The Latina President...and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her

by Joe Rothstein

  “What fights? I’ve got nothing now. No job. All my old business ties have been cut. It’s like starting over with no direction, no place to go, nothing to hang onto.”

  Carmie jumped off her bar stool and circled her friend like she was a strange object in a curio shop.

  “You don’t know what to do? You don’t know what to do? You have no direction? Your old life is over? Are you nuts or what? You don’t have to live in someone else’s corrupt world. Make your own world. A clean slate means no obligations to anyone but yourself. You’re your own person, with all the money anyone could ever want. Put all of it to work—all of it, your money, your time, your experience, your energy, your brilliance, your dedication—all of it—doing something positive, not picking impossible fights.

  “What should I do, set up my own foundation and give money to good causes? I’ve thought of that.”

  “Listen. You came up with an agenda for Aragon. It didn’t work. Take it somewhere else, somewhere where it will. My friend, you were pretty unrealistic thinking you could change the entire Mexican business and political culture single handedly. Admit it. That was a foolish thing you did. Lovely, but foolish.”

  “Okay, maybe so. But then why did my grandfather write me into his will as a future company CEO? He knew as well as anyone that it was a corrupt enterprise. I’d like to think he wanted me there to clean it up.”

  “Could be. And I would cherish that thought. He may well have had a late-in-life conversion and after seeing you perform decided you’d be strong enough to clean up their act. That’s really the way you should remember him.”

  “Oh, Carmie, I want to. I really want to. Federico has a darker view of it. He thinks Papa misread me. I pulled off so many deals using marginal ethics, Federico thinks Papa came to believe I was one of them and could be trusted to be a figurehead without rocking the boat. That’s the life Papa apparently had planned for Federico.”

  “Miguel’s motives don’t matter now. Think kindly of him. It’s easier for you. If he misjudged anything, it likely was how quickly his people would turn on you and run you out. What does matter is what comes next. Are you sure you don’t want to use your money to lead a jet-set, glamorous life? No one would blame you. In fact, it’s what most people would probably do if they struck it rich.”

  “No, Carmie, Federico inspired me. He’s doing penance his way. I need to find my way.”

  “Well the place to start is in the real world.”

  “The real world?”

  “You’ve been riding in first class and looking down at the world from 30,000 feet. What do you know about people who can’t find jobs or who need three jobs to keep the lights on and food on the table? Do you know anyone like that? Can you name one person? One hour you’ve spent with them?”

  “No, you’re right. Not one.”

  “Do you know what it’s like to run away from abusive husbands, with no money and no relatives or friends to take you in? Do you know what it’s like to live every day looking over your shoulder hoping you won’t get outed by your employer for being here illegally, or your husband or wife or kid won’t run a red light and be hauled off to a relocation camp? All the time I see people writing big checks to their old alma maters, or hospital funds or other causes without having a clue where that money goes and what it goes for. But they feel good about it because it’s quote, charity, unquote, and they get the tax write-off. Don’t be one of those people. You’re too good for that. One of your great talents is doing the research before you act. That’s how you got so many clients when no one else in Aragon could. Now do it for yourself.

  “If you want to use your money for the Aragon agenda, first do the research on what that agenda should be. Get down on the streets and get some experience learning what organizations do that help battered women, homeless people, hungry people, sick people, unemployed people, overemployed people. To fix problems, you have to understand them. You are what Carmona called you, a rookie. Become a journeyman. Maybe if you see these problems how they really are, in person, you may not want anything to do with them at all.”

  “Are you saying I should be like a Salvation Army volunteer for the rest of my life?”

  “Well, if you want to become Mother Teresa for Los Angeles why not? My guess, knowing you, is that it won’t take long for you to become more useful than just a soup kitchen volunteer. You’ll figure it out. You’re a smart girl. The point is, you have to start over somewhere. If you’re not interested in a life of luxury and would rather spend time and big bucks helping people, get to know how people live and what they need and what would really help them.”

  Tenny stared into her margarita glass, her mind weighing her friend’s advice. It made sense. That was a big key to her business success. Knowing. Being prepared. No winging it. What did she really know about life, other than how it’s lived in the very narrow spectrum of her class of wealth and privilege and power? Federico had considered his move for years. He had weighed all his alternatives, dismissing many for reasons he could explain to himself and to her that awful night in the garden. He made a rational choice. Her reaction had been emotional, impetuous, not carefully considered or realistic.

  She lifted her glass and licked salt from its rim.

  “Okay, you’re right, as usual. I buy it. Now what do I do? Walk into the closest food bank and volunteer?”

  “In a way. Look. I’ve got an idea. For years I’ve been working with a group here in New York called New York Lights. It’s sort of an umbrella organization for a lot of the groups that have food banks, shelters, charity distribution, things like that. We raise money, get management help and back them up so they can spend more of their donations on serving people, not administration. Move to New York and I’ll introduce you to all the players. You’d fit in great here. And think of it, the two of us on the streets together raising hell like we used to. New York’s a great city. It deserves us.”

  “I’d love that, Carmie. I’d love to spend more time with you. But my father’s about to retire, mom’s heart’s a big concern for us and Miguel’s death has been tough on her. I should stay close. Besides, I like living in Los Angeles. I’ve had two homes, really, Mexico City and L.A. I don’t think I’m up for a third. After all those years of living on airplanes and hotels, I’m sort of desperate to just live in one place.”

  Carmie looked at her friend closely, tapped her fingers on the walnut bar top as if keying up alternatives.

  “OK, how about this, then. We have a sister group in Los Angeles called L.A. Lights. Not as big or developed as the one we have here in New York, but it’s really well run and mostly feeds the hungry. An old classmate of ours, Hal Thompson, remember him, from those awful statistics classes? He’s a lawyer and he spends a lot of time helping this group. He’s also in court a lot arguing for tenant rights. He’s a real saint. Hook up with Hal. He knows all the players. You’ll be a good team. I’ll call him and set up a meeting. It’s a way to get started.”

  10

  “Tenny!”

  No one but Carmie had used that name in years. Since college she had been Isabel, prowling Latin America and California wealth communities like a hungry feline. Her prey, big bank accounts. The wealth world knew her as Isabel Aragon Tennyson. Now, here was a voice from her past, startling her with its enthusiasm as she entered Starbucks. Carmie must have asked Hal to be particularly welcoming to her fragile friend. He beamed sunshine and embraced her.

  Carmie had known Hal well in college, where she, like most young women in their circle, used sharp elbows against constant competition to dance with him. Tenny hadn’t paid much attention to Hal. Hal had seemed rail thin to her then. Now he filled his suit as pleasantly as a Zegna model. He was clean shaven, a welcome change from all the beards and mustaches so ubiquitous in Latin America. They settled in over lattes.

  “So tell me,” she asked, “why am I here?”

  “Good question,” Hal replied. “Carmie says you can be anywhere you want doing an
ything you want. But I’d guess you’re here because you want to do more than entertain yourself.”

  “Well, yes. Carmie thinks I don’t know enough about how most people really live. She’s right.”

  “Neither do I. I mean, I’m hardly an authority on people. But I’ve had a lot of experience with people near the bottom rungs.”

  “Homeless? Out of work?”

  “Sure, but you’d be surprised how many need help who have jobs and homes.”

  “Like?”

  “Just yesterday I got a bank to hold off foreclosing on a woman who works three jobs and it’s barely enough to cover day care for her kids, along with her mortgage and the food for their table. Nearly every day I get a call from some group to help a woman whose husband beat her bloody and she ran from the house and needs protection. Things like that.”

  “And where’s L.A. Lights fit in?”

  “A bunch of us try to coordinate all the groups on this side of the divide. You know, the food banks, homeless shelters, rape crisis people, all that, to see if we can change things at wholesale.”

  “Wholesale?”

  “Yeah, wholesale. Social service at retail is important, but there’s never enough volunteers, and too little money. We’re fighting some entrenched heavyweights and we need to bulk up.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I think that’s the answer to your question about why you’re here. I’ll show you. It’s hard to understand if you just talk about it. Just tag along with me for a while. Go where I go. See what I see. It explains itself.”

  She took a last sip of latte, the last bite of her chocolate biscotti. This felt right. More than right. Here she was, in her mid-thirties tingling like an impressionable teenager at the prospect of living with the underclass. Hal was offering to guide her on an adventure. She nodded assent, trying as best she could to mask her excitement.

  

  Her car phone rang as she drove home from meeting with Hal. Carmie.

  “So, how’d it go?”

  “Wow, you don’t waste a minute, do you. I just left him.”

  ‘And...”

  “Hal’s going to show me the streets. That should help cure my 30,000 feet problem.”

  “Great. And what do you think of Hal?”

  “Nice. Nice guy. He made me feel like he was glad to do this for me.”

  “Did he make you feel anything else?”

  “Carmie! You’re the one who had a crush on him, not me.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll ask you again in a few weeks, after you two have spent some time together.”

  11

  Tenny and Hal met most days at Hal’s law office in Studio City, a small enclave of Los Angeles just over the Hollywood Hills in the San Fernando Valley. Hal tried to whip through work for his paying clients during the morning hours, leaving clean up details for his two paralegals. Then it was on to wherever the day’s pro bono work took them. Sometimes to L.A. Lights’ store fronts helping to manage food service or clothing distribution. Other days they could be in court, fighting for a restraining order to stop an eviction. Or at a contentious city council committee meeting to plead for more money for a rape crisis shelter. This was the vortex that sucked up Hal’s days, and now hers, turning her notions of help from abstract penance to a cause with human faces.

  The Los Angeles Tenny returned to was home to about ten million people, where rivers of races and cultures converged. Los Angeles had become one of the most unequal places to live in the United States. Earnings, life expectancy and educational achievement all registered far higher for those living in prosperous and whiter beach and hill communities than in neighborhoods largely populated by Latinos and African Americans.

  Until Hal, Tenny’s life had been protected as carefully as if she lived inside an insulated rainbow. Unpleasantness not welcome. Now she was sharing streets where a warm cup of coffee, a cot for the night, a clean toilet, medication when needed—so many things taken for granted by those in her pre-Hal life, were daily uncertainties. Not for “groups,” or “classes of people.” But for those with faces, names, families, individual crises that defined their daily reality. Before, in Tenny’s world, there had been safety, now there was just enough disorder to keep her on the edge of discomfort, occasionally even slipping into fright. She was traveling through space she had never known. She loved it.

  To these encounters, Tenny brought an important asset Hal lacked, fluency in the Spanish language. She could understand what English-only speakers often missed, key details of a problem, the nuances of feeling. Slowly she was evolving into more than Hal’s appendage, a development Hal welcomed. It meant that they could widen their reach.

  One of the best ways to make money is to have money. With the right investments and little or no labor, money makes money through interest, dividends, rising land values and stock prices. Tenny had spent years managing the wealth of others. It gave her a valuable head start on how to manage her own. A billion dollars is a thousand million. Invested at 5 percent, that billion earns $50 million each year. Not all of her money was invested to produce interest. Some was used to buy real estate and undeveloped land for future appreciation. Some went into venture funds. More than she would admit found its way anonymously into local causes and support for individuals who came to her attention. Even with her generosity, even with her annual tax bill, her fortune continued to grow.

  In Hal’s world, her new world, she was Tenny Tennyson, volunteer. Presumed well-off divorcee or widow or single woman with a good heart and free time. No one knew of the Aragon connection, the deep Mexican roots, the bottomless wealth stored in her accounts. She was always in jeans, the non-designer variety, sweatshirts or something comparable, tennis shoes or walking shoes, and lightly made up. She cut an unremarkable figure. When they traveled it was in Hal’s eight-year-old Ford sedan, not her silver 700 series BMW.

  Months into their collaboration, Hal had a day-long court date in Long Beach, followed that evening by a neighborhood council meeting in East Los Angeles, a poor, densely populated, overwhelmingly Latino-centric corner of the city. That meant a lot of driving. Thirty miles from his office to Long Beach, another thirty back to pick up Tenny after the court session, and then twenty miles each way from Tenny’s home to the East Los Angeles community center. It was 11:00 p.m. when they reached the driveway at Tenny’s hillside home off of Beverly Glen Drive. He had never been here. She had never invited him, until now.

  “Come in for a drink,” she said. “Been quite a day for you.”

  “One for the road?” he smiled. “Sold.”

  “Let’s sit in the living room,” she said. She bent down, turned two knobs and a fire immediately sprang into life from the artificial gas logs in front of her. It was a chilly night. The warmth was welcome. Hal went where visitors to this home always were drawn first, to the floor to ceiling sliding glass doors separating the living room from the outdoor pool and patio, awash tonight in shades of blue and kinetic herring bone patterns designed by the pool’s lights. Beyond the patio, the San Fernando Valley, an endless carpet of light, a transfixing sight, even to those who see it often. A landscape created by man, not nature.

  “My home in Mexico City was on a hillside like this. As a little girl I would look down on the city’s lights hours on end. I imagined so much that was happening inside all of those lights. Little girl thoughts. I guess that’s why I bought this home. To recapture some of those feelings.”

  She settled onto the sofa facing the fire, legs curled up, drink in hand. She handed Hal his as he sat beside her, looking into the flames, the only light in the otherwise darkened room.

  “Oh, that’s good!” said Hal. Much better than I usually drink. What is it?”

  “It’s a rye. Dickel, from Tennessee. My favorite. And not expensive.”

  “Well, after today it’s really welcome. I was more than ready for it. Thanks for asking me in.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, hyp
notized by the erratic dance of flames.

  “Actually, if you hadn’t invited me in I was going to ask anyway. There’s some business I’d like to talk about.”

  “Oh, Hal, just unwind. You’ve done so much today.”

  “Something you said tonight just clicked with me. Remember, during the talk about getting more cops on the streets in those neighborhoods you said I wish I had the power to just do it. I’d just put up the money and the cops would be there. I’ve been thinking about that driving you home. In a way, an indirect way, you already do have that power.”

  “Me? Wonder Woman! I had no idea!”

  “Well not with a cape and a funny suit. But your money could pay for a political organization that could get the power.”

  “Where do you buy power?”

  “Politics. Political organization.”

  “We already have friends in city hall and other places.”

  “This job’s too big for just friends. Not people just willing to give us the time to hear our case and then think about it. It has to be people like us. People who will just do it because they believe in it. People who already are persuaded. People we put in power and can jerk right back out if we have to. We need a political organization.

  “I’m not sure I understand. I don’t know anything about politics. I’ve never voted. In fact, I’ve never even registered to vote.”

  “And that’s it,” he said, suddenly sitting up straight. “That’s it. You’re not alone. Think about it. If we could turn the thousands of people like you who work so hard as good cause volunteers into a political force, and lash in the labor people and environmental people and all the ethnic groups—Latinos, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, blacks—what a force. We’d be unbeatable. We could elect anyone we wanted. We. I mean people like you and me, who think like you and me. We could run L.A. and most of the smaller cities in the county.”

  Tenny laughed. “Hal, you need another drink. “

  He willingly handed her his glass for a refill.

  “Yes, I do need another drink. That’s good stuff. But hear me out. If we could register and mobilize all of our natural supporters, we could elect our people to the jobs that make policy and write the checks. Christ. That community we were in tonight needs a thousand more jobs. It needs a rec center for kids. Did you take a good look at those fire engines? Hand-me-downs. Class sizes there over thirty kids, 50 percent more than Beverly Hills. They need safe day care. They need everything. But they’re not even fighting for it. “