The I.P.O. (14 page)

Ryan, with his heart pounding out of his chest, made his way down to court level and got in line with a few eager members of the press to gain early access to the visiting team’s locker room.  At the front of the line, a stadium security officer sat on a foldable chair, mindlessly scanning barcodes and nodding in the direction of the door to the locker room after each pass cleared.  They always did.

Ryan looked over at the Chicago bench, shocked at how huge these high school kids were from his new vantage point.

“Kid!” the security guard said impatiently.  “Let’s go!”  He scanned the barcode and then flicked his head in the direction of the door.

Synergistic aromas of sweat, spray-on deodorant and bleach belted Ryan in a full-on olfactory assault as he entered the locker room.  Most of the media members were transfixed on the flat-screen TV on the back wall where the final quarter was about to start back up, oblivious to the odor.  No one seemed to think anything of the smell – or of Ryan’s presence.

“How you feel?” Coach Wright asked J’Quarius.

“Good, coach,” J’Quarius said.

“You got a couple more minutes in you?”

“Definitely.”

With the outcome of the game more or less decided, Coach Wright drew up one more play for the crowd.  After that, the plan was to sub each of his seniors out individually, to allow the fans a chance to show their appreciation and then empty his bench to make sure everyone on the team got some playing time.

The overhead buzzer blasted to start the final quarter, as the ref handed the ball to the home team’s point guard.  Dribbling it out nervously, he kept a wary eye on J’Quarius who herded him over to the left side of the floor close to midcourt.  J’Quarius then gave him a little room to his right, which the point guard took as soon as he saw it. 

As he dribbled past, J’Quarius wrapped his long arm around the point guard from behind, poking the ball forward to his waiting teammate.  Before his teammate had even secured the ball, J’Quarius was already accelerating toward the other team’s basket.

He looked back as he reached the three-point line and sure enough, the ball was in the air.  J’Quarius stomped down hard on the free-throw line and then took flight off his left foot as he caught the pass from his teammate.  Palming the ball in his fully-outstretched right arm, he reared back, arching his back as he flew.  Then just as he reached the apex of his jump, the totality of his motion – torso, arm, hand, ball – shifted violently forward, culminating in a thunderous dunk that brought everyone in the arena out of their seats.  The ESPN broadcasters didn’t even attempt to comment on what they’d just seen, both for lack of words and for the realization that it would be at least half a minute before they would stand a chance of transmitting over the deafening roar of the crowd.

J’Quarius came back down to his feet, turned toward his bench, and looked straight at his dad with sheer terror in his eyes.  Then he crumpled to the ground.

As if a switch had been thrown, the crowd went stone silent.

Ryan, watching from the visitors’ locker room, Dillon from high in section 213, Weinstien near the tunnel, and Bradford five rows from the floor simultaneously mouthed the word, “No.”

Hansford sprinted out onto the court with a medic trailing right behind him carrying a defibrillator.  For the second time in as many games, Arlene Washington rushed down from the stands screaming, “I’m his mother!  I’m his mother!” bypassing the security guards.

J’Quarius lay flat on the court, his face, misted with sweat, slowly turning gray.  The medic threw the fallen player’s shirt up and applied the defibrillator pads.  His shout of “Clear!” echoed all the way to the rafters of the eerily silent arena.  J’Quarius’s chest heaved, as the electricity flowed into his body, but nothing else moved.  Hansford couldn’t bear to see his wife watch this and threw himself between her and J’Quarius, holding her tightly in his arms.

The medic hit him with a second jolt.  Again nothing. 

A group of blue-uniformed paramedics materialized from the far end of the court, running over with a stretcher and as much equipment as they could carry.

One applied a mask over his mouth and nose and squeezed oxygen-spiked air into his lungs by bag, while another applied EKG leads hooked up to a portable monitor.  It didn’t take a medical degree to recognize the flat line on the display.  One of the paramedics loudly announced that he’d gotten an IV established, as his colleague handed him an ampule of epinephrine, which he quickly jetted into J’Quarius’s vein.  Still nothing. 

With a man at each corner of the stretcher, four paramedics lifted him off the floor, allowing the collapsible wheeled scaffolding to lock into place underneath him, and raced toward the ambulance to the sound of cautious applause from an apoplectic audience not quite sure how to respond.  All the while, the paramedic at J’Quarius’s head continued rhythmically squeezing the bag, inflating his lungs against no resistance.

Within seconds of hitting the emergency room, after 21 minutes of CPR, 17-year 11-month old J’Quarius Jones was pronounced dead.

~~~

Back at the arena, Ryan and all the other media members,  had been quickly ushered out of the locker room to give the Chicago team some privacy.

Ryan placed the Bluetooth earpiece back in his ear.  “Did you see that?” he asked, in utter shock.

“Yep.  Figures,” Dillon answered disappointedly, as if something had happened directly to him.  “This whole thing was for nothing!  We were so close!”

“I hope he’s ok,” Ryan said, not even considering the possibility that this youthful embodiment of physical fitness was already dead.

“Me too,” Dillon said.  “But even if he is, I don’t have any idea how we’re gonna be able to make contact with him at this point.”

“I tried,” Ryan said, holding out hope that Dillon would still give him whatever information he had on his parents.

“Well, we’ll have to try again.  Think.  And I’ll be back in contact with you – somehow.”

“Wait,” Ryan pleaded.  “What about my parents?”

“Sorry, I can’t give away my only leverage,” Dillon said heartlessly.  “I need you.”

“What?”  Ryan snapped back angrily.  “If you think telling me whatever info you have is going to make me
less
committed to your cause, I don’t need it.  Don’t contact me again!”

“Your dad’s friend Jared Ralston is a minority owner of your stock,” Dillon blurted out.  “And he’s been on the board of directors since day one.”

Ryan shook his head and gritted his teeth.  “I already knew that!” 
What a waste of time.
  He reached up for his earpiece disgustedly.  He had to get back to the train station to meet Jasper.

“But he never purchased any shares,” Dillon added.

Ryan stopped mid-stride.  “Then how did he...”  It had been years since he’d last spoken to J.R.

“That’s all I can tell you.  Really.  That’s all I know,” Dillon said.  “I’ll get back in contact you when the time is right.”

~~~

In the weeks following J’Quarius’s death, Bradford, desperate to exonerate Avillage of any involvement in the untimely death of the wildly popular student athlete and under heavy pressure from investors who’d seen their shares plummet to zero, filed suit against the University of Chicago Children’s Medical Center for failing to disclose the risks of J'Quarius's condition.

The charges were reviewed by the hospital's lawyers, who determined that Dr. Bennett, the treating physician, had meticulously documented his entire conversation, specifically detailing his warning that J’Quarius “could die with continued participation in sports.”

Bradford wouldn’t back away from his position that he’d never been given that information though – despite the fact that the electronic medical record supported Dr. Bennett's account.  And Bennett’s entry was time-stamped just minutes after he and Bradford had talked.

Lawyers from Bradford’s team, along with the hospital's side, all urged Bradford to drop the baseless case, but he wouldn’t relent.  He would, however, be willing to settle out of court, he announced. 

Dr. Bennett pushed hard to stand and fight, but as a single physician in a multi-specialty group-practice employed by a self-insured hospital system looking to protect its bottom line, the decision wasn’t up to him. Bradford, only interested in winning in the court of public opinion, opened with an offer to settle the case for a ludicrous sum of one thousand dollars, on the condition that the amount never be disclosed publicly. The hospital, looking at the alternative of a legal fight, which they would unquestionably win but that would cost them potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend against a client with Bradford's resources, jumped at the offer.

CHAPTER 9

By 1AM, most of the guests had either departed or were heading for their cars, gradually giving way to a bustling cleaning crew, now diligently but inconspicuously engaged in vacuuming, blotting out wine stains, and shuttling empty cocktail plates back to the kitchen of James Prescott’s expansive Southampton estate.  But Prescott, in a nostalgic mood on the tenth anniversary of the opening of his exchange, couldn’t quite bring himself to call it an evening.  By any measure, tonight qualified as a special occasion. 

After a quick survey of the dwindling crowd, he singled out Alec Alanson, a media member of all people, to join him in his study for a nightcap. 

Alec wrote for the Financial Times and was the rare individual who Prescott believed actually “got” him.  If anyone ever set out to pen his biography, Prescott tacitly hoped it would be him, with his style of interview that weighed heavily toward listening.  A successful interview, Alec believed, was like a memorable photograph.  Of course it had to have a compelling subject, and it had to be successfully framed, but if the one recording the beauty or the evil or the genius of the subject became even the slightest focus of the piece, then it was a failure.  Alec’s portrayals didn’t center around getting answers to “the tough questions.”  They involved unobtrusively peeling away layers and, hopefully, reaching the core.  Tonight, he wouldn't pose a single question.

The heavy wooden door to the study creaked open from its high arched frame as Prescott ushered his guest in ahead of him.  Prescott had actually given his housestaff explicit instructions not to grease the door, as he felt the creak added character to the entrance to this most august room of the house.

Inside, a fire crackled within a cavernous stone fireplace behind a masculine wrought iron gate, flanked on each side by a stack of hand-split oak logs and heavy iron pokers.  The opposite wall was lined with rare books that Prescott had painstakingly collected over the years.  His most prized possession, an original field atlas illustrated by Audubon himself, lay on a glass-covered pedestal in the center of the room, illuminated from above by a focused beam of white light that somehow left the remainder of the dimly lit room under the influence of only the warm tones of the flickering firelight.  Dark wood stretched up the windowless walls to the sixteen-foot beamed ceiling, and a hand-knotted oriental wool rug dating from the late 1800s covered the entirety of the floor.  A bare desk at the back of the room and two worn leather armchairs toward the fore were the only furnishings.

Prescott discreetly tugged on the false spine of a three-volume set on one of the lower bookshelves to reveal a simple ovoid decanter and 2 stout crystal glasses.  “Care for a drink?” he asked, holding up a bottle of 60-year-old Macallan Whisky.

Just sober enough to realize that another drink was the last thing on Earth he needed but also that this would probably be the only time in his life he’d be offered a drink from a bottle that cost more than his car, Alec Alanson politely accepted.

Prescott handed a generous pour to his honored guest, the most recent member of an exclusive club who’d seen the inside of his study, and he began to pace.  He carefully studied a row of books at his eye level, as Alec sat in silence, hypnotized by the honeyed aroma of the whisky mixing with the campfire smells of the burning wood.

“You know,” Prescott started hesitantly, “when you’re young, your focus is on the question, ‘What are you going to do?’”

He plodded deliberately a little further down the row of books before continuing,  “Then sometime in your 30s, you pop your head up from your work long enough to ask yourself, ‘What am I doing?’”

He paused again, having reached the end of the bookshelf, before starting back, “In your 50s, the question gradually evolves to, ‘What have I done?’ 

“Now,” he said, walking back toward the front the room, “as I’m entering my 60s, I’ve begun to consider how what I’ve done will be perceived historically – what my legacy will be.

“Are you old enough to remember the 1984 Olympics?”  Prescott asked, abruptly changing the subject as he slid down into the armchair opposite Alec, casually crossing his right leg over his left.

Alec shook his head “no,” careful not to interrupt the mood with extraneous words, studying Prescott’s every move and expression. 

“The United States won more gold medals that year than the next five countries on the medal list
combined
.”  Prescott followed the statement with a period of silence sufficient to ensure that what he’d said had fully sunk in.  “This will probably sound simplistic – and it was; I was just a kid at the time – but I saw what America could be that summer.  Our 250 million against the world’s five billion, and we came out ahead. 

“That lit a fire in me that’s never really been extinguished – even after I learned of the Soviet boycott. 

“My goal from that summer forward became to do whatever I could to keep or, in some cases, to make this country great.  Exceptional.

“At eighteen, I’d been offered admission to Princeton, but I had actually planned to delay my admission to serve in the army – not the reserves or ROTC, mind you.  I was going to enlist.”  After stealing a quick peek at Alec to measure his response, he glanced back down at his single-malt Scotch and swirled it reflectively in his snifter, studying the legs of the amber liquid as they slowly stretched down the sides of the glass.  He’d never disclosed this to anyone before – not even his wife.  After briefly reconsidering, he opted to keep going.

“My dad talked me out of it – and of course he was right.  My talents lay in other areas.  I had far more to contribute as a civilian.  And I needed more of an academic foundation to maximize my personal strengths.

“As a junior at Princeton three years later, I finished a minor in American Politics – with the genuine intention of one day running for office. 

“Again, my dad steered me away.  ‘Governments are run by schmoozers,’ he told me. ‘Businesses are run by leaders.’  Again, he was right.

“Then, later that year, I was hit with a lightning bolt of clarity,” Prescott said, his voice rising as he stood back to his feet.  “What made this country great – this country with such a brief history and a relatively small percentage of the world’s population – in everything from athletics to electronics, medicine to space exploration, entertainment to finance – was a very small number of exceptional individuals.  America had always celebrated these men and women – native born and immigrant – and had given them the environment, the opportunity and the incentive to maximize their potential.

“But unlike the olympic development program, where the best of the best were identified early, nurtured, trained and, in due time, celebrated, I saw our country implementing policies focused not on nurturing genius but solely on pulling up those people with no potential for greatness, while the would-be-great seemed complacently contented as bigger-than-average fish in their small ponds.”  Prescott walked toward the west wall and gazed deeply into the fire.  There was no way for him to continue without potentially coming off as callous. 
So be it.

“I freely admit ‘no child left behind’ has never been my policy.  And I could not care less how our average student stacks up against any other country’s average student in math or science,” Prescott said unapologetically, forcefully stoking the bottom log in the fire, which crumbled into a heap of glowing embers.  “Some children are destined to work at the grocery checkout.  Some are destined to become automatons in the world’s most powerful military.  Some may carve out a nice living as an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer.  There’s certainly no shame in that.  We need those people.  But they aren’t
the individuals who make this country exceptional.

“The exceptional are few and
far
between. 
They
make an impact. 
They
leave a legacy. 
They
would become my focus.”

~~~

Annamaria Olivera’s eyes struggled to half-mast, as she slowly transitioned from a sound sleep to a semi-conscious twilight.  A persistent buzzing from the front-left pocket of her painted-on jeans and a continuous throbbing in her head wouldn’t allow her to fall back asleep, and the lingering alcohol that had kept her liver working double-time all night prevented her from fully waking up.

A thin web of viscous saliva stretched between the corner of her half-open mouth and a puddle of drool on the magazine cover her head had spent the night resting on, as she slowly pushed herself up off the floor.  A veritable newsstand of similar magazines carpeted the opulent hotel suite, her image splashed across every one – Glamour, Vogue, Cosmo, Vanity Fair, and a host of weekly tabloids.  How they – or she – ended up there was a mystery that would probably never be solved.

Holding her pounding head in one hand, straining to focus her blurred vision on the cell phone in her other, she mumbled the incoming text message out loud, “We need to meet – Fellow Avillage Orphan.”

And with those seven words, she was wide awake – despite the persistent headache.

Annamaria’s childhood had officially ended the day that Aaron Bradford had set foot in her Rainbow City orphanage.

For most of the past five years she had traveled the globe with her adoptive mother, an aging model, who was far too envious of her to be any kind of role model, and her father, a photographer who viewed her as no less an inanimate piece of artwork than any of the other photographers she’d worked with had. 

When she’d turned seventeen, Bradford and her board of directors had happily signed off on her request to move on without her parents, saving the shareholders a year’s worth of parental stipends in the process.  And while she hadn’t sacrificed any nurturing or love by ridding herself of her toxic adoptive parents, she had given up the last shred of structure she’d had in her life.

Her flawless look and effortless talent allowed her to live by her own rules, and she knew it.  As was the case with many Avillage recruits, she resented her work – and the people who were profiting from it – but the money was addictive, and she’d been so deeply indoctrinated with the idea that she had to be successful that she kept going.  Plus she knew if she stopped, even for a moment, she might be forced to look at what she’d become, and she wasn’t ready to deal with that.

The text message was a complete shock.  Aside from her adoptive parents and a small group of people within Avillage, no one should have known that she was bound to Avillage, and as far as she knew, she had never come across anyone else who’d been adopted into the exchange. 

She called down to the valet to fetch her car as she changed into a pair of looser-fitting jeans and a baggy sweatshirt and then threaded her impossibly shiny black hair through the back of a Yankees hat that she pulled down low over her eyes.

Her shoot that weekend was cancelled, effective immediately.  It wasn’t as if her agency could do anything about it.  The only threat they could possibly make was that they’d get someone else.  But who would they get?  The day would inevitably come when she would be replaceable, but for now, there was only one Annamaria Olivera in the fashion world. 

Judging from the 617 area code on the text message, she figured she’d be heading to Boston. 

~~~

Tenuous allies at best, Ryan and Dillon had at least managed to resolve one of their longstanding issues.  Covert communication was no longer a problem now that they were living in the same city.  With high-end walkie-talkies, Dillon, a freshman at MIT, could transmit clearly two miles up Massachusetts Avenue to Harvard, where Ryan was a third-year senior majoring in economics.

They had gone back and forth for months over whether or not they should reach out to Annamaria.  Dillon was stuck on the fact that she’d become by far the highest-profile Avillage orphan, while Ryan contended that her near 24/7 press coverage was overwhelmingly
un
favorable and that anyone who was regularly referred to as a “socialite” in the tabloids wasn’t the face they needed for their cause – no matter how beautiful or famous a face it was. 

Dillon, driven by a self-sustaining internal fusion reaction of anger, was running low on patience and was desperate to do something.  Anything.  Now.  On the other hand, Ryan, who was still cautiously trying to distill the truth out of what his obviously biased source was feeding him, argued that they could potentially end up doing irreparable harm to their image if they made the wrong move.  They had to be viewed from the outside as sympathetic figures – exploited orphans – not greedy, entitled rich kids who already had way more than the average American (at least partially because of opportunities that Avillage had given them) and were now trying to hoard even more money.  Annamaria, whose only marketable talent seemed to be showing skin for the camera, exemplified the entitled rich kid.

Eventually Dillon couldn’t stand the inaction any longer, and texted Annamaria from his computer – using Ryan’s cell phone number.

~~~

Ryan was an even six feet tall with broad shoulders and a man’s build.  At seventeen, he wouldn’t have looked completely out of place in high school, but he certainly didn’t stick out in a lecture hall full of college students in their early 20s.  And his casual, confident demeanor further disguised any age discrepancy.