But Dru knew all the telltale signs: eyes opening wide in surprise, but only for the smallest fraction of a second; eyelids fluttering in swift recovery; then the all-teeth smile that failed to hide the hardening in the eyes from those who knew the language.
There was the ever-so-slight stiffening in the hand extended in greeting. The almost imperceptible turn of the shoulder so that it wouldn’t really look like the back was being turned. The stubborn formality in the exchange of words whenever an exchange was unavoidable. And always, always that determinedly polite smile.
Oh, yes. Dru knew it all.
What the hell happened, Lawton, is that thing between some of us black folks, she thought grimly, black people refusing to give their business to other black people. It didn’t matter how qualified the blacks were.
Dru recalled when she was planning her first trip to the island—years ago, for spring break with a group of college friends—someone had remarked that it was a place where privilege was accorded to leftover colonials, Syrians, Chinese, coffee-cream blacks and dark-skinned blacks who had good hair, good money, Britishy accents and white or nearwhite wives.
“Those people? They don’t like anything blacker than themselves, you hear me?” Dru remembered the girl saying. She was from another island. Dru couldn’t remember which one, but it was somewhere in the eastern Caribbean.
But that’s true for black people everywhere, even here in America, Dru had argued.
“Not like there. You’ll see,” the girl had said with a knowing smile.
Over the years, Dru had run into the same thing in other parts of the Caribbean and even in Africa—this passing over of black professionals, no matter how good their credentials, in favor of whites. She found it most prevalent in cities and big towns, among the pockets of people who had clawed their way to money and membership in circles absorbed with their own pretensions to nobility and class and entitlement. Most of the time it made her angry, but sometimes she found herself laughing outright at the pretensions.
Of late, she simply ignored them. Outside of those sorry-ass little circles were the real people, thank God, the masses who had no delusions about who they were, where they came from, or where they needed to be, who let it be known that no one was greater than they were because their greatness came from old, old traditions and from the Almighty.
What a world, Dru sighed.
She spoke patiently to Lawton now. “So we lost this one, Lawton. It’s not the end of the world. There are many others to win.”
“Don’t give me that trite bullshit, Dru! I know there are other fish in the sea. What I want to know is why we didn’t hook this one! And what do you mean, you’re not surprised?”
Dru sighed. Maybe she should give Lawton her take on what happened. “I’m waiting for an answer, Drucilla.”
Dru sighed again. She knew that tone.
“Okay, Lawton. You asked for it so I’ll give it to you. Just don’t give me any righteous outrage when you hear what I have to say, okay?”
“Get to the point, Dru.”
“We lost the contract because they’re uncomfortable with someone like me handling the account.”
There was a long silence before Lawton responded.
“What are you saying, Dru?” He spoke very quietly.
“I’m saying that I believe they would be more comfortable with someone who fits the physical image of the kind of person they have in mind for the job. I do not fit that image, Lawton.”
Another long silence.
“I see,” Lawton said finally, still in that very quiet voice.
Dru released the breath she suddenly realized she had been holding. She did not have to go any further. Lawton understood.
That did not mean the matter was over, but at least no words of indignation would be hurled into the air. Lawton would settle the score in his own way. She could tell by the quiet of his voice, a quiet that spelled danger. It was the proverbial calm before the storm, more like the calm before the hurricane, when it came to Lawton Pilgrim.
As she waited for him to speak, she thought of the two occasions on which she had seen Lawton in action, wreaking vengeance on those who had made themselves his adversaries. The first time was right after she joined the firm. It was over an article in the press about an affair alleged to be taking place between Lawton and one of his administrative assistants. The girl in question had had a little too much to drink at a gala event, and had bragged about an alleged affair to a reporter for one of the monthly gossip tabloids.
The reporter and his paper ran with the story without checking the facts. They had pieced together all sorts of circumstantial evidence to paint a picture of the taciturn Pilgrim as a womanizer. They even juxtaposed photos of Pilgrim with those of various young women on the fast-track to the boardroom, never saying that he really was not in the company of these women, but simply happened to be attending the same functions they were at the time.
The day after the story appeared, Lawton summoned the assistant to his office, where he had already assembled Phil Beckenstein, a lawyer from the firm that represented Pilgrim Boone; Marlene Driscoll, head of the human resources department; Elaine Panelli, who sat on the newly created Ethics Committee of the Wall Street Chamber of Commerce; and, much to her own surprise, Dru herself.
In front of all of these people, Lawton asked the girl to explain the origin of the newspaper story. The poor girl broke down, sobbing that she had been drunk and was just kidding around; that she did not know she was talking to a reporter. It wasn’t meant to go that far.
She begged, pleaded, groveled for a chance to redeem herself. She would be a slave for Pilgrim Boone if that was what Mr. Pilgrim wanted.
She was fired on the spot, with no severance pay. She got not a dime more than the money she had worked for up to the very hour of the meeting.
Months later, when she realized that she was blacklisted and would never again find a job in any consulting firm of good repute, even if she had sued Pilgrim Boone for harassment, the girl committed suicide. She left a note saying how sorry she was for the shame and disgrace she had brought on a wonderful man and on her family, and that it was she who had a crush on Pilgrim and had made up the whole thing about an affair after she had been drinking.
Well, I guess the liquor lobby will come out with guns blazing, Dru had thought dryly when she read the news of the suicide.
It didn’t end there.
Throughout the ordeal, Lawton had refused to speak to the press, not even to the biggest bylines on the society and business pages of the cream of the publications crop. Once the girl confessed, he filed separate suits against the offending reporter and his newspaper. The charges were reckless disregard for the truth, defamation of character, and malicious intent. His lawyers proved them all.
Even after his victory in court, Lawton made no statements to the press. The day the court decided in Lawton’s favor, the head of Pilgrim Boone’s public relations department announced in a brittle voice to the microphones shoved in his face outside the courthouse that Pilgrim Boone had no comment to make on a matter that American jurisprudence had laid to rest.
On the second occasion, the head of a small, upcoming accounting firm had caused Pilgrim Boone to lose a hard-won account by suggesting at an elite, private gathering of financial analysts that Pilgrim Boone’s growth strategy was “risky and unwise.”
Lawton and the accounting firm’s CEO had been college roommates for a year and they still saw each other socially. This “friend” was not being malicious. At least that’s what he told everyone afterward. Besides, he complained, wasn’t the gathering off-the-record? Street talk in a private home? Nobody had said anything about the press being there. He was merely giving his candid, objective view of the booming consulting industry and how accounting firms were taking advantage of that boom. All he had done was note that Pilgrim Boone was in a very vulnerable position because its growth strategy put so much store in countries whose economies were not
on solid footing. Wasn’t that the plain truth?
“Lawton is my good friend and we talk business all the time, but I worry about him. Anyone who’s as heavily exposed as he is in the emerging markets could be in for a rough tumble,” the CEO had declared earnestly during the gathering. “I see a lot of signs in Asia that tell me the bubble is going to burst soon. There’s just too much money flowing too freely into places it shouldn’t be flowing to. It just can’t continue. And when it goes bust in Asia, Latin America and all the rest of the developing world will feel it. I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon begin to see a whole lot of red ink on the financial statements of firms that are heavily exposed in emerging markets.”
A small mention of these sentiments appeared in The Wall Street Journal’s “Heard On The Street” column the next day, with Pilgrim Boone prominently mentioned. Neither Lawton’s friend’s name, the location of the gathering, nor even the names of others who had been there had been mentioned.
Even though the columnist expressed confidence in Pilgrim Boone’s decision to “go where few still dared to go,” and that the fundamentals of the firm were sound enough to enable it to weather any storms in the emerging markets, the mere speculation on the possibility of trouble, and a suggestion of unwise business decisions were enough to raise a few eyebrows.
The subsequent buzz, albeit short-lived, was too much for the telecommunications giant that had engaged Pilgrim Boone to study the landscape in developing countries and come up with a few investment options. The company’s board of directors was dominated by some of the most conservative names in American business. It had been hard enough to get them to consider investments in Canada and Europe, let alone “the poverty-stricken, debt-ridden, communist-prone Third World.” But, swayed by Lawton Pilgrim’s passionate reasoning, they had finally agreed to go forward with the Pilgrim Boone study, the results of which they would take “under advisement,” they said.
The “Heard On The Street” column sent them scurrying back into the corner from which they had so reluctantly ventured. They pulled the plug on the Pilgrim Boone study that very week.
Lawton got the bad news from the company’s chief executive himself over lunch at Bouley Restaurant.
“Sorry, Lawton, but you know my board. A bunch of tight-asses. They just don’t like the buzz about Pilgrim Boone. Everybody knows it’s all hogwash, but I’ve got to abide by what they say. They dragged me in and went on and on about protecting the interest of our shareholders. Sorry, old man. I have no choice.”
Lawton had accepted the decision graciously. Inwardly, however, he was seething. He had expected the buzz from the Journal piece to blow over without any damage.
He didn’t seethe for long. Beginning with the columnist, who refused to reveal his source, he harangued everyone who had attended the analysts’ meeting until he was able to figure out and confirm who the loudmouth was. He was devastated to learn it was his good friend, but he decided to bide his time before he took action. He would let the buzz fizz.
A year later, at a fund-raiser to launch the governor’s re-election campaign, he let it slip within earshot of a reporter for The Financial Times that the Securities and Exchange Commission was about to launch an investigation into the accounting practices of a certain aerospace company.
Dru was standing next to Lawton at the time. Lawton’s position within earshot of the reporter was no coincidence. He knew every important reporter by face and by name. The reporter immediately approached Lawton for more details, but Lawton feigned annoyance, telling the reporter to go digging elsewhere and threatening to sue him and his paper if he was quoted in connection with any story about an SEC investigation into the aerospace company.
The following week, The Financial Times broke the story about the SEC investigation, backing it up with statements from anonymous sources and even a “neither will confirm nor deny” from the SEC itself, which was as much an admission as any.
Neither Lawton Pilgrim’s name, nor that of Pilgrim Boone, was mentioned in the article.
That was the beginning of the end for Lawton’s ex-friend’s accounting firm. The aerospace company was its biggest client, and its management suspected that someone in the accounting firm had spoken out of turn.
That’s the way it was with Lawton. He was fair but he was no saint. Hurt him and he would hurt you back. He fought an ugly, down-in-the-gutter fight.
Dru felt sorry for Jamaica. It had no idea what it had gotten itself into by snubbing Pilgrim Boone.
But like Lawton, she was no saint. She didn’t feel sorry for the island for long. Hell, she groused silently, it wasn’t her fault that, in this day and age, some black folk still behaved as though they came from a better breed of slaves than everyone else. They deserve what they get, the arrogant Uncle Tom bastards.
Dru was on high ground, comfortable in the knowledge that she was on the good side of Lawton Pilgrim. She intended to keep it that way.
In the privacy of her office, the phone pressed to her ear as she waited for Lawton to speak, she rolled her neck and pushed away a thought about “consorting with the enemy” that tweaked at her conscience. The enemy isn’t always white folks. Sometimes it’s black folk who hate themselves. She heard Lawton say, “Let’s talk in a couple of days, Dru,” and hang up.
§
Dru put down the phone, closed the file she had been studying when Lawton called, and stood up abruptly, causing her swivel chair to roll back into the wall with a thud.
Glancing at the clock, she stepped from behind her desk, stepped out of her shoes, and kicked them aside. She closed the door, stood in the middle of the floor, and let her body go limp. She uttered a contented sigh as she arched her back, balled her hands into tight fists, lifted her arms, and pushed them up toward the ceiling with all the tension of a weightlifter struggling against his personal best. Her stockinged feet were planted a hip’s width apart and she pressed them down as hard as she could, flattening them against the floor. Her mind told her body that she was in the grasp of two powerful, opposing forces, one holding her down by the ankles, the other pulling her up by the wrists, stretching her torso, and stretching it more.
She held the stretch for as long as she could hold her breath, then she let go, exhaling slowly and collapsing her body so that her head and limbs hung limp again. She rolled her head from side to side, counting to ten, then rotated her shoulders, ten times backward, ten times forward. Finishing the rotations, she pulled herself erect, neck long, eyes on the horizon, to lift the spine. She closed her eyes, bent her knees just slightly, then turned her waist to the left, held it for an instant, then turned to the right, held it, back again to the left and again to the right. Her arms swung loosely with each turn.
She opened her eyes, inhaling and exhaling deeply, and remained motionless.
Stand like a tree, her instructor’s voice said.
After a minute she shook herself, retrieved her shoes from beside her desk and slipped them on. God, that felt good, she said aloud as she plopped down at her desk and pulled the folder to her.
The telephone rang. She reached for it.
“This is Dru,” she said, her voice relaxed and mellow.
There was a brief silence before the voice on the other end of the line said, “Hello, Dru. This is Theron St. Cyr.”
8
June 15, 1998
A heated argument between Andrew “Livuh” Goodings and Reginald “Macky” MacPherson, minister of transportation, was taking place over drinks in the family room of MacPherson’s home.
Goodings had dropped by unexpectedly for a nightcap with his boyhood friend, now his neighbor in the posh Prashad Nagar community where the elite of Guyana were bedding down for the night in homes costing millions of Guyanese dollars, guarded by armed ex-policemen and ferocious pedigree canines.
The minister was delighted by the surprise visit. His wife and children were spending the August holidays with his mother-in-law in Essequibo County and he was feeling p
articularly lonely and restless this night. He had a lot on his mind.
After a third round of rum and Pepsi—fealty to Pepsi ran deep and fierce among Guyanese—the conversation between the minister and Goodings landed on the subject that pained them both, but to which they were always drawn when they drank.
“I don’t care what anybody says, Macky. There is no way anybody born and bred in this country can justify such an asinine decision,” Goodings declared passionately. “Whoever heard of ripping out a country’s entire railroad system? Especially in a small, poor country like Guyana, where country people depend on that train to get to town and back. Good Christ, man! What the hell were those guys smoking?”
Goodings was so angry that his generous bottom lip flapped furiously, giving the impression of someone shaking a piece of liver, hence his nickname. “Livuh” was the kinder nickname, the one he accepted from his closest friends. More malicious individuals called him “Lipticus” or “Lebba Lip,” lebba being the local lexicon’s pronunciation of liver.
Teasing about his lip had been the most ruthless in elementary school. His classmates drove him crazy simply by tapping on their bottom lips with their index fingers. And they did it with an almost absent expression, as if they were lost in thought and the last thing on their minds was Andrew Goodings’ lip.
Although he was bright enough to be admitted to Queens College, the elite high school in Georgetown, Goodings was so devastated by the death of his mother just a week before classes started that he never recovered enough to make good grades. He barely scraped through to the sixth form, often finishing at the bottom of his class. Many who knew his potential called it a blessing in disguise when his father sent him, at eighteen, to Florida to live with an uncle. A year later, while still employed as a driver for a surveying company, he enrolled in the civil engineering department at the University of Florida.
The Guyana Contract Page 9