Trump Tower (9 page)

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 tired 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 relaying 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.

Although he wasn't sure he'd figured it out enough by 2008, when the world's financial markets went into meltdown, other people believed that Carson knew what he was doing because he was asked to join Goldman's “Internal Team,” the secret collective of traders, managers, gurus and strategists whose job it was to save the company from going broke.

After eight months of nonstop planning, convincing, conniving, buying, selling and restructuring—without any time off and hardly ever more than a couple of hours sleep a night—the sinking ship had been righted and was no longer taking on water.

That's when Warring told him, “Remember my plans for us? Now's as good a time as any. You and I are going out on our own.”

“I am? We are?”

“Set up shop. I'll back us. Everybody's selling, so we're buying. Let's have some fun.”

Carson went to see Warring in Puerto Vallarta where he was on his honeymoon with wife number four, Ellen Corley DeSoto, a blonde from Toronto who was a foot taller than him and at least thirty years younger.

She told Carson that she'd met Ken in Brazil, where she was living with her second husband, a racecar driver. According to Ellen, Warring had walked up to her at a party, said let's go, took her to his plane and flew her to Paris for a dirty weekend that turned into marriage.

But Warring said that he'd met Ellen in Monte Carlo on the arm of some British corporate raider and that he'd won her from the Brit after a long night in the private casino playing
chemin de fer
.

The truth, Carson decided, was probably somewhere between neither story and both.

Over the two days Carson was on their honeymoon with them, Warring drew up a business plan for a boutique operation that he decided should be called First Ace.