Manhattan (1)
In the study of Debenzer The Manor, June 23, 1979.
“This is pretty entertaining.”
Henry scanned the tabloid newspaper that Bart had handed him the moment morning duties began, his reply casual. Bart, however, looked far from amused. Standing before Henry, he barely contained his fury as he asked,
“How dare that vulgar Australian bastard touch the Debenzer family with trash like this? Henry, how should we handle it? Shall we have District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, whom we’ve supported, dig into them first? Or would it be better to mobilize the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and shake them down to the last speck of dust? A garbage company like this can’t possibly have clean books.”
While Bart vented passionately, Henry reopened the newspaper. The Debenzer family had long maintained a policy of strict seclusion. When Henry first possessed this body, he had been puzzled by how low the family’s public recognition was compared to its prestige. This bizarre aversion to the press was the reason. The insular tradition passed down through generations reacted with extreme sensitivity to any media exposure, and those who dared cross the line faced merciless retaliation.
Considering that background, the tone of this tabloid—run by the notoriously ruthless Rupert Murdoch in his previous life—was surprisingly restrained. In summary, the article claimed, “A young master from a prestigious New York family, fresh out of a Western university, has taken out bank loans to start a game console company.” They had clearly uncovered the existence of Henry’s investment firm as well, yet they had deliberately chosen to overlook it. With no presumptuous predictions of success or failure, the piece simply listed dry facts. For one of Murdoch’s outlets, it was unusually tame.
Is this really the same newspaper that tormented the protagonist with petty scandals in the original novel, sucking the life out of him? If you ignore the clickbait headline, it’s practically a puff piece.
Henry stroked his chin for a moment.
I don’t need personal PR right now… I’ll only need it once the Pocket Enjoy is fully developed. What a shame. Well, since these guys are professional writers, this is probably just them testing the waters. Letting it slide wouldn’t cause any major problems, but… the timing is annoying since I’ve only recently become the family head.
Henry set the newspaper down on the table, lost in thought for a few seconds, then stood and gave Bart his instructions.
“All right. Leave the prosecutor’s office out of it for now. Let’s focus on having the state tax authorities conduct an intensive audit of their business activities in New York. Even if the article’s facts are true, we can’t allow anyone to treat our family lightly. Consider it a preventive shot.”
“A wise decision, sir. Ah, and this afternoon we received a request for contact from David Rockefeller. It’s likely regarding the massive loan your reckless nephew took out. Let me remind you once more that tomorrow evening you have dinner with Donald Reagan. Although he hasn’t officially declared his candidacy yet, he appears to harbor considerable ambition. After that, visits from other presidential contenders are lined up, so please steel yourself.”
As Bart continued his report, Henry’s eyebrows twitched.
The family background really is cheat-key level. A household that presidential candidates come to visit first? And Bart here talks about mobilizing the district attorney’s office or tax investigations like he’s ordering takeout. Is our family even more overpowered than I thought? Or does it only work this well because New York is our home turf?
Even before Henry became the head, the Debenzer family had been a force that could not be underestimated in New York. Relying solely on the original owner’s apathetic memories, Henry had dismissed them as merely “a family of high honor but low visibility.” That assessment had been his alone. A quick glance at the media and press landscape made the truth obvious.
The Debenzers displayed an almost pathological sensitivity to becoming gossip fodder and hid behind the respectable virtue of being a reclusive noble house. Yet the reality behind that facade was bitterly contradictory. While they loathed appearing in articles, they were the true controlling family of The Times, which owned magazines that wielded authority across America and shaped global public opinion.
New York, their home base, was essentially the Debenzer family’s front yard. Even the neighborhood dog gets half its meals at its own doorstep, so it was only natural that a prestigious family rooted in this land since the nation’s founding had woven an intricate web of connections throughout politics and finance.
At present, Henry was obsessed with growing his personal seed money and had pushed trust operations to the back burner. Ironically, while the master looked away, the trust was undergoing more vigorous restructuring than ever to improve its constitution. The biggest catalyst had been talent recruitment.
Every individual on the recruitment list was either an industry titan or a household name. The process of bringing them into the Debenzer fold had caused a stir that shook all of New York. That commotion had been enough to set the city’s upper crust on edge, and it provided perfect justification for ambitious presidential hopefuls.
The excuse was simple: “The Debenzer family has been making quite a lot of noise lately, so I thought I should drop by to pay my respects.”
Despite the presidential election being scheduled for November 1980, the race had already grown feverishly hot by June 1979, more than a year in advance. Given the country’s vast size and the traditional need for a long buildup, candidates were scrambling to raise their profiles even before the ink on their candidacy declarations had dried, let alone before the primaries.
In that climate, the Debenzers—who controlled The Times—were an irresistible prize. When you added the fact that Henry’s maternal line belonged to the Sulzberger family, owners of America’s largest daily, the New York Times, the situation became blatantly obvious. With historical legitimacy as signatories of the Declaration of Independence, immense wealth, and the pens that could sway public opinion, it was no wonder the sleeping dragons of presidential politics wore down the threshold coming to visit.
When you factored in their spider-web network of connections that extended to both parties without favoring either, the return on investment from cozying up to a single Debenzer was simply too enormous to ignore.
Henry wasn’t entirely ignorant of the family’s true power, but the speed at which he was learning couldn’t keep pace with reality’s changes. All he could do was awkwardly scratch the back of his head at the sudden contact request from David Rockefeller.
The original owner of this body had been so indifferent to his relatives that, to be honest, Henry hadn’t even been sure whether his own kin in this world were still alive. Until recently, when he took out the loan, he had simply marveled innocently, “Wow, the trust must be loaded—loan approval is basically a free pass?” Never once had he dreamed of what lay behind it.
It was only after returning home and enduring Bart’s relentless scolding that he finally understood the terrifying scale of the family tree. His mother came from the Sulzberger family, the owners of the New York Times, and his grandmother had been none other than the daughter of the oil king Rockefeller himself.
This is way beyond a golden spoon. This is a diamond cheat-key level. No wonder I own stocks and my main bank is Chase Manhattan. With the bank president being basically my grandfather, how could they not lend to me?
Henry swallowed a dry laugh and turned to Bart.
“Bart… no matter how much I search my memories, I don’t recall ever seeing Uncle David as an adult. Do you think he even knows who I am?”
“He used to come and go from this mansion like it was his own back when you were still in diapers, crawling around the living room. He visited less frequently after your grandmother passed, but the decisive factor was you running away to the West Coast. Where would you two have met?”
“Sigh… better to get the scolding over with quickly. Let’s handle it now. When the call comes through, connect it to my study. Oh, and when is the Orange II computer arriving?”
“That computer? It should be installed the day after tomorrow. And this is the list I had Gilberto prepare earlier. The poor fellow looked positively distraught, worried you might pull another one of your outlandish stunts. Anyway, I’ll leave it here. I’ll patch the call through to the internal line as soon as it’s ready.”
“Thanks, Bart.”
Once Bart closed the door behind him, Henry bought himself a little time before the call connected. He picked up the thick list he had once dreamily ordered—a document that, while offering no immediate practical benefit, would help him grasp the current situation.
He took a sip of his cooling coffee and flipped through the pages.
“The top satellite broadcasting company is Hughes. Well, that’s obvious. Second is ACA? Ah, right. They were in satellites too. If we spin off and acquire just their satellite division, it would cost between four and six hundred million dollars… Everything else is defense contractors. If it were possible, targeting only ACA’s satellite business would have been ideal.”
Without realizing it, Henry drew a large circle around ACA, tore out the page, and set it aside in a separate pile on his desk. This was the process of selecting targets whose current prices seemed absurdly cheap from the perspective of future knowledge.
The next list covered American apparel companies.
“Levi’s at one billion? Way too expensive, no thanks. Calvin Klein at one hundred million—okay, check. Nike at one hundred million—check. GAB at eighty million—check as well…”
Next came the luxury brand list. From a 2026 perspective the valuations were so cheap they would make one faint, but on 1979 balance sheets they all looked like fairly ordinary numbers.
“Gucci at one hundred and fifty million, Hermès at eighty million, Louis Vuitton at one hundred and twenty million, Tiffany & Co. at one hundred million, Cartier at one hundred and eighty million, Chanel at two hundred million, Ferragamo at sixty million, Givenchy at forty million? Wow, these really are all dirt cheap.”
Before he even finished reading the list, Henry casually stacked the luxury brand pages to one side. From a 2026 viewpoint the prices were eye-popping, but in the current era the luxury industry was treated as a “declining sector for aristocrats only” and given the respect of a neighborhood corner store.
I want to sweep them all up right now… but there must be a reason they’re called a declining industry. Anyway, we still have time until the Japanese start their bubble-fueled luxury frenzy. Within three years they’ll probably fall even further before they rise, so none of them will shoot up vertically anytime soon.
Immediate profits mattered more than luxury brands he didn’t know well. Henry’s gaze returned to the sports brands.
It would be far more profitable to put a claim on Nike. It’s guaranteed to at least double right after its IPO next year, and once Jordan comes along the graph will break through the roof. Oh, right. I still have some loose change left in the trust account after taking out that loan. I should tell them to use it to snatch up Nike shares. If I get in now, I might even become a shareholder at a bargain price.
To Henry, who in the future had once waited all night in line just to buy a single pair of sneakers, the visionary sense of Nike’s founder felt as solid as a biblical truth. Until professional managers came in and started making blunders, this founder was a balance-breaking unit on the game board.
His management ability is practically on the level of the old man at Manchester United. For someone like him, we should hand over all the voting rights and simply sit back and collect our sweet dividends.
With a confident hand, Henry drew a large circle on the Nike document. Beside it he left a note: “Use an angel investment structure that entrusts voting rights to the current founder. Secure as many shares as possible under the trust’s name.”
From now on, I need to gradually accumulate shares in these quality companies under the trust as well. Of course, personal ownership takes priority.