by Wallace Ford
But, after he pulled the supernaturally craven stunt of secretly teaming up with Gordon to betray Diedre, Paul and me, I had to restrain myself from spending time and energy on thoughts of revenge and vengeance. Indeed, it was Charmaine who counseled me to just move on and leave Ray Beard alone. It was Charmaine who predicted that there was a terrible karmic consequence that he would have to face, she was proven right. And as a result of the New Orleans Fiasco, Raymond Russell Beard III was left humiliated and partially paralyzed. His long-term future was predicted to center around an excruciating regimen at a rehabilitation facility and what was once a promising career was reduced to shards.
I could not have plotted a more succinct or fitting revenge. Ray could have faced the physical and psychological rigors and challenges of rehabilitation, especially with Monique at his side. He was certainly brilliant enough to find a way to resuscitate his career and reinvent himself by means of a half dozen other professional pursuits. But the humiliation—that was something else again.
We all have our faults. And sometimes, those frailties can end up being the seeds of our destruction. In Ray Beard’s case, the seven deadly sins were all wrapped up in his pride. Somewhere along the line, his self-confidence and self-esteem had morphed into an arrogance and conceit that absolutely warped and twisted his judgment and clouded his mind when it came to matters of the greatest importance.
Ray just could not comprehend the fact that the universe did not revolve around Raymond Russell Beard III. He really thought that everyone in his circle of affinity made every major decision with him in mind. As a result, he perceived insult when none was intended. He saw praise when it wasn’t there. And he always thought that he was on the verge of discovering some kind of plan, plot or intrigue involving the people that he knew that somehow had him as the central focus.
“Paranoid” would probably be a good word to describe that aspect of Ray’s personality, but I am not a clinical psychiatrist and I certainly would be the last one to cast the first stone when it comes to being suspicious of my surroundings and other people. But Ray always seemed to believe that his best interests were served by keeping an eye on the whole world because the whole world was out to get him.
As I look back, the true turning point in the relationship between Ray and me came when Paul thought up the Morningstar concept right after Winner Tomlinson’s memorial service and we excluded Ray from the subsequent merger discussions. I am sure now that at that point, every twisted conspiracy theory rattling around in that twenty-four-carat brain of his was confirmed for all time.
I am sure that it was crystal clear to him that some of the most important people in his life were plotting against him. I am also sure that he figured that he was being excluded from future merger discussions because Paul, Gordon, Diedre and I were somehow intimidated by his obvious brilliance, never taking the time to realize that the merger discussions needed to be held solely between the principal owners of the three firms.
And, I am also sure that he figured that the entire Morningstar progression confirmed in his mind his long-held suspicion that his place as my right-hand man and closest personal and professional friend was illusory at best. I had neither the time nor the interest to try to assuage Ray’s hurt feelings at the time, and I am sure that he felt that my unwillingness to provide him with some kind of reassurance could mean only that we were never the professional brothers and personal friends that he had thought we were.
My conversation with Diedre at the office was the first time that I had really given Ray and the whole tragic turn of events any serious thought in quite a while. Since we had gotten the news from New Orleans, most of my life had been wrapped up in Morningstar, Charmaine’s illness and death, and my efforts to try to make sure that Jerome Jr. and Channing were able to live something resembling a normal life. I had closed my mind and heart to Raymond Russell Beard III, so there was simply nothing to think about.
And now, I had something to think about. Diedre would never be on anybody’s list of pushovers or soft touches. In the few years that we had worked together, I had come to know her as an extraordinary judge of people. She had a seventh or eighth sense that seemed to tell her who was worthwhile and who was not worth the time—regardless of pedigree, references or documentation.
It was probably never a really good idea to try and bullshit her, and from what little I knew of Monique Jefferson, I doubted that Monique was trying to pull off a stunt like that in any event. So, when Diedre suggested that we consider giving Ray Beard a chance to work at Morningstar, I didn’t have to give her proposal much consideration. If she thought that it was a good idea for our business, I was prepared to support it.
I did, however, have to take a moment to look inside myself because my visceral response was to reject Ray and to have nothing further to do with him. I had not survived the mean streets of Philadelphia and the academic back alleys of Yale and Columbia and the trench warfare of Wall Street by giving the people who would harm me second chances.
My survival instincts were finely tuned to avoid and eliminate betrayal and deception. And my success has been a testament to my policy of avoidance and elimination.
As I took the highway toward the Bronx and could see the lights of Manhattan shimmering over the horizon, as if some alien mothership was just over there, I had a chance to give some more thought to the turn of events involving Ray. After all, there had been many times in life when I had had to exercise my own judgment to look after my family, my business and myself.
But I have always known that judging people has many hidden pitfalls, starting with the fact that the faults that we see in others are sometimes simply a reflection of our own. And I also have come to realize that being the one to cast the first stone is a good way to end up under an avalanche of recrimination and regret.
There was no question in my mind that Ray had been absolutely wrong. In my view he had been a traitor and a betrayer, a liar and a thief, who had run off with my trust and my hopes for him. I didn’t feel that it was my role to forgive him—but I tried to figure out how I could forget his misdeeds, especially since they were so personally hurtful.
And that’s when I realized that I was wallowing in the same slough of egoism that had caused Ray’s downfall. In being brutally honest with myself, I realized that my biggest issue with Ray was not that he had betrayed Morningstar and my partners, but that he had betrayed me and had hurt my feelings. My biggest issue with Ray was personal, not business, and that realization hit me like a slap across the face.
In point of fact, Ray had made some very poor decisions. Leaving my firm so precipitously was certainly one of them. His linking up with Gordon was certainly a doomed prospect from the beginning, as Gordon was able to mask his predatory nature with a veneer of friendship that Ray probably needed because he perceived me as betraying him in the whole Morningstar process. And Ray had certainly paid a very high price for his mistakes. And one payment involved the termination of our friendship and personal relationship.
Ray Beard was still a young man with a lot to learn. Ray Beard had been brutally tutored as to the consequences of poor decision making and was smart enough to have learned from his Job-like experiences. Ray Beard was still an exceedingly brilliant businessman and corporate finance technician.
I realized what Diedre must have seen during her conversations with Monique: that if I could put my hurt feelings aside, Morningstar had the opportunity to add an asset to our management team. And, I thought, if I could stop thinking about my hurt feelings for half a second, I might have an opportunity to renew a valued professional and personal relationship.
As I steered my car onto East River Drive heading to my rendezvous with Paul, Diedre, Kenitra and Gordon, I realized that second chances were few and far between. I decided to trust Diedre’s judgment, I decided to trust my judgment, and I decided to believe in Ray Beard once more.
CHAPTER 22
Gordon
Can You Read My Mind?
The Dark Lord came to the hospital once again, with my street gear in hand as usual. By now I was used to the fact that whenever he came to visit, nobody on the hospital staff noticed him and no one seemed to mind when he helped me disengage from my tubes and wires and monitors.
At one point, I thought it strange that I could just walk out of the hospital whenever I wanted to, but I guess that as long as my allegedly comatose ass was back in the Special Intensive Care Unit by dawn, it was okay. I felt like I was in the middle of some kind of fucking vampire story, and the crazy thing is that I was cool with it.
We started to get a regular routine going. As soon as I had finished getting dressed, we would go downstairs on the elevator and right out the lobby. No one would ever say a fucking word to me. As a matter of fact, no one even seemed to notice the Dark Lord and me sashaying out the front door as if we owned the whole motherfucking hospital.
The Dark Lord usually arranged for a gypsy cab from East Harlem to be waiting for us. It was always the same car and it was always the same driver—Esteban Escondido. Esteban, who liked to be called El Steve, was an Ecuadorian brother from someplace outside of Quito, as best I could figure out.
El Steve was cool. He knew exactly when to show up and he knew to always have about a quarter of an ounce of Colombia’s finest ready for me. I needed those seven grams of coke after being cooped up in that hospital for days at a time. And I needed to have some coke around to make sure to get the party started with a couple of bitches that I was planning to see at the Purple Dragon that night.
The ride uptown was almost always the same. El Steve drove straight up First Avenue while I snorted some blow. The music on the car stereo was pumping sounds by Jay-Z and Missy Elliott and Ja Rule and some other miscellaneous rapper motherfuckers who I didn’t know. Meanwhile, the Dark Lord and I would usually try and figure out how much fun we could have that evening.
But this night was going to be a little different. In addition to the bitches and the blow and the Rémy at the bar of the Purple Dragon, we had some business to conduct. I had always had an entrepreneurial urge, ever since my first newspaper route as a kid in New Rochelle.
Then there was my car-washing and lawn-care enterprise that, by the time I graduated from high school, employed twenty of my New Rochelle High School classmates. I started investing in the stock market during my freshman year at Howard University and, by my sophomore year, I had made enough money to buy one of the photocopying franchises in Washington, DC, near the campus. By the time I graduated, I owned four other franchises, in Maryland and Virginia.
I sold those franchises and used the proceeds to continue to build up my stock portfolio. While I attended the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, I continued my stock market investments and did some speculation in the real estate market near the Hanover, New Hampshire, campus, a market that was just starting to heat up in the late seventies.
So, by the time I came to New York City with my MBA and a healthy stock portfolio and more than a little cash in my bank account, I was ready to make some real money. And ever since, during my stint at Goldman and when I founded and ran my own firm, I always have had other business interests going.
There has always been my personal stock portfolio. But there have also been real estate investments in New York City, all over the United States and in Europe and South Africa. There is the tool-and-die manufacturing concern in Detroit with the close relationship with General Motors and Ford in which I have had a silent majority interest for well over a decade while a very popular former member of the Detroit Tigers major league baseball team has been the public face as president and (titular) chief executive officer.
I have invested in some successful movies and a couple of Broadway plays, and I was an early investor in Apple and Microsoft. And all of my successful investments have actually brought in more cash than all of my successes as an investment banker. Not that anyone but me knows that full story.
I always engaged the parallel services of several law firms and accounting firms. And I am the only one who knows about the other bank accounts that I have set up, in places like Switzerland, Dubai, Costa Rica and the Fiji Islands.
All of the accounts are in my name. All of the accounts, that is, except a few that I set up with alternative identities in case I ever needed to be someone else in some other place. And one account I set up using the name of that dumb bitch wife of mine.
And it is that one Bahamian account, with ten million fucking dollars that that goddamn mother-fucking asshole Paul Taylor happened to stumble upon after I had my little mishap in New Orleans. And it was by listening to Paul and Kenitra chatting in my hospital room that I learned that Kenitra was now living in the high cotton, off my money. I made myself a promise that one day, Paul and Kenitra would pay for that little stunt.
There would be time for that, but in the meantime, rolling uptown as G-Perk with my only true friend, the Dark Lord, I had some new business in mind. It was okay to hang out at the Purple Dragon and check out the babes and drink Rémy and snort some coke in the back room, but I have never felt complete unless I was trying to make some money. And it didn’t take too long before a real moneymaking idea came to light.
There were always a few lightweight drug dealers rolling through the Dragon selling their nickel and dime bags and loosies (marijuana joints) to the patrons. Ernie Argentina was cool with the commerce as long as no one was too obvious or too stupid about it and as long as these minor merchants paid him a small management fee.
After hanging out there for a while, however, I noticed one particularly smooth operator who never seemed to actually put his hands on any money or drugs, but who seemed to be the vortex for a continuing stream of traffic. I slipped Ernie a C-note and asked him to make an introduction. Within moments, I was seated at a table with a slim young brother named Duke.
Duke was well dressed and elegant in a Purple Dragon sort of way. He was about six feet tall and brown skinned with a shaved head. He was not a big brother—“lithe” would be the first term that came to my mind. But he carried himself in a way that suggested more than a passing familiarity with the martial arts and the art of self-defense—and offense. He favored knits and leather instead of the usual denim/baseball cap/do-rag attire (like I was wearing), and he always wore sunglasses. I decided to get down to business right away.
“The name’s G-Perk.” We were both trying to figure out where this conversation was going.
“I know. Duke here.” We shook hands perfunctorily, and we each took a sip of our respective drinks. I noticed that he favored Corona beer with a wedge of lime in the bottle. For a moment, I felt like I was in some kind of fucking Japanese tea ceremony.
“Duke, I’ve got some cash and I want to turn it over. You interested?”
“Yeah, I guess I’m always interested when the subject is cash.” By his bland, noncommittal response, you would have thought I was talking about the weather. As the saying goes, “He was so cool, ice wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Duke. I have some cash, and I hear that you might be in the kind of business where some cash might come in handy.” I was trying to get a sense of the young brother, who was probably not more than twenty-five. He was playing it cool, as well he should. The question was whether he was smart enough to recognize opportunity when it was sitting right across the table from him.
“Depends on what kind of cash you’re talking about, G-Perk. You seem like a down brother so I’m not going to bother with a whole lot of bullshit. I pay enough money in this part of town to know every undercover cop around. So I know you’re not a cop. If you are some kind of snitch or a plant or a turncoat motherfucker, I will find out, and I will personally pop a cap in your old ass.
“Go on, Duke.” I was starting to like the brother already, although I wasn’t crazy about the “old ass” reference. He was handling this situation much the same way that I would have if I were on his side o
f the table. We continued the conversation. I made sure from my tone of voice and demeanor that he knew that he wasn’t intimidating me in the least.
“Okay then. As long as we are straight on that. If you can bring me ten G’s, I will give you twenty G’s in two weeks. You ask me no fucking questions and I will tell you no fucking lies. Do we have a deal?”
There was a certain electric intensity to this Duke that I enjoyed. We were definitely going to do business.
“No, we do not have a fucking deal.” It was, however, my style to always try to keep the other motherfucker off balance. I could see from Duke’s expression that my ploy had worked.
“What? Well, fuck it then, old motherfucker, I don’t ...”
“Hold on, Duke. Slow your roll. I don’t have time for any small-time bullshit, with you or any of these other Mickey Mouse motherfuckers in the Dragon. So no, we don’t have a deal—yet.” I knew that I had Duke’s attention for about another ten seconds.
“How’s this for a deal? I will bring you a hundred G’s tomorrow and you will bring me two hundred G’s in two weeks. And I will give you a hundred G’s every two weeks for the next two months. After that, we’ll see.”
I could see a small muscle twitch on the side of Duke’s jaw. He was now in the deep water and he knew it. He could either swim back to shore or risk fucking around with the sharks. I wanted to know if the boy had heart right away.
I could almost see his mind working. He had to know that if I had one hundred thousand dollars to put into his drug business, I probably had a whole lot more. He also had to know that if I had that kind of money, I also had the resources to track him to the ends of the earth and skin him alive if he tried to fuck with me. Plus, everyone in the Dragon knew of my encounter with the Gatekeeper of the Bar Stool, and Duke had to know that it was not a good idea to fuck with G-Perk.