comes home to visit, and on my birthday every year.”

I shrugged.  “That's her making the effort not you.  You have never seen her in Seattle and one of your own company's largest shipping hubs is in the Seattle area!  Everything she does, she does for you, but you just see it as 'playing around'.  Come see her.  See what she is doing.  See all the people she is helping!  And her home isn't DC anymore.  Her home is in Seattle and you've never visited once to even acknowledge that.”

He opened his mouth then closed it again, gathering his wits and calming himself.  “What's your angle here Penny.  Why are you getting involved?”

I shrugged. “I owe her.  She did something spectacularly selfless to help me see some things in my life more clearly.  And this is the one thing I can do for her, the one thing she needs.  She has your love, she only wants your respect.”

He sat silently for a long time.  Then hit the intercom.  “Tip.”

A couple seconds later Tip stepped inside the conference room and stood by the door looking expectantly at Mr. Callahan.  Was I being ushered out?

Then Alistair looked at me then to Tip.  “Cancel all my meetings for the next two days.  I need the company jet tomorrow, have them file a flight plan to Seattle.  Two passengers, myself and Ms. Franklin, you don't need to be there Tip.  Set me up in the Seattle Grand, presidential suite.  I'll speak to the missus about the trip.”  Tip's fingers were flying across his iPad.  He paused and when there was nothing else, he ducked out of the room.

I watched the door close and said under my breath, “What a tool.”

Then Alistair surprised me with a deep rumbling laugh, he had heard though I hadn't expected him to. “That he is.  But a useful tool.”

He stood, indicating our discussion was over.  I stood too and he offered his hand again.  I took it and he said, “Well Penny.  You certainly are a scrappy one.  That is kind of refreshing as everyone around here is offering tissues if I sneeze.  I'll go see my little girl with you, but I still think you are playing an angle.  Just write it up to my suspicions after so many people have taken advantage of my daughter for her money.”

He walked me to the conference room door and ended the meeting as he said, “Tip will contact you with the flight information, good day Penny.”

I nodded to him. “Good day to you too Alistair.  This is a good thing you are doing.”

Then the next day, we were on a private jet, landing at a small airfield up in Issaquah.

Now here he was.  Not listening to her and wanting to bring her back to DC.  Oh hell no, I wasn't going to let him ruin everything!  I was supposed to fix this... for her!

I looked down at Sandra, she looked so small.  Then I glared at Mr. Callahan who was now pacing through the apartment and I stood up and tried to contain my rage, I succeeded for the most part but there was so much that it bled through as I snapped, “You have no clue what your daughter is capable of!  Do you have any clue what she does for the people in this city!?”

He stopped pacing at her desk and wheeled around at me.  “She's my daughter!  I know exactly what she is capable of!  Don't you dare lecture me on her capabilities!”

Sandra's eyes were wide with... fear?  As she jumped up from the couch and was trying to get me to stop.  I just continued speaking with anger in my voice,  “There are hundreds of people that depend on her in the homeless community of Seattle.  Shelters, missions and community centers depend on her organizational skills and her knack for fitting the right person to the right job.  Not to mention the children she helps to forget about their situation and brings smiles to their faces, every time she brings her animals to the wards where those precious children lie dying, almost an afterthought to society like the men and women fending for themselves on the streets!  She has dreams of a foundation where she can help even more people and show them that they matter, that every person matters.”

He scoffed.  Sandra had given up trying to get me to sit and just held me with her head on my chest as she cried.  Alistair pointed at the desk at her scratch paper on the desk. “A foundation!?  That is beyond her capabilities.  I love my daughter to death, but she can't even do simple math!  She needs to come back home and take over the family business where I can surround her with advisers to do the heavy work!”

Sandra let go of me with her hand over her mouth and started to escape toward her bedroom.  I grabbed her hand and didn't let her leave, she turned back with teary eyes locking on mine.  I gave her a small smile then turned to her father, still holding my girl's hand.  “You don't even know your own daughter, all she wants is your acceptance and respect.  You think it is beyond her capabilities?  You don't have a clue the type of genius Sandra is!  All part of why I love her.”

I looked down into Sandra's eyes. “San, how many homeless people are in Seattle?”

She said, “Eight thousand eight hundred and thirty that we know of.”

I grinned. “How many do you know personally?”

She tilted her head for a second. “One thousand two hundred and three.”

I grinned. “Of those, how many of their names do you know?”

She smiled through her tears. “All of them.”

I nodded and asked, “And how many of them do you know their occupations before they wound up on the street?”

She spoke firmer now. “All of them.”

I grinned in pride at her then said, “And how many of their birthdays do you know?  And how many do you try to do something for them on that day to let them know they are not forgotten?”

She smiled broadly now.  “All of them.”

Mr. Callahan opened his mouth to speak but I shot a glare at him and held up my hand to stop him and I continued to speak, “All of them?  You know all this information about them?  So you keep lists or spreadsheets or something?”

She shrugged and pointed at her head and said, “No, lists get confusing, I keep it all in my head.”

I feigned surprise.  “In your head?  How many shelters and missions do you help every month? And how many are in this area you've decided to live in?  How many people can they give cots to?”

She tilted her head and squinted her eyes, I could see her trying to figure out what I was doing. “There are eighteen in the city proper and I consider Second Street Shelter and Anchorage Avenue Shelter mine.  They can handle two hundred and thirty seven people a night but there are four hundred and seven of my people in the area.”

I nodded and shot a poisonous glance at Mr. Callahan.  “You don't think she can do math?  She has an unorthodox grasp on math that we could never hope to match.  She has an unconventional intelligence that I envy!”  I looked at my beautiful blonde. 
God I just want to kiss her!
  So I did.  Then I looked at the porcelain features on her beautiful face that now had a dreamy look on it. “San.  If I had a family of five that needed cots for three days.  Can you shuffle them in somehow if each shelter in town had only a single cot for a single night in their rotation schedules?”

She squinted and stuck the tip of her tongue out the side of her mouth as she thought.  “If they each get a bunk, I can shuffle nine cots and transfer seven other people to other shelters so that nobody loses their turn at a cot, while providing the family the three days together.  But if the children are smaller and they can sleep on one cot together, then I can do the same with only three shuffles and two transfers.”

I looked around, everyone looked sufficiently impressed.  I grinned and then said,  “San, how many people have you found jobs, to get them off the street, since you came to Seattle?”

She said with pride, “One hundred and thirty seven.  But only one hundred and twenty two were able to keep the jobs and stay off the street.”

I smiled gently at her. “How many jobs on average can you find per week now?  And how many new people, freshies, find themselves homeless and on the street each week?”

She looked like she was about to cry again.  “Now-a-days I can usually place about five people a week but seven freshies show up in that time.  It is a losing proposition, that's why I wanted to create my foundation.  So I would have more resources and more people that can help my people re-integrate into society and find the jobs and support they need.”

Then I sneered at Alistair, I had researched this next one in DC with all the spare time I had there waiting for him to return from Germany and I had no doubt Sandra knew the answer.  “Sweetie, when Callahan Shipping did its cutbacks to maximize profits three years back, did any men and women in the Seattle shipyards get laid off?”

She nodded and I said, “How many?”

She shrugged. “One hundred and three.”

I nodded at her in encouragement when I prompted her as I asked, “And did any of those people wind up on the streets?”

She stood straight. “Twenty two.  They had such specialized jobs so it was hard for them to find another job.  They tried hard to make ends meet but within six months of the downsizing, their houses were foreclosed on and the debt collectors took all they owned.  I was able to get seven of them jobs to try to make amends for my family needing more money being the reason they were homeless, but it is so hard to find positions for people with odd skill sets like like ship crane operator in a down economy. I wanted to give them their pride back.”