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Chapter 34

Asher Bennett Carter

New York City, July 2015

Asher watched Tashia and Kennedy slink out of the apartment. Cowards. He knew that Kennedy didn’t really have the stomach for this kind of thing, even if she was trying to prove that she did. It was just as well that she was gone. Now was his chance to finally prove that he was a Carter, once and for all. He stared at Ernest, waiting for a number. Ernest fell quiet again. Asher didn’t know if he was thinking of a number or thinking of a way to tell him to get lost. He was prepared to wait.

“Is this what you wanted, Ernest? It’s just you and me now,” Asher said to fill the silence. Ernest’s gaze was empty in return. Asher wondered if that meant he was giving in.

“You know, Ernest, this place you have is pretty shitty, but you know there’s a worse place to be, and that’s jail. I wasn’t going to say anything, but we could put you there for any number of crimes: drug trafficking, illegal possession of firearms, kiddie porn. I mean, if you don’t tell me a number, you could always pick an offense instead, and that can be arranged,” Asher said slowly, deliberately. He didn’t actually know if any of that was true, but it sounded good. Confidence was half the battle. He learned that when he won a regional squash tournament he had no business playing in when he was ten. Even if it wasn’t true, he knew Ernest wasn’t flush enough to sign up for a litigious conflict that would drag out for years.

“I knew it would come down to threats with you. It always does,” Ernest said, shaking his head. He pulled out a mismatched plastic chair and sat across from Asher. They faced off.

“Yeah, well, you threatened us first. Let’s just take a wager on who is prepared to make good on their threats, shall we?” Asher asked.

“I never threatened you,” Ernest said.

“You threatened our way of life, and that’s the same thing,” Asher shot back.

Ernest’s eyes filled with pity. He frowned.

“Okay, I have to know, what is it?” Asher asked.

“What is what?” Ernest replied.

“What is your obsession with me. Is it a crush? Like what’s your problem ?” Asher broke out the syllables in problem for emphasis.

“You think so highly of yourself, it’s amazing,” Ernest said.

Asher flashed a picture-perfect smile at Ernest. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Ernest’s face fell. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “You used me. First, I got the Carter Foundation Scholarship, and you and your dad used me as your poor poster boy to feel good about how charitable you are before you went to play some sultan in squash. Then you dismissed me every day that we were at Princeton together. I wanted to get you involved. I wanted your input. You never helped me with anything. It’s not even about friendship, but it’s about having integrity. You never said anything to your Ivy friends after they kicked my ass for no reason, did you? You never spoke up on my behalf to your squash buddies. You think of me as disposable because my bank account balance is low. And it’s not even about that. It’s really about how sick it is that all of this allows you to pretend like you’re a good person, like you’re better than some white billionaire because you guys care , or whatever.” He was waving his fingers in mock quotation in Asher’s face. “That’s pathetic! But then all of a sudden, I show you I am not as weak as you think I am, and here you are.”

“So that’s it. You wanna be friends, huh? You want access to the inner circle? You want acceptance into a club? Grow up. You’re either born into this life or you fucking take it. But I have good news for you. If you want it so bad, it can be yours, right now. You can be in this club, and I have to say, it’s pretty great. You won’t have to live like this anymore. If that’s what you want so bad, I’m telling you right now, you can see what it’s like.”

Ernest slammed his fist down on the table, and Asher shot to attention. “It’s not about that!” he yelled. Asher was admittedly surprised by this outburst, and he decided to let Ernest talk.

“I’m sick to death of how entitled you are. You’re a horrible person. Your father was a horrible person. You inflict pain and misery everywhere you go and don’t even think twice about it. Have you ever thought about Black folks and how you contribute to inequity and the poverty cycle?” Ernest paused to take a breath, and Asher used that opportunity to swoop in and correct the record.

“I’m going to stop you right there. Of course we do. We volunteer at a food bank every Thanksgiving. Bet you didn’t know that. You can’t dunk on me over something like that. I do charity work,” Asher said calmly, rehearsed, but he actually did believe that made a difference.

“I do know that because you also make sure that there’s a camera present every time you do something ‘nice’ with your time or money. You are an idiot. You don’t even deserve to be rich,” Ernest said shaking his head, resigned.

“See, that’s what you don’t understand. It’s not about being deserving,” Asher said. “Everyone knew it wasn’t about being deserving. People don’t get rich because they deserve to. They get rich because they seize it.” Even now, he knew Ernest didn’t deserve the money, but he needed to get him to see that he should take it. The taking, that’s what makes wealth.

“So what now, I agree to your hush money or you make my life a living hell, or worse?” Ernest said, seeming to finally be getting the picture.

“Or better. You take the money, and your life becomes better. You can leave this dump. You can afford to fuck off for a few months. Well, years, probably, looking at how you live. How much good do you think you could personally do with half a million dollars? You could probably get a lot done. Here or anywhere. You could start your own school. You could start your own publication. You could go anywhere you wanted for a while. You could be free. Or you could keep publishing your little blog, and we’ll pay everyone involved five thousand dollars to recant their stories, and nothing will ever change.” Asher crossed his arms.

Ernest was fixed, his body rigid. He was considering his options, surely, and had to know that a story that every major media outlet had declined to report on and a blog with less than five hundred hits wasn’t worth all this trouble. His twisted principles aside, he was still broke, which Asher imagined was very uncomfortable. He dropped the NDA document on the table and waited. For several minutes, Ernest left it where it was and stared at it, but then, with a shaking hand, he reached for it. He leafed through the hefty document, and by the time he was done, large semicircular wet spots had formed on his T-shirt under his arms.

“I want eight hundred thousand,” he said at last.

Asher fought the urge to smile. He respected him more for not accepting the first offer.

“Great, we can swing that,” Asher said, not even bothering to counter. “Sign.”

Ernest retreated the four steps to his kitchenette and pulled open a drawer to retrieve a pen. Asher noticed two mousetraps on the counter and immediately looked elsewhere. He needed to get out of there as soon as possible. Ernest signed and initialed all required pages. He handed over his laptop and all other material associated with any information that he found on the Carter Corporation. When Asher exited Ernest’s apartment, he ran into Kennedy and Tashia on the steps above. He was triumphantly clutching the laptop and signed NDA.

“What happened?” Kennedy asked him.

“He signed it. I think that’s all you really need to know,” Asher said.

They rose and followed Asher to the waiting black Escalade.

William Carter Jr.’s funeral was held the following week in New York. It was just as well attended as his birthday party would have been, probably even better. Asher and Kennedy flanked their mother, and both spoke about their father, only touching on the version of the man that everyone knew. They were recommitted to maintaining the mystique.

After the funeral, Asher briefly returned to Massachusetts for a meeting on the Harvard Business School campus. He’d requested bereavement leave to avoid sitting for any final exams, gave a generous nine-figure donation to the school in William Carter Jr.’s name, and suddenly he had a diploma. “It’s what Dad would have wanted,” he said to Kennedy on the phone a few weeks after it was official, parroting what she had said a few weeks prior. He didn’t know which part of it their dad would have wanted more: the Harvard Business School diploma or the way he didn’t have to get it like everyone else.

He had, in fact, taught them a lot in life. He might not have taught them how to ride a bike, or how to drive, or how to swim. He taught them things that were far more useful for their station, and Asher seemed to finally understand what it was all for. He’d taught them how to be rich.