The thirty-nine rich, white men who met privately in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the Constitution favored “Your Excellency” when referring to their new creation-the President of the United States. Perhaps George Washington’s greatest contribution to the budding republic was his resolve to be called Mr. President. He saw that title as an indicator of common citizenship. Washington was well aware that in a representative government, a government of laws not of men, separating the man from the title was essential. He meant Mister to be the most simple of callings. Many of those men, gathered in Philadelphia, thought the office every bit the equal of an elected sovereign, a king minus only primogeniture. Few of the Founding Fathers would be surprised or disappointed by the pomp and circumstance that grew to surround the modern Imperial Presidency. Quite a few surely saw themselves occupying the position and the sound of Your Excellency must have been almost musical. General, then President, George Washington-like Hubert H. Humphrey two hundred years later, a man who would chide would-be President Richard Nixon by saying-“Being President just means free rent for four years!”-understood it was just a job.
Louis Devereaux was also a man who knew the power of titles and the force of names. The youngest child, the only brother to five sisters, he grew up being called Louis, never Lou, never Louie. He never had a nickname. His father, Zane Devereaux, was a small thin man with narrow lips and sharp features, the last surviving male in the family which originated modern banking and finance in the South after the Civil War or, as it was always called in the Devereaux house, the War Between The States. At the height of the Great Depression, Louis’ father relocated the family enterprises from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans. From their base in investment banking, the family ventured into residential real estate development after World War II. In successive later decades, they branched out to include highway construction, electronic communications, office buildings and shopping malls, and eventually low-cost, no-frills regional air transport. Zane Devereaux expanded his family’s fortune from millions to tens of millions and then oversaw its explosion into the hundreds of millions. While Zane guided it, the Devereaux Communications Group owned and operated fourteen radio and television stations in eight major cities in the Deep South, three recently acquired television stations in California, and an ever-increasing network of cellular telephone and data transmission frequencies. The company’s asset value had surpassed the billion-dollar mark years ago. As a testament to Zane Devereaux’s financial genius, all his companies were debt free. “You can be a lender,” he was heard to say more than once. “That’s good business. But, if you want to sleep nights, don’t borrow a goddamn dime!”
As a youngster Louis frequently witnessed grown men-important men, men he often recognized-shake uncontrollably in his father’s presence. They respectfully addressed him as “Sir,” and “Mr. Devereaux,” all the while being called by their first names by him. Louis learned that addressing someone by their first name, especially when they were uncomfortable replying in kind, could nearly always establish a dominant position in personal communications. The added prestige he later acquired with his PhD as “Dr. Devereaux,” taught him the value of titles well applied. As with every lesson ever learned, Louis Devereaux steadfastly used his knowledge to further his self-interest.
He put The Phone down, the blue one sitting alone on top of the small, light-colored marble table under the window-the phone the President had just called him on. He picked up another phone, the one next to the toaster on the red-tiled kitchen island. He pushed a single button, listened for the ring and waited for an answer. “I’m going to miss the game,” he said. “Sorry, Mandy.”
“Well, I’ll just have to tell you all about it later, won’t I?” his sister said. She hung up without any goodbye. She knew who her little brother was. She didn’t expect an explanation and she never asked questions. None of Louis’s sisters did. And neither did his mother. Each of them took great pride in Louis. Zane Devereaux was a different story.
When Henrietta Devereaux, known throughout proper Mississippi society as Hattie, told her husband she was pregnant again in 1950, he was thrilled. Zane Devereaux had no brothers and quite reasonably saw himself as the last of the line. He was already the father of five girls. His own two sisters had six children between them including four boys, not one of which, of course, carried the Devereaux name. Like his sisters had, each of Zane’s daughters would one day marry and surrender that cherished name too. Their sons, if they had any, would be family, but none would be a Devereaux. Not a day passed when Zane was not haunted and humiliated by his greatest fear-that when he died the Devereaux fortune would fall into the hands of strangers. When Louis was born in Louisiana in 1951, Zane’s world was saved. He named his son after his adopted state and never worried again.
Confident now that the family enterprise would remain firmly in true Devereaux control, Zane discovered the freedom to delegate responsibility to others, to outsiders, to employees. What had been a tightly held, close-knit corporation in which Zane himself approved nearly every decision, now opened up to dynamic growth under the direction of skilled hired help. Zane knew banking and had been lucky in real estate after the war with Germany and Japan. In the buyer’s market of the late forties it didn’t hurt to own a bank or two. He knew investing in the construction of the interstate highway system was a smart move, but he would need to hire people to set it up and run it. He was also smart enough to take the millions thrown off by Devereaux National Construction and buy radio and television stations. But again he needed to hire the right people to operate them. And now that he had a son, an heir, he did. He hired the best in the industry, paid the most money but always resisted releasing equity, taking in partners or going public. More often perhaps than Hattie thought was good for him, Zane looked at his son and said, “Louis, someday it’ll all be yours.”
By the time Louis entered Yale, at the incredible age of sixteen, his father was already preparing his future career. When Louis graduated from Yale, only three years later, Zane was pleased his son was going on to law school. There were already too many lawyers with too much influence making too much trouble for him every day. Zane was sure he would feel a lot more comfortable working side by side with his son-the attorney. But when Louis chose the University of Chicago Law School instead of LSU or Tulane, Zane Devereaux became concerned. At first, he kept it to himself. Louis was young-time was on his side.
Three years later, twenty-two-year-old Louis took his law degree and instead of going home, returned to Yale, this time to pursue a PhD in European History. His father was not happy. Still, he waited. When he was only twenty-four years old, Louis Devereaux-now both lawyer and doctorate-heir to the family fortune, broke his father’s heart. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency. The strain between the two never healed. Zane Devereaux died carrying both his pain and anger to the grave.