He calmly told Ida, “Well, looks can be deceiving. Ask Mr. Thomas Jones. He’ll tell you all about what I’ve been doing.” He said, “In the meantime, ask your mother to give us a date, and we’ll make another event happen for her. And tell her I thank her again for having the courage to start me out. And I thank you,” he added. “I have no hard feelings about anything.”

But on Ida’s side, she did have hard feelings. She was tired of the successful black man’s rejection of black women and culture.

She told him, “It may be all well and good for you to give to the cause on the sly, Ivan. But sometimes it goes a long way for you to represent out in the public. You should think about that for a minute.”

After Ida hung up the phone with him, Ivan did think. He thought about how hard and long a road he might need to drive alone to get to where he was going. The picture was crystal clear to him now.

He asked himself, What am I supposed to do, stop making money doing what I’m doing and then struggle trying to do something more righteous? That’s crazy! Somebody gotta make this money. Period! And if it’s right there in front of me to be made, I don’t care if it’s white, Asian, or Mexican, I’m trying to make it. So if they wanna hate me for that, for not choosing to be down, dirty, and broke in the trenches, then so be it…And maybe they’ll just have to forgive me when I’m done. But I’m not stopping my hustle for nobody. They couldn’t pay me to do that. And that includes the women I choose.

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Ivan pulled up to the Gillespie Field Airport on the far east side of San Diego, just north of Interstate 8, in a white Bentley Arnage from Roman Zemeckis’s private collection. He wanted to make a statement of his wealth to Vance Wellings immediately.

He climbed out of the black leather interior of the backseat in his sharpest dark blue suit, a powerful blue-and-gold-striped tie, and immaculate black shoes, and had the driver carry his luggage behind him to the private jet. He had kept his diamond-studded earring in his ear for the trip.

If Michael Jordan can do it in both ears, then I can surely do it in one, he told himself defiantly.

Vance Wellings, a tall and solid linebacker of a man with a slight belly and full, dark brown hair, looked on with his two tall, no-nonsense male assistants, along with the pilot and copilot. They were all standing out in front of the plane before boarding, and they were impressed with Ivan. He had outdone their expectations on arrival.