What You Sow

by Wallace Ford

  Domino made me feel like she was interested in me, not just in Morningstar or the latest deal or the latest word on The Pride. She had a way of looking at me that made me cancel out the rest of the planet so that I could hang on her every word. She had a way of looking at me that made me hope that the moment would never end.

  As was the case the last time we were at Fresco, Domino had a cappuccino and I had an espresso. And then it was time to leave. She had a late afternoon flight to Chicago, and I had a Little League game to catch in Hastings-on-Hudson. We walked east to Park Avenue to find her a taxi, as I was going to walk back to the Morningstar offices on 57th Street. And that’s when it happened.

  She slipped her hand into mine as we walked. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. And then, without saying a word, she turned and raised her face to mine and kissed me. At that moment, the world stopped spinning on its axis. My heart, however, spun like an ever spinning top, whirling around and around.

  “Jerome, if you are as smart as I think you are, you won’t say a word right now. Just listen.” I guess I must have nodded my head like an obedient beast of burden.

  “I think we could enjoy being together. I’m sure of it. I’m willing to give it a try if you are. I have always been attracted to you, Jerome. But now that we are bifurcating, I am just going to be bold enough to say that I want to be with you. Is that okay with you, Saint Jerome?”

  Domino made “bifurcation” sound like something that was done in bed or on a bearskin rug in front of a blazing fireplace. As we continued east toward Park, once again walking hand in hand, I knew I had to say something. I wasn’t used to being tongue-tied. But then again, I wasn’t used to being with Domino.

  “Domino, I don’t know where you got that ‘Saint’ business, but I would like to spend some more time with you, too. So, if you can tear yourself away from Chicago and get back to New York City by Friday night, we can bifurcate all weekend.”

  We had stopped walking again so that we could look directly at each other. It seemed that, even with the parry and thrust of double entendre and all the jocularity, something serious was going on, and we both knew it. Domino fixed me with those black-black eyes of hers, and I felt as if I were looking into the depths of some kind of bottomless black diamond mine.

  “Jerome, I will be back from Chicago Friday afternoon. I recently purchased a town house in Battery Park City. If you can arrange for your boys to be otherwise engaged, why don’t we bifurcate at my place? I’ll cook if you bring the wine.”

  “Domino, if you cook, I’ll bring a case of wine, although I’m not such a bad chef myself.”

  “Just bring a healthy appetite.”

  “I’m starving already.”

  “So am I, Jerome, and if you don’t flag a taxi for me soon, I am going to be late getting back to Chicago and we’ll both be hungry for the weekend.”

  Her smile seemed to come from another galaxy of pleasure, and I was already counting the moments until Friday as I flagged down the taxi. I opened the door and we kissed briefly once more, then I closed the door and she was gone.

  And then she was back. And on that weekend in the summer of 2000, both of our lives changed. We made an easy and quick transition from lust to love to comfortable companionship. After a few months, she started spending time with my sons, who were as quickly enchanted as their father. Being with Domino was not always pure reverie, but the good times so far outweighed the tense times that soon we were spending every possible moment together.

  By the summer of 2001, I felt comfortable enough for the boys to accompany Domino and me to the Cap Jaluca resort in Anguilla during the week before Labor Day and over the Labor Day weekend. It was one of the most wonderful weeks of my life, and as I lay on the confectioner’s sugar-like sand with no phones, faxes or computers in sight, I felt it was almost possible to leave behind everything that being a partner in Morningstar entailed.

  CHAPTER 53

  Jerome

  Eronel

  Even as Domino and I started what turned out to be an all-consuming romance, I still had to take multiple business trips, both locally and to London. The trips to London were occurring with greater frequency, as Morningstar was becoming involved in more and more transactions that had a foreign nexus. In fact, going to London was starting to become a regular part of my routine and something I really didn’t mind.

  I recall starting to make those trips to London soon after Morningstar started getting high marks for some of the successful international deals in which we were involved. The routine that I soon established involved my taking a late-night British Airways flight out of Kennedy Airport, arriving early the next morning at Heathrow Airport. By flying first class, I was able to sleep in a reclining seat that became a bed, with drawn curtains that almost made me feel as if I was in my own private bedroom forty thousand feet over the Atlantic.

  As soon as I exited Customs at the airport, I would go straight to the Mandeville Hotel, which was located in Marylebone Village right next to Regents Park and Hyde Park and within a few minutes’ walk of Mayfair. The Mandeville is known as a fairly hip hotel, and its accommodations remain simply flawless.

  As soon as I checked in to the hotel, I would unpack my bag, return phone calls, check e-mail and then head straight for the hotel’s gym. After a good forty-five-minute workout, followed by a shave and a shower, I would be ready for the day and not too worse for the wear and tear and assaults of jet lag.

  I do remember that, on one of my early trips, the lawyers from the local U.K. firm that we were using took me for a proper English lunch at the centuries-old Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. It was an Olde English establishment, replete with dark oak and rich leather and what seemed to be an infinite number of tables piled high with slabs of beef and lamb—shoulders, joints, loins, legs and more shoulders. Not being a heavy meat eater, it took me more than a moment to find suitable fare on the menu.

  I settled for some thinly sliced roast beef and boiled potatoes, and the few mugs of the accompanying beer that we had made for a pleasant meal. When my hosts suggested dessert, I decided to be the cooperative guest, and once again I searched the menu for something that would be pleasing but not too heavy. And that was when one menu item caught my eye, and I had one of my more memorable London conversations.

  “Gentlemen, being a humble visitor to London, I know I am not totally familiar with all of the customs and traditions that you have here.” I was lunching with two of the most talented business attorneys—solicitors, actually—Vincent Wesley and Charles Patterson of the Rippington & Wells law firm. Both were in their fifties, and with their stocky builds, ruddy complexions and thinning brown hair, they looked like they could have come straight out of central casting.

  “Jerome, from what I know of you, you have been to our little island far, far too many times to be convincing in the role of confused tourist. What seems to be the problem?” Vincent’s eyes were twinkling, and a good-natured smile was on his face.

  “Well, let’s put it this way. I am definitely not about to order this item on the menu.” I said this while pointing inside the leather-bound book that contained pages and pages of selections for lunch, dinner and dessert. “But curiosity compels me to ask, what the hell is ‘spotted dick’? I have no idea what it is, but I am sure that neither of you two good gentlemen will ever be able to say that they saw Jerome Hardaway with a mouthful of ‘spotted dick.’ Still, what the hell is it?”

  Vincent and Charles collapsed into paroxysms of laughter that continued for at least two full minutes. I had asked my query in the nature of a jest, but I had no idea that my question would be the source of such unbridled hilarity. After sipping some water and wiping the tears from his eyes with a table napkin, Charles was finally able to speak.

  “Jerome, you should get the Queen’s Cup for Comedy, truly you should! You just have to get some culture over on the other side of the pond. You really do. I don’t know what’s on your dirty Yankee mind, but spotted
dick, my good man, is simply a steamed suet pudding containing currants. It’s usually served with custard. And just for the record, my good man, ‘spotted’ refers to the currants, which look like spots when they are served. And ‘dick,’ I am sorry to disappoint you, my good man, is simply a corruption of the word ‘dough.’ ”

  At this point, impending gales of laughter would not let Charles continue, and Vincent had to pick up where Charles had left off. “So you see, you can have all the spotted dick that you want here in London, and we’ll never tell.” And with that, Charles and Vincent both collapsed into another fit of laughter at my expense.

  “Gentlemen, let’s just say that I remain firm on my original point. You will never be able to say that you saw me eating spotted dick in London or any place else.” And with this, we all laughed at the silly joke and play on words that provided us with some respite from the tedium of business that day.

  Over the next few years, Morningstar wound up doing a lot of business with Rippington & Wells, and I got to see a lot of Charles and Vincent. Indeed, by 2000, Rippington & Wells had opened an office in New York City, as several top London firms had done by that time. Rippington & Wells chose a suite of offices in the World Trade Center, and I had occasion to meet with Charles and Vincent in their new offices on several occasions when they came from London to New York.

  There were several occasions when, after meeting with Vincent and Charles at their World Trade Center offices, I would invite Domino to join me for lunch at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the very top of World Trade Center Tower Two.

  Domino and I never tired of eating at Windows on the World. It seemed like we could never go there enough.

  CHAPTER 54

  Gordon

  These Foolish Things

  It didn’t take me long to get back into the swing of things. Once I got back to work at Morningstar, it was like I had never left. And as I returned to full health and full strength, I could focus on the plans I had concocted while lying in my hospital bed.

  Part of the plan depended on my being enormously successful with Morningstar. As long as I was bringing in big money for the firm, there was every reason for Diedre and Jerome and even Paul to grow more and more comfortable and less and less vigilant.

  And so, I dusted off my old contacts and made new contacts. Within a few months, the corporate and municipal deals were rolling in to Morningstar. Before long, we were hiring additional personnel, and while the firm already had offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago, offices were soon slated to open in Miami and Washington in 2001. I supported Jerome’s idea that we add Johannesburg as our foreign office along with London, and it was clear that all of these things would be happening, and happening soon.

  I didn’t spend a lot of time around Ray Beard at first. He was understandably a little gun-shy about being seen with me. Also, he was truly driven to prove to Jerome and everyone else that he had not only recovered from his physical challenges, but that he was still the golden boy who was destined for huge success.

  But, as time progressed, and as success begat success, both time and circumstance brought Ray and me into closer contact. And, before too long, we were working on deals together, pitching new clients together and working on long-term strategies for Morningstar.

  By the latter part of 2000, it wasn’t unusual to see Ray and me working late on various projects. And no one thought anything of just the two of us going to meetings to secure new business for Morningstar. Diedre and Jerome were just too busy to go to every meeting with me. Add to the mix the fact that the new financial success that I had brought to the firm, and soon there was no reason for anyone to worry about what I was doing or where I was going. Whatever it was and wherever it was, it was clearly going to be good for the firm.

  That was why, when Ray Beard and I were flying the Delta Shuttle back to New York from a day of meetings in Washington at the end of the summer of 2001, no one even began to suspect that the fall of the House of Morningstar was at hand. I had already put together a complicated and foolproof scheme, but I needed someone like Ray Beard to help me complete the plan.

  Ray might have been everybody’s golden boy, but it didn’t take me long to bring him onto my side. By the time the flight landed at LaGuardia Airport, he was a full partner in my plan.

  If everything went the way that I had planned it, the second Tuesday after Labor Day 2001 would be the last day that Morningstar Financial Services would be in business.

  CHAPTER 55

  Paul

  Blues for Pablo

  From the moment that Diedre, Jerome and I concluded our meeting at Morningstar and it was decided that Gordon could return to the firm, to say that I had my work cut out for me would have been a monstrous understatement. I had to revise literally every document related to the existence of Morningstar. And just about every change I made in an effort to protect Jerome, Diedre and Morningstar was subject to negotiation with Gordon’s personal attorney.

  Solomon DeSouza was a legend among practicing lawyers in New York City. Born in Spain during the civil war in that country, he had the misfortune of making a wrong turn while escaping that country with his parents. He wound up on a train to Poland instead of France, ultimately becoming a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz.

  He emigrated to the United States after the war and went to City College and Harvard Law School, and became a lawyer specializing in handling the very private matters of the rich and famous, as well as of the rich and infamous. High-ranking members of the mafia and drug overlords from Colombia sought out his services on the most discrete matters. He left it to other lawyers to appear in court and on television.

  Solomon DeSouza was rarely seen in public and was never quoted in the newspapers or photographed. When waves of indictments swept through Wall Street in the eighties and nineties, there were more than a few very senior executives who found themselves on the same freight elevator ascending to the top-floor SoHo loft where DeSouza lived and kept his offices.

  His specialty was negotiating and completing complicated transfers of assets, as well as structuring very private ownership and partnership arrangements. My understanding was that he had handled all of Gordon’s personal business for years, and that he might be the one person in the world other than Gordon who knew exactly what Gordon was really doing at any point in time.

  Working with Solomon DeSouza was like spending an eternity with Yoda, the wise and all-knowing character from Star Wars. He had an adage or oblique quote for just about every occasion. And he didn’t just know every trick in the book. He knew about tricks and books of which I had never even heard.

  Negotiating with Solomon was exhausting and educational, and I was so very glad when we finally concluded the arrangements that resulted in Gordon returning to Morningstar. But I could never shake the feeling that Solomon and Gordon had somehow gotten the better of me, even though I was sure that I had covered all the bases, dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. It was a nagging feeling that I didn’t enjoy and that wouldn’t go away.

  CHAPTER 56

  Kenitra

  ’S Wonderful

  Time is an amazing element. It cannot be seen or held, but it can certainly be felt. And the effects of time were nothing but positive for me after witnessing Gordon’s revival at New York Hospital and then fleeing back to California. I was so very thankful that Sture came with me to Los Angeles that very first day, and I was even more thankful that he was able to start coming to California for about a week every two to three weeks.

  There is very little that is good about a long-distance relationship. But I found that missing him made me want him, and that seeing him made me miss him and want him even more. We were never together long enough to find the time to argue about much. There was only enough time to savor and enjoy and love each other for every waking hour and even in our dreams.

  Sture was a wonderful lover. And Sture was a wonderful friend. And although not a day went by withou
t a shiver of fear coursing through my body at the mere thought of Gordon being alive and awake, Sture made me feel safe and Sture made me know that he would protect me. Knowing that he cared was enough to make me know that tomorrow always had a chance of being a better day. And I loved him for that as well.

  By the summer of 2001, Sture had spent so much time in California that he had started to explore the idea of opening a Dorothy’s By the Sea there. Actually, it was an idea that I had suggested to him as we were having coffee one morning while watching the dawn sun reflect off the western shores of the Pacific Ocean. Of course, I did have my ulterior and rather transparent motives for making such a suggestion.

  “Kenitra, you do realize that the restaurant business in LA is fundamentally different from the restaurant business in New York.” I always enjoyed it when Sture adopted that faux professorial tone. And I loved being this teacher’s pet.

  “Sture, how different could it be? After all, a restaurant is a restaurant is a restaurant, right?” I had an idea of what he was talking about, but I enjoyed our banter, and awaited his response. It didn’t take but a moment.

  “Well, in New York, restaurants have to succeed based on the cuisine, the quality of the food, the ambience and the presentation. In LA, there is the additional factor of celebrity. Unless and until there is sufficient celebrity support and presence, even the finest restaurant will only be a best-kept secret in this town.” I knew that what Sture was saying was true, and waited for him to continue. “It would take a lot of research and a tremendous networking effort for something like Dorothy’s to work out here. And, Kenitra, don’t think for a moment that I don’t realize that your ‘suggestion’ is part of a devious plot to get me to move to California. And don’t think for a moment that I wouldn’t do it. But under only one condition.” He was now smiling that smile that made me melt like butter on a plate on a picnic table on a hot summer day. Slowly, but surely.