Formerly Fingerman

by Joe Nelms

  “She looks like she might be open to that kind of thing.”

  Sold.

  Of course these exact ideas would never run in GQ or the New York Times, but they were perfect for guerrilla postings, and the line “Maybe too good” would translate to all sorts of cleaner FCC-friendly and network-approvable incarnations. Brad and Matt were invited to present their ideas to the client. Quite an honor, indeed.

  But none of this would even register as the English language to Champ, who was convinced that Brad’s job was nothing more than coloring with crayons and adding the words “20% off” to soap packaging.

  Champ’s bloodcurdling peals of laughter and hernia-inducing guffaws would wait patiently through Brad’s explanation of the Molotov Vodka pitch meeting. The magnificent presentation Brad made. The hilarious jokes and anecdotes he told throughout the meeting. The way the clients looked at him almost maternally as he guided them through his genius campaign for their product, and how it worked as a seamless three-sixty program—Just look at that Facebook initiative! Phil sat overwhelmed with pride as Brad finished presenting his brilliance. He had hit a home run. Stuck the landing. Killed it. But that’s when Champ would be silent.

  Champ had pegged Brad for a loser early on. Brad didn’t hunt, couldn’t golf, and had wet his pants at his own bachelor party thanks to the dozen or so boilermakers Champ and his uninvited hunting and golfing buddies had forced on him. So even if Brad were to tell the story of his spectacular performance, Champ would somehow know there was an epilogue where Brad blew it. Which there was.

  Needless to say, after winning a plum account like Molotov, Brad was the cock of the walk. And he knew it. Everyone knew it. He became an instant star in the agency. And unlike Matt, who understood that when you got down to it, they were just pushing fermented potato juice on the American public and lucky to have their jobs, Brad ate it up. The week after the win, he promenaded down the hall like he was going to his own movie premiere, accepting the attendant attention as a matter of course.

  “Bradley, well done!”

  “What up, Mr. Molotov!”

  “Hey Brad, maybe you and Matt can help us cast that bra commercial. We could use your eye.”

  Oh, life was good. Brad and Matt went to work bringing the vodka campaign to life and taking their pick of the other choice assignments at the agency. Goodbye frozen pizzas and hot flash treatments. Hello lingerie and video game accounts. In fact, hello new agencies.

  Brad called his headhunters. He and his partner had single-handedly landed a monster liquor account—the advertising world equivalent of having your dick spontaneously grow nine inches. Time to move on to the next level. Time to get paid.

  Brad told his headhunters he made one hundred and seventy-five thousand. They in turn told the agencies that Brad was making two ten, but would make a lateral move if the accounts were right. Because he loved making advertising that much.

  Every day when Gracie called to check in, Brad had fresh and exciting news about the interviews his headhunters were piling up. She was invariably happy for him, and half the thrill of landing the interview was savoring the bragging rights he exercised with his wife. Modern man’s version of a caveman bringing home an elk he slayed with his bare hands to feed his family.

  The interviews were with the best agencies in town. ChangBaby, Seaton/Dara, Dogfight. Everyone wanted a little bit of that Brad magic. Phil was no fool. He preemptively called Brad into his office and handed him new business cards.

  “Congratulations. Mr. Senior Art Director.”

  Brad took the cards and couldn’t help but smile. His plan was to play it like he was not that impressed and couldn’t be won over by a token gesture. But he failed. Brad Fingerman, senior art director. That really had a nice ring to it, and he hadn’t even had to take a single meeting.

  “Wow, thanks Phil. What a surprise. But, I was going to talk to you anyway about a—”

  “Of course, that comes with a big raise.”

  “Ahh. Right. Well, then.

  “And Schott’s old office.”

  “What happened to Schott?”

  “Didn’t work out. Which reminds me, I want you to talk to Osbourne about some work we need on the Massive account.”

  Sports drink work. Sexy. Well played, Phil.

  “Great. I’ll do that.”

  Brad got up to leave.

  “Thanks, Phil.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Molotov.”

  Phil’s ploy worked. Brad decided he might just have a bright future at Overthink and turned down the offers to meet with other agencies. Some of the biggest stars in advertising had done it that way. Company men all the way to agency partner. Overthink/Fingerman. Nice. Hmmm, maybe Brad was a company man after all.

  A few weeks later, Brad, Matt, and Phil had gone over to the Molotov headquarters to show them the latest incarnations of the Maybe too good campaign, including the microsite/app that let visitors play online strip poker with live, sexy Russian female potato farmers. Phil was already making room on the awards shelf.

  After once again dazzling both his new client and his boss in this presentation, Brad led them all to the bar next door for a celebratory martini. One martini easily turned into to two and then three, and the third one led to joke after joke in which the punch line was “Maybe too good.” The idea of a fourth martini was floated, but Brad had a different thought.

  “Let me handle this.”

  He called a waitress over and ordered with confidence.

  When she returned bearing a full tray, Brad commandeered the floor and informed his audience that it was time to really celebrate and made a short, tasteful toast to the new relationship between client and agency. And then he noticed that no one was joining him. Or smiling. They just kept looking at the tequila shots that had been placed in front of them. Finally, a junior member of the client team broke the silence.

  “Molotov doesn’t make tequila. This is our competitor.”

  If it is possible for silence to grow, then that is what happened next. It seemed like three hours, but it was probably more like two seconds before Phil spoke.

  “Well, it’s getting late.”

  And that was the end of that. The party broke up instantly with a few hurried goodbyes and Phil making sure to insert himself in between the clients and Brad’s attempt to apologize and explain himself. Matt avoided making eye contact with anyone in the hope that they would all forget he was there and especially that he was Brad’s partner.

  Phil walked the clients out with a few hushed assurances Brad couldn’t quite make out and even got a laugh out of them before they cleared the door. Once he was sure they were safely tucked in their cabs, Phil came back into the bar to stare at Brad. Stunned. Flabbergasted. And then finally he said three words as if they were the most obvious things in the world.

  “You’re. So. Fired.”

  Word spread quickly. Brad attempted damage control with his headhunters, but they weren’t much help. As in, they didn’t take his call or call him back. He no longer had a job because he had acted like an ass around a major client. That was a tough sell. Not responding was their unmistakable way of saying, Sorry, Brad. Give us a call the next time you sell a gigundo campaign and don’t screw it up.

  So there he was, unemployed and unemployable after blowing the chance of an advertising lifetime.

  That would be the part Champ would laugh at.

  Actually, he would smile slowly at first, savoring the rich texture of predictable flameout. Rolling it back and forth across his tongue like a rare Pinot. Mmm. The luscious taste of I told you so with top notes of What do you see in this guy ?

  Champ would smile until he was absolutely sure it was the worst possible outcome. Then he would really let loose with the laughter. Like a hurricane. A torrential downfall of laughter that would soak Brad to the bone. And the bitch of it was, Champ had one of those really infectious laughs. Once he started, everyone would start laughing. At Brad. Champ. Gracie. Maybe ev
en Brad himself. And especially the people Champ retold the story to. Which would be everyone. Everyone. Including Jerry down at the Camaro dealership.

  “I’m interviewing because it’s a better job, Champ. Better accounts, bigger salary, more opportunity.”

  Technically, that was still the truth. He had just left out the colossal failure part. Brad was always good with selling concepts.

  Champ stared blankly.

  “Hmmph.”

  Brad was getting lightheaded. He pretended to wipe some food off his mouth so he could at least take care of the upper lip sweat that, in his mind, was making a big cartoon water mustache on his face.

  Champ eyed him with the deep and precise stare of a courtroom shark. He knew something was bullshit here, but couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “Well, just make sure your dress is ironed.”

  Frank “Fancypants” Fortunato

  “You call that guy about the thing?”

  “I saw him on the street.”

  “He get the thing?”

  “He got the thing, but he can’t get it to the place.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s got to talk to a guy.”

  “What about the other thing?”

  “That he can get, but not when he told us.”

  “Is it still in the place?”

  “It’s still in the place, but we need the other other thing.”

  “So tell him to get another one.”

  “He can’t. The guy with the other other thing is away.”

  “So what are we supposed to do if we don’t have it?”

  Sal shrugged.

  Frank Fortunato simmered as his eyes drifted to the hockey game playing quietly on the TV hanging in the back room of the grimy office they worked out of. The Rangers were down by three in the second. Star goalie Glenn Bozlinski was doing his best impression of a sieve. Like he had been told to do. Good. Frank would make a killing on that game. At least something good would come of Glenn’s raging gambling addiction.

  But still, the guy with the other other thing was away.

  Sal’s shrug was not the answer Frank was hoping for. He was looking for a nod. Or a wink. Some definitively positive movement or grunt that indicated the affirmative. Some tic or hand motion that meant “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go to Plan B.” Instead he got the shrug. To an outsider, that might mean “Gee, Boss, I don’t know what to do. What do you think?” But to Frank and Sal and anyone else affiliated with This Thing of Theirs, it meant someone was about to get some bad news. News whose headline would probably read something like You’re dead. There was no other way around these things. If the guy with the thing had come through, then maybe something could have been worked out. At the place. By the guy with the other other thing. Frank had given very specific instructions that the thing had to be at the place. And it wasn’t.

  “You want me to take care of it, Frank?”

  “No, I’ll do it myself.”

  Sal gulped. Frank could see his associate’s simple mind spinning. This was big. Frank Fortunato hadn’t lifted a finger in the last twenty years unless it was to pick a piece of stray lint off his brand-new suit. He had people for the real dirty work.

  Of course, Frank had put his time in early on. He didn’t get to the top of the Maraschino crime family by being lazy. Legs had been broken. Judges had been bribed. Piles and piles of money had been stolen. A couple of dirtbags had been sent to a better place, but that was part of the game. Frank knew very well that he could have been one of those dirtbags had he made one misstep. But he hadn’t. He was too smart. He quickly rose to the top of the heap and never looked back. There was no longer any mention of his former self, the working thug. No, Frank Fortunato had reinvented himself to become more than simply the phony head of the Corona Sanitation Transportation Corporation. He was the head of one of the most powerful crime families in New York.

  One of the most powerful. That distinction never sat well with him.

  With so many layers of secrecy among the Mafiosi, it was difficult to quantify for the purpose of rank exactly which was the most powerful crime family in New York City. It was pretty reasonable to presume there were five very powerful crime families along with assorted minor wannabes. So after much debate and feather-ruffling it was decided among the top five bosses that they, along with the reporters they paid off, would refer to themselves individually as “one of the most powerful.” The hope was that this way maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to shoot each other over a matter of pride. What they also agreed on (at least four out of the five) was that Frank could not change the name of his crime family.

  It had been Maraschino for almost a hundred years and the general consensus had been that to change the name would be not only an undignified breach of Mafia etiquette but possibly confusing to lower-tier mobsters and mainstream media, perhaps even leading some people to believe that an entirely new gang had become One of the Most Powerful Crime Families and encouraging the idea that there was potential for competition. There wasn’t. So why make trouble?

  After grudgingly accepting their decision, Frank came up with a new plan. He set out to make his own name bigger than the family name. He would become larger than life. Dominate the tabloids. If he couldn’t claim to be the most powerful and didn’t have the juice to change the name of his own gang, then he would secure the title of best-known and most-liked alleged crime boss.

  And so the makeover began. He had his hair cut by Mr. Jon (the same guy who cuts Hugh Jackman’s hair when he’s in town). He lost twenty pounds. He bought designer suits. He spray tanned. And then he paraded around the hippest, hottest restaurants and clubs with his new look and a series of models, each thinner and nip-slip-ier than the last. The tabloids took notice. Soon Frank Fortunato had become the character he had dreamed of being, landing on the front pages several times a month. The public ate it up. He was bigger than the Mafia. The one flaw in his plan was born from a seemingly minor character trait.

  He was cheap. Frank was cheaper than a backup dancer’s weaves. He loved to look the part, but he couldn’t stomach paying for it. So he traded Mr. Jon a set of stolen rims for his haircut, had the finished product photographed from every possible angle, and then went to Vinnie DiMassio in the old neighborhood for all subsequent shearings. He made a big to-do about buying a seven thousand dollar Brioni suit, and then had it quietly returned after it was knocked off by a backroom tailor on the Lower East Side. Certainly he could have worn some of the expensive suits that so often ended up in his meat locker after falling off a truck, but that would have been cash out of his pocket. Those suits were to be sold. For money. Even his spray tan was straight from a bottle picked up at Duane Reade by an underling who knew better than to open his yap about it.

  Frank Fortunato was a chiseling bastard.

  And finally the tabloids that weren’t paid off by the Mafia noticed that too. The Daily News was first on the case. An ambitious (read naïve) reporter spotted a knockoff designer tie around Frank’s neck. Hermes was spelled Hemres.

  It made the front page. The headline read, “Cheapfella!”

  Naturally, the reporter was never heard from again. But it was too late. The damage had been done. After elevating himself to celebrity status, Frank Fortunato had been turned into a gigantic human target thanks to his New England-esque frugality. The rest of the tabloids picked up on the angle and the New York Post dubbed him Frank “Fancypants” Fortunato. It was not the nickname Frank had in mind. In fact, it was crazy-making for him. He denied wearing knockoffs, but to no avail. All his hard work to remake himself. And for what? To become a joke? Not likely.

  The timing of the story was serendipitous. It came the same day Frank found out he had made almost no progress in his fight against stage four prostate cancer.

  The beam therapy had failed. Chemo failed. The seeds had given him bowels irritable in Russell Crowe proportions—he was terrified to fart for fear of unexpectedly dropping a load in th
e middle of a sit down. That would not exactly jibe with the elegant mob boss persona he had put so much effort into developing.

  And he didn’t care how advanced certain medical practices were and how much they claimed to have lowered the risk of impotence. Any risk in that department was too much risk.

  Which meant, according to the best doctors in the Northeast, Frank’s options were now exhausted. And there was a ticking time bomb up his ass.

  The whole business put him in a foul mood. But it did help him focus on what was really important. They wanted to make fun of Francis Albert Fortunato? Fine. He would reinvent himself again. Only this time, he wouldn’t be a target. This time he would make sure the legacy he left was not “one of” but the most powerful crime boss in the city. Undisputed.

  Aside from frequent trips to the bathroom—just in case—any actions Frank took now were not based on any short-term plans. It was all long-term thinking from here on. He was going for broke because he wanted to go out on top. Like the firemen who work as much overtime as they can in their final year so they can retire with a salary based on whatever hours they pile up during their swan song, Frank was trying to accumulate as much power, fear, and reputation as possible before he bit it. This was his legacy. He wasn’t going to risk the mausoleum he bought in Flushing having an engraving that read, Here rests Frank Fortunato, devoted father, beloved community member, arguably powerful gangster. He wanted all questions answered before he was laid to rest.

  And that process would start with the guy who hadn’t come through with the other other thing.

  “Frank, you sure about this? I mean, I could talk to Tony Stutters.”

  Frank slowly turned and stared off in the distance, imagining the ripple effect this first step of his journey would cause.