Baby Brother's Blues (15 page)

26

T
he afternoon he had scheduled lunch with Kwame Hargrove, Bob Watson left his office at twelve forty-five. His driver met him downstairs. The 191 Club was only a few blocks away, but he always took a car. Presentation was half the battle. Everybody
and their mama
was riding around in Lincolns these days, but Bob was a traditionalist. He liked Cadillacs.
Black
Cadillacs. DeVille for business. Fleetwood for pleasure. Today was no exception and he was pleased to see that the car was so clean it practically gleamed in the sunshine.

The big sedan glided through Atlanta’s lunchtime traffic like a shark on its way to the beach. Bob sat back to clear his mind. He had wasted the morning trying to find a new agent to handle the lease of the house he had designed and built in Ansley Park when his business had first taken off. Starkly modern in contrast to the rest of the homes around it, the house had caused quite a stir in its day. Several years ago his wife had decided she needed a more traditional space to host her endless round of dinner parties, receptions, and bridge games. Bob had acquiesced, under protest, but refused to sell the house, fully intending to move back into it one day, with or without his wife’s approval.

The problem was the hassle of finding suitable tenants never ended. As soon as somebody got settled in, they’d get transferred, or decide to build their own house, or realize they didn’t like the stark lines of the place as much as they thought they would. Tenants kept breaking their leases and leaving him in the lurch. Thinking about it was giving Bob a headache. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Right now he wanted to focus on the business at hand.

Lee’s end run to Precious Hamilton hadn’t gone down well with Bob. He had fumed about it for a long time after she left the other night, until he realized he, too, had an ace in the hole whose name was Hargrove—
Kwame
Hargrove. When Teddy Rogers had first mentioned Kwame over drinks a few weeks before, when bad weather left them stranded in LaGuardia without time to catch up, Bob had only half listened to the praise song his old friend was singing. Actually, he had been thinking about hiring a white female, but in the scramble of realignment that began immediately after the indictment of Councilman Long, Precious Hargrove had landed center stage.

Suddenly Teddy’s enthusiastic promoting of her son, Kwame, seemed like a beacon in the darkness. Running into him in the flesh at the preservation hearing the other day only reinforced what Bob was already thinking. He had his secretary call the next day to set up a lunch. Bob’s support for the disgraced councilman had been largely behind-the-scenes. The damage to his own reputation was containable. Hiring Precious Hargrove’s only son would send a message that once again, he had landed on his feet.
It would practically make them family.

The thought made him smile as the driver pulled up in front of the 191 Club and jumped out to open the door. At precisely two-fifteen, the same driver would return to drive Bob back to his office and the day’s public presentation of
who
and
what
he was would be over. He would have arrived and departed in a style befitting any self-respecting power player in front of others of his kind. Atlanta was an O’Jays’ kind of town:
People smilin’ in your face, when all the time they want to take your place.
Bob knew that as well as anybody, but all those folks waiting for him to fall could just keep on
smilin’.
He wasn’t going anywhere.

The 191 Club was one of those exclusive
members-only
establishments located at the top of one of Atlanta’s downtown office towers. In addition to a main dining room, there were any number of private rooms, equipped with leather-bound books and fully stocked wet bars. The white-jacketed servers were known for their pleasant efficiency, the chef knew his way around a Southern kitchen, and the bartender was old-fashioned enough to make the mint juleps as strong at lunchtime as he did for happy hour.

On any given day, the mayor of Atlanta, the governor of Georgia, and an impressive roster of elected officials and corporate chief executives gathered there. This was a place where offers and counteroffers were made over drinks, careers were directed during the main course, and fortunes were invested over coffee. Bob Watson was a member of the board of directors. This was the official watering hole of the city’s most active
movers and shakers
and everybody who came here knew it.

A firm believer in doing more than was expected during the early stages of a relationship, business or personal, Bob had reserved his favorite private dining room for lunch. He called this courting process “sweetening,” but it was all about breaking down the other person’s defenses by acting as if he or she had already been accepted into the rarefied realms where the Watsons of the world moved around so effortlessly. He intended to offer Kwame a position as a junior associate, and he wanted to show his young friend that if he came to work at the firm, everything about the experience would be
first-class.

As he stepped off the elevator, the first person he saw in the small crowd around the hostess stand was Kwame Hargrove. Chatting as easily with Louis Adams, the editor and publisher of
The Sentinel,
as he had lingered to exchange ideas with Bob at city hall, the tall, handsome young man was at ease in a setting that might have intimidated someone less worldly. Watching Kwame talking and laughing with the club’s regulars, Bob realized that this was beginning to look like a
win/win
situation. Those were Bob’s favorite odds and he smiled as he approached the group.

“Who let the press in here?” he said, clapping Louis on the back and reaching to shake Kwame’s hand.

“Don’t tell my readers.” Louis laughed. “My credibility will be shot.”

“We are your readers,” Bob said. “And have no fear. Your credibility is already shot.”

“Love you, too, brother,” Louis said, turning back to Kwame with a grin. “Make sure he picks up the check and give my best to the senator.”

The woman had been out of politics for almost two years and they still called her senator, Bob thought. She was not only the front-runner. She was the
favorite.
He hadn’t felt the political energy in this town so fully behind any candidate, announced or unannounced, since the possibility that Maynard Jackson could actually be elected mayor swept through Atlanta like a fever and carried him to victory on the power of the collective hopes and dreams of his people.

“I certainly will,” said Kwame, turning back to Bob as Louis went off to join his party. “Pleasure to see you again, sir.”

“I’m glad you could make it,” Bob said, catching the eye of the smiling hostess, who picked up two menus and smiled even wider.

“If you’ll follow me please, gentlemen?”

“I thought we could use a little privacy,” Bob said as the hostess led them down a hallway lined with pictures of dead game birds and men on horseback. The carpet muffled their footsteps. “Sometimes when I come here for lunch, I spend so much time greeting friends, I can’t get any business done.”

“I understand,” Kwame said, although he only wished he did.

The hostess opened the door to a small tastefully appointed dining room with a table set for two and the same spectacular view. A middle-aged black man with a round, pleasant face and a spotless white jacket entered the room and nodded to Bob as the hostess disappeared.

“Good afternoon, Roland,” Bob said. “I’ll have the usual. And for my guest?”

Bob knew this was a test of sorts. Kwame had no idea what
the usual
was. Hard liquor? A glass of wine? A beer? Coca-Cola Classic over ice with a slice of lemon? What if Kwame ordered a drink only to discover that Bob was a confirmed teetotaler? The moment presented a challenge for anyone without the courage of their convictions, but Kwame didn’t blink.

“I’ll have a Heineken.”

Good choice,
Bob thought. Nothing wrong with a beer at one o’clock in the afternoon. Bob was a member of the generation that always had a drink at lunch. Sometimes
two.
His
usual
was Meyer’s rum on the rocks with a wedge of lime. Roland brought their drinks and took their lunch orders in one swift movement and left the two men alone.

“Sit down,” Bob said, indicating a chair and taking one himself.

“It’s a real honor to be sitting here with you, sir.” Kwame brushed a nonexistent crumb off the crisply starched white linen tablecloth.

“Call me
Bob.
”

“Bob.”
Kwame mentally ordered himself to banish the word
sir
from his vocabulary for at least the next two hours. “You’re the reason I became an architect.”

Bob always enjoyed anecdotes in which he was a source of pride, inspiration, or envy. He assumed this one would fall into the inspirational category.

“You gave the commencement speech when I graduated from high school,” Kwame said. “I introduced you.”

“That would make you the valedictorian.” The honor of introducing the main speaker always went to the smartest kid in the class. That never seemed to change.

Kwame nodded.

“How was I?” Bob smiled.

“You were great. You said the challenge of our generation was to rethink the use of shared urban space.” Kwame’s voice was almost reverential. “You said there has to be a blurring of the distinctions between personal and communal space so that we begin to feel as protective and proprietary of our neighborhoods as we do of our living rooms.”

“I still believe in that concept.”

“I do, too.”

The ice in Bob’s glass tinkled softly as he sipped his rum. “Have you had a chance to check on those Victorians we talked about?”

“My information is that the owner isn’t interested in selling any of them right now,” Kwame said apologetically.

“Blue Hamilton is never interested in
selling.
” Bob chuckled. “He’s too busy
buying.
”

Kwame just smiled, not confirming or denying Blue’s ownership of a row of Victorian houses on Peeples’ Street. They were worth millions of dollars already and their value would only continue to rise.

“My wife loves those houses, too,” he said, hoping Bob didn’t think he was being evasive. “She’s had her eye on the big one in the middle of the block.”

“Hamilton won’t sell to her either?”

“It’s not that,” Kwame said. “I just think I’d like to try living in another neighborhood for a while.”

“Are you really thinking of leaving West End?” An idea began to dawn at the back of Bob’s mind.

“If I can convince my wife that there’s life beyond Cascade Road. I’d like to find a place in midtown.”

Bingo!
Bob thought, delighted. Roland knocked on the door discreetly before entering with another server, who carried a tray with two covered dishes and a basket of homemade bread.

“Will there be anything else?” Roland said, whipping the tops off the food and releasing the smell of two perfectly grilled T-bone steaks into the air.

“Open us a nice bottle of Merlot,” Bob said, “to complement these steaks, and I think we’ll be set.”

They chatted easily as the meal progressed. Bob asking questions so conversationally it hardly seemed like the interview Kwame knew that it was. He wasn’t nervous as he told Bob about his experiences at Howard, his internship with Teddy, his move to Atlanta, and his most recent project. He wanted to present his best self to Bob Watson; a promising architect, a good son, a devoted husband and loving father. There was no need to confess that his mentor was also his lover.

For his part, Bob talked about his vision for the future of his company, their current expansion plans, and his confidence in the city itself.

“The next decade is going to be a period of unprecedented growth and development,” he said over coffee, almost ready to seal the deal. “Watson and Associates is going to be a part of it, Kwame. We’re going to be major players in reshaping this city for the next hundred years.”

He leaned back and looked across the table as if waiting for an
amen.

“It sounds exciting,” Kwame said.

“It’s damn exciting, and I’m inviting you to be part of it, too,” Bob said. “Would you like to come and work with us at the firm?”

Kwame was momentarily speechless, overwhelmed at having his fantasy knock on the door and call his name.
Say something,
he scolded himself,
before the man reconsiders his offer!
“It would be an honor.”

Bob smiled and extended his hand to Kwame, who shook it gratefully, hoping his palms weren’t sweating, but convinced that they were.

“Good man,” Bob said. “Welcome to the team!”

“Thank you,
Bob.
” That first name came a little easier now. “Thank you.”

“I’d like to courier you over our salary offer and a benefits package in the morning. Take a look at it. Talk it over with your wife. I’ll be traveling for the next four days, but I’ll be back on Saturday morning. How about you and your missus—what’s her name again?”

“Aretha.”

“Why don’t you and Aretha come by the house on Saturday night? I’ll round up my partners and their wives, a few associates.”

“I’d like that.”

Bob stood up and went to the bar. “How about a brandy to seal the deal?”

Kwame wondered if Bob drank this much every day at lunch. He was already feeling a nice little buzz as Bob splashed the brandy into two snifters. But before they toasted, he turned back to Kwame slowly, the bottle still in his hand.

“There is one more thing.”

Kwame practically held his breath like contestants do on game shows just before the host pulls back the curtain. Bob reached in his pocket and withdrew a set of keys. “I have a house I want you to take a look at.”

Kwame sounded as confused as he felt. “A house?”

“When you said you were looking for a place in midtown, I couldn’t help wondering if you’d consider Ansley Park,” Bob said, sitting down again. “It’s an ideal place to raise children. Big yard. Lots of space.”