Every Man a King

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I drove my tiny cream-colored Bianchina up the FDR to Seventy-First, crossed the park, passing the Strawberry Fields memorial, and then made my way up West End a few blocks until turning left, finally arriving at an imposing gate in the Great Wall — the only entrance to a sprawling estate overlooking the West Side Highway and the Hudson.

I stopped at the thick crisscrossed stainless steel bars and waited. Across a broad, two-hundred-foot-deep lawn could be seen the four-story white stone home. The structure itself occupied half a Manhattan city block.

The owner of this impressive example of opulence was multibillionaire Roger Ferris, called King Silver by international society pages, jealous competitors, and those who liked catchy nicknames that had the ring of truth.

The not-so-reclusive Ferris had moved out of Stonemason’s Rest Home to take up residence in the heavily guarded hall because he was in serious negotiations with his son and daughter over control of MDLT (Mains dans la Terre) Inc. Roger’s children, Alexander Ferris and Cassandra Ferris-Brathwaite, had filed suit claiming that their father was no longer competent, arguing that the board of directors of MDLT and the state of New York, among others, were legally bound to appoint them his trustees. If they were successful, they would become executor and executrix of an international conglomerate estimated to be worth north of eight hundred billion dollars.

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