by Don Potter
“Mister Wilson.”
“Trip, everyone calls me Trip. My agency, ConCom, is about to become the biggest and best agency on the planet.”
“Congratulations and what may I do for you?”
“No, it’s what I will do for you,” he said, spreading his hands wide like a carnival barker, or perhaps a TV evangelist. “I am here, Mister Fleming, to buy you out. Lock, stock and barrel. Let me tell you how this will work.”
45
A NASA scientist testifies to the US Senate that man-made global warming has commenced. President George Bush orders troops to Panama. Martial law is declared in Beijing, China as the Tiananmen Square protest continues. Rob fights a takeover.
* * *
At this point here was only one person in the agency I trusted completely, do to all the political maneuvering going on. So I flew to New York to get together with Vince D’Angelo and develop a strategy for heading off Trip Wilson. We met in a coffee shop. I told him about Wilson marching into my office like he owned the place, which he actually intended to.
“Trip Wilson’s a pompas ass, using his father’s money to make himself important,” Vince said.
“I know his background. He seemed to know an awful lot about us, far more than what one would call public information.”
“He’s got an insider?”
“I think so.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know yet. My major concern is the other major shareholders. Too many of them are nearing retirement and if someone acquired us, they would get a decent return on their investments and forget about the future of the agency.”
“You can’t blame them. If you sold out you’d get a wad of cash too.”
“I like working and I was handed the baton to preserve and build this company. If we sell, Carlson Communications gets folded into Trip’s company and sooner than later it would cease to exist. He’s a rich kid with no agency experience and could well drive his business into the ground in a year or so. In the meantime, everyone on our payroll would get canned, no jobs, and no more Carlson Communications.”
“What’s the answer?”
“A pre-emptive strike would build internal confidence. First we announce that Carlson is looking to buy other agencies. No mergers, no partnerships, just a straight up buyout.”
“That’s sticking your neck out.”
“Then, if Trip Wilson says he wants to buy Carlson, we laugh and say it’s the other way around. We’re thinking of buying his operation.”
“That’s a monstrous bluff.”
“I don’t want our clients getting nervous and start bailing out on us.”
“Do you really think he wants to buy us out?”
“His brains and ego are in his checkbook, yes, he wants to buy us out. Now we have to find the rat in our nest who’s feeding him information.”
“You have to take this to the Board.”
“And have it leaked all over town in seconds? No.”
“They’ll freak out when they hear about Carlson wanting to buy other agencies.”
“They’ll freak out individually, and I’ll keep them at arm’s length until I call a Board meeting. We have a little time.
“Dangerous going it alone, Rob.”
“You don’t have to come with me.”
“I’m with you.”
“First I need to level with you. I lied.”
“About what?”
“I know who the snitch is,” I said then scribbled a name on a piece of paper, folded it, and gave it to him. He smiled. “This name’s never to be spoken aloud inside the agency until this is over. You have friends in low places that can sniff out rats, right?”
“The lowest of the low.” Vince grinned, opened the paper and silently read the name. “Really?”
“Are you surprised?”
“Not really.”
“Unleash your rat-catchers.”
The advertising media jumped on my story about Carlson Communications looking to expand by buying out other agencies. I even got to appear on the business television network where I offered a diplomatic smile when asked if Trip Wilson intended to buy us out. I waved my checkbook directly into the camera and asked Trip how much he wanted for his company. It brought laughter followed by a dozen calls from worried Board members. So I scheduled an emergency Board meeting. I knew everyone would turn up. And they did. I was facing some angry men and wished I had Doctor Scanlon’s poker face.
I stood facing the Board and gave them a short history of the company and its projected future, as I envisioned it. They listened but didn’t really hear.
“What’s this nonsense about us buying up other agencies?” Jerry Madsen asked. He had a Florida leather-tan, an expensive hair transplant and a wife, Wendy, who was thirty years younger than he. Jerry was the oldest of the old school guys, had been a Board member for decades, and should have retired long ago but oversaw the largest industrial clients in the Pittsburgh office. He was known as a man who counted his pennies and had amassed many pennies. The rumor was he knew them all by name.
“That’s not what bothers you most, though, is it, Jerry?” I asked rather than answer.
“No,” he replied. “I want to know what this Trip Wilson fella is offering for our agency.”
“Enough for you to retire and buy a bigger boat in the Keys,” I said and got a few chuckles in reply.
“Then why shouldn’t I sell out?”
“You can. No one is stopping you. But before you sell shares of this company to a man who doesn’t care about Carlson’s survival, why not sell to someone else who does care?”
“Who?”
“Me,” I said quietly because I knew that would separate the proverbial men from the boys. It did and I let them chatter for a while before calling for order.
“You have the money to buy us all out?” Jerry asked.
I laughed, it was a practiced laugh. “No, and I don’t need to. With my shares, to get a controlling interest I only need to buy you out, Jerry, along with Roger and Bill sitting on either side of you. I’ve got that much.”
Silence filled the room but only for a few seconds. Then it got noisy again before I calmed them down. “But let me tell you something first, and listen because I speak the truth. I came to this company when I was a snot-nosed kid. I grew up here, I became a man here.”
This was the time to move, to circle the table, to make them turn to watch me. All eyes were solely on me. This was my Gettysburg Address. “I learned this business, our business, here. I learned to love it. I was taught by the best and I worked hard and I helped make the agency grow and prosper.”
I stopped behind Jerry and put my hands on his shoulders to pin him in place, and then I continued, “I am just like every one of you. I’m an adman, but much more than that I am a Carlson adman and I will always be a Carlson adman. I will never betray this agency. I would die before I sold out any of you.”
“But,” I pulled out my checkbook again. “Jerry, I will buy you out right now.”
Jerry looked stunned and I winked at the other board members. “Should I make it out to you, or that pretty wife of yours?”
The atmosphere changed, there was laughter, a few embarrassed faces, and I knew we had won. I had won. They voted against a takeover and we still held the company. I was no Abraham Lincoln, but I sure as hell was Rob Fleming, and no spoiled brat with his pockets stuffed full of daddy’s money was going to take this company away from me. One day we might even buy his agency after he drives it into the ground.
Vince and I got together and I related the entire Board room scene as we relaxed at our favorite watering hole in Pittsburgh. We drank champagne to celebrate. Expensive champagne. Vince couldn’t stop giggling, an unlikely sound for him. It must have been the bubbles. “What would you have done if Jerry called your bluff?”
“Bluff Abraham Lincoln?”
“Huh? What was your plan B?”
/> “There was no plan B. Maybe a massive stroke or a lightning strike. I mean on Jerry, not me.”
“What cojones. You could have lost everything. Did you to talk to Ginger about it?”
“Of course.”
“What did she say?”
“Pray.”
“Did you?”
“Damn right.”
“I gotta remember to talk to God sometime about the mortgage on my co-op.”
“There was one thing I forgot to mention.”
“What’s that?”
“We have a new Board member. A certain Vincent D’Angelo by name.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope,” I said and put out my hand. “Welcome to the Board.”
“Thank you,” he said, his eyes appeared to be glistening with tears as he grasped my hand and shook it vigorously.
“You deserve it, Vince. Now, how did your rat-catchers do?”
He clapped his hands. ”Man, they did so well. I’ve got photographs and tapes and all kinds of shit.” He was about to reach into his briefcase.
“No,” I caught his arm and stopped him from going further. I pointed to a woman approaching us - Nancy Gates. “She can tell us herself.”
Vince stared at Nancy in amazement as she slid into a seat next to us and whispered in her best sultry voice, “Well hello, boys. Heard you were here. Buy a dame a drink?”
I poured her a glass of champagne as she asked, “How’d you do it, Rob? How’d you pull it off?”
“I’m an adman.”
“You sell things.”
“No, I make people want to buy things.”
“And you did. They all bought it big time.”
I waited for her to take another sip, a longer one, before I asked, “What did Trip offer you for the inside information, Nancy?”
“CEO of the whole operation,” she said without hesitating.
Vince was catatonic. Then he managed to mutter, “You do PR, you don’t know advertising.”
She patted Vince’s cheek and giggled. “I know how to make a profit, big boy. A talent that seems so frequently to elude you advertising princes. How did you know it was me, Rob?”
“Because you’re the smartest and hungriest player in Carlson, and that twerp Trip, would have been easy meat for your wily feminine charms.”
Nancy held out her glass for more champagne and Vince filled it. “Are you going to fire me?” she asked.
“Yeah!” Vince sputtered.
“No,” I said. “I think a raise and a long European trip to drum up more PR work is in order. You’re a snake, but you’re my snake, and you’re right – Nancy Gates sure knows how to make a profit.”
She rose, downed the champagne in one gulp, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Ever wonder what we would have been like as a couple?”
“I would have woken up one morning dead,” I said.
“But imagine how exciting it would have been until then,” she whispered.
“Travel safe, Nancy. Learn new languages.”
“You too, boss. Ciao.”
She left and suddenly the bar seemed quiet.
“What do I do with all the stuff my rat-catchers collected?” Vince asked. “It’s useless now.”
“Oh, no, keep it,” I said. “You never know when we’ll have to fight Nancy again.”
46
Washington DC’s Corcoran Museum shuts down Robert Mapplethorpe’s gay photography exhibit. President Bush vetoes a bill to raise the minimum wage to $4.55 an hour. Bette Midler releases Wind Beneath My Wings. And Rob is brought back down to earth.
* * *
My father was a menace to society, at least the society in which he now lived. My parents had moved to the Manor House, a nice retirement facility close to our home, and there he became dangerous. He was finding it increasingly difficult to walk, refussed a cane or a walker, and was an angry bull thrashing around the place until I bought him one of those motorized mobility scooters. I thought it was a great idea. It was a terrible mistake, like giving a hormone-fuelled teenager a Ferrari. Sidewalks, paths and hallways were aiming reference points as he roared throughout the property. Only the threat of having the scooter taken away from him prevented the needless slaughter of dozens of little old ladies and a few elderly gentlemen. He banged into walls and over most things that stood in his way. My father developed a particular dislike for flowerbeds, and I often received phone calls from the Manor House detailing bills coming my way for replacing ruined plants. Dad was not a gardener and never met a pansy or impatiens he liked.
Stevie was involved in his undergraduate studies at USC and had expressed intentions of working in advertising after earning an MBA, while Beth planned to go on a supervised tour of Europe before going to college, also USC, in the fall.
Meanwhile Ginger was struggling. There were good days and bad. Lately more bad than good. Our communications had deteriorated to simple two or three word sentences as the PPA coupled with the Alzheimer’s took hold. In an odd way she had built a life around her affliction and seemed not to miss me so much when I worked late and on weekends or went out of town on business. But I still remembered my father’s words to me. “A man needs a family and they need him around. Kids grow up fast and need a Dad. You’ll be sorry you missed so much of them growing up. It goes by so quickly.”
He was right. I had missed so much and the kids needed me less and less every day, while my wife was slowly vanishing too. I was lonely, so I did what I always did when uncomfortable feelings and emotions rose up. I went to work and buried them.
A new form of advertising was coming on stream; it was called infomercials. An infomercial was a half-hour sales pitch, interrupted by several two-minute spots telling consumers the price and how to order by phone, now! Production was inexpensive; all that was needed was a simple stage set and air time was dirt cheap, which was good because the agency’s income was flat at best. I sat, staring out the window of my temporary office in Los Angeles, half-listening to the up-and-coming media buyer spin the virtues of infomercials and how they would change the world, or end starvation, or save the whales, dolphins or some damn endangered species. He droned on and on and I fought a rising urge to say, “Shut up!”
He must have sensed my indifference/hostility because he went quiet.
“Thank you,” I said. “We’ll talk more about this later.”
He left and I stared at the various certificates and awards hanging on the walls of the office I was using, which was normally reserved for clients when they visited us. The LA office had done well over the years. I thought about my old office now occupied by the man who headed up this operation. When I was there the office walls were covered with pictures of me in a Dodgers game shirt with Tommy Lasorda, President Reagan and me in tuxedos while grinning like drunken chimps, as well as my favorite with me standing next to the beautiful Ann-Margret in Las Vegas while at a convention.
“And not a single picture of Ginger,” I heard myself say aloud. “Jesus!”
I snatched up my coat and left the office.
“Where are you going?” my secretary called after me.
“Home, to see my wife.”
I hurried home. “Ginger? Ginger, where are you?”
The caregiver stepped out of the kitchen, put a finger to her lips, pointed up and whispered. “She’s in the bedroom, Mister Fleming.”
I went upstairs and eased open the bedroom door. The room looked empty and then I saw her. She was kneeling at the foot of the bed with her back to me and muttering something, although there seemed not to be any recognizable words. I slipped in, kissed the top of her head and knelt at her side.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?”
She nodded and said, “Praying.”
“Uh huh. For anything or anyone in particular?”
“You,” she said and my heart contracted.
I don’t know what flooded through me - h
umility, shame, embarrassment, or maybe all three and more. I asked, “May I pray with you?”
She nodded, her eyes glistening.
I bowed my head. I had no idea what to say, since my prayers over the years had been rooted in self-centered fear – fear of not getting what I wanted or fear of losing what I had. So mentally and spiritually, I stepped aside and let some greater presence speak for me. No, through me.
“God, I thank you for all the gifts you have given me. I thank you for my family, my children and my wife. I thank you too for making me aware.” I reached out and took Ginger’s hand. “Of all the blessings in my life, there is one above all for which I am eternally grateful. Thank you, God, for my wife. My lovely, understanding, compassionate wife.”
I stopped and there were tears. My tears. “Ginger, we’re going away. We’re taking a vacation, just the two of us. No kids, no phones, no business, just us. Would you like that?”
She kissed me. “Yes.”
“Where would you like to go?”
She grinned. “Ice cream.”
“Ice cream?”
“Ice cream. Cold. Alaska.”
We took a cruise to Alaska and saw so many things. We saw glaciers and salmon and bald eagles and whales and even a bear. We ate and slept and danced, and when one evening at dinner I sat across from my wife who had supported me for all these years, I found nothing but love and serenity in her silence.
“I love you, Ginger,” I said and she could only smile back. But the smile and her silence carried more meaning than any spoken word ever could. I felt truly blessed.
47
Braniff Airlines files for bankruptcy, again. Movie actress Bette Davis dies at age 81. A 7.1 earthquake hits the Northern California Bay area and kills 67 people. And Rob continues his hunt for new business.