Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“This is a scrapbook I keep. Gives me ideas. And reminds me of what works and what doesn’t. It’s a tool my own mentor showed me to use. He was a coin man. No interest in jewelry at all. But they are more or less the same business. Look at this here.”

It was a headline from the L.A. Times , dated May 7, 1953. It read: “Five-Million-Dollar Fake Gem Plot Uncovered!”

“That there’s the so-called Szirak Treasure. Some ole boys claimed they had found a collection of five-hundred-year-old crown jewels, orbs and tiaras and what have you, and sold the whole lot to a collector. Five million back then is like fifty million today. They got busted, but just through ineptitude.”

He turned the page to a clipping from a paper in San Antonio. “Ten-Million-Dollar Coin Collection Revealed as Fake!”

“I knew that fella. I knew him rather well.” He patted me on the shoulder. “What he used to do was, you took a new coin, changed the date with a little drill-and-stamp apparatus we employed, and then to get the look of age you blew cigar smoke over them in a paper bag. It was no more complicated than that. If he had stuck to counterfeiting he could still be the most famous coin dealer in the Southwest. But he fell in with an insurance man and a safe salesman and they conjured up this deal where they’d sell the coins, insure them, sell the security system, then wait a few months and steal the whole damn thing back from the customer. They got caught stealing their own coins — from some helicopter manufacturer, as I recall — and when the FBI brought in their experts they discovered all the coins was fake, to boot. Boy, that caused a commotion down in San Antone.” He turned the page. “Take a gander at this one here. This is from the British National Archives. Calendar of State Papers, from the time of King James the First. Sixteen hundred and six.”

He traced the lines of text with his slender, leaflike fingers as he read. Not with one finger but with two or three, like a priest or a magician.

“‘Query on the equity of a Chancery decision on fraud committed by Robert Davis, at the instigation of Richard Glanville, in selling counterfeit jewels to Francis Courtney.’ That’s beautiful, isn’t it? ‘At the instigation of.’ That is the proper usage of the English language. Like poetry. Listen to that.” He laughed and took another drink of the scotch. I took a mouthful, too.

“In these parts we’re amateurs, Bobby. Those old boys were selling paste to the crowned heads of Europe while our forefathers were scratching their asses in the potato fields. Goes back to the alchemists. The first blue diamonds, sold by Tavernier back in the seventeenth century, were London Blue topazes with fancy faceting. Hell, he made the market for the damn things. Until he told ’em they were blue diamonds nobody had even heard of such a thing! You have to be extra careful when you’re dealing with the Belgians and the Dutch. I avoid those fellas, they got too much expertise in contrivance for the likes of us Texans. Hell, the crown jewels of England are just plain old everyday garnets. Sheila and me have been to the Tower of London to view them. I wouldn’t pay ten bucks a carat for those stones. And these days, with the Thais and the Indians, even I can’t tell half the time what’s real and what’s fake. Course that’s my point. It don’t really matter, so long as she’s done right. I know a boy who got out of the museum business because he claimed he’d never sold a real painting. Nothing but counterfeits and copies. ‘The dream of acquisition,’ he calls it. One of the leading experts on German Expressionism in the world.”

He took his ChapStick from his pocket and rubbed it quickly around his nostrils.

“I suspect the problem, Bobby, if you want to know the plain honest truth of the matter, is people getting hung up on this notion of intrinsic value. It’s the silliest damn thing. There ain’t no intrinsic value to a diamond except in a drill bit. And that’s an instrument. Outside of religion you simply won’t find a dadblamed thing that will stand up to the scrutiny of intrinsic value. Least of all the truth. What I’m getting at, Bobby, is you may notice, over time, as you study and learn, a certain amount of chicanery in this business of ours. But don’t let that dismay you. It’s just the nature of the business we’re in, part and parcel of the good old capitalist system that’s gonna make us both rich men before we die.”

He paused on that and looked at me carefully. I understood it was time for me to speak.

“I understand, Mr. Popper,” I said. “I mean, I believe I understand. If I have any questions I’ll ask Jim. I sure hope I can do as well as you have done, sir. Half as well, I mean.” The scotch had settled into my stomach and I felt comfortable and happy. I finished the last swallow.

“That’s an excellent idea. If you have any questions, you just ask your big brother. He understands this business better than almost anybody I’ve got working for me. Reminds me of myself. Hell, you both do, I don’t mind telling you.” He stood, rounded the desk, and patted me on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry too much, son. You and your big brother are going to be just fine.”

T he 800 lines at the store only worked in the continental United States. You were supposed to use one of the dedicated lines if you were going to make a long-distance call. But there were no technological reasons you could not pick any line and dial whoever you wanted to call, in any country. So I usually called Wendy from the store. I would wait until Jim was up in Popper’s office discussing the day’s sales and then I had a free half hour or so. I would untangle gold chains with two pairs of tweezers, or package up loose color in their little plastic boxes, while I talked to her. That way if Jim rounded the corner I could hang up in a hurry and to his eyes I was hard at work at his desk.

“I think I’m in love with another woman,” I told Wendy on the phone. “Not a girl, I mean. A woman.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “What’s her name?”

“I’m not lying, if that’s what you think. Her name is Lisa,” I said.

“This is a real woman. You are not making this up.”

I was making up part of it. I did not think I was in love with her. At least, as far as I could tell.

“She is a jewelry salesperson. She’s in college, too. Or she was. At SMU. Southern Methodist University.”

“Some Christian school. Isn’t that nice. I bet she’s real smart. What does she look like? This Christian saleswoman. Is she skinny?”

“She has black hair. She is nice. You would like her. She knows all about you.”

“Sure. I would love her, too. Is she skinny?”

She is believing me. She is buying it, I corrected myself.

That was an important distinction I had recently learned. “Don’t take responsibility for other people’s beliefs, whatever you say to them,” Jim had told me. “For one thing, it’s presumptuous.”

“I don’t know. I guess she’s skinny. I haven’t really noticed. You would say she’s skinny, I guess.”

“Are you fucking her? Are you fucking this skinny Christian? Or does she not do that? Because of Jesus.”

“Wendy, it’s not like you aren’t doing the same thing. With Andrew.”

“That’s not the way you made it sound. It’s a little fast, Bobby. I don’t mind. It’s fine. Do what you want. You didn’t exactly make it sound like you were going down there to start fucking Christian girls. Women , I mean. Excuse me. You said you were in love with me. I never said I love Andrew. I said I thought you needed a change.”

“I don’t love her like I love you,” I said. Back down now and the whole effect is lost, I thought.