Chapter Twenty one.

Chad Williams had finished the last of several important, work related, phone calls. He had also called his driver to come and pick him up. He leaned back in his chair and tried to relax. Things had been hectic at work, lately.

The view from of the New York skyline was amazing from where he was sitting in his home office. The apartment cost over four million dollars but the view and the size of it made it a steal. He did go into the office downtown but he often did much of his work from home.

“A stockbroker can make many personal connections with evening calls,” or so his father had told him more than once. A call from from a quiet room to a man or woman’s home can often lead to a great relationship unhurried by the pressure of office politics or sales quotas,” his father mentioned often.

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

The driver arrived in twenty minutes after crawling through endless traffic that always seemed to tie the city up into tight knots and long delays. The city was always a decade behind the curve when it came to the magic solution for 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 many drivers still waiting to get one.

The city fathers were close to throwing up their collective hands in the air and just leaving the traffic engineers out in the cold when it came to blame. The engineers were blamed time and again for the city’s traffic woes.

“Our local politicians are like all the others since cities were created,” Chad’s driver thought as he sat still for what seemed like hours, not minutes, waiting in a long line of black cars while heading to Chad’s tall apartment building.

Chad gathered up his keys and heavy jacket and took the elevator down several stories after the front desk had called him. They had been contacted by the driver and relayed the message to Chad.

The driver, Jack, 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 his building and saw Jack as he pulled up out of the street and into the curved driveway.

Chad waved at him as he left the protection of the warm lobby for the long black car. Chad was dressed in a black suit with a white scarf wrapped around his neck. It had been a gift from Suzan a few months ago.

The rain had been falling intermittently and the highly polished car was covered in millions of sparkling water droplets shimmering under the streetlights above. The car was perfectly clean, as always. There had been a few sprinkles in the last our.

That had made the view from his apartment change from crystal clear to fade and blur slightly as the rain clung to the large windows of his living room where he waited for the phone call. Chad held his briefcase in his hand but his luggage had been brought down earlier by Hector, the Puerto Rican porter, as always.

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

He thought about what he had said to his father a few days before the wedding as he climbed into the car and Hector placed Chad’s luggage into the limousine.

“No work after Friday of this week dad, I’m off on my honeymoon,’ he had said to his father in the office days before the wedding to remind him. His father wasn’t happy but tried to understand.

It had been a long time since his father’s honeymoon, some forty years ago. He had spent the last four decades creating an empire and at some personal cost.

That time lost to family and friends would never be recovered but the money was of some consolation to all of them. They could now buy anything they wanted and go anywhere they desired 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 one.

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, except for the “special accounts project.”

There were several dozen brokers brokers that could do most of the other work. He didn’t like it but it had to be done this one time or until his other two children married. Those special tasks were handled only by Chad and his father.

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Well, more of the puzzle has been offered up.

I am making good progress as I rewrite these chapters.

I leave for Europe and London next week for a month or so.

More of “Joe in Africa” tomorrow.

Don’t forget “The House On The Cliff” and “The Bad Seed” on Amazon.

“Atlanta,” “Kazu, son of Osheda Kamasaki,” and “Sunrise Sunset” are now also available on Audible.