Bookman

by Ed Baldwin

  Billy had been one jump ahead of the cops for two years. The fresh young thing with him was the daughter of a barge magnate in Minnesota and was only 15. I had noticed she looked a lot younger than her stated age of 20. Billy had wanted to marry her and wouldn’t take no for an answer when her parents refused. A letter to her mother written in a homesick moment had led the FBI here.

  In less than an hour the phone rang. The agent in Little Rock had found three salesmen in the office, waiting for Billy and their paychecks. Payday was yesterday. His hotel room was empty. The pregnant wife was gone with some of the rented furniture from the apartment that I had helped him rent in Memphis.

  The agents were noticeably disappointed when they were finally convinced that their man was gone again. Further probing led to the discovery of a number of overdrawn checking accounts, doubtless many more checks on the way. I remembered answering a lot of credit checks on him. I had reported his income at well over a thousand a month, which it was. His car payment was overdue. His rent hadn’t been paid for two months.

  The real scam surfaced the next week. Monty Golden began checking on his orders. In learning all about the business Billy had included the branch in his quest. He had taken Monty to lunch a dozen times. We all thought it was just to give him an edge when Monty verified his orders. We all did it. But Billy had learned enough about the business to know that after an order is verified, nothing is done about lack of payment for 90 days. Then the branch manager calls the family. The 90 days on Billy’s first order in Parkin, Arkansas, was over this week.

  When Monty called the first account the customer was quite happy with the books. No, he hadn’t intended to pay anything for them. He had been promised specifically that there would never be any charge. When asked about the $15 check that had accompanied the order he said that he didn’t have a checking account. The bank in Parkin uncovered a checking account in the name of each of the customers, opened on the day the order was closed, or a day later, and including just enough money to cover the one check that had been written on each account. Billy had written 10 orders in Parkin.

  Luckily, though, Billy had written a large number of legitimate orders and hadn’t tried the phony account scam anywhere but Parkin.

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  “Hiring women is bad for business,” Barney said with a sneer. He took a sloppy bite out of the corned beef sandwich he had talked us all into ordering from the deli across the street. He washed it down with a half of a kosher dill pickle, laced with garlic. Currently prosperous, he had sprung for lunch just to have someone else smell bad with him. We were sitting around the big walnut desk in the DM’s office trying to find a way out of the slumping production figures Burt had just chewed me out about. We were all doing well, but there were no answers to our ads and no new salesmen. Five or six guys do not a district make.

  “They won’t work and the guys are always trying to get into their pants instead of writing orders.” Barney popped the rest of his pickle into his mouth. “It ruins the whole crew.”

  “What about a separate crew, with a girl field manager?” I asked hopefully, thinking of Honey. Properly motivated and trained, I was sure she could handle a crew. Maybe that was taking a quantum leap for granted, but the chips were down.

  “Shit! That’s even worse,” Barney said, reaching for my pickle. “They won’t work for another woman. No, they have to have some man to impress, to do it for.”

  I wondered why I was listening to the opinion of a man twice divorced and who had not had the same girlfriend for more than a week since I had known him.

  “Ever work with a girl in your crew?” I asked, challenging him.

  “Yeah.” He smiled smugly. “And it wasn’t any good.”

  “What do you think?” I said, turning to Gerald. At least he was still married.

  “There was one in my crew a couple of years ago. Worked her separate from the men. She worked hard, wrote a few orders then got pregnant and moved away,” Gerald replied only marginally interested. He had stayed for the free lunch. His sporadic crew from Memphis State worked only when he needed the money. Their cluster of three or four orders every week or two had kept me from being sacked a couple of times already.

  Burt did have a way of keeping the fire under my butt. Every day there was some new wrinkle; a hot new sales manager in Toledo demanding a district, an old timer who had a drinking problem but was currently on the wagon and who was a master at hiring. One day he even threatened to fire me and come down to run the office himself. I figured that if he really had anyone better he would never have given me the job. I decided that now was the time to show the other guys why he did give me the job.

  “Well, boys,” I said with decision in my voice, “I think it’s time we did something drastic. I’m going to let women into my sales force.”

  Pat Warburton was a looker. I figured any woman I hired had to be or else she’d never get past any doors. After I gave her the whole hiring interview and loaded her down with materials, I sent her home to learn the first part of the presentation. Then I gathered the other salesmen in the training room for a post-hiring-a-woman talk.

  “Now listen up everybody. First off, she’s married and is to be addressed as Mrs. Warburton.” I ignored the grumbling and held up my hand to quiet everybody down. “And second, any man making a pass at Mrs. Warburton will be in jeopardy of losing his job.” I made sure Honey was in earshot of this last comment.

  John Sevier, because he seemed the most gallant of the salesmen and was currently on a streak, got the honors of going out with Mrs. Warburton to show her the proverbial ropes. I didn’t trust her with Barney, even though it was really his job to do it. I was also headed out of town and didn’t want her to spend her first night in a long drive with a bunch of foul mouthed, beer swilling, order writing slobs. John showed her two presentations and two orders. When I converted her the next day she was so anxious to get started she wanted to start hitting doors right then. Barney didn’t object when I gave him one of the guys from my crew and took Pat. It was a typical February night in Memphis, cold and wet.

  I dropped her off first, as is the custom with new people. I gave her the Shelbourne with strict instructions to work only one building. I didn’t want her to run into Paris. She wrote an order.

  Certainly not one of the boys, she settled right in with the crew. Riding in my Chrysler seemed to appeal to her. I noticed some improvement in dress among the guys, and her stories of life on overseas naval bases livened up the first few days. She also knew how to defuse the sexual tension by talking about her little girl and her husband, currently stationed in the Philippines.

  Two days after the first order she wrote another and then blanked for three days. By my own rules that called for a retraining session with me. I chose a ritzy section of East Memphis. These large houses, spaced apart on large lots took real nerve for the average salesman to work. The people are hard and aggressive, and cannot be dominated by the average salesman. They are curious though, and this can get you into the door.

  “Hi there! Stopped by to speak to your husband,” I said to a salt and pepper haired lady who merely nodded and closed the door. We started to walk a way, but after just a moment, her husband appeared. His jacket was off but his tie was still on. He had a drink in his hand.

  “Phil Lazar,” I said, extending my hand. “And this is Pat Warburton.”

  His eyes were on Pat as I gave the brief door opener. He opened the door without a word and motioned us into the living room, calling his wife to come join us.

  The room was furnished lavishly in a formal, French Provincial style. The most remarkable thing about it, though, was the spotless white carpet. I quickly checked my shoes for debris after sitting down. Pat did the same. While we waited for the wife, we made small talk about how hard it was to do door to door work when the houses were so far apart.

  “Mommie can’t come now!” A small voice rang out as a little girl rounded the
corner from the kitchen but came to a sliding halt one inch from the edge of the carpet.

  “Thank you, Caroline. You may watch television,” the man said formally but with a smile of pride at her good behavior. “They are only allowed in here for birthdays and Christmas.” He had assumed the role of proud host now, insuring at least a cordial interview.

  Determined to show Pat the right way to do this job I made conversation about the carpet, the painting on the wall and the neighborhood until the wife came in for the interview. To begin talking about our purpose before the wife arrived was to lose control of the situation. He would then make a decision without her and she could come in and talk him out of it.

  To keep him from asking me about my purpose before she got there, I asked him about things he would likely be interested in explaining. Some question about the house, the neighborhood or the community worked best as those questions were simple to answer and more appropriate from a stranger. I could then easily ask a follow up, or clarifying question and kill several more minutes.

  None of it mattered, though, since the wife was a real tough number and would have nothing to do with us. We were outside in a matter of minutes after she walked into the room. It was a good training session anyway, since Pat had been unaware of the importance of small talk, thinking she had to stick with the canned interview.

  The next presentation was with a middle aged Jewish businessman. He was the president of a clothing store chain that was well known in the area. Brusque and impatient at the door, he took one look at Pat’s tight sweater and alluring smile, and immediately his curiosity was piqued, he softened, and let us in.

  “What is it, some kind of survey?” he asked.

  “Just a few questions about advertising,” was the stock reply.

  “Why aren’t you going to write it down then.”

  “Keep it right here.” I smiled confidently and pointed to my head. “Television’s running three to one over magazines tonight. In a lower rent neighborhood it’s usually closer to twenty to one.”

  “Oh,” he said with a thoughtful twist of his face, pondering this new piece of information.

  I asked about the wife, and he replied that he didn’t have one. I made a mental note to instruct Pat later that under some circumstances it is acceptable to talk to a single person.

  “So, Mr. Roth, how many nights a week do you watch television?” I said, expanding the usual perfunctory part of the interview.

  “Only the news, sometimes the Johnny Carson Show.”

  “How many magazines do you take, including trade journals?” I was trying to make it as complex as possible to raise my credibility.

  “Six,” he said, after some thought.

  “Front to back or back to front?”

  He smiled and began to relax. “Both ways.”

  “That may sound silly, but a lot of people read back to front, and that makes the back page the best one to have.” I said, making up a plausible lie. “And how about the children?” I could see a couple of girls, grade school or a little older watching us instead of doing their homework in the adjoining room.

  “They’re pretty good girls,” he said, glaring at them to leave us alone. “I suppose they watch more television than they should. And magazines? Maybe a couple of teen things.”

  I continued this line of questioning until I felt I had covered the subject pretty well. I kept him informed on how he did in comparison with other aspects of society. I even ventured into treacherous waters by saying that I had noticed in the large number of Jewish families in the area there seemed to be more emphasis on books than magazines, but that this was okay because I worked for a publishing company. That led into the canned interview.

  The presentation went fast. Although interested in detail, he wouldn’t allow a lot of small talk. If I strayed from the subject, he’d hit me with a question.

  “How about population and demographic trends?” he asked as we presented the reference service.

  “I don’t understand.”

  I have fifteen retail stores in three states. I need to know what kind of people are there and if there is any change. It’s very difficult to get that from the census people.”

  “That is probably beyond the scope of this service. It’s really more tuned to what census questions the girls might have about the 1970 census, when they’re in high school,” I said, for the first time admitting that there might be something the service couldn’t do.

  “So what does all this come down to?” He was sounding impatient just as I had reached the part where I show the total cost of the special offer in comparison with retail cost.

  I gave him the standard breakdown and then said, “There are really two considerations here. First, is the reference library. In order for this situation to work for both of us you must be convinced that it is something necessary for your family and be willing to take the time to teach the girls to use it properly.” I paused to let this sink in. “Second, we would need some sort of letter from the family, if you didn’t want your name used in the neighborhood or local advertising. One of the girls, for example, could sign the letter.’’ I had said nothing about the $400 cost, although it was on the pad in front of him.

  He looked at the girls, now standing in the doorway looking at all the display material, and nodded. Then he smiled and said with a slight exaggeration of his Jewish accent, “How much for cash?”

  “For cash” I threw in the bookcase and the children’s books, as he had committed before the conversion to the monthly payments. It was the first full payment deal I had ever written and carried an extra $20 commission.

  As Pat and I went back out into the cold I tried to hide my elation.

  There was plenty of night left. Between houses I learned that Pat wasn’t managing too well on the allotment her husband’s job in the Navy paid. She needed the job badly.

  We came to a house with no lights on. I always ring the bell anyway, as there might be someone in the back with the shades drawn. While we stood in the shadows of the entry she put her arm through mine and snuggled close. Under the circumstances it was a blatant sexual advance and one that I had no intention of answering. A man could get a piece of ass anywhere, but good sales people are hard to find.

  The next dark house brought the same response, and no answer from me. It was getting late and she was either actually cold or hot for me, so I said we should quit and go for some coffee. Over a steaming cup, I gave her a lecture about fooling around on the job and she said she’d never do it again.

  Pat’s production was steady, and I never caught her goofing off in the middle of an evening, so I changed the ad to attract women as well as men. Interest in training class picked up as several female applicants appeared within days.

  Gloria lacked the class Pat had. She looked more like the out of work waitress she was than a secretary, but she wanted the job and I was less wary now that I’d already hired a woman. I took her with me once she was trained and showed her an order the first night out. The next night she wrote an order that failed to verify. I chalked it to bad luck and explained to her that a single college student, under 21, is not what we wanted.

  A few days later, though, I learned the real risks of hiring women. We were at the Holiday Inn having a pitcher to celebrate a good night and waiting for Barney’s crew to come in. Gloria told a dirty joke—the punch line was something about an enormous cock—and when she said it we all started laughing uncontrollably. Perhaps without the beer it would have seemed as tasteless as it was, but at the moment it was hilarious and more so because a female had told it. Gloria obviously enjoyed it as much as we did. Her breasts bounced as she laughed and threatened to pop the already straining buttons on her blouse.

  Then Barney arrived and pulled another table over, and we began ordering pitchers in two’s. Closing time found Pat trying to imitate the walk of a homosexual while the rest of us crossed our legs tightly and held cigarettes in our fingertips, making life miserable for a
couple of pretty boys who had come down from the motel above for a nightcap. Our numbers had thinned to the two girls and four men.

  “We could go to my place.” Pat said gaily.

  That sounded like a great idea so we bought a case of beer and walked the three blocks to the King Cotton Hotel. It was on the waterfront in downtown Memphis. Once a fine hotel it was way past its prime. She lived in what one time had been a regal suite and was now a cheap apartment.

  When we walked into her place, a young black girl was sitting with a dirty two year old watching television. Pat paid the sitter, put the kid to bed in the other room, and was back in two minutes. Then the party began in earnest.

  Lucian Fowler made the first pass at Pat and was politely rebuffed. He was married and it was already past midnight so he just left. Barney had guzzled more than his share of the beer and made the next pass at Gloria. He did manage to get her into the hall for some whispered discussion and furtive necking but soon grew tired of the chase and grabbed a six pack and called a cab.

  That left John and me. When Barney left I saw a look in Pat’s eye that removed any doubt about what was to happen. We turned out the lights and danced to the radio with the neon from the parking lot across the street giving a red glow to everything, punctuated by green flashes.

  Heavy breathing and a tongue in my ear later, Pat said, “Can we do it in front of them?”

  Even with several beers and the blood rising I was thinking of the office. Already violating my own rule about fooling around with help, I couldn’t afford to give John and Gloria that much to hold over me. Especially Gloria.

  “No. Let’s just dance for awhile,” I said, disappointed for both my scruples and my body, now aching with passion.

  John and Gloria were leaning against the wall, his tall frame bent over ravenously gnawing at her face, their lower torsos undulating slowly, not in time to the music. Pat and I danced on while they made it to the couch, still making sloppy noises and groping for each other in the dark.