George Pelecanos - Firing offence

McGinnes and Malone split up, Malone heading back to the relative darkness of the Sound Explosion. McGinnes had picked up a sales call and was gesturing with his hands as he talked into the phone. I went around the counter and dialed Patti Dawson’s number on another line.

“Pat Dawson’s desk,” her assistant said.

“Is Patti in?”

“She’s away from her desk.”

“When you see her, tell her Nick Stefanos called.”

A blt size= pause, then, “She’s back at her desk now. Hold please.”

I held for at least a minute and listened to New Age whale music. Finally Patti picked up.

“Where you at, lover?” she said.

“In hell.”

“Back on the Avenue, huh? What’s going on?”

“Some free-lance work I couldn’t get away with in the main office. I figure I can get the job done from here, with your help.”

“What do you need?”

“You got a pen?”

“Shoot.”

“The ad I mocked up for the weekend,” I said. “Have ad services run the proofs over to me here at the store. For next weekend I want to pick up an old ad.”

“Which one?”

“Take the ad I did the second week of September, I think the head was ‘September Savings.’ Change the head to ‘October Values.’”

“How do you keep coming up with these zingers?” she asked.

“It’s pretty scary, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got any camera-ready art down there of a horn-of-plenty?”

“I’m sure we do,” she said.

“Good. Put that in the head too, and paste down some art of televisions and radios spilling out of the horn. Got all that?”

“Yeah. It’s absolutely brilliant, Nicky. I’m sure it will create a feeding frenzy. Anything else you want, while I’m doing your job for you?”

“That ought to do it.”

“They know in the office that you’re just picking up old ads?”

“Patti, Nathan Plavin comes to work every day to be taken out to lunch. I doubt he’s even cognizant of the advertising. The GM, Jerry Rosen, he spends more time out of the office than in. I can’t even tell you what it is he does. Ric Brandon’s just a boy in a suit. Only Gary Fisher keeps an eye on those things, and I’m tight enough with him.”

“Just want to make sure you know what you’re doing, lover.”

“Thanks, Patti. Talk to you later.” We hung up.

Lloyd was waiting on a small appliance customer from whom the others had hidden when she walked in. McGinnes was going down the row of televisions, writing something on the tags. I dialed the office, got Marsha, and asked for Gary Fisher.

“Fisher,” he said, catching his breath.

“Fish, it’s Nick.”

“Nick! What’s happening?”

“Nothing much. Just wanted to keep you apprised of the ad situation.”

“Apprise me,” he said. “And trim the fat.”

“We’re running the ‘blowout’ ad this weekend. Next week we’re doing an ‘October Values’ ad very similar to the ‘September Savings’ promotion we ran last month.”

“So you’re rerunning the same ad with a different head, right?”

“That’s right.”

“As long as it pulls, I don’t give a shit what you call it. Sometimes I think the public doesn’t read the ads anyway. They see something’s going on, they come in and spend money.” He said this almost sadly.

“Well, if you want to make any changes, let me know. By the way, when did we start buying Korean goods?”

“You talking about that Kotekna dreck?”

“Yeah.”

“Rosen saw those at the CES show in Vegas and brought in a hundred. One of those ‘show specials.’ Every time I’m in the barn, I see them sitting there, I get a pain in my fucking gut.”

“They’re not going to turn if they’re not out on the floors. They don’t even have one on display here in the store.”

“Whatever. It’s Rosen’s problem. Later, Nick.” He hung up.

Lloyd was still with his customer, an older woman who seemed to be edging away from him in fear. I walked over to McGinnes, who was scribbling seemingly unrelated letters and numbers onto the sales tags.

“You remember the system?” he asked, continuing his markings.

“Refresh my memory.”

“The first two letters in the row are meaningless. The next set of numbers is the commission amount, written backwards. The final letter is the spiff code, if there is a spiff. A is five, B is ten, C is fifteen and so on. So, for example, the figure on this tag, XP 5732 B means twenty-three seventy-five commission with a ten dollar spiff. That way, you’re pitching the bait that doesn’t pay dick, you look right beside it on the next model, you see what you get if you make the step, in black and white.” He stepped back to admire his handiwork.

“Just in case one of these customers asks, so we keep our stories straight, what do we tell them the numbers mean?”

“Inventory control codes,” he said with a shrug.

“By the way, Johnny. I talked to a buddy of yours today, an Evan Walters. Something about an ice bucket.”

He shook his head and chuckled. “Yeah, I know him. A flaming asshole. I could have had that fifty-nine cent ice bucket over here months ago, but I thought I’d let his droopy ass stew about it for a while.”

“I’ve got it coming over on the truck today. He’ll be in tonight to get it.”

“Thanks, Nick. You always did like to pick up those loose ends around me.”

“There’s an awful lot of them,” I said.

He pinched my cheek, looked at his watch, and smiled. “Time for my medicine,” he said. Then he turned and headed for the back room.

That afternoon we waited on customers and put out some fires. I closed two deals, though one of them was a write-up, an advertised piece that I was unable to get off of. The boys informed me that the next time I sold the plunder, I would follow it out the door.

On one occasion I TO’d to McGinnes, introducing him as my manager. He held the line by throwing in a TV cart, which retailed for thirty bucks but cost Nathan’s nothing.

For another tough customer I excused myself to call the main office for permission to drop a price. I dialed the weather report, listened to the recording, and nodded my head repeatedly, the oldest ruse in a very old book. I returned to the customer with “permission” to cut the price only ten dollars, and wrote the deal.

I observed the other salesmen and noticed that Lloyd was still awful. The boys were obviously feeding him just enough sales to keep his job for him and thereby keep another hotshot off their floor.

Malone’s specialty was audio. His technical knowledge was extensive, though that was also his biggest weakness. He often talked himself out of deals, talked much further than the point at which the customer was giving off buying signals. But his rap was strong and especially impressive to the white clientele. To them he was the ice-cool jazz enthusiast, on a mission to turn the average Joe on to the music via fine audio equipment.

McGinnes, however, worked the floor with the care of an craftsman. He could pick up two or three customers at once, sometimes keeping their attention in groups. All of the tricks were there, and the lies, though these were vague enough to be open-ended in a confrontation. With McGinnes, the customers rarely left the store with what they had intended to buy, but they were satisfied they had made the right decision.

By four o’clock, traffic had heavied up northbound on the Avenue. Most potential customers would be focusing now on maneuvering home through the rush hour. I found the store’s Polaroid up front beneath the register. I took it into the back room, had a seat at Louie’s desk, and opened his junk drawer. In it I located an Exacto knife and glue.