Kickback

(Originally published in Down & Out: The Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 3)

THEY SAY THAT PEOPLE FROM MONTREAL drive like maniacs. The first time I drove with him, I figured Gilbert was the guy they had in mind. His dad owned a printing business, and Gil used his knowledge of printing terminology to lie his way into a job as print production manager at the ad agency I worked for. It took about two days for them to figure out he was utterly unqualified, but, for reasons beyond understanding, they didn’t fire him. They made him an account executive. I guess they figured if he could sell himself into a job he couldn’t do, he could sell clients ads that didn’t work. If they’d canned him, probably none of this would have happened.

Gil walked into my office on his first day, grinning. “Have you written a novel yet?” he asked.

My mind said, Fuck off, but the part of me that likes to get along with people said, “Yeah. It’s shit, but I wrote one.”

Gil asked the same question to Lynne, the other copywriter, who shared the office with me.

She laughed and shook her head. “You must have some work to do,” she said. Later, Gil confessed to me that he did have work to do but had no idea how to do it.

Lynne responded to many questions by laughing and shaking her head. She did the same thing the first time I asked her out. Then she said, “You don’t make enough money. And you live with your parents.”

“Not much longer,” I said, stung by the truth that I had not realized was public knowledge. “A buddy and I just got a place. I’m moving out in two weeks.”

“Great. What about the money part?”

Eleven grand a year seemed like a lot to me, but not everyone saw it that way.

Lynne’s desk and mine faced each other with a five-foot partition between. It meant I could not see her when we were seated, but it was not high enough to block the clatter of typewriter keys or the smoke from Lynne’s constant cigarettes.

The partition was also the perfect height for me to lean against and talk with her when we weren’t typing. She always left her top few buttons undone and from that angle I could look down the front of her shirt. This was the first sign I had that she was interested in me.

Despite her feelings, I would never have asked her out if not for the photograph. She had returned from a vacation at an adults-only resort in the Caribbean where she had gone with a jingle house sales rep she was seeing and some of his high-powered ad agency friends.

“How was the trip?” I asked.

She laughed. “Good. It was great just to be able to kick back and relax.” She took out a four-by-six colour print. In the photo, she was standing up to her knees in the turquoise water next to a man I recognized as the creative director of a major agency. He was holding a drink, and she was turned sideways to him with her arms around his neck and her lips against his cheek. She had a cigarette between the fingers of her right hand and she was wearing a white T-shirt. The water stretched off to the horizon, uninterrupted by boat or any other sign of life, and the sky was cloudless. It took a second for me to realize she was wearing nothing other than the T-shirt, which came to just above her waist. When I handed the photo back, Lynne gave me a look that seemed to be asking what I thought.

“It looks very relaxing,” I said.

There was no way she would show me that photo if she wasn’t interested.

The first time I drove with Gil was eye opening, though I reckon Jackie spent the time with his eyes closed.

Gil had a Honda Civic, which was a very small car. Jackie, our boss, had to take his Corvette in for service, and I didn’t have a vehicle, so he asked Gil to drive us to a meeting. I squeezed into the tiny back seat with Jackie riding shotgun. I was smart enough to do up my seatbelt but Jackie was more cavalier about things like that. Gil lurched towards the exit of the parking lot. A line of vehicles waiting for a light blocked access to the street. Gil turned onto the sidewalk, drove past the end of the line of cars, and bounced over the curb onto the road. I watched Jackie’s head smack off the roof. “Jesus”, he said, rubbing his head then grabbing the dashboard with both hands as Gil roared down the street. Six blocks later, Jackie yelled at Gil, “Stop the fucking car. Now.” I was surprised at the outburst as the whole thing stuck me as fun and amusing.

Gil pulled to the curb and Jackie climbed out, slamming the door with a violence that shook the vehicle. He raised his arm to hail a cab. “I guess we’ll meet him there,” Gil said, not put out at all.

When Jackie hired me, I assumed that he and his partner, Alan Thomas, knew what they were doing. I figured that everyone at the agency was competent. My first clue to the contrary was when Jackie told me I had the job. He asked me if I could bring my own typewriter. I was smart enough to say no, and they supplied a stiff and noisy Remington upright.

I was rolling in a sheet of paper on my first day when Alan came and stood next to me. “So you’re the asshole who wanted to get into advertising,” he said.

Jackie had no previous advertising experience beyond watching commercials on TV. Alan knew a bit more than Jackie. He’d worked as ad manager for a second-rate discount retail chain that had gone out of business a couple of years before. The rest of us were basically enthusiastic amateurs who worked cheap.

The two agency art directors, Kent and Bev, sat together in an open area of the office. They spent most of their time hunched over their drafting tables, assembling print ads for shipping to magazines and newspapers. In those days, sheets of typeset copy arrived from the type house, and the art directors used scalpels to cut the sheets apart and to make any necessary changes. Spacing was refined. Words were moved. Headlines were shifted. Hot wax was used to stick the copy to the art boards that were sent out for photo-static reproduction once approved by the client.

I was talking with Bev one day when Jackie came over and picked up Kent’s scalpel. “I need to borrow this,” Jackie said.

He used the blade to slice a hangnail off one of his fingers. “That’s better,” he said, putting the scalpel back and walking away.

I must have looked surprised because Kent said, “He does that all the time. I think he uses them to pick his teeth.”

The next time I asked Lynne out, I had come back from lunch a little drunk. Lynne was smoking and reading the paper. I gave her a charming smile. “Let’s go out on Friday night,” I said. “We can go dancing. I got my own place now.”

“You’re sharing it,” she said with a laugh. “And did you get a raise that I don’t know about?”

“No, but I got a car.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ve seen it. Although just barely through that smokescreen it throws up.”

The car needed new piston rings and burned oil, causing a blue haze when I drove, but it really wasn’t that bad. The good news was that she still hadn’t given me a flat out no.

One day, the marketing manager of our shoe store client called to complain about a brochure that we had created. “Pure puffery,” she said. Gil and I took the initiative and drove to her office to resolve the situation.

We spent half an hour defending our work, and grudgingly agreed to make changes. When we got back, Jackie called us into his office. He was opening his mail with a scalpel. As soon as we were through the door, he pointed the blade at us, and started yelling. “What the hell were you idiots thinking? Never go to see her without me. In fact, never go to see any client without me. In fact, never go to see any client. Period. Do you know what I had to go through to calm her down, you morons?” He went on like that for some time. I had never been on the receiving end of Jackie’s temper and it shook me. I felt frightened and angry. Finally, he told us to get the hell out of his office. A day later his outburst made sense.

Around two o’clock the following afternoon, Jackie was on the phone, behind closed doors. His voice was raised, and it sounded like he was making an impassioned pitch that was not going well. The receiver slammed down suddenly and sharply, and I was about to knock on his door, when the smashing started. It was loud and persistent, coupled with the sound of breaking plastic, Jackie swearing all the while. When the noise stopped, Jackie stormed out of his office. He found the office manager and said, “I need a new phone, Iris. Mine doesn’t work anymore.” His voice was surprisingly calm.

I looked in and the floor was covered with smashed plastic.

“Jesus,” I said to Lynne. “That can’t be good.”

The call had been from our biggest client, firing us. The next day another piece of business did the same thing. The morning after that, a third of the staff was fired, including Lynne. Gil kept his job but they laid me off and then hired me back on a freelance basis. I guess they thought that would save them money. In fact, my new rates gave me a raise.

A few days after the mass firing, I called Lynne at home. “You can go out with me now,” I said. “I’m making more money than you.”

“Don’t make me come down there and hit you,” she said. “Call me when you have a good car.”

In an attempt to salvage the agency, Jackie and Alan merged with Ryan Clark, a friend who owned the recording studio we used for radio spots.

Ryan had a few clients of his own. His answer to every advertising problem was to use radio, preferably commercials with a bouncy jingle. He wrote the commercials, produced them in his studio, composed the music, played piano on the recording sessions, and even did the voiceovers. His background in radio news made every spot he read sounded like a recap of the day’s headlines.

After the merger, our use of jingles increased beyond common sense. Ryan believed that a jingle could boost sales for a custom drapery company by repeating the company’s phone number over and over. This approach had worked well for a chain of pizza joints. Ryan was certain it would work for curtains, too, as if people ordered sheers and vertical blinds as frequently as they ordered a double pepperoni with extra cheese.

Jackie fought the idea in several heated discussions to no avail. I was puzzled by the client’s willingness to buy a campaign that was so ill advised. Ryan must have been a heck of a salesman.

Three weeks later, we won a modest piece of new business. A brief article about the acquisition appeared in one of the trade rags. The client was quoted as saying, “We picked the agency more for what Ryan Clark knows about radio than for what they know about advertising.” Jackie read this and destroyed his bookcase by kicking it repeatedly with the bottom of his foot, leaving the shelves canted and books and splintered wood on the carpet. Gil and I got a hammer and some finishing nails and did our best to repair the damage, but it was always rickety after that. Putting a cup of coffee on top of it was an act of faith.

Ryan frequently told people in the office to do things that made no sense. One plan involved promoting our car stereo client’s products by having thieves talk about why they liked to steal them. He was trying to arrange interviews with convicted felons. He wanted me to write sample scripts. I went to talk with Jackie and Alan.

“This is insane,” I said, sitting on the sofa next to Alan.

“Jesus Christ,” Alan said.

Jackie corrected him. “Jesus wept.”

I was hoping they’d have more to say about it when Ryan stuck his head in the door. “Have you written the scripts yet?” he asked, staring at me.

“I’m not doing them. It’s a bad idea.”

Ryan tipped his head to one side and gazed at me as if I were an unusual specimen. “I want the scripts. First thing tomorrow.”

“Look, Ryan,” said Alan, “we all agree on this. It’s not happening.”

Ryan glared at his two partners. “This is my client. I brought him in. And we deal with my clients my way.” He looked at me again. “Tomorrow. First thing.” He walked away.

Seconds later, Jackie picked up his coffee cup and hurled it at the doorway. It was half full, and cold coffee flew across the sofa, Alan, and me. The cup hit the doorframe and smashed, shards of porcelain flying across the room. He put on his coat and left.

I was stunned. Alan and I sat in silence briefly, until Ryan reappeared in the doorway. “What happened? Did someone throw something at me? Was someone trying to kill me?” He looked around the office in a frantic manner.

“Ryan,” Alan said, “go home.”

Ryan looked around one last time and went. Alan stood, brushing at the coffee stain on his trousers. “Remember, kid,” he said, “you’re the asshole who wanted to get into advertising.”

I assumed that most of the agency’s accounts stayed on because of friendships, one of the partners knowing a CEO or an Advertising Director. Competence didn’t seem to enter into it. Then, late one Friday afternoon, I was at my desk after everyone else had gone. I was editing some copy by pen and being very quiet. When the shouting started I peeked out and saw Jackie waving a piece of paper and walking across the office towards Ryan.

“What the hell is this?” Jackie yelled.

Ryan took the paper, glanced at it, and handed it back. “It’s a cancelled cheque,” he said calmly. “That’s how we keep the account.”

“Jesus.” They went into Jackie’s office, which adjoined mine.

The voices through the wall were muffled but clear enough. “We’re fighting to make our nut,” Jackie said, “and you’re giving away what little profit there is.”

“Think that through, Jackie. What I’m doing is investing part of the profit to make sure we keep the rest. Do you think if these cheques stopped going out the ones from the client would keep coming in? It’s been working this way for years. Stay out of it.”

There was more, but that was the important part.

Soon after, the cheques did stop because Ryan came up with an alternative. Ryan’s car was in the shop one day when he saw Gil standing in reception, yacking to anyone who would listen, looking like he had nothing to do.

“Get your keys, Gilbert,” Ryan said. “You’re driving me to a meeting.” Ryan had never been in Gil’s car before and may not have believed the stories.

“Do I get mileage?” Gil asked.

“You get to keep your job.”

When I asked Gil later, he told me he had dropped Ryan off in front of a café in the west end. As he waited for a break in traffic so he could pull away, he saw the client sitting at a table in the window. Ryan went in and sat across from him. Why, I wondered, were they meeting on the far side of town, away from both the agency and the client’s office? And why in a coffee shop? Both of them preferred places like Barberien’s Steak House and martinis.

A month later, Ryan needed a lift again. Gil grabbed his keys. “Ready when you are,” he said.

“Not on your fucking life,” Ryan said. He pointed at me. “You got wheels now, right?” He started towards the door and I followed.

Ryan went back to the coffee shop and met the client at a table in the window. I made a quick U-turn and pulled over. From the far side of the road, I watched Ryan take an envelope from his pocket and hand it to the client.

It wasn’t hard to put together. Just like Jackie asked, Ryan had stopped giving cheques to the client and had switched to an envelope full of cash. The money was probably being funneled out of the recording studio, so Jackie wouldn’t see it leave right away. It would show up eventually, and there’d be problems, but for a while this would keep the peace and the account.

I drove Ryan the next month, too, and followed him the month after that. The pattern was always the same.

I watched Jackie on kickback days, looking for indications that he suspected anything. By that point, though, he looked at Ryan with anger or contempt most of the time. It was hard to pick out days that were worse than others. Ryan seemed oblivious, smiling and whistling around the office, but you could feel the tension.

In May, I left the office before Ryan did and waited outside the coffee shop. He did not show up. Neither did the client. I waited half an hour.

Ryan was at his desk when I got back. He was on the phone giving his hearty salesman’s laugh.

“Has Ryan been laughing like that all day?” I asked his secretary who rolled her eyes.

It was clear that nothing was wrong or he wouldn’t be so jolly. Later, as I was pouring a coffee, Ryan asked, “Big plans for the weekend?”

“Nothing special. You?”

“Golfing with the client,” he laughed. “Betcha I win some money off him.”

I thought it’d be the other way round, the envelope changing hands before they got to the second tee.

After work that evening, I went out for a beer with a couple of friends at a bar down the street. I left my briefcase in my office and went back to get it before driving home.

The office was at the far side of a closed-off courtyard. The front door could not be seen from the street. It wasn’t until I entered the courtyard that I saw the office lights still on. No big deal. Sometimes people forgot. But the door was unlocked, which was not normal. The place was silent. I walked in quietly in case of a burglar. Instead, Jackie was standing in Ryan’s office.

There was a lot of blood. Ryan was on the floor, drenched and not moving. Except for his deep and steady breathing, Jackie was not moving either. His clothes were less bloody but still past cleaning. His hands were bloody, too, and the scalpel he held.

“Jesus,” I said. “What the fuck?”

Jackie looked at me sadly. “I lost my temper.”

“Put down the blade, Jackie.” I didn’t think I was in danger, but there was no point taking the risk.

Jackie looked at the scalpel and let it fall.

“What happened?”

“I told him to stop with the kickbacks. I gave him lots of chances. He laughed.”

“Yeah, that laugh was pretty fucking annoying.” I didn’t bother to pretend I didn’t know what had been going on.

“The amount was going up. The client threatened to take away the account. Ryan was paying him more.”

“And you killed him for that?”

“I told him to stop. I lost my temper. He laughed.”

“Okay,” I said, “here’s what we do.” Jackie was in no condition to take the initiative. “Don’t touch anything.” His prints were all over the office so that was no problem, but bloody prints would raise eyebrows. I got some plastic wrap from the kitchen. “Wrap the scalpel in this and hand it to me. Handle first.” In a day or two, I’d take the ferry to the Island and drop it in the middle of the lake.

I picked up a promotional T-shirt from a radio station, and a pair of rubber gloves from under the sink. “Put these on.”

“I want to wash my hands,” he said.

“No. Put on the gloves.” I took him to the front door. “Go outside. I’m going to lock the door. You smash the glass and unlock it. Understand?”

He nodded. “What do I smash it with?”

“Find a rock or a brick or something.”

The rock bounced off the door a couple of times before the glass shattered and Jackie came in. I was grateful that the courtyard hid the office from view, though the sound of the rock did echo. But no one came to investigate.

“Okay. Now follow me.”

We went back to Ryan’s office. His top desk drawer was locked. I broke it open. The envelope was there as I’d expected. There was a lot of cash. It made my pocket bulge. I left the drawer hanging open.

“I want a beer,” Jackie said. “Let’s go to a bar.”

“Don’t be an idiot. Here’s what you do unless you want to spend a long time in Kingston. Go home. Get rid of those clothes. Burn them. Clean yourself up. Keep your mouth shut about everything that happened here. And keep your temper under control.”

“What about this mess?”

“We leave it. When he doesn’t come home, they’re gonna start looking. For sure they will when he misses his tee-off time tomorrow. Now get out of here.”

“What about the money?”

“I’m keeping it.”

Jackie took out his car keys and started for the door.

“Hang on,” I said. “Hold out your hand.” It was shaking badly. “You’re not taking your car. In that thing you’ll be all over the road and if the cops see a black guy all bloody driving a ‘Vette it’s not gonna end well.”

Jackie nodded. “I’ll take a cab.”

I marveled at how dense he was. “No you won’t. You get in a cab all bloody like that anywhere within five miles of here and you’re fucked.” I reached into my pocket and gave him my keys. “Take my car. It’s a piece of shit and it won’t go fast enough for you to do any damage. No one’ll pay any attention.”

He dropped his keys on the desk and took mine. “Have a good weekend,” I said.

On Monday, if he hadn’t done something stupid, I’d talk to Jackie about what was in this for me. And there had to be some way to make money out of the client. I figured he’d want all those years of kickbacks kept quiet.

Before leaving, I called Lynne. “Hey,” I said, “do you want to go out for a drink tonight?” Before she could say no, I added, “I got lots of money.” I glanced at the keys on Jackie’s desk. “And I got a real nice car.”