I bought my second new suit in less than a month: a nice Calvin Klein three-button slim-fit in a heather-grey wool blend. Once again Marcus, the Eastern European tailor, was on the case. While fitting me he occasionally consulted a small black notebook and, like a mad scientist, found a passage or note that had him exclaiming, “Ah! Yes!” Then he would make his chalk marks. At one point Marcus stood on tippy toe and whispered, “You buy a new gun, you tell me. Makes difference in measurements, yes?”
When Tuesday morning came, I was looking good and ready to meet Kip Atchison, CEO of Titan Securities Investment Group.
Eleanor Paget was one of the first Detroit entrepreneurs to take an interest in revitalizing the city’s business core. Her considerable efforts had little to do with altruism. They had everything to do with money and solidifying her public legacy. Paget had shouldered, elbowed, bit, clawed and bludgeoned her way into the boys’ club of other Detroit business luminaries, all millionaires tens and hundreds of times over.
After the riots and “white flight” in the ’60s, several crushing recessions and astoundingly bad political management, property in Detroit became dirt cheap. Architectural wonders that had fifty years ago boasted ninety to a hundred percent occupancy had in recent decades gone begging. Four-star hotels went dark and Michelin-rated restaurants were shuttered. A pall settled over the city, lingering like smog over L.A.
This was the perfect multi-generational storm for entrepreneurs with pockets full of cash, including Paget. Detroit real estate in the early 21st century meant power. The power to shape a municipality to the benefit of the wealthy. It was the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.
41781 Titan Place on Woodward Avenue was Eleanor Paget’s land grab acquisition: a white skyscraper built in the late ’70s, gone into disuse for much of the ’90s and brought back to vibrant life in 2000.
The lobby of Titan Securities Investments Group was large and open, with an expanse of polished white marble floors, tall windows, lazily curving black leather sofas and ultra-modern stainless steel coffee tables. There were four dogwood saplings growing up through mulched holes in the marble floor and a modern take on a Japanese garden fountain at the lobby’s center. There were expensive sculptures, paintings and three large wall-mounted flat screen TVs.
None of the TVs were showing SportsCenter.
An expansive curved desk sat in front of a two-story marble wall bearing the Titan logo in polished stainless steel. At the desk sat an attractive black woman with short-cropped auburn hair, her expression pleasant but very professional.
The appearance of the lobby was inviting and feng shui. I took note of at least six security cameras. There were three security guards—one of them a big, beefy black guy—dressed identically in well-tailored black suits. One of the guards sat at the end of one of the sofas near the main entrance. A gaunt white guy with brown hair streaked with grey at the temples and wearing wire rim glasses. He was casually flipping through a magazine. It was my guess this guy was in command and on-point. The other two guards—bigger and beefier—were stationed by the elevators behind and to the right of the reception desk.
Looking like a million offshore bucks, I walked up to the good-looking woman at the lobby desk and announced myself.
“August Octavio Snow,” I said. “I have a nine o’clock with Mr. Kip Atchison.”
The receptionist smiled a perfect hostess smile, welcomed me to TSIG, Inc. and briefly consulted an iPad. She swept an elegant and well-manicured forefinger across the screen, then tapped something. Looking up at me and still holding her perfect smile, she said, “Please have a seat, Mr. Snow. Mr. Atchison’s executive assistant will be with you momentarily. Would you like something to drink? Spring water? Cappuccino?”
“Got any single malts back there?” I said.
“Glenmorangie? Glenfiddich?”
“Seriously?” I said.
“I never joke when it comes to providing our guests and patrons with the highest level of comfort and convenience.”
I guessed “patrons” meant “customers” or “shareholders.” From a credenza drawer behind her, she pulled out a Waterford crystal tumbler and placed it on a rolling tray.
“May I assume you take it neat?” she said.
“It’s nine in the morning,” I said.
“It’s happy hour somewhere,” she said with a demure smile.
Inadvertently, I laughed. Then with a raised palm I said, “Pass.”
She touched a finger to her ear, said, “Yes, ma’am,” listened for a few more seconds and then said, “Ms. Mayfield will be with you momentarily. She apologizes for an unavoidable delay.”
I took a seat on one of the leather sofas. On the coffee table in front of me were an assortment of neatly arranged magazines and newspapers: Barron’s, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal. There were also magazines like Architectural Digest, National Geographic Traveler and Travel + Leisure. Nothing with comics except for the most recent issue of The New Yorker, and I rarely found their cartoons funny.
In the fifteen minutes it took Rose Mayfield to come and retrieve me, ten people had entered the lobby. Three talked briefly to the woman at the desk before heading to one of the three elevators at the back of the lobby. Five checked in at the desk, nodded and took seats on the other leather sofas, or simply stood and looked out the windows at the crowds and traffic on Woodward Avenue. The remaining two—a well-dressed elderly couple in the middle of a discussion—stopped near me to reassess exactly how much they needed for their annual month abroad.
“I thought we decided?” the elderly man said to the woman I presumed was his wife.
“Well,” the woman said hesitantly, “we kind of did. A month’s a long time, Jessep. I’m not so sure fifty’s going to be enough. And I don’t want to put a lot on our cards.”
The man shrugged his narrow Harris Tweed-covered shoulders (as I assumed many a man married for over thirty years shrugs when discussing plans with his wife) then proceeded to the desk, where they were unctuously greeted by the receptionist and escorted to an elevator.
Customers of TSIG coming to check on their pirate’s chest of gold doubloons.
A minute later the doors of an elevator slid open and Rose Mayfield emerged. One of the two security guards at the elevators started to escort her, but at a briefly raised hand from Mayfield he stopped and went back to his sentry post. As soon as the young woman at the lobby desk saw Mayfield, she stood, smiled and gestured discreetly to me. Mayfield nodded—she knew who I was—and walked toward me.
No sooner had I stood than the security guard with wire-rim glasses and grey-streaked hair quickly approached Mayfield. She held up a palm and he obediently stopped.
“Wow,” I said to Mayfield. “You’re like a Cesar Millan human whisperer.”
Mayfield and I shook hands. She said, “I am so sorry for the delay, Mr. Snow. Every day is a challenge, emergency or test of faith. We’ve avoided disaster thus far.”
I said it wasn’t a problem and that I’d been enjoying the ambiance and riveting conversation—“Boxers, briefs or commando”—with the dead-eyed security guard who at this point stood well within earshot of me.
We entered the elevator and the doors slid closed. Mayfield swiped a keycard against a laser reader and we began to ascend.
“How many floors?” I said.
“TSIG has the first ten,” Mayfield said. “Eleven and twelve belong to one of our non-profit ventures—LifeLight, Inc. Fourteen through eighteen we lease. Nineteen and twenty are TSIG executive offices.”
“What’s this LifeLight thing?”
“We buy state-of-the-art streetlights—solar powered LEDs—and install them in neighborhoods that have been without them for ten, fifteen years. We’ve partnered with some of the car companies as well as DTE and a few others, to offset the costs. We’ve still got a long way to go. So far we’ve installed sixty-five with a goal of a hundred and twenty by the end of this quarter.”
“I think some of those lights are in my neighborhood,” I said.
“Really?” Mayfield said, smiling. “Which neighborhood is that?”
“Mexicantown.”
We came to a stop on the twentieth floor and emerged into a large, airy office space decorated with curving glass block cubicles and Scandinavian-styled pearwood furniture. It was mostly well-dressed young people gazing intently into the hypnotic glow of tablet computers or talking the lingua franca of finance on telephones. Others were performing their mission-critical walk along the plush carpeting, consulting notepads, checking emails or texting on smartphones.
“A twelve million dollar settlement from the city and you move to Mexicantown? Isn’t that a bit of a risky proposition?”
“I was raised there,” I said. “Back then it was a great place. I’d like to see it become a great place again.” Then I said, “What’s LifeLight’s installation goal?”
“The company that makes the streetlamps is a start-up with proprietary technology. It’s going to take some time for them to ramp up production capabilities, but we’re hoping we can have five hundred installed over the next three years. Lots of people out there living in the dark.”
“Lots of carnivores feeding in the dark,” I said.
“Plus we’ve got a couple land development proposals in front of city council,” Mayfield continued. “Large-scale urban gardens. Community parks. Wind and solar energy farms. Lots of open land in Detroit these days. Not very surprising considering the population now is about what it was in 1910.”
“Your idea or Eleanor Paget’s?”
Mayfield was steely and uncompromising in her clipped answer. “Mine.” Her chocolate brown eyes held me in their command when she added, “When Elle took over the bank from her father—which she had to wrestle from his cold, dead grip—I was one of the first ten new employees here. And the first black. The only original still standing. Elle and I became friends. I was one of the few people that took little to none of her shit, if you’ll pardon my spicy language.”
“Being half-black and half-Mexican, I’m quite the fan of spicy language,” I said.
As we walked down the long, wide hallway, everyone we passed nodded deferentially and said, “Ms. Mayfield.”
We reached a set of tall, brushed steel doors framed in rosewood. Mayfield pushed through the doors and took a seat behind the large rosewood desk. She gestured for me to sit in one of the two high-back red leather chairs.
“Mr. Atchison’s office?” I said, looking around and admiring the décor.
“Mine,” Mayfield said. She nodded to another set of tall, brushed steel doors to her left. “His office is through there.”
Upon closer inspection, there were signs that this was indeed Mayfield’s office: Photos of her smiling and being embraced by Eleanor Paget. Photos of Mayfield with the new mayor of Detroit, the governor and Presidents Barak Obama, Bush-43, Bill and Hillary Clinton. There were ornately scrolled citations from the most recent mayor, the governor and the presidents of Wayne State University, University of Detroit and Madonna University. And there were two large framed watercolor paintings directly behind her desk. Vivian Paget’s work, I assumed.
“How’s it feel to be so close to Titan’s heir apparent?” I said.
She laughed. “There were heir apparents before him,” she said. “And there will be heir apparents after him. I’ve signed the checks paying for their office remodels. And I’ve signed the checks for the movers who have ushered them unceremoniously out. Eleanor went through presidents, vice presidents, CIOs, COOs, directors and managers like a fat man goes through a bag of M&Ms.” She smiled. “I, Mr. Snow, am the only constant.”
I asked her about former employees and if any of them had been problematic upon their departure.
Mayfield, looking in full command behind her desk, said, “There have been a couple of lawsuits. Settled quickly, quietly and for sums that were regained within the first hour of the next trading day. The others have gone on to other private wealth management organizations. Two months here at Titan, whether they were fired or not, is considered quite prestigious to like firms. And some consider hiring a former TSIG executive a joyous middle-finger to us.” Then Mayfield paused, grinned and said, “Have we been enjoying a friendly conversation, Mr. Snow? Or perhaps an interrogation?”
“Bit of both, I suppose,” I said. “My apologies.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Her desk phone rang and she answered it.
Titan’s fair-haired boy was on his way.