Pecking Order, page 14
On cue, the DJ began to spin his next record, 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.” He had been holding the popular record on his turntable while they used the microphone to address the crowd. Once he let it spin, the crowd went crazy and got back to dancing.
In confusion, Zee-Dog and Perry looked at each other and shrugged. It was not Ivan’s intention to end their stage presentation with such authority, it just happened that way. All the while, Lucina stood at his side in silence, with a grand, money-getting smile.
When Ivan realized he had cut the football players short, he tried to apologize to them offstage. “Hey, man, I didn’t mean to cut y’all off like that, I was just—”
Zee-Dog stopped him and said, “Shit, man, I didn’t want to be up there no way. I’m glad you did that.”
Perry added, “Yeah, they already know I’m halfway damn drunk in here. And this is the perfect shit to get back to the party with. Girls love this damn song.”
Zee-Dog stepped right into a circle of three excited girls and started dancing in the middle. Perry joined him and did the same. The party was back into full swing.
Ivan looked at Lucina, who barely moved to the beat. She seemed above dancing. She was only teasing the music.
He asked her, “How did that look when I did that?” He was still self-conscious about his short address to the crowd. He didn’t want to seem like a showboat or a control freak. But how did the crowd view it?
Lucina smiled at him, beaming away. She pulled his left shoulder down toward her to speak directly into his ear through the music.
She said, “I-van, you don’t even realize your full po-tential yet. But for-tunate-ly, I do. For both of us.”
Part III
Learning to Deal
Seven
Like a Pimp
AS SOON AS IVAN stepped away from Lucina at the Chargers party, he walked into Jeffrey Morefield, the overly cautious wide receiver, who had been able to play the background more successfully that evening. Jeffrey wasn’t even dressed for a weekend party. In his tailored suit and button-up shirt, he was only a tie away from a corporate business meeting.
He nodded to Ivan and told him, “That was good. It was straight to the point and no-nonsense.” He extended his hand for a shake.
Ivan took his hand and said, “Actually, I would have rather been in the crowd like you were on this one. I had no idea they were gonna pull me up there for that.”
Jeffrey smiled at him. He shook his head and said, “Naw, brother. You can’t hide in business. In business, you’re supposed to be on the field. That’s just who you are, Ivan. You were right where you needed to be to police things back in the right direction.” He jokingly added, “Those defensive guys can easily get out of hand on you.”
Ivan smiled back at him. “Thanks. I appreciate that. And I thank you again for working with us.”
“No problem. You’ll be hearing from me,” Jeffrey told him. He quickly disappeared into the crowd.
Ivan watched the reserved football player in a daze for a minute, while ignoring several admirers who hovered nearby for his attention. His eager webmasters were able to break through his haze.
“Hey, Ivan, that was awesome, man!” Jeff shouted at him over the music. “We need to make that your end-of-line slogan: ‘Peace out, party on.’ Did you feel the moment of that? That was out of this world.”
Paul added to his energy with a wide smile of his own. “We have it all on camera.”
Ivan nodded, noticing more people in the crowd who begged for his attention.
He told Paul, “That’s good. We’ll talk about it for the website this week,” and he moved on to meet and greet a few folks. He couldn’t continue to ignore them.
Catherine Boone was there in the crowd as well, dancing with his brother, Derrick, who had driven down from L.A. just to see his brother pull it off. Derrick knew Catherine from Ivan’s college years.
As soon as Ivan approached Catherine and his brother, Derrick told him, “Shit, you the man now, ain’t you?” his open hand extended.
Ivan took his brother’s hand and grinned. “Believe it or not, I didn’t mean for that to happen that way.”
“Yeah, but it did,” Derrick told him. “You shut the shit down and started the party back up again.”
“Actually, Perry Browning shut the party down,” Ivan stated.
“Yeah, and how many of us really wanted to listen to that football shit?” Derrick commented. “This ain’t no football field. These people paid their money for a party, and that’s what the hell you gave them. You saved us all from hearing that bullshit.”
Ivan smiled it off and addressed Catherine. She was looking special as usual, wearing bright colors to pop off of her smooth brown skin.
“How have you been?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “I’m hanging in there.”
Derrick felt the crowded space through their unspoken words. They needed more privacy.
“Yeah, well, let me let you guys catch up while I catch on to something else in here,” he hinted.
When Derrick walked away, Catherine said, “So, you end up with a San Diego Chargers party, and then you go from high yellow to foreign now. I guess blond and blue is next up, hunh?”
Ivan chuckled. He said, “I see you still have your candor. So, who’s been occupying your time lately? And by the way, Lucina and I are strictly business. Even Ida knows that.”
Ivan figured there was no sense in hiding anything from her. They were all adults in the room. And adults made adult decisions.
Catherine said, “Does she really? Because I’ve heard a few things about Lucina,” she insinuated.
Ivan laughed off the venom again. He asked, “Is that the direction we’re headed in now? Because I still consider you a good friend. We have a lot of great memories together.”
Catherine looked into his face and snapped, “You know what, Ivan, spare me the bullshit. Okay? Because I’m not from San Diego, and I can clearly see the direction you’re headed in now. I thought you, of all people, wouldn’t go for that. But I guess I was wrong.”
Ivan frowned at her. “Go for what? Look, all I’m trying to do is grow my business in here.”
Then he stopped and realized that he was in the middle of a crowded event, where people were still watching him. How would it look for him to have an argument? So he smiled it off and said, “I’m obviously the bad guy now. Is that it? Is that what you’re trying to make me out to be?”
On cue, a Filipina assistant asked him politely, “Do you need anything, Ivan?” She was easily one of the most eye-catching girls in the room. At five foot five with three-inch heels on, she stood eye to eye with Catherine.
Catherine responded by looking through the crowd for Lucina. She figured, who else would send a pretty foreign girl to interrupt them? Lucina had nearly twenty associate girlfriends around the room. They were swarming the place. She even knew most of the Chargers cheerleaders who were there.
Ivan said, “Naw, I’m good right now. But thanks.”
“Are you sure?” the assistant pressed him.
Catherine looked the girl in her face but failed to get any eye contact from her.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Ivan told her.
“Okay, well, you let me know if you need anything.” Then she looked at Catherine. “Hi.” She never waited for a response. She was there to assist Ivan and nothing more. Catherine wouldn’t have responded to her with anything positive anyway.
Ivan’s college girlfriend looked back at him and was convinced by the whole scene. He had crossed over into a different world. She told him, “You be whatever the hell you want to be now, Ivan,” and walked away.
Instinctively, Ivan wanted to reach out and secure her arm. He wanted to know more about what she felt. But he restrained himself. It would have given Catherine too much of his attention again. However, he still felt an impulse of loyalty to their friendship.
“Shit,” he cursed himself. He had only a second of private time before Henry Morgan from the Urban League appeared in front of him with his wife.
“Hey, Ivan, you’re moving on up fast now. This is huge.”
“Yeah, it really is,” his wife agreed.
Henry added, “Too bad Thomas couldn’t make it. He’s out of town this weekend. But I’ll be sure to tell him what he missed.”
Ivan smiled and said, “I know you will.”
Then he noticed the Filipina assistant was back.
“Ida and Lucina are waiting for you at the front,” she told him.
Henry overheard her. He said, “Well, go ’head and do your thing, Ivan. I know you’re busy. But we’re proud of you man. Real proud.”
Ivan continued to smile and nod. “Thanks.”
As he followed Lucina’s assistant to the front entrance of the ballroom, he grinned at the many well-wishers who continued to eye him and randomly call out his name.
“All right, Ivan! Great party!”
“Thanks!”
At the front entrance were Ida, Lucina, an assistant from Ivan’s camp, two girls from Lucina’s camp, and three beefy security men in black. They were awaiting his arrival with two metal money boxes and two dark leather money bags.
“We need to count everything up,” Lucina told him.
Ivan nodded and followed them all to a smaller, private room of the hotel.
“Only me, I-van, Ida, and May-ya in the room,” Lucina told them all. Maya was her most trusted friend, a Colombian woman with the dark hair and eyes and the olive-toned skin of people from her native country.
The three security men stood guard outside the closed door, while the other assistants returned to the party.
Ida opened her metal money box on an empty table and kept her poise. Maya did the same with her box. They then opened the leather bags and poured the money out onto the table.
Ivan looked down at the overflow of cash money in front of him and couldn’t believe his eyes. He had never seen that much hard cash in his life. Before the party, he had never seen twenty thousand dollars in hard cash, which the three Chargers had shelled over to promote it.
Damn! he thought. He forced himself to keep his cool like the rest of them.
Lucina, Ida, and Maya had all been around hard cash before, but not quite as much as they now had out in front of them.
Ivan took the lead. “Okay, so let’s count the hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives, and ones all in separate piles, from left to right.”
“You got it,” Ida told him.
“I’ll take the hun-dreds and fif-ties,” Lucina commented. “You two girls take the twen-ties. And I-van, since you are the a-ccoun-tant in the room, you count the fives and singles, and add it all up with the cal-cula-tor,” she joked with a smile.
“Yeah, leave it up to the accountant to do all of the grunt work with the bills, hunh? That’s typical,” Ivan joked back.
Lucina had brought a calculator and a thick bag of rubber bands to group the money with. They started their count by first organizing the bills into their separate piles.
They all began the exciting count of hard American cash in the San Diego hotel room. As expected, the twenties outnumbered all of the other bills. So Ida and Maya had their hands full.
When they all had finished, after two recounts, they had added up and grouped more than sixty-eight thousand dollars.
“Se-parate the first for-ty for the investors,” Lucina told Ivan.
Ida beat him to it, grouping twenty rubber-banded stacks of twenty-dollar bills. Each stack was two thousand dollars.
Ivan said, “Naw, don’t give them that. Give them the stacks of hundreds and fifties to make it easier for them to count.”
Lucina argued, “No, you want them to think about coun-ting. That way they know how much money they made with us.”
Ivan frowned and said, “These guys have all counted money like this before. They’re professional football players. Giving them twenty stacks of twenties will only make us look small-time.”
Ida and Maya looked at each other as if their argument was frivolous.
What the hell difference does it make? Ida mused. Money is money.
But Lucina insisted. She grabbed the stack of twenties and said, “Trust me on this, I-van. It’s much bet-ter to give them more to count. They are much more generous when coun-ting more than they are when coun-ting less.”
Ivan thought about that and froze for a minute. Maybe Perry and Zee-Dog would spend more with twenties, but Jeffrey would prefer his in a check if possible. Then again, Ivan could explain his own preferences to Jeffrey later. So as a team player, he agreed with Lucina.
Ivan nodded, understanding her game. “Okay, you’re right. Let’s just give them the twenties, then.”
“Thank you,” Lucina responded. Then she looked at her thin Movado watch. “It’s getting close to two o’clock. Let’s go say our good-byes now.”
AT THE END OF THE NIGHT, everyone was paid well, San Diego had enjoyed a hell of a football party, Lucina’s girls were out entertaining more of the players, and Ivan was headed back home in his car carrying a purse of more than twelve thousand dollars, while Ida followed him in her car.
Ivan’s brother Derrick was nowhere to be found and would not answer his cell phone. But that was all right with Ivan. Knowing D., he would tell him all about his adventurous night in the morning. Or more likely during that next afternoon.
Ivan was all smiles, driving in silence as he made his way back home. He had heard enough loud music to last him for the rest of the weekend.
“This has been a good damn night,” he told himself. “Now we have to make enough to throw parties without so much overhead.” He grumbled, “She should have negotiated thirty thousand back instead of forty,” in reference to the football players’ payout.
But we’ll work on that for next time, he thought.
As he continued to think it over on his drive back home, Lucina called him on his cell phone.
“So, what do you think about the bigger crowd?” she asked him.
“It’s much bigger money,” Ivan answered immediately.
“That’s what I already know. And we made a lot of big noise tonight, I-van,” she told him. “So now it will be ea-sier to throw more parties. Al-ready I have cli-ents li-ning up.”
Ivan jumped on that and said, “Hey, before you lock up more of these deals, you need to talk to me about the payouts first. Because these football players didn’t need to make back forty thousand dollars. They already got money.”
He thought the return was a stretch when she first told him about it. But now that he saw forty thousand dollars walk back out the door, it made the point even more evident. They needed the lion’s share of the money for doing the lion’s share of the work.
Lucina responded, “I-van, if you want more of the money, then you put up your own money. That’s the way it goes. But I am not in this biz-ness to risk my own money if I don’t have to.”
Ivan began to calculate immediately. If he put the twelve thousand he had just made into another major event, and made at least sixty-two, he could walk away with fifty thousand dollars instead of sixteen. Or if he split the deal down the middle with Lucina at six thousand apiece, they could each make twenty-five thousand off of their six.
In the middle of Ivan’s thoughts, Lucina told him, “I-van, please don’t get ahead of your-self. You have to re-mem-ber that this was a Chargers par-ty, and al-though people did come to dance and to have a good time, they still came to par-ty with the stars of the field. Otherwise they would not have paid twenty-five dollars and left their usual downtown clubs. O-kay? So, unless you have a celebrity showcase like we had to-night, please don’t think you can draw the same crowd and make the same money.”
She continued, “That is why I worked so hard to have this par-ty du-ring football season when the Chargers are the spot-light of the city.”
After Ivan listened to her explain things for a while, Lucina’s accent became normal to him. And she made good business sense. So Ivan nodded and reminded himself, Trust your partner.
He said, “So it’s all about having a celebrity draw?”
“Yes. Definitely,” she told him. “And celebrities cost money. That is why you use other people’s money and take less of a risk. And yes, you may earn less for yourself, but in the meantime, you lose less or nothing.”
Ivan chuckled and said, “Yeah, you lose all that setup time and effort, that’s what you lose.”
Lucina paused for a spell. She said, “Ivan, I hear so many people say that time is money in America. But in Brazil, we learn that time is only wasted when you do nothing at all. So as long as you are busy having a good time with your life, then you are not wasting time.”
Ivan had no comment. He thought, This girl has an answer for everything. And since he was almost back at home with Ida, he wanted to end their phone call.
“Well, anyway, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Are you in for the night?” he asked her.
“Are you?”
Ivan paused. She had to know that he was attracted to her. But he had spent enough time just trying to figure out Ida. Lucina was another long-term project. Nevertheless, he asked her, “Should I be?”
She chuckled. “You have a good night, Ivan. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
When they hung up, Ivan wished that he had never asked her. Now she was on his mind again, and in more ways than just business.
When he reached the parking lot of his apartment complex and climbed out of his car to walk up with Ida, he saw Julio step back inside his house. It was nearing three o’clock in the morning.
I wonder if he was out here smoking weed again. But I can’t smell it, Ivan thought.
Ida wondered the same thing. She smiled and asked, “Does your neighbor always smoke weed out here at night?”
Ivan laughed as they climbed the stairs together. “I was just wondering that myself. But I don’t really know. I don’t see him every night.”
Then he thought about Julio’s connection to super music producers Dr. Dre and Scott Storch through his cousin Mike Elizondo.
