Pecking Order, page 43
Nevertheless, he received a phone page in his office from his secretary.
“Ivan,” he answered.
“Yes, Mr. David, you have a call from Ida Stewart on line two. Would you like to take the call?”
Ivan hesitated. He hadn’t heard from Ida in a while.
“Ah…yeah, put her through.”
“Thank you.”
When Ida got him on the line, she said, “Hey, Ivan, it’s been a long time, right? My mother told me you stopped by the restaurant for a bite to eat last week.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll always support,” he told her.
“Just not on your website anymore, right?” she hinted.
Ivan paused. He said, “Those weekly rates have gone waaay up.”
“Even for the people who started you off?”
Ivan felt the trap coming. Immediately he felt he had made a mistake by answering her call.
So, I guess she hasn’t healed, he mused. She’s calling me up for a marketing war.
To nip the argument in the bud as quickly as possible, Ivan asked her, “What do you guys need? I’ll pay for it myself.” She had Vance Wellings to thank for that. Ivan figured he would pass on the generosity.
Ida said, “Well, it would be nice if we could have a three-year anniversary event at my mother’s restaurant, especially since we were your first successful promotion. And I see you’ve been lining up second and third annual events everywhere else. What happened to us?”
Her assessment was only half right. IDPromotions.com was repeating only the major events: his second network birthday party, a second luxury car show, a second summer boat cruise, a second Hutch & Mitchell Golf Tournament, and other events that were heavily supported.
Ida’s suggestion was a bit more than he expected, but he figured she was right. He did owe them continued support through an annual event. It wouldn’t take much to pull off. And he liked the idea.
He said, “Yeah, we can work that. That’ll work. All I need is a good date.”
“Just like that?” she questioned.
Ivan grinned. He said, “I’m the boss. If I say it, it’s done.”
“Are you sure? You must no longer be with, um…Lucina, then,” she jabbed. Ida just couldn’t let the opportunity slip by her.
Ivan only chuckled at it. He said, “As a matter of fact, she’s her own boss now. I think that’s how all new power women want it. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton couldn’t wait to run for senator of New York as soon as Bill was out of the office and out of her way. Next she’ll run for president,” he joked.
“She should,” Ida commented. “I’ll vote for her. But how many votes can a sister get from you now, Ivan? I look at your website now and don’t see any black people anymore, sisters or brothers.”
That comment hit Ivan harder than the first. It was well below the belt. He had stopped paying attention to the racial makeup of his website. The money was all talking too loudly, and it wasn’t black money. So Ivan didn’t have an immediate response for her.
Ida caught on to that and asked him, “What’s wrong, Ivan? A white woman got your tongue?”
He quickly remembered how “pro-black” Ida was when he had first met her. She was a real “power to the people” sister, who supported him early on, only for him to scorn her for a Brazilian/Italian hustler, who had left him out to dry. So what could he say about that to redeem himself?
“Actually, no,” he responded meekly. “I haven’t been going that way.”
“You haven’t? Are you sure?”
Ivan had rolled in the hay with a few white women by then. It was practically inevitable in the crowds that he was in, but he never dated one seriously enough to say that he had crossed over. Nevertheless, his preference had not been all black, either. He had landed somewhere in between. Ida fit the script herself. And Ivan told her so.
He said, “Well, you’re not exactly the darkest black woman in the world yourself, Ida. But I’m embarrassed to even get into this conversation.”
“Well, we’re definitely in it, Ivan,” she told him. “And I just wanted to remind you where you started off. Because you didn’t start off over there, and I thought you would have enough strength to fight the right fight. But lately it sure doesn’t look that way.”
She was kicking Ivan’s ass and leaving him speechless. She even had him thinking about what Catherine Boone had been up to lately. Then he thought about his connection to Thomas Jones as his real estate partner, and all of his Urban League contributions. He thought about the Black Contractors Association and how he had utilized them to work on remodeling his club acquisitions. He thought about the National Bankers Association, whom he was presently working with for access to lines of credit to develop more residential homes in the underserved areas of San Diego. He even included the African-American Chamber of Commerce in his business expo event at the convention center.
Thomas Jones had made certain that all the proper connections were served in the African-American community, even though many of their businesses and organizations were not pressured to advertise with IDPromotions.com or sponsor any of Ivan’s web pages. So Ivan calmed his nerves and realized that he had been more of a team player than those who liked to do the talking.
He calmly told Ida, “Well, looks can be deceiving. Ask Mr. Thomas Jones. He’ll tell you all about what I’ve been doing.” He said, “In the meantime, ask your mother to give us a date, and we’ll make another event happen for her. And tell her I thank her again for having the courage to start me out. And I thank you,” he added. “I have no hard feelings about anything.”
But on Ida’s side, she did have hard feelings. She was tired of the successful black man’s rejection of black women and culture.
She told him, “It may be all well and good for you to give to the cause on the sly, Ivan. But sometimes it goes a long way for you to represent out in the public. You should think about that for a minute.”
After Ida hung up the phone with him, Ivan did think. He thought about how hard and long a road he might need to drive alone to get to where he was going. The picture was crystal clear to him now.
He asked himself, What am I supposed to do, stop making money doing what I’m doing and then struggle trying to do something more righteous? That’s crazy! Somebody gotta make this money. Period! And if it’s right there in front of me to be made, I don’t care if it’s white, Asian, or Mexican, I’m trying to make it. So if they wanna hate me for that, for not choosing to be down, dirty, and broke in the trenches, then so be it…And maybe they’ll just have to forgive me when I’m done. But I’m not stopping my hustle for nobody. They couldn’t pay me to do that. And that includes the women I choose.
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Ivan pulled up to the Gillespie Field Airport on the far east side of San Diego, just north of Interstate 8, in a white Bentley Arnage from Roman Zemeckis’s private collection. He wanted to make a statement of his wealth to Vance Wellings immediately.
He climbed out of the black leather interior of the backseat in his sharpest dark blue suit, a powerful blue-and-gold-striped tie, and immaculate black shoes, and had the driver carry his luggage behind him to the private jet. He had kept his diamond-studded earring in his ear for the trip.
If Michael Jordan can do it in both ears, then I can surely do it in one, he told himself defiantly.
Vance Wellings, a tall and solid linebacker of a man with a slight belly and full, dark brown hair, looked on with his two tall, no-nonsense male assistants, along with the pilot and copilot. They were all standing out in front of the plane before boarding, and they were impressed with Ivan. He had outdone their expectations on arrival.
Vance shook his head and chuckled. He said, “You sure know how to make a first impression, don’t you?”
Ivan kept his cool. He said, “It’s my first trip to New York. And I want to be invited back.”
Vance nodded. “I don’t think you’re gonna have too much of a problem with that.”
They boarded the eight-seat plane of plush leather luxury seats, wineglasses, individual ice buckets, headrests, foot and back massagers, cloth curtains, a full-sized bathroom, small tray tables, four flip-down TV screens, and a bloodred carpet symbolizing deep wealth.
“Nice plane,” Ivan commented, taking the second seat to his right.
“Glad you noticed,” Vance joked. He took the open seat next to Ivan’s. His two assistants sat in the two seats in front of and to the left from them.
Ivan got comfortable and asked him, “How long is the flight?” He had flown a few hours to Hawaii, Los Angeles, Dallas, and up to the San Francisco area in private jets with Seth and Roman. But New York was a much longer trip.
“We got a good five to six hours before we touch down,” Vance answered.
Once they got up in the air good and leveled the plane off, heading northeast for America’s business capital, Vance poured them each a glass of wine before he began to ask Ivan some of his big questions.
He reclined his chair back halfway for the long flight and asked his guest, “So, Ivan…what is your ultimate goal in business? Do you just wanna make enough big bucks to settle down with? Or do you have designs on trying to take over the world?”
Ivan grinned at the question. Vance was being slightly dramatic. Ivan answered, “I’m like thirty years old right now, so I can honestly expect to see a lot of different changes going on in my future. It’s only natural.”
Vance nodded with his drink in hand. He asked, “What do you see as your strengths and weaknesses at this point in your career?”
Ivan continued to grin. He really didn’t want to answer such a revealing question for the man, but he figured Vance had practically paid for his answer. They were on a five-to-six-hour flight to New York. So there was no way he could dodge it.
Ivan told him, “My strength…is definitely fast thinking. It takes me no time at all to come up with new ideas and figure out how to make them work. I’m also a good manager of talent. I find the best people for the job, I give them direction, and I step out of their way unless they need me for more guidance. And with me being a trained accountant and consultant with the Hutch and Mitchell firm, I’m always tight on the bottom line. It’s always about squeezing the most orange juice into the glass.”
He continued, “But my biggest weakness…that would probably be…” Ivan honestly couldn’t think of anything. His two-year run had been nearly flawless. But he knew he had to say something. So he came up with, “My age. While you’re still young, you got such a big learning curve to go through, you know. Fortunately, I haven’t made a lot of mistakes yet.”
Vance listened to him, took a sip of his wine, and nodded again.
He said, “A young age can also be a huge advantage. You get a head start on the competition. It’s like getting up early in the morning for war. You capture your enemy before they’re even awake.”
Ivan took a sip of his own wine. He said, “Let me ask you a question.”
Vance looked at him and said, “Go ahead.”
Ivan asked him, “What nationality are you, you know, your bloodline?”
Vance grimaced as if it were a hard question to answer. “Ah…Scottish, German, Dutch, some Native American. Why do you ask?”
Ivan smiled when he said “some Native American.” Did that make him nonwhite, like the one-drop-of-African-blood rule?
He said, “I’m just curious to know if you believe that it’s harder, easier, or about the same for a black man to become a millionaire in this country as it is for a white man.”
As his two assistants sat deathly still in their chairs up front, overhearing Ivan’s question, Vance answered, “Well…if you look at the percentages of black people who live in this country as compared to whites and others, I would say that there’s a lot of black millionaires in this country, who surely started out with much less. But you can also say that for some Mexicans, Koreans, and Filipinos. But I think the key for any race or gender to become wealthy in any country is to have an undying drive. It’s just a never-say-die mentality, you know. You gotta have that in your makeup. Or you’ll never make it.”
Ivan nodded back to him and said, “Yeah…I know.”
Vance asked him, “Is that it?”
Ivan closed his eyes and reclined in his chair. He answered, “Yup.” There was no more overselling, only basic small talk with Vance on the jet plane ride. Ivan planned to do the majority of his work at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. And he couldn’t wait to see what kind of business opportunities would present themselves there.
Twenty-one
Let’s Do It Again
JUST AS THE PRIVATE JET reached the New York city skyline, Vance woke Ivan from his rest and told him, “You don’t want to miss this if you’ve never been to New York before.”
Ivan raised his chair forward and opened his window curtain to look out at the view. Tall New York buildings were everywhere. The downtown skyline looked like a game of Monopoly on steroids. And the sunlight was just beginning to fade west.
The first thing Ivan thought was, Somebody owns every last one of these buildings. And thousands of people are paying them rent.
As they descended to the airport away from the overpowering buildings of the downtown area, Vance asked Ivan, “So, what do you think?”
“I think there’s a whole lot of business going on in that city,” Ivan answered.
“Oh, yeah, you bet. You got plenty of millionaires in New York. You can get twenty or thirty of ’em all living in one building.”
“And who owns that building?” Ivan asked him with a grin.
“Exactly. That’s the right way of thinking, my friend. Who owns the damn buildings here?”
Ivan smiled and thought of calling Jacari on her cell phone as soon as they touched down. Like clockwork, she had informed Jeff and Paul that she was free for the rest of the week and that she was looking forward to meeting Ivan, hanging out with him in New York, and then flying back home to San Diego in the private jet. She had already agreed to his surprising offer.
The private jet touched down at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, where a black stretch limo was already waiting at the gates for their arrival.
When they all reached the limo, with Vance’s two assistants handling the luggage, Vance asked, “So, are you hanging out with us tonight, Ivan, or are you planning to pack it in with your lady friend until tomorrow?”
Ivan hadn’t called to talk to her yet, so he didn’t know.
“Let me find out right now,” he answered. He dialed Jacari’s New York number and wondered how long it would take before she answered the phone.
“Hello.” It only took her two rings.
I like that so far, he mused. I want to see this girl in person as soon as possible. Let’s get it all out of the way. Then I can get back to business.
He said, “Hey, this is Ivan in New York. We just arrived at the airport.”
“Oh, okay, which one?”
“LaGuardia.”
She said, “Okay, well, it’ll take you about thirty-five minutes to make it into town. And then what do you want to do?” she asked him.
“First, I just need to see you,” he told her. “I feel like I’m going out on a blind date here.”
“No, you’ve seen my pictures and I’ve seen plenty of your pictures,” she responded.
Ivan said, “Cameras and makeup lie sometimes.”
“Not with me they don’t.”
Vance gave him a look of confusion. “You haven’t even met her yet?”
“Not yet,” Ivan answered, grinning. “But I’ve seen plenty of her on the website.”
Vance shook his head and said, “You’re a wild guy, Ivan. Your weakness may be wild adventures.”
Ivan chuckled. He asked Jacari, “Are you dressed and everything yet?” He now felt overdressed. What if she was only wearing jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt? He said, “You don’t have on jeans and a T-shirt, do you?”
“No, you’ll see. I came back with a whole lot of things from Italy. And I can’t wait to wear some of them.”
That made Ivan look forward to it. He said, “Well, here’s what I need you to do so we don’t lose any time together. Meet me in the Waldorf-Astoria lobby, and then you can wait there for me while I change into something to run the town in.”
“Okay. I know where that is. That should only take me fifteen minutes.”
Ivan joked, “Well, bring some reading glasses and a book so the guys’ll leave you alone while you wait for me in the lobby.”
She laughed and said, “That won’t work. Then they’ll bother me more to find out what I’m reading.”
So far, Ivan liked her wit. He said, “Okay. Just come as you are, then.”
When he hung up the line with her, Vance asked him, “Does she look like a lot of the other girls I see on your website?”
Ivan nodded to him. “Now I have to see her in person to make sure.”
Vance nodded back and joked, “Maybe your weakness is pretty women.”
Ivan said, “Oh, now, in that case, that’s a lot of guys’ weakness.”
WHEN THEY PULLED UP to the curb at the historic Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, bellmen promptly approached the limo to collect their bags from the trunk, then escorted the four men to the registration counters. They then piled the bags on the wheeled luggage carts for the elevators.
One of Vance’s assistants looked to his right and asked Ivan, “Is that your lady friend there?”
Ivan looked past him and spotted Jacari in a black and brown leather skirt, brown leather flats, an off-white top, a giant brown leather belt around her waist, and a wide, soft brown leather hat that fell over the sides of her long, dark hair.
Vance Wellings eyed her himself. “Good gracious,” he commented. “Now, she’s a beauty.”
“And she’s full Native American,” Ivan told him.
“Is that right?”
As Ivan moved in her direction to greet her, he wondered how hot she would be in so much leather clothing during the summertime. Did it get that cool out at night in New York?
