The Pride

by Wallace Ford

  I knew how I would dominate that bitch this particular afternoon. But I wanted to think up some special ways to humiliate her, break her down, and make her beg me to beat her, fuck her—make her beg me to do anything and everything to her. And that’s just what I planned to do. The Dark Lord was whispering suggestions to me in a steady stream that just went deeper and deeper into the planned degradation.

  And that’s when the Dark Lord had a stroke of pure genius and shared his inspiration with me. I picked up my cell phone and called home. Kenitra picked up on the second ring.

  “Hey, baby, what’s going on?”

  “Not much, Gordon. Just relaxing.”

  I could tell from her voice that she was wary. But she had to front it off. She couldn’t even begin to act guilty.

  “Listen, I was just thinking. My meetings are pretty much over for the day and I am on my way home. Why don’t you let Colleen go home and call Alex and let him know that we won’t need him for the evening?

  “You can chill a couple of bottles of champagne and put on that short, tight red dress with the four-inch heels. I’m bringing some refreshments that I am sure you will enjoy.”

  I know that Kenitra didn’t know what the fuck to say. The Dark Lord was an absolute genius.

  “O.K. Gordon. Sounds like you’re in the mood for some fun.”

  “You got that right. I am definitely in the mood for fun. And Kenitra?”

  “Yes, Gordon?”

  “Be sure to turn the lights down and the music up. The way I like it.”

  “Whatever you say, baby. You the man!”

  “Don’t you know it. See you soon.”

  Real soon, bitch. Real fucking soon. The Dark Lord was inspired and Kenitra was going to get schooled that night. By the time that night was over she was going to wish for the worst day of her life instead of what had happened to her. That was a promise I made to the Dark Lord as I settled into the backseat of the car and thought about what I was going to do to Kenitra first. I couldn’t help but smile.

  It had been a good day. It was going to be a great night. The Dark Lord would see to that.

  CHAPTER 38

  Jerome

  Don’t look back

  I stood watching as the car carrying Gordon Perkins headed down Broad Street. It was cold as hell, getting colder now that it was getting dark. But something made me stand there and just think about it all for a moment. Down the street was the headquarters of the Rolls Royce of investment banking firms, Goldman Sachs. Up the street stood the building that once housed the now-departed buccaneer investment banking firm, Drexel Burnham.

  Man! Sixty Broad Street, Drexel’s headquarters address, used to be the center of the high flying investment banking universe. It was the ultimate definition of the fast lane. Boesky, Milken, Kluge, Perlman, Tomlinson and so many, many more, found that the end of the rainbow was less than fifty yards from where I was standing.

  I knew the firm well. I have a busload of friends, colleagues and associates who literally found themselves on the street thanks to a nondecision by the United States Secretary of the Treasury that let the firm die.

  I still find it amazing that no one found it a little interesting that that Secretary of the Treasury was the former head of Dillon Read, one of the white shoe investment banking firms that considered Drexel Burnham to be anathema. Everyone knew that the key players at Drexel were arrogant, aggressive and most importantly, largely Jewish. Supposedly this was never an issue. Yeah, right!

  As I walked into the lobby of the building where my firm’s offices were located, a variety of thoughts stampeded their way through my consciousness. Here I was, the chairman and chief executive of my own Wall Street investment banking firm. Surpassing the wildest, most hopeful, most insane dreams of my mother and father and Charmaine.

  I had to wonder about what those unseen powers had done to Drexel Burnham. What on earth might they do if the plans that we discussed at the Water Club ever came to reality?

  I had to smile at that. The unseen powers certainly did not scare me. I knew that they were there, so that was half the battle as far as I was concerned. I have certainly seen worse in my time.

  You should know that I am a graduate of Yale University and that I received my MBA from Columbia. Most people in The Pride know that I began my professional career as an analyst at Merrill Lynch and that I was considered something of a “star” at Salomon Brothers before founding my own firm.

  What is also true, and what very few people know, is that there is a whole other side to my life. I am sure that nobody in The Pride knows except that damn Gordon Perkins. And sometimes I could kick myself dead in the ass for drinking with him that night and running my mouth.

  The truth is that I have been arrested so many times that I lost count. I was in jail on numerous occasions as a teenager in Philadelphia. The truth is that I was present at several homicides and assaults, although I was never convicted of any crimes related to those events. And the truth is that I was involved in any number of petty crimes before the age of seventeen.

  My mother and father and Charmaine and Gordon are among the few people in my current life who know anything about this side of me. There is no explaining my past behavior. No broken home. No abusive treatment by my parents. No dysfunctional family.

  My father was a postal worker and my mother a hospital maintenance worker. They worked hard to provide me with a comfortable home and all the educational opportunity that they could afford and then some. They tried hard to raise me in a proper and steadfast fashion in a small home on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.

  I am told that I was a unique child. I was very bright, “whip smart” they called me. When I spent time on academic endeavors, I excelled. No matter the school, no matter the subject, no matter the competition. But I was also an absolute knucklehead, doing the wrong thing, just because it was the wrong thing. There was no sense in my own particular universe. It was kind of an inner-city Dada approach to life.

  I am more than thankful that my sons are nothing like me and a lot like their mother as far as their conduct and deportment is concerned. I would have had to absolutely strangle the young Jerome Hardaway. In fact, I realize how much my parents must have loved me because they didn’t just throw me off a bridge or send me to my Maker in some other fittingly Philly fashion.

  Nothing seemed to work on me in those days. Threats, punishment, bribes, entreaties, beatings, made no difference. I cringe when I think of how perverse I must have seemed to my mother and dad. A hundred years of my success won’t make up for the pain that I caused them.

  I was a frequent visitor to the juvenile courts of the city of Philadelphia. I am sure that anyone who gave a damn about me as I backed into my senior year of high school figured that a penitentiary or a cemetery was waiting for me in the near future. No need to confirm the reservation.

  I can’t help but be reminded by Paul’s theory about the Law of Unintended Consequences. The notion that all kinds of things happen that have nothing to do with the original intent of the actors is an interesting concept. I can testify to it playing a major, indeed pivotal, role in my life.

  CHAPTER 39

  Jerome

  Welcome to the Law of Unintended Consequences

  Jonathan Bedford Samuels was an illustrious graduate of Yale University (Class of 1949). He was an extremely successful businessman (steel, petroleum, precious metals) and a renowned philanthropist. It was not surprising that Mr. Samuels was such a success in business—he was born to take his place in the hierarchy of American business. His mother was part of the Bedford family, a Maine institution. His father, Charles Wilson Samuels, was part of a family that had owned a good part of northwestern Connecticut for at least two hundred years.

  His philanthropy was to be expected as well. Most of it was directed to Yale. It was part of his family tradition.

  But just as certain evolutionary changes—the first amphibian, the first beast to walk upright—take place fo
r no reason, Jonathan Samuels just changed his approach to philanthropy and life, and in the process, changed my life forever. If you asked him he probably could not tell you where his bright idea, his revolutionary idea, came from.

  It is said that a moment of inspiration occurred to Mr. Samuels while he was sitting on his yacht on Long Island Sound. He considered the notion that the same leadership and organizational skills that were the hallmark of generals, presidents and corporate chairmen, were also the leadership and organizational skills that were the hallmark of successful gang leaders and heads of criminal syndicates. His musings continued.

  If his theory was valid, then it should only be a matter of giving the gang leaders and criminal syndicate heads an alternative that the smartest of the group would comprehend as an avenue to greater and safer wealth and success. And, if that were true, then finding a way to channel and focus the energy and intelligence of young people headed in the wrong direction could produce outstanding citizens, could indeed change the world. And those musings begat the Star Search Foundation.

  Operating on Jonathan Samuels’s moment of inspiration, and his generous philanthropy, within a few years the Star Search Foundation had scoured the school records and national achievement test results of thousands of inner-city high school students. A network made up of the administrators of the best public and private schools in major cities began with New York, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles … and Philadelphia. Clearly it’s always better to be lucky than good.

  Star Search was looking for extremely bright young men and women who were clearly headed in a direction that absolutely and positively did not include college. Star Search was looking for the kind of young people that Jonathan Bedford Samuels had in mind on that yacht on Long Island Sound that day. Young people who, with guidance and opportunity, could become some of the leaders and achievers of this country. And that’s how Star Search found my sorry ass and changed my life forever.

  I can tell you that I absolutely did not believe or trust the first couple of letters that I got from the Foundation. I do remember throwing the letters out with a nagging curiosity growing in the back of my consciousness. I also remember throwing the third letter into the trash and not tearing it up. And then I remember taking the letter out of the trash, smoothing it out and calling the Star Search Foundation. I will never know what made me do it. I am just glad that I did.

  I picked the right time to change my life. It was also the right time for Star Search to “suggest” some applicants to the Class of 1971 at Yale University. By the way, I later learned that Jonathan Samuels actually increased his financial support of Yale when he founded Star Search, making it almost impossible for the university officials to say no when Star Search made the “suggestion.” And that’s basically how I wound up at Yale University.

  In later years, Charmaine would ask me whether I felt intimidated by my freshman year in New Haven. In response I would have to gently remind her about my past, and how nothing that might be at the Yale University colleges could compare to the sociopaths, knuckleheads, gangsters, hustlers and killer bitches that I knew and hung with in Philadelphia. Compared to bullets, knives, fists and bad intentions, the achievement tests were a breeze. Plus, I always enjoyed taking those standardized tests.

  As it turned out, I tested off the charts when I attended the July 1967 orientation session for Star Search students. As a result the only freshman class I took was French, and I began my double major in economics and engineering.

  Considering what I had seen in my short eighteen years, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot that I had in common with my Yale classmates. I didn’t fit in and at the time, frankly, I did not feel the need to fit in. I have never been about that.

  And it wasn’t simply a racial thing. I certainly did not have very much in common with the white graduates of Choate, Croton, and Deerfield. Similarly, I sure in hell didn’t have much in common with my black classmates who called Baldwin Hills, Shaker Heights, Teaneck, and Long Island home. It was simply a matter of perspective.

  Of course there were the inevitable knuckleheads who either believed the hype about white superiority or had been duped and bamboozled into believing that black people don’t know about intimidation and retaliation.

  And so, there was that day, in my freshman year, when I found myself face-to-face with a drunken member of the world-class Yale swimming team. I was about six-three and 190 then, and I remember him being significantly taller and bigger than me. Probably six-seven and 230 pounds would be about right.

  On this night, Mr. Swimteam found that he had an uncontrollable urge to rub the head of a black man for good luck. And, as fate would have it, the head that he just had to rub was sitting on my shoulders.

  I later found out that Mr. Swimteam, in his sophomore year at Yale University, had literally never had any substantive, challenging contact with a black person except the housekeeper at his home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. So I guess one could say that his desire to rub my head was understandable and certainly worthy of forgiveness.

  Unfortunately for Mr. Swimteam, I did not share this perspective. To be succinct, I blew Mr. Swimteam up. Kicked his stupid ass.

  My fighting skills had no formal orthodoxy. I learned through survival and trial with no error allowed. Let’s just say that my skills were sufficient to put Mr. Swimteam in the hospital. And when he did recover he could compete in some swim meets only on a limited basis in his senior year.

  As you can imagine, the result of this particular incident had its humorous aspect. In the first instance, after that, no one, absolutely no one, no matter how angry, drunk, racist, high or insane, ever thought it was a good idea to mess with me. As a result, the rest of my time at Yale was remarkably free of these types of incidents.

  The unintended result was a remarkable degree of racial peace and harmony that existed at Yale during the late sixties and early seventies. I later learned that my incident with Mr. Swimteam, who is now a United States senator, became the stuff of Yale campus legend. The tale of our encounter was retold over many a beer, joint and glass of wine. Many of the white students were not sure which of the limited number of black students was me. So, rather than engage in the harassment of a black student who could have turned out to be me, most white students determined that the best course of action was to simply leave the black students alone.

  Since, as black students, we were already infinitely outnumbered in New Haven, in the state of Connecticut, and America, most of us had the good sense not to instigate or participate in nonpolitical confrontations that could turn unpredictably physical. Some wrestling, shoving, a few minor league punches. That was one thing. Throwing down with no mercy, that was another thing entirely. And something to be avoided if at all possible. It was a great recipe for survival, and it allowed me to continue with a personal transition that I never would have believed.

  To my parents’ never-ending wonder, satisfaction and amazement, there was something about the challenge of being at Yale that struck just the right chord with me. My contrarian impulses took over once again.

  I could tell in the tone of voice of counselors, in the barely hidden condescension of instructors and students, that I was expected to fail. I decided that was exactly what I would never do. I would succeed just to drive these people crazy. But then something happened that I could never have expected.

  I actually began to enjoy school. I began to pursue my studies with a passion that I used to reserve for gangbanging and ripping people. I discovered that I actually enjoyed learning. I couldn’t stop reading Fanon, Sartre, Dickens, Baldwin, Wright, Virgil, and Musashi Miyamoto. It was like popcorn, once I got started, there was no way that I could stop. And I have never wanted to stop since then. Since then all I have wanted to know is everything.

  I learned later that my success at Yale was considered to be the ultimate validation of the founding premises of the Star Search Foundation. My life story was the real-life laboratory results for which th
ey were searching. Lucky me.

  By my junior year I was on a track that looked pretty good. I was on schedule to graduate ahead of time, with honors in all my subjects. My double major in economics and engineering was demanding, but it occupied my time and my life. I had no complaints. As far as I was concerned, life was O.K., as complete as it could be at that stage in my life. But I was wrong.

  CHAPTER 40

  Jerome

  Charmaine

  Charmaine Leslie Cumberbatch was the daughter of Dr. Lionel Cumberbatch and Mrs. Mattie Hatfield Cumberbatch of Shaker Heights, Ohio. When they first moved to one of the finest suburban towns in America in 1961, the Cumberbatches were one of the few black families to live in that exclusive residential enclave.

  Now that I know the man, I am absolutely sure that it mattered not in the least to Dr. Cumberbatch that he was the first black any thing, anywhere. He expected, demanded and got only the best for his family. It was simply a non-negotiable point in his universe. In his view, Shaker Heights was the best place to live in the Cleveland area, and that was essentially the end of the discussion as far as he was concerned. Prejudiced real estate brokers, appalled neighbors and puzzled friends just had to learn to live with it.

  Charmaine, one of the three Cumberbatch daughters, went to the local Catholic school system through junior high school, and then she went to Shaker Heights High School, which, at the time, was ranked among the top private schools in America in terms of the academic achievements of its students.

  Charmaine attended with her sisters, Beverly and Cynthia. Beverly later went on to Stanford University and graduated from Harvard Medical School. Cynthia attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, and is now a noted women’s wear designer in Milan. Charmaine, for all of her accomplishments was very different, and pursued a very different life even before she met me.