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He then went through his double-wink ritual.

  First, he winked at Rod Laver.

  While Tommy used what little wall space he had to hang framed photos of himself playing tennis, Carson hung a large LeRoy Neiman oil painting of his hero winning the 1969 US Open at Forest Hills.

  Then he winked at Alicia.

  He’d taken that photo of her one morning on the deck of the beach house they’d rented in Aruba while the sun was coming up and her hair was blowing in the dawn breeze.

  The photo always made him smile.

  It sat on the window ledge, right next to his all-time favorite tennis trophy—fourteen large sterling silver letters on a black Belgian marble base, spelling out “Bragging Rights.”

  The trophy always made him proud.

  Settling in to study his overnight e-mails, he sipped his juice until he spotted one that read, “I’m up.”

  Without checking the others, he speed-dialed Ken Warring in Omaha, and when Warring picked up, Carson wanted to know, “Why?”

  “‘Cause when I was your age,” he said, “I was coming in at this hour, and now, at my age, when you’re going out, I’m going to bed.” But that was the extent of his morning small talk. “You see his e-mail yet?”

  Putting down his juice, Carson quickly ran through his in-box until he found it.

  I will not agree to your terms, but I will agree to meet.

  “I see it,” Carson said. “What do you think it means?”

  “It means that,” Warring said, “he thinks we’re fools. We stay home, the deal is over, he wins. We go to Japan, the deal is still over, he still wins.”

  Warring had bought into a Japanese conglomerate, Shigetada Industries, after a chance meeting with the man who founded it, Chokichi Shigetada. They’d bumped into each other in 1993 in South Africa, where they’d both been the guest of Nelson Mandela at a gala party to celebrate his Nobel Peace Prize. Both of them had done business in South Africa, and both of them had been vocal Mandela supporters.

  During the gala dinner, Shigetada mentioned to Warring that he was looking for private equity. Three weeks later, Warring became Shigetada’s largest minority shareholder.

  Everything worked fine, as far as Warring was concerned, until old man Shigetada passed away and Shigetada’s eldest son, Daitaro—who was already in his sixties—took over.

  Junior didn’t have his father’s business skills or, as far as Warring was concerned, his father’s deeply ingrained culture.

  They’d had no dealings at all while the old man was alive, but the moment Junior took over, he did not hide his resentment toward Warring for having ignored him. They clashed over business and they clashed personally, until Warring decided he wanted out. He liked the business enough to put an offer on the table to buy it. And he disliked Daitaro Shigetada enough to come up with a number for which Warring would sell his holding.

  But Warring’s price for buying was too low and his price for selling was too high to suit Shigetada, who now accused Warring of deliberately undermining him.

  “How do you want to play it?” Carson asked.

  “For keeps,” Warring answered.

  “We go?”

  “No, you go.”

  “Let me think for a moment,” Carson said, wanting the time to tear off a small piece of bialy and pop it into his mouth. “He’s got fifty-one percent of the shares. We’re second with twenty-two. So there’s still twenty-seven out there. We know eighteen are with the institutions. That leaves nine somewhere. He knows the institutions aren’t sellers and that if we picked up all of the remaining nine, we’d have to declare any intention to bid. It does us no good.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Warring growled.

  “How about something he doesn’t know . . . that we’re holding a lot of his paper.”

  “And?”

  “And how about we threaten to call it in?”

  “Then what?”

  “Only some of the company’s debt is secured. We threaten to pull the bottom out, half the institutions sell, half of the remaining nine sell, we drop our shares onto the market, and his paper goes down the toilet. He’s out of business. We buy it all back at fire-sale prices.”

  “I like it,” Warring said. “Except . . . that could put us out of business, too.”

  “Probably would, if we actually do it. It’s called poker.”

  “And if he sees us and goes all in . . . it’s called hara-kiri.”

  Carson checked the time. “It’s quarter after eight at night in Japan. Nothing’s going to happen now until Monday morning, Tokyo time. Let me keep thinking, and I’ll get back to you.”

  When they hung up, Carson e-mailed Shigetada that he would come to Tokyo and asked if they could meet next Friday.

  Much to Carson’s surprise, an e-mail came back from Shigetada himself saying, “Come now. I will see you tomorrow.”

  “Sorry, dude,” Carson said to his screen and e-mailed back, “I will be in Tokyo next Friday.”

  Shigetada responded, “I won’t be.”

  “Then there is nothing more to discuss,” Carson wrote, held his breath, and sent the e-mail.

  This time, there was no immediate answer.

  Carson stared at his screen for nearly fifteen minutes.

  Nothing came back from Tokyo.

  WARRING’S WIFE, Anita, had been dying of breast cancer when, in 2001, he set up a charity called “Play for a Cure.”

  He hosted, and personally funded, an annual, all-Omaha tennis tournament, handing out prizes for every possible category of entry, from school children and young couples all the way up to “Over 80s” and handicapped players.

  The culmination of the weeklong event was an invitation-only, all-day Sunday, pro-celebrity, round-robin doubles event that saw six teams playing each other, vying for the “Bragging Rights” trophy.

  Carson had vaguely heard about it from some of the guys on the tour—they said it was a terrific weekend—but he never gave it any thought until, out of the blue, a few months after he quit the pro circuit, Warring phoned to invite him to play.

  Carson told Alicia he wasn’t interested.

  She asked him, “Why? You got something better to do?”

  In fact, he didn’t.

  He’d been earning good money playing tennis since before he graduated from Miami in 1998 with a BA in business. That meant weekends in Tallahassee and Mobile, Macon and Shreveport, Palm Beach and Orlando, but he paid off his student loans that way and earned pocket money hustling games at private tennis clubs around south Florida.

  Within a year of graduation, he’d been runner-up four times on the Futures Tour, won twice—in Hilton Head and Cape Cod—and soon accumulated enough ranking points to move up to the Challengers Tour.

  He won there too—in Brazil, Chile, Tunisia and Australia—and was quickly promoted again, now given access to all the ATP World Tour events, including the nine masters.

  His first year on that tour he played in thirty events and actually won two—Qatar and Johannesburg—but failed to qualify for any of the big four majors.

  The next year he won three—Acapulco, Calgary and Helsinki—but failed to get to Wimbledon and lost handily in the first round in Australia. He did, however, make it into the second round in both the French and US Opens.

  The year after that, he won four tournaments around the world—Salt Lake City, Quito, Mumbai and Johannesburg for the second time—but still couldn’t progress past the second rounds of any of the big four.

  But by now, traveling fifty weeks a year was taking its toll.

  When he was beaten in the first round at Wimbledon in 2004 by Roger Federer—6–3, 6–3, 6–0—he shook the Swiss star’s hand at the net and said, “I think I’ve had enough.”

  In the locker room, Federer asked what he meant by that.

  “I’m tired,” Carson said. “Not of playing tennis, but of the circuit. I’m tired of bad hotel rooms, I’m tired of bad food, I’m tired of airports, I’m tir
ed of bimbos looking to score their first black guy, I’m tired of promising my girlfriend that I will make it big someday and that when I do, we’ll have a great life together . . . because it’s just not going to happen.”

  “You going to quit?” Federer asked it as if he couldn’t imagine having any other life. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve made enough money and still have most of it, so I can live okay. But I don’t think I want this.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Not what, who,” he answered. “The girl back home.”

  Federer stared at him, as if the answer was obvious. “So what are you waiting for?”

  Carson stared at him, “You’re right,” patted Federer on the arm, “Have a good life, mon ami,” reached for his cell phone and dialed Miami.

  As soon as Alicia answered he said, “Warm up the coffee, mama, I’m coming home.”

  She said sympathetically, “You lost already?”

  “I did but you didn’t.”

  “You did but I didn’t . . . what?”

  “I lost, you won.”

  “What did I win?”

  “Me.”

  He flew back to Miami the next morning, and the two of them were married a week later in a small church in Little Havana.

  The wedding made the front page of the Miami Herald.

  Alicia had cohosted the biggest local morning show in Miami, Today in South Florida, on the NBC station since 2000.

  Born and raised there—her father was a lawyer and her mother was a doctor—there wasn’t anybody in Little Havana she didn’t know, and there wasn’t any Cuban in the entire state who she couldn’t get to.

  In 2000 she led the country on the coverage of the immigration and custody battle for the young Cuban refugee Elián González. Two years later she made headlines around the world covering the hunt for and capture of Miami’s most powerful crack cocaine dealer, Ernesto “Machito” Faz.

  Tipped off that the DEA was going to raid his heavily fortified house at the end of a dead-end street off West Flagler, Alicia had talked her way inside his house, with a camera crew, before the DEA arrived with a SWAT team from Miami-Dade Police. She’d wound up trapped there with Machito during a two-day standoff, all the time broadcasting regular reports that made it onto the network. The standoff had ended when Alicia convinced Machito to surrender. She walked him out and handed him over to the DEA.

  She was a star.

  But being Mr. Alicia Melendez was not what Carson wanted. And just two months into their marriage he confessed to her, “I really don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.”

  That’s when, out of the blue, Warring phoned. “I saw you play once in Palm Springs.”

  Carson told him, “I lost.”

  “And I saw you play in Vegas.”

  “I lost there, too.”

  “I saw you win in Punta del Este.”

  “See how far we both had to travel for a runner-up cut-glass vase?”

  “I’ll offer you a better trophy, and it’s a lot closer. Come play in Omaha.”

  “Whoever you are, you’re too late because I’ve hung up my Keds.”

  “It’s a charity event,” Warring said. “Last year I raised three mil. This year I’m gonna raise four. Give me an address, and I’ll FedEx you all the bumf. Also, I read somewhere that you just got married. I’ll send you a pair of first-class tickets. Maybe Omaha isn’t much of a honeymoon destination, but I promise you’ll have a good time.”

  The next day when a FedEx envelope arrived from Warring, Alicia Googled him, read several entries about him, and announced to Carson, “He’s known as the other one.”

  “The other one what?”

  “The other one other one,” she said. “There are two in Omaha, and he’s the other one.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Gazillionaires. There’s Warren Buffett, and there’s Kenneth Warring.”

  Carson didn’t want to know. “Just another rich guy.”

  “No,” she insisted, “an extremely, very rich, rich guy . . . who likes you enough to invite us to Omaha for the weekend.”

  “He can’t like me that much because he’s inviting us to Omaha.”

  “You ever been there?”

  “I have. And it was closed.”

  “I think we should go.”

  “Except you can’t get there from here.”

  “He said he was sending us tickets . . .”

  “What he didn’t say was that we’ll have to change planes nine times.”

  A week later, when Alicia opened the next FedEx from Warring, she told Carson, “He booked us on a direct flight.”

  “There is no direct flight from Miami to Omaha.”

  “On his airline there is.” She said Warring was sending his plane for them, and hoped they could be there for lunch on Saturday.

  Carson still wasn’t sure. So Alicia mentioned on-air that she and Carson were going to the event and promised to report back on Monday’s program.

  That settled it and on that Saturday, Warring’s G-5 whisked them off to Omaha.

  Expecting a chauffeured limo to meet them, they were surprised to find Warring himself waiting for them, driving his own car.

  Somewhere in his late sixties, he was short and robust, with a smallish head, large shoulders, no waist, a big grin and surprisingly large hands.

  He brought them to a spectacular twelve-bedroom, 1930s mock Tudor home sitting on four acres in northeast Omaha, backing onto Carter Lake. Right away, he took them upstairs to introduce them to his third wife, Anita, who was in the final stages of the disease.

  Alicia spent most of the weekend upstairs with her.

  However, Anita did come down for lunch, so they were five. The other guest for lunch was Warren Buffett.

  At dinner that night, under a huge marquee, everyone who was anyone in Omaha attended. So did a bunch of people Warring called “Non-Omers,” including tennis greats Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase, boxer Smokin’ Joe Frazier, actresses Morgan Fairchild and Rue McClanahan, actors Dick Van Dyke and John Spencer from the West Wing—it was just a year before he died—NBA star Karl Malone, Daunte Culpepper from the Minnesota Vikings and the inimitable Willie Nelson.

  Warring got up at the end of the meal and announced that at this year’s event, they’d raised $5.2 million.

  Everyone stood up and applauded him, while he blew kisses to Anita.

  Then Willie stood up.

  Just like that, unplanned and unannounced, he walked to the front of the marquee, borrowed a guitar from a guy in the band, said, “Anita darlin’, this is for you,” and sang “On the Road Again,” “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” and ended with “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

  The place went wild.

  Before he sat down, he asked the audience, “Anyone know what the last thing is that a woman who sleeps with Willie Nelson wants to hear the next morning?” He said right away, “I’m not Willie Nelson.”

  On Sunday, Carson and Warring paired as a team and won the tournament. At the awards’ presentation, Warring whispered to Carson he could only take the trophy home if he agreed to defend it next year.

  Alicia and Carson have been back every year since. And Carson has won it two more times.

  By now the charity tops $10 million a year.

  But Warring has since changed the name of it. He calls it, “Anita’s Play for a Cure.”

  She passed away ten days after Carson first played there.

  As soon as they heard the news, Alicia and Carson rushed back to Omaha—“I don’t care if we have to change planes fifty times,” Carson said—to stand with Warring, holding his hand at Anita’s funeral.

  Three months later, Carson received a call from a woman at Goldman Sachs, asking if he could come to New York to meet with Mr. Green.

  “Who’s Mr. Green and why does he want to meet me?”

  The woman was very vague and simply said she was relay
ing a message.

  “From who?”

  “From Mr. Green.”

  “But what does he want?”

  “He wants to meet you.”

  “To do what? Play tennis? Sorry,” he said, “I’m not interested.”

  The next thing Carson knew, Green himself was on the phone. “Please come to see me. I will explain everything when you get here.”

  When he got there, Carson was ushered into Gerald Green’s huge corner office, where the sign on the door read, Vice Chairman. “We want you to come to work for us,” Green said.

  “Why?” Carson admitted, “I’m a has-been tennis player who doesn’t know anything about finance, stocks, shares or the markets.”

  Green said, “You can learn.”

  Carson asked, “To do what? Be your corporate doubles partner?”

  “That’s not what this is all about.”

  “What is it all about?”

  “It’s about making money.” Green said, “That’s what we do. And one of our major private investors wants you on his investment team. He wants you to help us help him make money.”

  “Who?”

  “Kenneth Warring.”

  That afternoon Carson phoned Warring to say thanks, “But what do I know from private investing?”

  “You’re going to learn,” Warring said. “Because I have plans.”

  “For me?”

  “For us.”

  “I appreciate it. But that world . . .”

  “You have a degree in business.”

  “I have a piece of parchment that says I showed up and handed in enough term papers. Anyway . . . I can’t take a job in New York. Alicia’s show is doing really good. I’m not going to leave without her, and I can’t ask her to give that up for me.”

  “Hang tight,” Warring said. “I’m working on it. The difficult I can do right away. The impossible takes a day or two.”

  In fact, it was seven days later when Alicia received an offer she couldn’t refuse from NBC—to anchor the flagship six o’clock news at their local New York affiliate, WNBC Channel 4.

  Carson phoned Warring again. “How did you manage that?”

  All he’d say was, “Sorry it took so long.”

  So the two of them moved to New York. Alicia established herself as a media personality, while Carson worked hard to learn the world of Wall Street.