The January Girl
Page 8
The office was larger than she had imagined. The executive suite was luxuriously furnished with a collection of tufted leather chairs, polished wood, and artwork. The smoked-glass wall behind the empty reception desk was emblazoned with the Campbell-Perkins logo. It was 7:30 a.m. and the phones were already ringing. The place was alive with associates hauling coffee and bagels. Several meetings were already underway. No less than six secretaries, already perched behind their desks, answered the buzzing phones with warm “good mornings.”
No one noticed her at first. Thandy looked around, searching for a place to put down the box she’d hauled up from the car. A tall, slender woman greeted her.
“Good morning. How can I help you?”
“I’m Thandywaye Malone.”
The woman was at first confused, then overly kind. “Ms. Malone?” she said, taking the box. “I’m sorry, I . . .”
“It’s okay. Good morning.”
“It’s good to finally meet you. I’m Susan DeGross, Director of Operations.”
“Good to meet you, Ms. DeGross.” Thandy guessed she was another overblown office manager.
“The driver didn’t help you with this?”
“What driver?”
“How did you get here?”
“I drove.”
Susan smiled. “Your driver is probably still waiting outside your house.”
“I have a driver?” Thandy asked, understanding the corporate culture immediately.
“Yes, ma’am. Every member of the executive team has a driver. Mr. Thomas will come every morning at seven or any time that you prefer. He’ll be on call throughout the day and take you home each evening. Your office is ready.”
Thandy followed her down the lengthy stretch of hallway. John Stafford, a senior vice president and the chief investment officer, met them. Stafford was a fifty-something, short brick of a man who ambled along as gracefully as a sack of potatoes. He’d interviewed her twice, the first time at a restaurant on Navy Pier.
“Thandywaye! Top of the morning to you!” he boomed in a heavy Irish accent as he greeted her in the hallway.
She nodded and smiled. “Thandy is just fine.”
“It’s an interesting name. I never asked you about the history.” He walked with her to her office.
“It was my father’s middle name. Simon Thandywaye Mbeki. His family emigrated from South Africa in the 1950s and changed their surname to Malone. It was one thing to be colored, but quite another to be straight off the boat from Africa.” She laughed. “Mbeki is my middle name.”
Her father, the strict disciplinarian, brought his traditional African values with him to the United States. Spare the rod and spoil the child, he believed. Simon Mbeki also believed that a man should earn his own way. Accepting a job referral from his wife’s father meant he would have to work twice as hard to prove himself. He would lead an orderly life, one beyond reproach. Even though he had shed his African surname, there were some things he would not leave behind.
Thandy knew her defiance had been heartbreaking. He had blamed her destruction on the evils of American media, the disrespectful music, and readily available drugs. He hadn’t lived to see the string of victories she could now count up and Thandy regretted never being a source of pride. She wished her father could see her now. She hoped he would be pleased.
“It’s good to have you, Thandywaye,” said Stafford.
“It’s good to be here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
During the interview at Riva’s three months before, Stafford had been coy at first, but then direct in his questioning. “Where did you go to school? Why law? What are you like under pressure? Does your team like or respect you? Why? You’re thirty-four. Why do you think you’re ready to run a multibillion-dollar business? Why would our clients trust you with their money?”
She had answered him straightaway. “Emory. My grandfather said I’d make a great lawyer. I’m cool. And I’m sure they respect me. But liking me is another question—and irrelevant, I might add. I’m a tough administrator and tough on details. I am selective about my words and concise in my instruction. And you called me. I’m sure you knew my age, birth weight, and shoe size before the headhunter picked up the phone. My track record alone commands the trust of your client base.”
Thandy didn’t flinch.
If nothing else, she had inherited her father’s unflappable bearings. Living in Simon’s house had been a trial by fire. Ironically, even as he wielded the leather strap, he had taught her how to fight, how to endure pain. She had come a long way from Winston-Salem. The difference now is that she had a daughter of her own. She wanted better for Montana. Stafford was immediately impressed, but kept up the game. He fired another round of queries. Again, she answered quickly, leaving little room for doubt. After the first hour, he gave in. His expression softened. He leaned in casually and told her how impressed the team had been with her credentials.
“You managed to accomplish a great deal in a short period of time.”
She watched Stafford’s thick white hands as he mapped out the inner workings of Campbell-Perkins on the back of a bar napkin. Privately held, the firm housed four units, and eight thousand employees inhabited sixty offices around the world. With eighty billion under management, they were giving the big boys a run for their money. The mother ship was located at First National Plaza in Chicago. The founding partners, Jerry Perkins and Peter Lloyd Campbell, started out fifty years ago with a small savings and loan in Naperville, a town that sits just west of Chicago. Jerry Perkins Jr., the elder son of one of the founders, had been chairman, president, and CEO until last year, when he handed the reins to his younger brother. Young, quick-tempered, and driven, Joel Perkins fired three division presidents his first day on the job. Two new division presidents were promoted from within the ranks. He wanted stronger talent for the Wealth Management practice. The board agreed with him. Perkins also created a new chief operating officer’s job to oversee the division chiefs. Résumés flowed in from around the country.
“There’s a second search underway,” Stafford explained further. “We haven’t found the right fit. It could take a year or better; we’re in no rush.”
“I’m certain they will find the right talent.”
“If I have any say in the matter, you’ll be our next president in Wealth Management. But that’s up to Mr. Perkins and the board.”
“I appreciate your confidence.”
A week later she had returned to Chicago to meet Joel Perkins. The discussion was brief. He knew everything about her, he assured. He leaned back in his chair, admiring his pick like she’d just hit a jump shot from center court at the buzzer. She was everything he was looking for. Thandy had been immediately taken with Joel’s sheer mental fortitude, his firm grasp on the normally elusive, and his ability to draw connections to seemingly disparate topics and issues.
The board vote was unanimous. The compensation committee quickly decided on a generous, seven-figure package. The press release had already been written. Thandywaye Mbeki Malone, age thirty-four, would be the first African-American woman to ever head a major division of a Wall Street firm and she would be among the most highly compensated executives on the Street.
The firm’s chief diversity officer had been especially effusive. Various industry columnists speculated that she would soon be named COO. The story was strategically leaked to the New York Times before the press release hit the street.
The headhunter who had recruited her had been persistent. “This is strictly confidential. No one will know you are under consideration,” he had promised at the time. “If it’s not a good fit, you can just walk away and pretend it never happened.”
She had promised herself then that it was just a dry run; she was just keeping her options open. She wouldn’t accept the job, if offered. She wouldn’t leave Atlanta. She wouldn’t leave Jack. The offer was barely seventy-two hours old when Etienne called.
“He’s where?”
“In Barbados.”
“With who?”
“Angel Delafuenta. But, of course, she’s using his last name. That cheap bastard made the conference organizers pay for her plane ticket.”
“And you want me to believe that? Where did you get my phone number?” It was the first time she had ever spoken to Mrs. Jack Gabrielle.
“From his cellular bill, of course. You don’t have to believe me. I’m just trying to help you.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Listen, sweetheart, you don’t want my husband or you wouldn’t be settling for second place, and it’s clear he doesn’t want you. He loves only himself. That and his bank account.”
Thandy hung up, took a deep breath, and dialed *69 to call her back.
“Where did you say he was staying?”
“I didn’t.”
Thandy paced the hardwood floors as she talked. “When’s he due back?”
“Sunday night.”
There was silence.
“Ms. Malone, how long have you been seeing my husband?”
“Almost ten years,” she responded without thinking.
The silence was deafening. Thandy was immediately ashamed. She didn’t know how long Etienne had known of their affair. She politely said good-bye and hung up again. She thought about killing the sorry bastard and even went as far as to count the paces he would take from his car to the garage elevator at his office. The first shot would hit him in the ass. She would empty the next five rounds into his head.
But she’d gone in with eyes open wide. She felt foolish about that now. She had been hoodwinked, bamboozled, and deceived by the Great Jack Gabrielle. Suddenly she felt herself choking. She told herself Jack wasn’t worth a lifetime in jail, that he wasn’t worth her sanity. But leaving was easier than being gone. In the end, she took the job in Chicago, packed up her daughter, and left.
We’ve all got our cross to bear, she told herself as she followed her self-appointed tour guide to the last office on the left. Stop trying to dodge the raindrops and get yourself an umbrella.
Susan unlocked the door and waved her arm across the threshold. Stafford followed.
“I took the liberty of ordering some office supplies. The technician will be along shortly with your laptop and BlackBerry,” Susan said.
The office manager drew the blinds, revealing a near panoramic view of downtown. The lake was off in the distance. The water was blue, as though somebody had dropped food coloring in it to pretty things up. She could vaguely make out the trail of redemption. Her feet hurt just thinking about it. Thandy imagined Mr. Blue Shorts making his way over the hills. Chicago had its charms. Her best girlfriend, Phillipa, always called it “Boy Central.”
“Beginning at nine thirty, we’ve arranged several interviews for you,” Susan announced, as if their roles were reversed.
“Interviews? With whom?”
“Candidates for your support team. I took the liberty of setting up six appointments: three this morning and three this afternoon,” Susan said. “They are all highly qualified, but I will arrange for you to see more if necessary. You are budgeted for two.”
“You’ll need them both,” Stafford advised. “A third if you can get it.” He winked.
Susan wasn’t amused. “We’ve scheduled lunch with your immediate team at noon,” she advised. “La Rosetta is on the first floor. They’ve got great pasta.”
Susan kept talking. Stafford looked to Thandy and shrugged his shoulders.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
By late afternoon, Thandy had lunched with her full senior team, met with three junior associates whose only job was to see after her needs, reviewed top-line quarterly financials, picked two secretaries—including the young woman she had met briefly on the elevator that morning—and dismissed her driver. By four o’clock she was alone.
She remembered the days when things weren’t so good. She certainly hadn’t had a secretary, let alone two. Then she didn’t have twenty-five hundred employees. Back then there were times when she got by on four hundred dollars a month in welfare and food stamps. Back then was only fifteen years ago. There was no Susan DeGross and nobody cared if she wiped her ass good back then, let alone where or if she had lunch. Then too, she vaguely remembered the long stretch of placidity, the days when she had loved and had been loved.
There had been a nice house, a couple of new cars in the garage, and she never had to worry about the light bill. Contrary to what her mother might have wished, Monty had been good to her. He quickly saved up enough money for a down payment on a car wash. Within a year, he owned two more. He purchased a comfortable, spacious house in a new subdivision in South Fulton.
The new business floundered almost immediately, but the money kept rolling in—due mostly to Monty’s unfortunate agreement with a drug dealer to run dirty cash. Within a year, he had bought three more car washes, bringing the total to six. Monty became known as Big Boy on the street, the go-to man for drug peddlers who needed to wash their money and their tricked-out cars.
He bought Thandy a shiny new BMW, equipped with a premium sound system and chrome wheels. He built an even bigger house with a circular drive lined with a stable of other expensive cars. Thandy got her hair done every Friday at a swanky Buckhead salon and sent Montana to a private preschool she saw advertised in a magazine. She didn’t think twice about the money and never asked where it came from. As long as the tuition was paid on time, the preschool administrators never questioned it either.
Thandy was seventeen years old, married, and living a grown woman’s life, driving a car and living in a house women twice her age couldn’t readily afford. At Monty’s urging, she had finished high school and enrolled in college, but had otherwise been a stay-at-home mother. Monty never wanted her to work outside the home. Life was coming together nicely.
Then the bust came.
Just before 3:00 a.m., May 24, 1992, Thandy had heard shouting outside the house.
The front door blasted from its frame and the motion detector blared. Monty reached for the 9 mm pistol he kept tucked under the mattress. An FBI agent, dressed in a navy blue T-shirt and a bulletproof vest, took aim at his head before he could get to it. A team of drug enforcement agents flooded into the house. They went room to room with guns drawn seeking out every occupant. She heard them rummaging through closets upstairs. Others were in the basement. They ordered drug-sniffing dogs to search the closets and vents. Drawers of clothing were emptied onto the beds, the carpets torn from the floor. The once-perfect decor was now a mess of overturned furniture and clumps of linen stripped from the beds. Even the refrigerator was emptied.
“Ain’t nobody here but me and my baby!” Thandy screamed. “Please, ain’t nobody here but us!”
She heard Montana crying, but an officer blocked her from getting to the nursery. They had her husband spread out naked on the living room floor. She fought her way forward, kicking and screaming. She watched as an agent helped him put on a robe, then cuffed and led him out the front door toward a waiting squad car. An officer read Thandy her Miranda rights while another comforted then two-and-a-half-year-old Montana.
They simultaneously raided eight more houses that morning. All of the safe houses were loaded down with cash and uncut cocaine wrapped in duct tape. Monty’s empire came crashing down while he sat in a four-by-four holding cell dressed in Thandy’s pink terry cloth housecoat. The judge ordered him remanded without bond and moved to seize control of the car washes.
Monty pleaded innocent to 212 counts of drug trafficking, money laundering, and wire and mail fraud. After an extended trial, the jury read convictions on all charges, including two counts of felony murder, and the federal judge sentenced him to three life terms. If the feds ever let him go, which was unlikely, the state would be waiting for him with another murder conspiracy charge. A snitch was still living and breathing, but he had a sordid tale of how Big Boy ordered a hit on his life for shorting him in a transaction.
At the crack of dawn one morning, Thandy picked the marshal’s lock and crept into her house with an empty pillowcase. She moved cautiously through the kitchen, down a long hallway toward the den. She struggled to move a heavy mahogany desk and rolled back the carpet. She swallowed, slowed her breath, and remembered the combination to the safe. After a couple of attempts, the lock clicked. Inside the box lay several bundles of cash. She was relieved the feds hadn’t discovered it. She quickly stuffed the stacks into the makeshift bag and made her way back to the car parked three blocks away. The next day, she went to the lawyer’s office and placed the pile of money on his desk.
“I can’t say this will help,” he conceded. “I’d be lying if I told you one more penny would make any difference.”
“Just tell me that it might.”
“There is a slim chance, but we can file a dozen appeals before one will stick.”
“Then take it. Take all of it.”
The lawyer felt through the bundle. “There has to be more than a hundred grand here.”
“I know.”
“Take it and make a life for yourself,” the lawyer said. “Start over. You do it right and you can turn this money into a nice future for yourself. A nice life for you and your daughter.”
“We don’t have a life without my husband,” she told him. “Whatever he did, he earned this money.”
In the end, the money made no difference. Every appeal was denied. It wasn’t long before the house was sold at auction. The car washes had been boarded up and awaited sale. The feds seized what was left, including the small bank account she was living on.