Business picks up, and some American mysteries are made a bit more comprehensible. I think this is the part Bollywood thought was “too complicated”. The guy pitching to them obviously hadn’t read it, either. I couldn’t be bothered blinking when this guy scuttled in, clearly knowing nothing about it. I’m too used to media morons. Done as a TV show or a stream, easily costed, it’d sell. Try convincing anyone of that.
“Al, a friend of mine is a fashion designer. She wants some advice about advertising locally and trying to get her stuff to big outlets. Can we help?”
Al bought lunch for both of them, pointing out that he still owed them for six jaffles and five pots of coffee. Bryce Lewis rang that night. Al was actually glad to hear his voice, for once.
“I thought you were away for that meeting deliberately.”
“I was. I got saddled with your cosmetics fanatic as a punishment. Is that guy human?”
“No.”
“Al, I wanted to ring you and then Keith told me to ring you, off the record. Tony came back to be hailed as a conquering hero………”
Al roared, “What! I’ll nail the insect-sodomizing, necromaniac, fetus-molesting sonofabitch to a flagpole if I get my way!……”
“Yeah, yeah, we know. But what we didn’t know is that Tony is White’s left hand man; the one you’re not looking at. He came back and dumped on David, saying that he spent all that money trying to get some decent cash flow business going. You’d swear he was Lassie. He made himself out to be a martyr, and we can’t prove a goddamn thing here. He didn’t actually accuse David of anything illegal, but you’d think Tony spent his life savings to Save The Company”.
“I really hate to say this, but it’ll take some long hard work to find out what actually happened to that money. Tony really dumped on David?”
“I quote, “Very difficult and intricate client relationships, with very low profit potentials. I had to schmooze like I’d never schmoozed before……””
“He frightened them off with talking about huge outlays, and drove them rabid with his sheer incompetence……. I’ve got letters threatening to sue if he ever showed his face in some clients’ offices again.”
“Well, whatever, he saved the honor of a nun, the way he puts it.”
“That’s a new one on me, I have to say. He screwed up badly with all of them. Did he claim that David had created the mess? Because that’s what it sounds like.”
“Not as such. Pity, really. Could have been a great defamation case. He did say, quote, that he “…spent months in difficult and lengthy consultations with existing clients which were ultimately acrimonious and unsuccessful”. He also produced some projections that showed that the existing client base could never have made a profit, so he went for new business. Crap, of course, but hard to disprove with no information.
It was interesting, though, because he had an army of excuses working for him. The American copywriters were one. He called them uncooperative and too expensive for the Australian market. Overlooking of course that he hired them in the first place. This logic was based on the “local production” situation, in which our hero found that they can’t make ads in Australia and was forever saying what lousy work they did. He made it sound like he was an African explorer.”
“Impressive comment from a guy who’s never made a real ad himself. The copywriters walked, the minute they figured out they could take the money with them. He hired some English corpse called Nigel who was a drunk. I just fired him. The rest of the stuff seems to have gone to anyone with a camera or a laptop, with little or no actual product.”
“He spent an hour telling us how worried he was about clients taking action against the firm for the inferior quality product they got. Whatever it was, there was Tony saving the firm.”
“The only action taken was against him, for breach of contract.” Al recited the fertilizer case. After Bryce had stopped laughing, Al asked him,
“How does White benefit from discrediting David? It seems to be his mission in life. He also knows Keith and Saul don’t buy it.”
“Therein the rub. David was on track to become a partner.”
Now it became clear, to a point. The partnership agreement, currently Stone and Gold as a joint partnership with White, would have had to be to be redrawn. As it now stood, to dissolve the partnership Keith and Saul were in the unenviable position of having to split a lucrative business in a very expensive legal fight to separate, and things were going too well for that to be worthwhile.
White would know that if David came in it would reduce his equity. Instant marginalization, and the current split on profit would be redefined. More to the point, White couldn’t handle David, who’d hated him from day one, and would take great delight in tearing White to pieces every time the mood struck him, which would be often. White would do all he could to stop it, and he had. David, under these circumstances, had simply had no choice but to resign, rather than give any impression of tolerating the accusations. The resignation wouldn’t really affect the basic intent of a new partnership deal, but a barrier had been created, and an ugly thing it was.
The discrediting of David was a theatrical process. Reputations matter, and rumors of multi million dollar fiascoes do hurt. The insiders might know that it was a load of crap, but the clients wouldn’t. Incompetence isn’t an asset in the industry, and people worry about their accounts being in the hands of agencies that can’t handle their own business. David could deny it as much as he liked. The Australian operation would have to go on the books as making a definite loss of three million, and Tony would be right there, still employed, while David wasn’t. Worse, Tony couldn’t be accused of anything at all without making the very sticky admission that all that money had gone with nothing to show for it, whatever the circumstances. Embarrassing, from all directions.
They were in no position to take any action against Tony; if it went to court as it stood, the series of bank statements would just show that a lot of money had been disbursed by the firm. The defence would be within its rights to ask why the firm had paid out, and Tony would just look stupid, not criminal. Anyone could ask why Stone Gold and White hadn’t pulled the plug on him sooner, if that was a problem. To also have to say to a court that your account figures had to be found before you got to see them, to make a decision like that, would be a major denouement. That still didn’t stack up to Al. Any idiot could just lose money through bad deals. Why do it like that? It seemed superficial to do all that and then say that it was to solve poor margins caused by David’s choice of clients. However, the damage to David was already done. It was too late to go into details about how it happened. Nobody would gain much.
Tony, acting like a demented Santa Claus, had been trying to save a business that didn’t need saving, from someone that was no longer there? Al could imagine the judge saying “What exactly is Mr Fazzina being accused of, counsel? Surely it’s up to the firm to control its own expenditure, for whatever reason, or by whom, it is made.”
In this case, the facts weren’t good enough. To Bryce he said,
“It reeks.”
“It was the last straw for Saul. He sat through Tony’s presentation like a small stone god, said nothing, and left the office without a word to anyone. He’s vanished over to New York for a while. Nothing’s getting signed, and I think White’s getting worried.”
“What about Keith?”
“He’s being very nice to everyone, even White.”
“Why? Keith was the first of any of us to start to despise White.”
“Dunno. It’s like a shark turning into a lapdog. Very out of character. Keith and Saul both send their regards, by the way.”
That rang a bell, and Al couldn’t think why. The conversation turned into a coffee break dialogue until Al remembered to ask why Keith had told Bryce to ring him.
“Thank God you asked, I nearly forgot. Keith said I was to tell you, verbatim, that you should trust your instincts.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is. My other bit of news, also courtesy Keith, was that the partners can’t authorize payments on their own above $10,000 without the consent of White.”
“So White can block anything being sent here? This is sick, Bryce; we have very good people here who have been killing themselves doing good work, putting up with Fazzina, and are now finding business for us. Thanks to them I think I can get us out of this hole Tony put us in. Can you mention that to Keith?”
“I heard.”
“Keith?”
“Just got in. Bryce told you the story about David’s various alleged indiscretions and incompetencies? I can’t even think of that seriously. Look, Al, this could get nasty, as I’m sure you know. Please believe me when I say we have great faith in your ability. However, we also have a minefield to get through before we can send in the Marines for you.”
“Understood. But I have an idea. Well, I think I have. Look, can I get back to you tomorrow? I have to sound out the guys here about it, but I think I can at least kill anything they’re firing at David. By the way, it could take ages to track down that money……..”
Al gathered Keith had guessed that. He sounded so unsurprised that it was suspicious. Keith agreed to be available for a call at an acceptable hour for both time zones. Al rang off. What hadn’t been said was that in theory Keith and Saul could tackle Harvey directly, putting the liability on him for the losses. Tony was employed directly by White, and the agreement, as Al understood it, allowed for partners to be held responsible for failures like this. However, Keith and Saul were advertising veterans. They were therefore not about to advertise a major embarrassment any more than necessary. They based a lot on their professional expertise. This scrambled business would do nothing to enhance their valuable reputations, and would inevitably head to the nearest court.
