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Chapter 24

William Carter Jr.

New York City, June 2015

William was reviewing a draft of the speech that he was to give at his seventieth birthday. The main event was now only three weeks away, and everything was falling into place. In his study in his New York City apartment, he was surrounded by memories of what he had built. He glanced at the framed photograph of him with Barack Obama, a snapshot taken in Hawaii. There was also him and Warren Buffett laughing on the tarmac after touching down in Sun Valley. Him and David and Charles from Ross Financial encased in a weighty Baccarat crystal frame.

And then for some reason, another picture popped into his head, the Polaroid that had been taken of him and Kofi on the first day of their trip in Ghana. He hadn’t seen that picture in years, the physical copy lost to time, but he saw it in his mind. William wasn’t hallucinating, per se, but every day since the first time he’d heard Kofi’s name in years, he had the feeling that he was constantly being chased. He reached more frequently for his cigarettes, his hand trembling as he extracted one from the pack and smoked it out on the patio of his personal office. He noticed that his heart would race, that he would begin to perspire and get short of breath. He tried to disguise this as best he could as to be able to camouflage any weakness. He had assured Jacqueline that everything was contained, but he didn’t know truthfully if that was the case.

With only three weeks to go to the Vineyard party, one of his men on the ground reported that Gifty had been making some peculiar movements outside of her normal routine. She was as slow as could be expected at her age, taking long walks outside the gates of her considerably large home. It was strange in and of itself. She had been unofficially retired for decades, but according to paperwork filed with the IRS, she was officially a Carter Corporate consultant. Even though they had a contract, the fact that she wanted to blackmail him at all made William want to keep a close eye on her whereabouts and, more importantly, on any potential additional evidence that she might’ve had that suggested that he killed Kofi.

According to his sources, Gifty’s daughter had taken a meeting last year with a local teacher, which was strange, and William didn’t know why exactly, but it was giving him a feeling of unease. There was a part of him that wanted to inform Jacqueline about this, but he knew that she was very busy planning his birthday party, and after so many years, he had finally learned to stop micromanaging her.

It had never occurred to William that he would need to work at being a husband. Marriage in his head was a binary, like a light switch. It was either on or off, married or not. What happened in the middle was a great mystery, but when Professor Hill had suggested that getting married would aid in the establishment of his reputation, he couldn’t argue with the logic. With Jacqueline, he saw an opportunity and stepped into it, the intuitive sense that he’d begun to hone over the years working efficiently for him even outside of the office. It was an arrangement to begin with, but along the way, his feelings had evolved. He grew very fond of her and remained so to this day, sometimes fascinated by her sparkling wit and emotional intelligence, how she could work a room far more effortlessly than William ever could, and how she spoke to him with respect, maybe even care, even when he knew he was behaving like an idiot. They had a great partnership, and he’d never regretted his decision to make her his wife.

During the early days of their marriage, with Jacqueline being so low maintenance, William was able to focus on growing his business. He attended a Harvard Club lunch two years after their wedding where two gentlemen, both white and older than he, had been describing tactics for dodging their spouses. The Jewish music executive said, “I have to make up studio sessions just to get out of going to another Central Park Conservatory fundraiser. They have enough of my funds, and they need me too? No way.”

Across the table, a white-haired WASP agreed, “Why do you think I am golfing Saturdays and Sundays? Hell, I’ll go golf in Australia. Twenty-four hours to fly there and nine hours on the green uninterrupted? Bliss.”

William cut into his steak and listened good-naturedly but did not really have anything of measure to add. He left that lunch and phoned a hoary Professor Hill to recount to him what was said.

Professor Hill had laughed, “William, your wife is a saint, and not because she doesn’t care about golf or the trees in Central Park. She’s good because she works hard and she has agreed to align with your goal. Look how far you’ve been able to go with her help.” And that was the truth. He had needed Jacqueline’s help in the beginning, and he still did.

When he signed with Ross Financial, he was aware that Kofi’s ideas would help to give him a stable financial foundation, but that wasn’t enough to take him to the next level. Building projects took years to get off the ground, especially abroad, and it was a singular point-of-sale. It was guaranteed revenue, but there was an inherent limit to how much he could make based upon how much could be built, and so he had a problem that needed a solution. From listening to the issues on the ground in Ghana and poring over detailed reports of the market, he assessed that there was a lack of functional technology that stood in between him being able to maximize the potential of the factories that produced the modules for his properties.

To solve this problem, he recruited more factories to produce different modules so he could expand into more industries. There was no reason that these modules had to be specific to architecture. In fact, it was actually better if they were not. By automating production for other things he needed to help his business, he not only decreased the time it took to build new properties but also created a new industry that only served him in the end. He easily adapted to production for things like automobile parts, medical machinery, and even consumer goods.

His vision involved implanting complex systems of software into manufacturing facilities. This required clients to set up a subscription service, garnering a guaranteed monthly income for the initial cost of membership. Thereafter, anytime there were updates (and of course there were always updates), each additional service incurred another fee. Contracts minimally required a five-year commitment, and in that time, he generated tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, in additional profits.

Getting clients to sign on to this was a barrier he was confident that he could handle by, as Kofi had not liked to admit all those years ago, greasing the palms of several strategic government partners who could all but make it illegal for a production facility to not have this technology. And at Professor Hill’s direction, he significantly increased his charitable contributions in Ghana. He opened a school. He opened a facility for women specifically to be able to work and earn money. He named a hospital wing after Kofi and gave money to mental health. He also helped to fund the police force and befriended some judges too, because it was important to have them as allies.

William realized he was composing a kind of symphony. He never considered himself very artistic, but this was art, and it would have been impossible without his steadfast co-captain, Jacqueline. It was intricate and complex and beautiful, and best of all, all these things working in tandem reduced his taxable income. In the meantime, he continued paying Gifty as a consultant even after the $5 million payment was completed, because keeping her quiet and happy was key to his success.

He wasn’t totally sure about the requirements of husband and father outside of providing, but he was certain that providing was at the top of his priority list. He was still in constant contact with Professor Hill, who received a 10 percent finder’s fee on all William’s endeavors. Hill provided all the introductions to necessary experts, who also aided in guiding William in positioning himself optimally for the lifestyle that he was seeking and the legacy that he was determined to create.

William would have never guessed that decades later, after accomplishing all that he’d set to accomplish as a young man, the concept of legacy would trouble him deeply. Outside of thinking about Kofi, the other preoccupation giving him anxiety as his birthday approached was the colossal disappointment he was experiencing over his children. He hovered the cursor over the lines in the speech that read “Of course, my greatest achievement is being a father.” He knew this was what he was supposed to say, but his children had caused him a great deal of stress so far. He couldn’t find himself in them on most days, physically or otherwise.

He’d begun to notice their exaggerated shortcomings when they were young, how Asher seemed to epitomize imbecilic behavior at times, and how Kennedy seemed lost in her daydreams. Now that he was older, it was abundantly clear that they were ill equipped for a life without him at the helm. The first thing that activated his distaste for his own children was how careless they were. Never in a million years did he believe that his children would have no regard for caring for their things (or his, for that matter) and how mad this would make him. It started when they were toddlers, their sticky, dirty handprints covering vintage wallpaper that constantly had to be replaced. When they were in middle school, he would notice how they scuffed up their shoes, creased them, stepped on the backs to get out of them, never tied them, and let them wear down to a holey imitation of their original form. This also never bothered them.

With technology they were worse. They broke, tossed around, or lost everything from cell phones to digital cameras to keyboards and gaming consoles. An entire drawer in Asher’s desk was dedicated to being a graveyard for discarded devices. They abandoned their belongings all around the houses with no regard for how such a mess reflected on their character. They crashed cars (well, Asher did) and smashed devices and lost jewelry and accessories. William realized, entirely too late to do anything about it, that this was because his children were extremely certain that they could just get something new whenever they felt like it. Somewhere along the way, he realized, in cementing his vision of being among the elite, his children became just like the kids he went to Galston and Harvard with—spoiled rotten, obnoxious in how they related to exquisite things. They didn’t appreciate the art lining the walls that he’d won in auctions, beating out major museums and private institutions. They didn’t care about Watcha Cove’s mesmerizing scenic views. They didn’t interact with the world that he built for them with any kind of veneration. And it was such a profound disappointment.

William was not sure how to rectify this, and by the time that he noticed how problematic it was, it was too late to correct. Forcing gratitude on them as teenagers would just result in eye rolls and snide commentary. They already had to do community service through school and Jack and Jill, and this was something that they did without complaint since it had been established as routine, but how could he make them see how lucky they were to be in their position?

He toyed with an extreme idea: dropping them off somewhere without any money or knowledge about where they were and letting them use their instincts in order to get home. An insane proposition, frankly. He brought this up to Jacqueline one night as they were both flossing over their separate sinks. “Like Survivor ?” she asked him, slightly confused by the suggestion.

“Well, no,” he said, wanting to persuade her. “More like ... a way to cultivate resourcefulness.”

“They’re kids, William. Torture is not a mechanism for character development,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror.

To some degree, he could acknowledge that this was correct, but on the other hand, it worried him that his children had limited life skills. They seemed to lack drive, ambition, and general grit. They could only do what they did in a very specific context, which was sanitized and predetermined. William found it distressing that they had been to all the places that he deemed them worthy to be in: summer camps for networking, ski trips in the Alps, summers spent on safari, but with each eye roll and bored glance they displayed, he grew more resentful. “We’re here, we’ve made it!” he wanted to scream at them, but no matter how extreme the lesson, they would not learn. He’d once forced Asher to accompany him to a Carter Foundation Scholarship ceremony for kids his own age, hoping to see a spark of gratitude, but nothing came. Asher shook hands for five minutes and texted his friends for the rest of the time. They had grown up in such extreme comfort that they had no concept of struggle.

William had always imagined that his children would be smart, and with Asher, the most disappointing realization hit him. Asher was solidly average, and that was being generous. What Asher lacked in intelligence, though, he made up for in loyalty. The boy was as dedicated as they come. He would do whatever, whenever, no questions asked. In another life, he would have made an incredible soldier. William found this useful for the time being while he was vivacious and healthy, but the day would come eventually when he was gone and the Carter Corporation might also crumble if he wasn’t careful. The first step toward making sure both children were ready for the world at large was enrollment in an elite four-year university. This was not a formula that William Carter Jr. had invented, just one that he had obviously seen work.

The night that Asher was accepted to Princeton, William had stopped working. He threw an impromptu party for the four Carters at home. He turned the stereo up to full volume, knowing that he would be reported to the co-op board. He let Asher and Kennedy drink alcohol. He was certain they were doing it already anyway. He laughed with his kids, and when they had all gotten tipsy, asked everyone if they wanted to go for a drive. He had to summon two separate SUVs, but they paired up and piled in and drove to the marina on the East Side. Asher stuck his head through the sunroof of the other car, and William watched him let out a guttural scream, arms outstretched and head back, just absolutely roaring with delight. When they arrived at the dock, a chartered boat was waiting to take them around the island, anywhere they wanted to go.

“Oh my God, Dad, how’d you do this?” Kennedy asked as she was removing her shoes and being helped on board. William answered by tapping the side of his nose and winking like a thin Black Kris Kringle. It had been years, decades since he had allowed himself such freedom. As the city receded behind them and all four Carters clinked their glasses together with giggles, William had to blink back his tears. He knew he was fulfilling the destiny he had set out to accomplish the moment that he accepted that he would leave home and enroll at Galston. The moment that he let Kofi plunge into the dark. The moment that he decided to make his own luck and choose himself and his future family.