The I.P.O. (6 page)

“Things can be real easy or real hard in here.  It’s up to you,” Montay said, uncomfortably close to J’Quarius’s face.  “Now, I see you got two pairs of shoes.  The way I see it, no one needs two pairs.  I want your high tops.”

“No,” J’Quarius said disinterestedly, putting his hand on the doorknob to leave the dining room.

Montay slapped J’Quarius’s forearm, ripping it off the knob.  “I don’t think you heard me!  I said I want those shoes.”  His minions were closing in.

J’Quarius grabbed the doorknob in a second attempt to leave.  Again Montay’s hand slapped down on his forearm.  “Where do you think you’re going?  We’re not done,” Montay snarled.

This time, J’Quarius’s hand held fast on the knob.  He lifted his head up from the resigned position it had been hanging in and straightened up his shoulders.  Then slowly, deliberately, with Montay’s hand still clutched onto it, he raised his arm up to the deadbolt on the dining room door and twisted it locked.

Montay took a quick step back, his sneer fading fast, trying not to let his sycophants see the fear in his eyes.  But before he could figure out what was happening, J’Quarius’s hand was gripped tightly on his throat.

J’Quarius effortlessly spun him around and threw him into the door.  Teeth gritted, tears spurting sideways out of his bright red eyes, J’Quarius unleashed a year’s frustration on this petty, insignificant thug who happened to be looking for trouble in the worst possible place at a catastrophically bad time.

With one powerful hand, he lifted him up off the ground by his neck, leaving Montay kicking and flailing his legs helplessly 18 inches off the floor.  Veins bulging from his neck and forehead, J’Quarius rhythmically slammed him against the reinforced glass of the windowed door, all the while keeping a maniacally vacant stare fixed on Montay.

Two orphanage workers on the other side of the glass scrambled for the door shouting at J’Quarius to stop as they fumbled with their key rings.

An amalgam of emotions – grief from his grandmother’s death, hopelessness that he’d never get out of this place and resentment for having been cast as the town jester playing for the crowd’s entertainment on the basketball court, yet going home alone to an orphanage every night – manifest as unadulterated rage. 

“You’re gonna kill him,” one of the lackeys shrieked as Montay gradually stopped struggling and went limp.  Thud, thud, thud came the continued drumming of his flaccid body against the door.

Finally, one of the orphanage staff managed to unlatch the deadbolt and pull the door open.  J’Quarius gave one more shove, and, with the door no longer there to provide resistance,  released Montay,  who crumpled to the floor.  He lay there lifeless for a few seconds before coughing and gasping himself awake, gulping in the air he’d been starved of.

J’Quarius, suddenly aware of what he’d been doing, sunk to the ground, buried his head in his hands, and sobbed.

~~~

“Melvin, it’s Leonard again.  Look, if you’re there, pick up the phone.  We need to come up with a game plan here.  You can’t just ignore this and expect it to go away.  Your court date is in 4 days.  If we’re not prepared, we’re gonna go down in flames.  Please...”  Weinstien was cut off by the beep of the answering machine, which now flashed “17” new messages.

Melvin threw on a blue tank top and white gym shorts, laced up a brand new pair of white high tops, grabbed a duffel bag and left his apartment, not bothering to lock the door.  Down on the street below, he hailed a cab and directed the driver to Greenwich Village. 

“This good?” the driver asked twenty minutes later with no specific instruction on where in Greenwich Village his passenger had wanted to be dropped off.  Melvin peeled off a hundred dollar bill, handed it to the driver and, without asking for change, exited the cab.

Now on foot, he passed by three blue mailboxes, dropping a letter in each one.  Then he ducked into a hardware store, where he bought a sturdy rope, a bolt cutter and a permanent marker, paying with cash.  From there he descended into the nearest subway station and took the first train heading north. 

As the train rumbled into the Bronx from Manhattan, he moved to an empty car and removed the bolt cutter from his bag.  Then just before the train arrived at the last station, he snipped off his court-ordered ankle bracelet.

The train squealed to a stop, and as the doors slid open, Melvin kicked the bolt cutter and the bracelet off the train and sat back down to wait for it to head back south.

A few people straggled into the other cars, but no one boarded his.  It was nearing midnight on Sunday. 

After a 20 minute wait, the train jostled back to life and hissed loudly, as its doors slid back shut.  Melvin closed his eyes and meditated to the rhythmic rocking of the southbound train, going over the execution of his plan in his mind. 

For the three weeks he’d been incarcerated, The New York Times had been his only connection to the outside world, and he’d had more time than reading material.  What had captivated his attention most was not the sports section, but the financial pages, specifically a new section that had been created, behind the equities, commodities, and currencies, for AVEX – the Avillage Exchange.

He devoured every story about the exchange – the absurdity of it, the legality of it, and the single commodity that was currently on offer.  He read daily stories speculating what, or more accurately, who the second listing would be.  Rumors had initially sprouted that James Prescott was going to go in a very different direction from his highly cerebral first commodity.

Then, as interest had just started to wane in the fledgling market during the SEC-mandated 30-day hiatus between offering one and offering two, unnamed sources within Avillage had leaked that the next orphan to go public would be an athlete.  Unnamed sources were also quoted as saying that the SEC had demanded that the athlete’s ticker symbol be changed, so as not to reveal his identity.

Day by day, the pieces continued to fall into place, and it finally dawned on Melvin why he had been set up.  His son was already at the top of the middle school All-American lists; he’d even been profiled briefly on Yahoo Sports six months prior.  The fact that he was an orphan was a closely guarded secret by the administrators at Lincoln Junior High, but the Yahoo story had touched on his dogged dedication to his terminally-ill grandmother.  With the attention to detail that had been ascribed to Prescott, Melvin knew he wouldn’t have missed that.  J’Quarius was on every high-profile division I school’s radar – his initials would become immediately recognizable, if they weren’t already. 

Melvin had tried convincing his attorney that there was a plot against him, but the computer’s data was too overwhelmingly convincing, complete with expertly hacked dates on which he had supposedly downloaded and uploaded data, as well as fabricated emails it looked like he’d exchanged with known pornographers going back 2 years.

~~~

J’Quarius was in counseling when Arlene and Hansford Washington arrived at the orphanage.  After two sessions, the counselor had more or less come to the conclusion that J’Quarius had been pushed a little too far by a bad kid.  But J’Quarius had to understand and accept the responsibility that came with his size and athletic ability.  When a Chihuahua snaps, it gets scolded; when a Rottweiler snaps, it gets put down.

Arlene Washington was 43 years old.  A former college basketball standout at The University of Connecticut, she understood the kind of dedication it took to reach the highest levels of athletic success.  She was six feet tall, lean but with generous hips, and walked with a limping gait, trying to protect what little was what left of the cartilage in her knees. 

Hansford stood a half foot taller than his wife and looked a good ten years younger than his 44 years.  He had made some poor decisions early in life and didn’t get so much as a sniff from a major college after spending the last 6 months of his senior year of high school in jail for check fraud.  But after his release, a local junior college coach made sure he got his GED and then took him under his wing, taught him a little about basketball and a lot about being a man, and eventually got him a transfer to a small four-year school where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sports sciences. 

With that background, he’d gone on to become quite a coaching success story himself, having directed his inner city Chicago high school team to three state championships, while keeping his players out of trouble with the law and maintaining an astounding college matriculation rate among his players that was three times higher than the high school’s average.

Arlene had played briefly in the WNBA, but after meeting Hansford at a local gym, she’d fallen in love, had a child, and walked away from the game for good with no regrets.

Like J’Quarius, the Washingtons’ biological son had been a standout in middle school.  He even resembled J’Quarius from certain angles.  He’d gone on to make the Parade All-American team as a sophomore in high school, but a drunk driver had stolen him from his parents before he’d had a chance to start his junior year.  Devastated and too old to start over with a baby, Arlene and Hansford had jumped at the chance to take in an adolescent basketball prodigy from the inner city when Avillage had come calling.

When the counselor opened the door to introduce J’Quarius to the Washingtons, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.  Arlene and Hansford didn’t care in the moment that they weren’t legally full parents.  J’Quarius didn’t think about how and where his life might be uprooted.  They all simply felt an immediate sense of wholeness, satiety for a primal human need for which they’d been starving.

~~~

Just prior to sunrise, with shades of gray evolving to dull colors, Melvin emerged from a public restroom at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway.  An impressive suit that had drained the majority of his bank account covered the gym shorts and tank top he’d been wearing the night before.  Wingtips replaced the high tops that he now carried in his bag.

Apart from his size, he didn’t stand out from any other upwardly mobile young executive getting to work early on an important trading day.

With a purpose in his gait, he walked the two blocks to Avillage headquarters, slid past security with the first wave of employees that came through the lobby and took the unsecured elevator to the 24th floor.  From there, he hoofed it up the remaining 22 flights to the roof.

Knees throbbing and out of breath, he threw open the emergency exit and climbed down the small metal ladder to the rooftop, where he quickly shed the suit he’d been wearing.  After putting his high tops back on, he removed the rope and marker from the duffel bag and tossed it next to the $600 heap of clothes.

He then laid the thick braided rope down in a straight line on the blacktop before turning back and mouthing the number of paces, as he concentrated on maintaining a constant stride length.  When he reached 33, he marked the rope, tossed the marker aside and got busy tying knots.

Once he had securely fastened the end of the rope to the vent cap closest to the corner of the 45-story building, he backed up, slowly, methodically, toward the center of the building. 

With his eyes closed, he took in a few deep breaths to clear his mind. 

Then he opened his eyes. 

The sun was just peeking up over 11 Wall Street to the east.  To the southwest he could see Lady Liberty in the shadow of lower Manhattan surrounded by the calm water of New York Harbor, only her torch and crown illuminated. 

He then reached down to one of his socks to retrieve a scrap of newspaper that he’d clipped from the back of the sports section six weeks earlier and gently pressed the picture of J’Quarius to his lips.  Then he released it to the wind and watched it flitter and float away, climbing the updrafts between the buildings.

When the clipping had disappeared from sight, his expression hardened, along with his resolve.  He bounded toward the edge of the building next to the roof vent.  Reaching full speed just before he took flight, he let out a cathartic scream.  For the athletic career cut short.  For the college dream unrealized.  For the son he could never know.

Dozens of faceless suits on the street far below craned their necks toward the leonine roar and then scattered, as Melvin soared 20 feet clear of the building.  His rickety knees had conceded one final athletic statement. 

With a striking suddenness, his scream went silent as the rope cinched around his neck, choking off his airway.

His lifeless body, adorned in a blue tank top and gym shorts, came careening back toward the top floor of the building.  A full one-story spiderweb took shape in the plate glass on the top floor of Avillage headquarters as his massive corpse slammed into the window of James Prescott’s corner office.  Clearly visible from inside, through the kaleidoscopic glass, was the number 11 on the back of Melvin’s Lincoln Junior High jersey.  Above it were the letters JQJ.

~~~

Ticker symbol J opened with even more fervor than RTJ had, as investors leapt at the once-in-a-lifetime chance to get in on the ground floor of the next Michael Jordan or LeBron James, both of whom had reached net worths in the billions.  Prescott had deliberately undervalued the listing to re-energize his market, and the idea had worked to perfection.  One million shares of J opened at 5, peaked briefly at 34, and then closed at 27.  AVEX was the only financial news story of the day.