She nodded, and the nod turned into something else, and she had to grip the doorframe.
"Hey," he said, more gently. "We're going to fight this. But from now on β you don't talk to anyone without me."
Chapter Six
The Union
The union's statement landed on Daniel's desk at 7:40 in the morning, twenty minutes before Elena arrived with coffee and the particular expression she wore when she had decided to let him read something before she tried to soften it.
He read it standing at the window, the gray jacket still on from the drive in.
MERIDIAN AIRLINES LOCAL 114 condemns the public suspension of check-in agent Claire Donovan, an overworked single mother made into a sacrifice so the executive floor can feel clean...
It was Tony Marone's language all the way down β management by ambush, trial by headline. By the second paragraph it had stopped being about Claire and started being about every agent who had ever been timed with a stopwatch while a passenger cried at their counter. It was, Daniel had to admit, uncomfortably well aimed.
"There's more," Elena said from the doorway.
"Of course there is."
"Picket permit filed for Thursday. Departures curb, Terminal Four. Informational only, but the cameras will come. Tony was on WGN radio at six this morning. He called the suspension" β she checked her notes β "'a corporate beheading performed for the stock price.'"
Daniel set the statement down. "He's good."
"He'll be better on television. And Preston called twice. He wants the union, quote, 'cut off at the knees before Thursday.' His words."
"Tell Preston I'm in meetings all day."
"Danielβ"
"Tell him."
He looked out at the tarmac, where a Meridian 737 was pushing back in flat morning light. Thirty years in aviation and he could still read a ramp the way other men read newspapers. He thought about Counter 17, about the way Claire's hands had moved β fast, practiced, angry at all the wrong things. And he thought about the union card he'd carried for eleven years, back when his hands were the ones in the belly of the airplane.
"Get me Tony Marone," he said. "Not his office. Him. Private. Today."
Elena stared. "The man who just called you an executioner on drive-time radio."
"The same. Tell him I'll come to him. Somewhere neutral. That diner on Cicero β the Starlight. Tell him I'll buy the coffee and he can bring anyone he wants."
She held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded once and left. Elena had arranged his undercover morning at Counter 17 without flinching; she could arrange a diner.
---
The Starlight smelled of grease and rain. Tony Marone was already in a corner booth at noon, a mug in front of him, a leather jacket over shoulders that had spent three decades loading and unloading the consequences of other people's decisions. He didn't stand when Daniel slid in across from him.
"You wanted to see the enemy," Tony said.
"I wanted to see the steward."
"Same thing today."
A waitress poured Daniel's coffee without asking. Tony watched her go, then leaned forward, forearms on the table, and Daniel recognized the posture β it was the same one he'd worn himself at nineteen, across from supervisors who'd never touched a bag.
"Let me tell you about Claire Donovan," Tony said, "since your cameras only caught the worst ninety seconds of her life. Thirty-two years old. Kid's eight. She was top of her training class β ask anybody who was there. Then we put her on doubles three weeks out of four and timed her transactions like she was flipping burgers, and her supervisor told her, and I quote, 'keep the line moving or I'll find someone who can.' So she kept the line moving. And now you want to tell the world she's the disease instead of the symptom."
Daniel wrapped his hands around the mug. "I watched her for forty minutes, Tony. Not ninety seconds."
"And?"
"And what I saw wasn't one bad agent having a bad day. An old woman with a heavy bag, treated like freight. A college kid with a student fare, charged like a criminal. A young woman who couldn't hear, waved away like she wasn't standing there. Then a man in first class gets a smile that could've melted the counter. That's not a bad day. That's a system. And I'm not going to fix a system by feeding it Claire Donovan."
Tony's eyes narrowed. "Then what are you doing? Because from where I sit, you suspended her without pay and put her face on every screen in America."
"I suspended the counter. I'd do it again. But I'm not here to negotiate her punishment with you over coffee." Daniel set the mug down. "I'm here to offer you something your union has asked for since before I got this job."
"Which is?"
"A joint review board. Labor and management, equal seats. Full access β every complaint, every minute of camera footage, every metric, every supervisor email about handle times. It doesn't decide Claire's future in a back room. It decides in daylight, with your name on the findings. And its recommendations on the metrics system are binding."
Tony was quiet for a long moment. Rain ticked against the window. Somewhere in the kitchen, a bell rang.
"Committees," Tony said at last, "are where the truth goes to die."
"Then put your name on this one and make sure it doesn't."
"You'd give the union binding say over your own performance metrics?"
"I'd give the people who do the work a say over the work." Daniel almost smiled. "Radical, I know."
"You ever work a double, Mr. Cross?"
"Ramp. Winters. Nineteen years old, fingers so cold I couldn't feel the tags." Daniel met his eyes. "I carried a union card for eleven years, Tony. I haven't forgotten what it felt like when the people upstairs talked about us like we were a cost instead of a crew."