Chapter 18

Chad Williams had finished the last of several important phone calls from his apartment. He also called his favorite driver to come and collect him. He leaned back in his desk chair and relaxed. This was the end of his work before leaving on his honeymoon.

The view of the New York skyline was breathtaking from his apartment window looking south. He could see most of the most famous buildings in the city from his living room. He went into his office most days but often worked from home. It gave him more phone time while staying out of the city’s traffic.

“A stockbroker can make many personal connections with evening calls. A call from a quit room to a man or woman’s home can often led to a great relationship unhurried by office politics or sales quotas,” Chad’s father had told everyone in the office more than once.

Chad was now as content as any man can or deserved to be, or so he thought at the moment. His marriage was the last puzzle piece to the perfect life.

The driver arrived twenty minutes later after crawling through the endless traffic that always seemed to tie the city up in knots and long delays. The city was always a decade behind the curve when it came to the magic solution to better traffic.

Most professional drivers had plenty of time to stew over that issue and others while waiting in traffic. The price of a taxi license was another hot topic among most drivers still waiting to get one.

The city father’s were close to throwing their collective hands in the air and just leaving the traffic engineers out in the cold after blaming them for cost overruns and delays. But bribes to city officials were often the real issues for the problems of the city if the truth be known. Fewer buses and higher taxi fares made some people more money and those behind the scenes would pay the crooked politicians to keep things that way for as long as possible.

“Our local politicians were like all the others since city’s were created,” Chad’s driver thought as he sat still for what seemed like hours, not minutes, while waiting in long lines of black Town cars and taxis while headed to Chad’s tall apartment building.

Chad took the elevator down from the twenty-first floor after the front desk called and told him that his driver would arrive shortly. The front desk and the driver were in nearly constant contact.

Jack, the driver, was great at his job and loved it most of the time. Tonight was an exception.

Chad came out of the wide glass doors of the building and saw Jack, as he pulled out of the street and into the curved driveway. Chad waved at him as he left the lobby for the long black car. Chad was dressed in a black suit with a white scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. It had been a gift from Suzan a few months ago.

The rain had been falling for intermittently and the highly polished car was covered in what appeared to be millions of sparkling water droplets shimmering under the many street lights shinning above in the thin, cold, night air. The car was perfectly clean as always. There had been a few sprinkles in the past hour.

Chad held his briefcase in hand but his luggage had been brought down by Hector, the Puerto Rican porter of the building, as always.

This was going to be Chad’s one and only honeymoon and a vacation to remember. Africa and all her hidden mysteries would be at his feet.

“No work this week end,” he had told his father in the office days before the wedding. Chad’s father wasn’t happy but tried to understand.

It had been a long time since Chad’s father’s honeymoon some forty plus years ago. He had spent the last four decades creating an empire and at some personal cost to him. That time lost to his family and friends would never be recovered but he hoped that the fortune that came from it was some consolation to all of them. They could now all go anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat.

Cathy, Chad’s only sister, seemed to understand the lack of a father figure less than the boys. Cathy had little time with her father while growing up and almost felt that she didn’t have a father. The boys all worked with their father everyday after they received their licenses or saw him during school events.

Chad wasn’t used to time off but his father was able to shift some of the work load to others in his large office that filled three floors of his building, except for those “special projects.” There were dozens of brokers that could do the other work.

Chad’s father didn’t like it but it had to be done this one time, or until his other two children had married. Those special tasks were only handled by Chad and his father. This business took all of your attention if you did it right.

“What good was all the money if you can’t enjoy it?” Chad often asked his father in that private room with the separate and secret computer terminals used for the “special projects.”

His father did all of those computer entries in that dark, gloomy room in the sub basement of the giant building. No one ever entered this inner sanctum except for Chad and his father.

Chad wasn’t really sure of what these projects were all about or why only they could do the computer entries but his father had showed him how to access them in case of his death or an emergency of titanic proportions.

I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I’m dead Chad. “Work is my mistress, Just ask your mother Chad, his father would often say.

She had finally stopped complaining after forty five years of this. We’re on the verge of a final push that will set us up for life, Chad. You know that as well as I do.”

Chad could remember hearing his parents fight about his father working too much when he was much younger. She had finally realized that her husband would never change and that she would have to.

You have been a great son and employee Chad. Now isn’t the time for cold feet, son.

Chad wasn’t down with the plan at first but after it was clearly explained by their lawyers and others in a small circle at work he could see the merits and the few, small, pitfalls.

“We are near the end of a long term strategy Chad. The risks are there but if all goes well, the payoff will be worth it.

Their building, by itself, was worth millions and created a great deal of rental income for the family. It was nearly paid for now and worth four times what it had cost to build those forty years ago.

As Chad sat in the sub basement, his mind raced about what might be happening just above him.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, this all sounds interesting and a little confusing.

Just sit back like Chad and take a look at the big picture.

We’ve been sick here in Southern California and a little wet. We just went out to see the doctor and swam home.

More tomorrow.