A man in full, p.69
A Man in Full, page 69
After hanging up, Charlie swiveled in his chair until he was looking due north, away from the city. Another sunny day in May! He resented it. He resented God’s or Nature’s making it a sunny day. It reminded him too much of the optimism and energy of his youth, when he thought of life as a hill that led up to about age fifty-three or -four, a hill you climbed with gusto and boundless energy, somehow sure that what you would see at the crest would be the full glory of that dazzling Future you were always heading toward. In those days he would have been irresistibly curious about what the likes of Roger White, a black partner at Wringer Fleasom, wanted to see him about. But now he was not curious, not in the least, because he now knew that the golden glow at the top of the hill was merely the twilight at the rim of an abyss.
No, he only decided to go ahead and see the man out of loyalty to Inman. He had promised to do whatever he could to help, and maybe he would learn something Inman might want to know. Gloomily, with no zest left for the city and its great frays, he told Marguerite to go ahead and have the man come over here this afternoon.
Ever since his conversation with Wes Jordan about Charlie Croker, Roger had been compiling a file on him, and quite a fat file it had become, a good two inches thick. Wringer Fleasom’s research department had retrieved everything available on Nexis and Lexis, which was a lot but went back only as far as 1976. There was even more from before that, starting with Croker’s days of football glory as Georgia Tech’s “Sixty-Minute Man.” You could tell by the endless photographs in the Constitution and the Journal and, for that matter, in Time, Newsweek, Life, and Look, you could tell that back in those days, the 1950s and early 1960s, Charlie Croker had seemed like a giant. At six-foot-two, 215 pounds, he had hit the line “like a runaway Trailways bus,” wrote someone in the Journal in a typical, childishly exuberant sports-page simile of those days. The great Sixty-Minute Man … oh yes … It was hard for any black person to review all this adulation from forty years ago without getting into a resentful or at least a rueful state of mind. The great Charlie Croker had been a great white athlete of that period … which wasn’t saying much. In retrospect it was obvious that up against any average Grambling or Morgan State football team of those days, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and their Sixty-Minute Man wouldn’t have lasted sixty seconds. No, to realize just how many black lives, how many black talents, had been wasted, doomed to obscurity even a full century after the Civil War, you only had to do what he had been doing: go over the sports pages from forty years ago and review all these inflated grayboy bubble reputations, such as Charlie Croker’s. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it had been going over a big article in Atlanta magazine that included a description of a visit to Croker’s plantation, Turpmtine, down in Baker County, which was real Cracker country. There was a “Big House,” as in the days of slavery. There was an “overseer” as in the days of slavery. There was a “master” of Turpmtine, as in the days of slavery. Croker’s employees referred to him as “Cap’m Charlie.” The writer was not so uncouth as to identify them as black, but it was perfectly clear that they were. No, this two-inch-thick Croker file made Roger’s blood boil.
And now that the time had come to confront the man in person, his contempt was commingled with a touch of … apprehension. (He avoided using the word fear.) In photographs Croker reminded Roger of Coach Buck McNutter … the same massive, muscular hulk made even bigger by a thick coating of lard … the huge body and the tiny evil eyes … like the cruel plantation lords of old.
This … apprehension … was amplified when Roger got off the elevator on the thirty-ninth floor of the tower at Croker Concourse and looked through a pair of floor-to-ceiling glass doors adorned with great brass handles and saw the slab of granite or marble or whatever it was in front of the receptionist’s desk incised with the words CROKER GLOBAL and the corporation’s logo: a globe—the world—dominated by the enormous curving forms of a C and a G. When the glass doors, which must have been an inch thick, closed behind him, he felt he was now as deep into the alien country of Atlanta’s white establishment as he had ever been in his life. He began to wonder just how much fury Croker would dare unleash when he revealed in all its newborn nakedness the suggestion that he say a few good words about Fareek “the Cannon” Fanon.
Roger was thankful for the clothes he had chosen to wear today, because if there was ever a time when he needed sartorial armor, it was right now. He had on a navy hard-finished worsted single-breasted suit, a shirt with white collar and cuffs and a body of pale blue stripes, a medium blue crêpe de chine necktie with tiny navy pin dots at half-inch intervals, and cap-toed black shoes. From his breast pocket debouched a plain white silk handkerchief. In Atlanta, white or black, north of Ponce de Leon or south of it, sartorial armor didn’t get much more bulletproof than this.
The receptionist, a young white woman, checked him out from face to necktie to cap-toes. When he announced his name, the young woman smiled and told him to please take a seat; someone would be out very soon. He had just sat down in a leather armchair and was weighing the woman’s promise to decide whether it was sincerity or a faux-polite runaround he had detected in her voice, when an older white woman did, indeed, emerge from somewhere beyond the receptionist’s desk and invite him in. She led him through a small, windowless gallery that suddenly opened onto an enormous room. Light poured in, seemingly from all sides. Behind a desk so big it seemed like a satire on the executive life, in a great leather-covered swivel chair, sat the unmistakable Cracker bulk of Charlie Croker. With a heave of his chest, Croker rose and came walking—or, rather, limping—toward him. He seemed so much older than his pictures, and wearier. He gave Roger a smile, but it was a tired smile, and he had circles under his eyes. Yet he radiated physical power. He had on a white shirt and a dark red necktie, but no jacket. His neck, trapezius muscles, shoulders, and chest seemed to be a single unit-welded mass. They were so big, it was as if he were wearing a chest protector beneath his shirt. His hands were so big, Roger braced as they shook hands, for fear he might be another hearty bonecrusher, like Buck McNutter. Roger’s hand disappeared inside this huge white man’s, just as had been the case when he met McNutter, but in fact there was nothing unusual about the pressure Croker exerted.
Croker indicated that they should go to an alcove that opened off the big room and sit in a pair of low but plush leather swivel chairs. There were floor-to-ceiling windows. Down below in the foreground was a rolling thicket of green treetops that ran together so densely there was no sign whatsoever of the earth below, let alone the houses and roadways. The expanse of greenery was so vast and lush, it made you blink.
“Spectacular view!” said Roger.
Croker turned his head and looked at it himself for a moment, then turned back to Roger and said wearily, “Yeah … I reckon it is. The trouble with views is, after the first coupla weeks they don’t surprise you anymore.” Roger didn’t know what to say to that, and so Croker continued: “I’d like to write a history of views, if I could write, which I can’t.” Caint. “If you look at Atlanta real estate long enough, you’ll notice there was a time, not all that long ago, when folks didn’t care about views one way or the other. Views came cheap as the air and a lot cheaper than dirt. Then along about the 1960s, I reckon it was, folks discovered views, and that gave everybody one more thing to get competitive about.”
The man sounded like the Old Philosopher, wiser but wearier, a note Roger found disarming.
Croker sighed and said, “So you and Zandy White are partners—I mean Scott!” He shook his head and cast his eyes down, and said, “Nothing wrong with me. Godalmighty. Scott, Scott, Scott.”
Roger tried to analyze that one. Was it a simple transposition, his name for Zandy’s, or was it a Freudian slip that said, “He, Zandy, is white, but you’re not”?
By now Croker had started over. “Okay, as I thought I was saying, so you and Zandy Scott are partners.”
“Well, yes,” said Roger, smiling to show he didn’t care about the slip. “We’re partners, although some partners are more equal than others. I don’t know whether you know Zandy or not. I haven’t mentioned to him that I was coming to see you.” This was by way of notifying Croker that this was something Zandy Scott didn’t know about and didn’t have to know about. That, in turn, made him wonder what was on Croker’s mind at this moment.
To tell the truth, Charlie was thinking about the fact that this black man—whose name, like an idiot, he had just pinned on a white man—had no black accent at all. He had begun to run across that more and more, especially since the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings on television, when there you had one black person after another, professional people, and if you closed your eyes you couldn’t tell if they were black or white.
“Well,” Croker said, “what can I do for you?”
He said it with such a tired smile that Roger felt as if he was talking to someone who had come out on the losing end of a very long war.
“Mr. Croker,” he said, realizing as soon as the words left his mouth that the little speech he had rehearsed was going to come out sounding stilted, “I represent a young athlete at Georgia Tech, a football player named Fareek Fanon.”
“So I gather,” said Croker. “I read about it in the paper this morning.” He looked at Roger with a level and slightly suspicious gaze. Then he yawned and quickly covered his mouth with his hand. Roger was startled, taken aback, since he didn’t realize that this was a sign not of boredom but of advanced insomnia.
“I assure you,” Roger said, “that everything I’ve tried to do for my client thus far has been with an eye toward avoiding this kind of publicity, but that battle I’ve already lost.” He sounded terribly pompous to himself. “So now my main objective is to try to keep this thing from turning into a racial battleground.”
Charlie was busy trying to calculate where all this was leading. He decided that this solemn, somewhat stiff, educated black man was now going to ask him to intercede with Inman. The only interesting part would be listening to him trying to articulate the reasons why.
Lawyer White was sitting quite upright in the leather swivel chair. He had begun massaging the knuckles of his left hand with the fingers of his right hand … nerves … trying to figure out just how to put it, no doubt … Bathed in the light that came flooding in through the window wall, he didn’t look very dark at all … almost pale, in fact …
“As you know,” said Roger, “Fareek Fanon is an all-American running back, probably the most famous Georgia Tech running back since one named … Charles Croker.” Just as he had rehearsed it, he paused and smiled warmly. To his dismay, Croker yawned again and covered his mouth. He could think of nothing else to do but plow on:
“So I’m sure you’re aware—probably more aware than anyone else I can think of—of the pressures that suddenly converge on a young man when he has achieved fame of that magnitude, pressures of every sort, social pressures, public pressures, personal pressures—so that all at once you’re vulnerable to forces you’ve never even thought about before, forces you were never even aware of.”
He paused and looked at Croker, hoping to coax at least a nod of agreement out of him concerning that broad, general principle. All he saw was the big white man’s mouth and mandibles twisting and struggling mightily to avoid another yawn. So he put the question squarely:
“Do you agree? Is that true, generally speaking?”
“Aw.w.w.w., I reckon,” said Croker. Then he lifted his hands from his lap and gave them a little ironic toss in the air and said, “And therefore?”
Is he mocking me? Roger wondered. Aloud, somewhat flustered: “Well, the thing is—we’d like for you to meet Fareek, spend a little time with him if you can, see what he’s like, see if you agree with us—see if you think he’s the kind of young man who would do what all these rumors and anonymous reports accuse him of doing.”
Croker sighed, leaned back in his chair, and put on a big smile that was without any doubt ironic … and disconcerting … and then he said, “Who’s we?”
Roger said, “Well—Fareek and a great many backers of the Tech athletic program and a great many people who look upon Fareek as a role model. This thing could turn into a very ugly situation even if—by the usual standards—the charge is proved to have no basis in fact, which in fact is the case.” He was aware of tripping on his own verbal vines and thickets.
Croker gave his smile a twist to one side. Definitely ironic. “So … we want me to spend some time with Fareek Fanon …”
Roger’s heartbeat quickened. This was going to be the tricky part to put into words. “We realize that … uh … this would be an imposition on you. It would be an imposition on anybody, but especially you, since we realize that you … uh … have far more urgent problems right now than the fate of Fareek Fanon. But we think we’re in a position to clear the deck of those problems, so to speak, so that you’ll have the time to … uh … devote some time to what we hope you’ll be able to do.” He paused again, desperately hoping Croker would at least come out and meet him halfway on this misty terrain he had just sketched in.
Croker cocked his head to one side and said, “What ‘urgent problems’ are you talking about?”
“May I speak frankly?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“We’re very much aware of the fix you’re in with PlannersBanc. We’re aware of what happened with your Gulfstream Five aircraft and other measures the bank is threatening to take.” Croker still had his head cocked to one side. “Well—the fact is—if I can figure out the most exact way to put this—the fact is that Fareek, as an Atlanta celebrity with a big following, if you will, and various backers of Tech’s athletic program have enough friends so as to … so as to … be able to convince PlannersBanc that it’s … uh”—how the hell did this part go? He’d gone over it a hundred times in his mind—“that it’s … in their interest—as a big part of the city themselves—in their long-term interest—and possibly their short-term interest, even—since this thing has the potential to rip apart the entire fabric of the Atlanta Way in race relations—it’s in their interest to put your financial troubles behind you—and behind them—for good—so that you can devote your time and your interests to the role that you can now play in this crisis—or what could easily develop into a crisis, for the entire city.” He was aware of the sweat that had begun to flow in his armpits, beneath his T-shirt, the striped body of his shirt, and his 12-ounce navy worsted suit with its fashionably high-cut armholes.
“Put them behind me how?” said Croker. He still had his head cocked to one side, but he wasn’t giving him the ironic smile anymore. Perhaps he had taken a few baby steps out into the mist.
“Completely restructure the loans,” said Roger. “And call off the bank’s workout department.”
Croker said, “All this in return for my spending some time with Fareek Fanon.”
“And an expression of your sympathy and support for Fareek as someone who’s been in precisely the same situation himself, at the same college, someone who was once a young man with the same pressures and vulnerabilities—I mean, if you genuinely feel that way after getting to know Fareek. I realize that’s a big if.”
“And just how would I go about expressing my sympathy and support?”
“A press conference.”
“A press conference …”
“Yes.”
“And then my troubles will disappear …”
“Well, obviously, it can’t be as simple as that,” said Roger, “since what actually hangs in the balance here is the concern of many important players in the civic life of this city—their desire to defuse what could develop into a very ugly situation for them and the Atlanta Way and … Well, the whole city—but in a word, to answer your question … yes.”
“So what would I do,” said Croker, leaning forward in his seat and lowering his head slightly, “just take your word for it that you can deliver on such a promise?”
“I know what you’re saying,” said Roger, “and I don’t blame you.” All the while thinking: Oh, yes! He’s definitely out on that misty terrain now! “There’ll be a very simple test. Once you’ve met with Fareek, you decide whether or not to go ahead with the press conference. If you say yes, then you let us know, and immediately all pressure from PlannersBanc will cease. If you then do your part at the press conference, it will cease for good, and the bank will restructure the loans on the most generous terms imaginable. If you say no”—Roger drew in his chin and pulled a face that as much as said They’ll sic the dogs back on you.
Croker put his tongue in his cheek and just stared at him for what seemed like an eternity. Then he said, “If I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing, then this is the goddamnedest proposition I ever heard of.”
“Well,” said Roger, “this is an unusual situation, and it could become a critical situation in the life of this city, especially if the identity of the young woman in this situation becomes known, and a lot of people know it already. Do you know who it is?”
Croker hesitated. Then he said, “Yes, I do.”
Roger said, “A lot of people—a lot of people in a position to try to head it off—they see this as a situation like the Rodney King case or even the death of Martin Luther King, a situation where the city becomes polarized. Atlanta’s claim is, we’re the city that has put all that behind us. So if this city lets itself get polarized again, the implications, including the economic implications—there’d be just no end to it. So people are willing to go to great lengths to try to head such a situation off.”
“Okay,” said Croker, “let’s say that’s so.” No more mocking smile. “How do you—we—they—whoever you’re talking about here—how do you expect to put that kind of pressure on PlannersBanc?”
Roger said, “That I’m not at liberty to go into. That’s why we’re proposing a test. We can either deliver or we can’t.”
