King of the Mississippi: A Novel - Hardcover

1.

The King Declares

“Not everyone is meant to be a CCGer,” Brock Wharton said to himself as much as to the staffer who fumbled with the applicant folders.

Great consultants mastered the management of time. The muggy fall day that would usher the war home to the future managing director of Cambridge Consulting Group had commenced, like any other for change agent Brock Wharton, on the fast track.

“Next up in the holding pen,” Carissa Barnett said, pulling a manila folder from the stack.

Holding pen. She had not been on the job five weeks and already acted as if she were a veteran consultant with a short attention span. Confidence was contagious at CCG, even for the support. Wharton conceded to himself that the new twenty-five-year-old recruiting coordinator did carry a disproportionally generous bosom on her slender frame, which was managed expertly--the old conceal and reveal--in her pairing of formal business suits with blouses his colleague Piazza labeled “plunging.” Wharton waited for her to set down the folder she held out for him, as she exaggerated multitasking with God-knows-what application on her new smartphone that had transferred none of its claimed intelligence to its owner. That Carissa ran the task force to recruit a wider collection of out-of-the-box thinkers troubled Wharton, who as a principal at CCG had pushed the initiative over the summer after feedback from a client critical of CCG’s junior-level consultants.

Seven of them sat erect in chairs in the four-walled glass room. From outside the fishbowl, their conversation buzzed like a horde of caught flies against glass. All faked pleasantries with the other applicants while nervously hoping their newfound friends fell flat on their faces during the case interview. Although these seven applicants had done their first-round interviews at the smaller Dallas office, Wharton recognized a couple of the applicants from networking events the Houston office had sponsored. Five guys and two girls. Or was that six male applicants and one female applicant? Wharton studied the cropped hair and suit style of the suspect candidate. CCG was really leading the charge to beat McKinsey and Bain in their recruitment of the best and brightest from the LGBT community--though if pressed Wharton would be forced to admit that although he knew what the first two letters stood for, he wasn’t sure those belonging to the third letter should have their own category, and was still confused as to what the fourth letter represented in this “community.”

“Topper.” Wharton read the first name at the top of the résumé aloud and waited to gauge the manner in which he rose. The tall candidate was an easy read for the ex-quarterback. The burgundy tasseled Ferragamo loafers with yacht-stitch detail, though not on the level of Wharton’s bespoke shoes, were a touch of class by Topper Musgrave IV. He wore a practiced smile (to match the sheen of light mousse he put in his hair) as easily as he wore a tight-fitting, European-cut suit favoring his athletic build. On the older side of applicants, he was close to Wharton’s age of thirty-three. Wharton predicted that within a year of starting, Musgrave would be on the website and in company recruiting literature under the caption For me, CCG is not only about developing the strengths you have but also about growing intellectually in a field where the learning never stops. His was an image cut from the Brock Wharton Catalog for out-of-the-box thinkers.

Wharton led Musgrave down the all-white hallway to put him through the obligatory case interview. “How was the flight from New York?”

“Nothing quite like coming back home to Houston from the city.” Wharton understood this code-speak: I can play with the big boys on Wall Street, but I have chosen to return home and be a big fish in a small pond. Wharton liked the play. Wharton had benefited from comprehending the big-picture value of leveraging his fading status as a hometown hero. In New York, he would have joined the mile-long list of ex-athletes turned traders and bankers. But in the good-ole-boy network of Houston, Wharton was the marlin hung on the office wall.

Inside his office, Wharton allowed Musgrave to take in the football given to Wharton by the Houston Texans on draft day that was mounted on its own wall. On the other wall hung his framed University of Texas jersey from the Holiday Bowl. Next to it was his Harvard Business School degree encircled by a bright, crimson-colored frame to achieve a layered effect juxtaposed with the majestic Longhorn dehydrated orange. Never one who was much for the aesthetics of interior design, Wharton adhered to a guiding principle of honoring achievement.

After sufficient time had passed for Musgrave to be intimidated but composed, Wharton put the résumé down and examined the applicant’s features for signs of awe or reverence. No wrinkles on the field under the perfectly stationary, coifed brown hair or above the thin eyebrow trails; big hazel eyes dialed in on the prize; the symmetrical nose and ears showing no genetic slight. Only born assurance. A familiar face stared back at Wharton in the award-winning pedigree of Musgrave: here was a CCG man.

Wharton began, “I usually begin a decision-round interview by providing the candidate with a face to put with our international reputation of excellence and seventy worldwide offices. Then I will ask you a few questions about your background to get to know your story, allowing you to walk me through your résumé. After which time we will proceed to the case portion of the interview, and then wrap up with any questions you might have. Sound good?”

“Sounds great.”

Wharton motioned to his football jersey upon concluding a brief internal debate to lend his own face as the best example. “When my football career ended in injury before my first NFL preseason, I asked myself, ‘What other challenges are out there for a game-changer in life, Brock?’ At first glance, it was investment banking. Which I did here in town at arguably the best bulge-bracket investment bank for four years--logged a lot of hours and got up to speed on everything I thought there was to know about business. But it was while learning the case-study method at Harvard Business School that I realized a well-trained monkey can perform the functions in banking.” Since Musgrave, a native Houstonian, had opted for Wall Street, Wharton decided to forgo his polemic on oil and gas as unnecessary; he calculated he was not alone in his derision of the industry as not meeting the ambitions of someone of their talent level. “It was that epiphany--which came to me during the twenty-fifth mile of the Boston Marathon--that made me realize consulting was the only place in the business world that provided a daily intellectual challenge for the extreme competitor in life. If you’re a competitor, you will never be bored and your future is limitless at CCG.” Wharton stopped to point at Musgrave and asked with a turn of the palm up to show the oyster that could be held there, “In what other job in the world can a recent MBA graduate stand in front of a Fortune 500 CEO and tell him how to fix his company? So, Topper, why do you wish to be a part of CCG?”

“Because it’s the best. And it can grow further.”

“Further,” Wharton said, wrapping his tongue around the length of the word approvingly, in the manner of a python encountering a small mammal.

“Houston was the number one city in job creation at three hundred and nine percent this past year. It’s about to overtake Chicago as the third-largest city in the country. This is the downtown where I wish to log my future late nights.”

Directed by this exhortation to his lectern, the future mayor asserted, “It’s not just an oil town.”

“My grandfather used to say, ‘Oil is a commodity you own, not something that defines you.’ ” Musgrave did not have to spell out for Wharton that his grandfather had uttered the platitude as a cabinet member in President George H. W. Bush’s one-term administration.

“You can’t be inimitable if you float on the same rising tide as all boats,” Wharton crowed, now rehearsing his speech as the first Mr. Houston recipient who would reject the celebration of oil--in his case, as not celebratory enough of his own distinguished talents, any industry that ultimately derived its success from the luck of drilling into the earth’s right spots. Where was the sport in that?

“At every stage in my life I’ve been the best, gone further. Whether it was graduating at the top of my class and still finding the intestinal fortitude to captain the basketball team at a little school in Boston, or serving as a leader after that by besting my peers on the trading desk.”

Little school in Boston. The competitor speech had sunk the hook deep in this billfish. “Captained at Harvard, eh?” Was it even necessary to insult this captain by asking him for a solution to a case study? The rest of the interview would be better spent shooting clays. What a joy it would be to open the gate for such a competitor. To hit him with a tight spiral in the end zone during the Consulting Bowl. Even the future king of a city needed his lieutenants.