A day earlier, the very same, Mary Ann, who also carried the needless burden of being senior class president, had enclosed a New York University application in a large manila envelope and mailed it to her younger brother. Two years older than he, Mary Ann adored her only brother. She was truly hoping that he would join her the following semester. She knew he would love the Ivy League school, known to be one of the best in the country and New York as well.
After all, how could anyone from the little hick town of French Lick, Indiana not love New York City? Oh, how she hoped he would make N.Y. U. his choice after graduation. She would take him to the East Village to see the Bohemians and the artists. She would take him to the coffeehouses where famous writers met. She had written him about it all but there was nothing like being there. How could she write about John Coltrane’s horn? Like Coltrane’s horn, New York, all too often, defied words. She’d written him several times, in the past wee alone, hoping to sway his opinion but had yet to get a response. So, she’d sent him the application, with the hope that he would see just how badly she wanted him to join her. She loved the city but it was easy to get lost and, more often than not, she felt alone. She was treasurer for the young Communist Party, a member of the 52
nd
Street Jazz Ensemble, played volleyball at the YWCA on Tuesday nights and basketball at the YMCA on Thursdays. On Friday nights, she would go barhopping, with her sorority sisters on Bleecker Street and she was constantly trying out for a role in some off-Broadway play. Then there was the matter of being senior class president while maintaining a 3.75 grade point average. All this she could handle. What she could not handle was her constant fear of being alone, a loner in a strange place—an outsider.
The same day her brother received the application, he boarded a flight for New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Upon his arrival, he took a cab into Manhattan with all intentions of surprising Mary Ann. He’d finished high school a semester earlier and had already been accepted at N.Y.U., where he planned to study law.
After a good deal of exasperation, supplemented by a twenty dollar bill, he was finally able to convince the Resident Advisor in Mary Ann’s dorm, that he was indeed her brother and that his intentions were honorable. Entering his sister’s dorm room that day would impact his life forever. Sitting with her head resting on her chest, thick white globs of saliva from the corners of her mouth, a bloody needle still dangling from her arm, her body still warm, sat Mary Ann Shannon, medical student, senior class president, her future now behind her, dead at nineteen years of age, a victim of a heroin overdose.
“It was at that moment, that very day, that my life changed,” Terry Shannon said. “I dedicated my life to my sister’s memory and to all the Mary Anns of the world. That was twenty-four years ago. And since then little has changed.”
The evening, which had begun so optimistically for William, had suddenly taken on a grave overtone and the darkening skies peering through the worn, red and white curtains of the little Italian restaurant did little to lift the som-berness.
“I’m sorry to hear about your sister,” was all William could muster. Pushing his dessert aside and sipping the last of his wine, William sighed and thought for a moment of all the Mary Anns that he had contributed to since his trip to Lagos.
“Tell me something, Terry. Why does your department allow this shit to hit the streets? You told me yourself that DEA has known about Morris and these shipments for years. How many innocent kids just like Mary Ann have to die before anything is done?”
“William, understand something,” Shannon confided. “Simply because I’m a contingent of DEA, does not mean that I either condone or understand their practices. In the case of your boss, who has political ties with both parties, all the way up to the oval office, it’s imperative that this thing be done correctly. If he had any knowledge of you or I sitting here discussing his foreign affairs, chances are we’d be dead by morning. Are you getting the gist of the gravity of the problem? If our case isn’t airtight, he could bring DEA to it’s knees. That’s how much power he wields. But this time I think we have him. I know the plan seems a little unorthodox, and it probably is, but it’s the only plan we’ve got. All I can suggest from my vantage point is to say a lot of Novenas, William.”
Terry Shannon paid the waiter, tipping him handsomely. Still, his demeanor did not change.
“Thank you and come again,” the waiter said beneath a heavy Sicilian accent.
“You think he means that?” Shannon said.
Both men chuckled as they headed for their respective cars.
A week later, William had Melinda drive him to Fulton County Airport. Several hours later, William arrived at Heathrow in London. To William it seemed like an eternity. He hadn’t had any hard liquor since that night at Dante’s and was determined not to drink now despite his fear of flying. Once in London, he decided to take advantage of the sights and see as much of London as he possibly could. He had become since his dinner with Terry Shannon cognizant of how precious life really was.
In between flights, he was able to visit Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey. Not knowing what tomorrow would bring, he strolled the streets thinking of Oliver Twist’s London and how much the city had actually changed from the dank, damp and cold of Dicken’s time. Five hours later, William Shannon boarded a British Airways flight on the last leg of his journey bound for Lagos, Nigeria.
On his arrival, Nigerian customs officials welcomed his return and quickly escorted him to a waiting limousine almost as if he were some foreign dignitary. Someone in government scrapped his hotel reservations and he was driven to a tiny villa overlooking Lagos. The panoramic view of the bustling city of Lagos was magnificent. That evening an entourage of smiling black waiters brought in tray after tray of Nigerian delicacies. He wondered if such a grandiose reception was the result of his last visit and his treatment of young Alex or was this just the government’s way of insuring that they receive a fair market value in the upcoming negotiations? If it were, they certainly had endeared themselves in his eyes. Unsure of how to handle such fanfare, William offered the headwaiter a hundred dollar tip at the end of the evening to split among his entourage. His refusal to accept it, left William with a plethora of questions he simply could not answer.
On his second day in Lagos, William was picked up at eight o’clock in the morning in a black chauffeured limousine and driven at his requests to the outskirts of town, then transported by land Rover to Alex’s village in the country. Everyone was busy with their daily chores when he arrived. Dismissed as another stalwart government official with another new decree, William found the village atmosphere in sharp contrast to the very festive mood he’d experienced only six months before. In the broad daylight, the stench of abject poverty filled his nostrils much the same way it had on his first trip to the back streets of Harlem in the early Nineties.
He found his way to the one-room hut Alex’s family occupied only to find it abandoned now. After a good deal of inquiry, which consumed the better part of the morning, an elderly woman who remembered the American from his last visit, approached him. From what he was able to gather from the bits and pieces of broken English, government officials, tired of complaints from hotel management, conducted a citywide crackdown on panhandling. Alex and one of his younger siblings were arrested. When their father tried to intervene, he was beaten, thrown into the back of a paddy wagon and hauled off along with his children.
Alex’s mother, after searching for months to no avail for her husband and children, was also threatened with incarceration if she continued to annoy the authorities. Unable to locate her family and unable to pay the rent, the property owner evicted what was left of the family. Heartbroken, she packed up the few belongings she could carry and walked the twenty some odd miles with her six remaining children in tow to her sister’s village.
“She went to the bank where you set up trust fund for Alex’s education in hopes of contacting you but the bank people would not help her. We tell her to take money out to pay officials for her rent. She say, this money for Alex education. I tell her, ‘Education hell, pay rent. Get you husband and children from the jail,’ I say to her. ‘What do we know of education? I tell her she a fool. The educated ones are the ones, which cause so much hardship. I tell her: ‘Pay the rent.’ But all she say is, ‘Money is for Alex to go to school.’ All she keeps telling me is that my Alex will go to college. I tell her: ‘He is in only college the authorities will allow him to go to; but she just keep shaking her head saying, ‘No.’”
William and the old woman hugged, tears streaming down both of their dark cheeks.
“I will do all I can, I promise. And, you in return, must promise me that you will not allow anyone to move into their home. When you see the landlord, tell him I, William Stanton, would like to speak to him. Tell him I will make it worth his while,” William said.
He gave the old woman his business card and scribbled a number on the back where he could be contacted then hugged her again, tightly.
“You are good man, Mr. William,” said the old woman. “The village has given up hope but as long as there are men like you, my friend, there is reason to live; there is still reason to hope. I know you will bring our Alex back to us. I know you will make it right, Mr. William.”
Climbing back into the Land Rover, William picked up the cell phone and called Davenport Enterprises.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davenport’s in a very important meeting and does not wished to be disturbed,” the secretary informed him.
“Tell him it’s William Stanton from.” before William could telling the voice on the other end the agency he was from, Davenport was on the line.
“Davenport here. That you, Stanton? Good to have you on board, son. Morris tells me you’ve got one helluva proposal for the government. Tells me the yield over the long term could very easily run into the hundreds of millions. Funny thing, though, he wouldn’t elaborate. Just kept telling me, ‘It’s your baby.’ First time I’ve ever known him to be that close-mouthed about anything and I’ve known Jonathan going on close to thirty-five years. He’s taken a real likin’ to you, son, and I think it goes beyond the dollars you’re bringing in. Tells me you’ve got some head on your shoulders and could come back a partner, despite what that crazy board says. That’s some kind of an accomplishment for a young man after only a couple of years with the firm,” Davenport said, pausing before continuing. “You know, William, Jonathan and I have been around for awhile. I guess we’ll both be bowing out in the next couple of years and let you young Turks run things. But from what I hear, you look to be that son he never had. The way it looks right now, you may just inherit the whole shebang, if you play your cards right. He told me to look after you while you were here. ‘Nothing but the best is the way he put it’.”
William was almost back within the city limits and Davenport was still yakking. “Are the hotel arrangements to your liking?” Davenport inquired.
“Fine sir, and thank you,” William responded, surprised. So it was Davenport and not the government who was responsible for all the hoopla. Now it all made sense. After all, why would the government go through all this trouble to make sure he was comfortable and then negate it all by locking Alex up?
“But the government vehicles, sir?” William said in amazement.
Davenport chuckled.
“It’s good to have friends in high places sometimes. The government is somewhat suspicious of foreign investors and their investments so I thought it best that they be a party to this. Anyway, what is it that I can do for you?”
“Well, sir, a friend of mine, a nine year old boy, who I had the opportunity to meet and who acted as my tour guide and interpreter on my last visit has been jailed for panhandling, along with his father and some of his siblings. Is there any chance I can have them released into my custody?”
“I’m well aware of the situation, William. I contacted Jonathan as soon as I heard. It appears you were working on two new rather lucrative accounts and I don’t think he wanted to disturb you at the time. He knew how you felt about the boy and didn’t know how much influence or bargaining power you would had in getting him released so he asked me to look into the matter but I must confess I haven’t been able to make any headway with the current regime’s Minister of Defense. He’s quite a character. So I turned to the Minister of the Interior, who appears to be a somewhat more reasonable fellow but he’s also having trouble. Seems Alex and his family are being used as examples. You’ve probably noticed that panhandling outside the villa is almost nonexistent. Wasn’t like that when you were here before. Petty theft and street crimes are down in general so there have been some benefits to the crackdown. Still, I know how you must feel and it certainly doesn’t warrant the time they’ve been locked up. Believe me, William, I know how you feel.”
“Do you, Mr. Davenport? Do you really?”
“I know that it happens everyday, son, but let’s not forget why you’re here, William. With power comes change. Make your play, present your proposal and when you come to an impasse, then discuss the boy. That’s how business is done, my boy.”
“I guess you’re right, sir,” William had to concede even though he detested Davenport calling him
boy,
that he was right.
“Are we still on for lunch on Thursday?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good! Let my secretary know if any changes arise.”
“I certainly will, sir.”
“And if you need anything, anything at all, just let me know. Your flight leaves on Friday?”
“Yes, sir. Nine forty-five a.m.”
“Well, it’s been good chatting with you, William, and remember to proceed slowly and cautiously with government around the boy’s situation. They don’t want to feel pressured or threatened from outsiders, concerning internal affairs.”
“I understand, sir.”