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Not one of the four partners of B, B, C, B complained about having a meeting late on a Friday evening. Jack Benning had even stiffed the governor to be there. Politics could wait. This was sports! This was the law firm he founded, maybe making the world scene in the Olympics! It was better than lawyering, much better. All the partners had been athletes in college, which Benning felt made them more competitive in the courtroom and the board room as well. To whatever degree that was true, it was certainly true that they all enjoyed, and admired athletes at work.
They stopped chattering instantly when they heard the speakerphone on the table make the connection.
A distorted voice boomed out. "Hello? This is Dick Haskin! Can you hear me?"
Hartley Braithwaite leaned forward and turned down the volume while Al Bynum responded "Yes, Dick. We're all here. How are you?"
Bynum had missed the conference when the others had met the athletes. He’d had to attend a trade negotiation which he couldn’t get out of. He’d actually griped to Jack Benning about it.
"I'm fine," the Haskin replied. "But enough small talk. I guess you want to know how your little athlete is doing after two weeks, right?"
"Indeed we do," purred Braithwaite. "How's she doing?"
"She's unbelievable!" he shouted. "Where did you find her? Does she have any brothers or sisters? Find them! Sign them up! I want to coach them! I want to adopt them! I want to give them scholarships!"
"We get the idea, Dick," said Braithwaite. "Can you give us any particulars?"
"Particulars?" he hollered. "Yeah, I can give you particulars! A coach can only dream of an athlete like her! She’s going to make us famous! No one has ever heard of her, she loves being coached, she works like a horse, and her performance is off the charts!
“She's the quickest kid any of us have ever seen! And dive? When she dives she hits the water like you dropped a yardstick into the pool. We can’t understand how she does it, but please, find her a husband! I want to coach her children! I want...."
"Thank you, Dick," interrupted Braithwaite. " Great work! We'll be in touch. Keep it up! We may even fly down for a visit. Take care, now."
He turned the volume down to barely audible and sat back and looked at his partners. His partners looked at him. They were all thinking the same thing. A couple days in Barbados? What could it hurt?
But the following week the news wasn't as good. Coach Haskin, who spent at least an hour a day pouring over printouts of performance data, was alarmed to see that in the timed events Darcy's times were decreasing consistently. By the end of the week her times were merely competitive, not unbeatable. Darcy said she felt fine, that she hadn't noticed any diminution of energy, but it was undeniably happening. The figures didn't lie.
The week after that, with the downward trend of Darcy's numbers unchanged, Haskin thought she seemed different too. A crucial bit less sharp, less on the ball. The team had a local physician, a prominent doctor with some sports medicine experience on retainer, and Haskin called him.
They had to get to the bottom of this, and soon.
