Concierge Confidential (31 page)

Oh my God,
I thought.
This is weird. I'm going to be on a national radio show. I've never been interviewed live before. I've only been interviewed in articles
.

The producer was nice and normal and funny, and we had this ten-minute conversation about my job. I told him about some funny clients and a few techniques I used to help me with my work. Just like that, I was going to be on the air the next day.

I obsessed over how to act, and I obsessed about what I was going to say, and I obsessed about what I should wear right up until it was time for the show. It was kind of fun heading to the radio station, being on the list, and passing through security. They took me down a hall of studios, glass windows everywhere, until I saw the red
ON AIR
sign. I walked up and paused right before the window into Whoopi's studio. I tried to calm myself down and act nonchalant, like I'd known Whoopi for years—even though we'd never met and I'd only spoke to her on the phone twice.

Do I just stand here until they're ready for me?
I wondered.
No, they probably need to know that I'm here
. I channeled the outgoing side of me, the Michael who can walk into Penn Station and demand entry for a string quartet, and stepped forward with a big smile and a wave.

“Hold on,” Whoopi said, over the air. “Michael Fazio's here!
The
concierge extraordinaire is here with me. Tune back in right after this commercial break and you're going to meet my friend Michael.”

I came into the room and instantly some of my anxiety dissipated. It was like I was connecting with a friend that I hadn't seen in years. “Tommy told me what happened at the restaurant!” Whoopi said. Tommy had told her this and Tommy had told her that. “I
love
your job. I should've been a concierge. I'd be so good at it!” She was right; she
would
have been good at it. She definitely knows her stuff.

She interviewed me for a bit, and I shared some funny war stories about the profession. “Michael's going to come back on Friday, and he's going to take your phone calls.”
I am?
“So if there's anything you want to ask him, you call back on Friday.”

I scrambled to think of any more stories that I could offer, so there wouldn't be any dead air.

“This is going to be great,” she insisted. “I want you to come back and we'll take some calls, and maybe you can fulfill some requests for the listeners.”

Yes, Ms. Goldberg. Whatever you say, Ms. Goldberg. Right away, Ms. Goldberg!

I returned to the show on Friday with my notepad at the ready. I expected some Tiffany to be calling from Las Vegas, dying to go to Pure and asking for my tips on how to get in.

“If you want Michael to do something,” Whoopi said, “don't ask him to do it for
you
. Ask him to do it for somebody that you want to help.”

The very first call came from Ohio. “My best friend's brother is really, really into the wrestling, and the WWE is having a big show in Columbus. He would just love to meet the stars.”

“Okay,” I said. “That's great. What's his passion about wrestling?”

“He has cerebral palsy and he's in a wheelchair. He just loves the theatrics. They're like superheroes. I want to get tickets for him, but I really want to be able to make it super-special. Like front row seats or something.”

“Stay tuned,” I said. “My job is all about front row seats. Let's see what we can do and we'll report the results back here next week.” It wouldn't be
that
hard, I figured, but we had to elongate the suspense.

It turned out that there was nothing available; the WWE really did have a big following. I knew every backdoor trick to getting front row center—and it was usually accompanied by a big price tag. But did it work the same way in Ohio? Was I going to be stumped on a national radio show by a Midwest wrestling match?

Wait a minute,
I thought.
I'm on a national radio show hosted by Whoopi Goldberg
. It's not like I needed the tickets for Alan Chiles. My usual strategy would have started with the venue. Then I'd move on to a broker. Then I'd track down the wrestlers' reps. Cutting to the chase, I knew I just needed to go straight to the top.

I can find anyone anywhere, and in a few clicks of the mouse, I had a direct name and number for the person who handled all PR for the WWE. “I'm working on Whoopi Goldberg's radio show,” I told them, “and we have a listener who's a huge fan. Can we take this over the top? Can he actually go backstage? What can you do?”

They vetted the guy's story—and then they rolled out the red carpet for him. They arranged for him to come during the day when they do all of their rehearsals. There was a preshow dinner backstage, which he was welcome to stay for. The wrestlers took tons of pictures with him, even ones sitting in his wheelchair. They went all out and over the top, as wrestlers are wont to do.

The original caller contacted Whoopi's show next week, absolutely beside himself. “I'm going to put my friend on the phone.”

The friend was so excited that it was hard to understand him at first, but it was very easy to make out the “thank you”s and the word “awesome” that he must have said ten times. The thrill of what he got to experience was palpable. But it still felt a little awkward, because I figured any intern could have accomplished the same thing with the power of Whoopi's show behind them. But maybe I did have something special. After all, I knew
how
to ask, I knew
who
to ask, and I got it done quickly.

I looked at Whoopi while she was talking to him on air. She winked at me. It wasn't a scene from a Lifetime TV movie. It was just her and me enjoying a little private acknowledgment that we gave this guy a little lift.

As Whoopi wrapped it up to go to commercial, the guy said, “I love you Whoopi, and I will be listening to you every morning.”

Her voice cracked as she signed off. It was a pretty great radio moment.

“That was wonderful!” the producer told me after the segment. “We're going to make an experiment. We're going to take requests on Wednesday and pay them off on Friday so there's not this lapse. Can you come back?”

“When?” I asked him, not believing what I was hearing.

“Every Wednesday and Friday?”

“I'd love to.”

The next time I was there, the caller had a similarly touching story. “My son-in-law and daughter have been married for six weeks,” she told us. “He was deployed to Iraq, and his twin brother was just killed last month. He's coming back for four days in three weeks. We live in San Diego. I don't know where to send them. Could you just tell me what I could do to make for a really magical evening? Anything, just so they can have a memorable night out. I don't even know what to plan for them.”

“What do they like?” I asked her. “Tell me a little bit about them.”

“He's all about the water. He loves fishing and he loves sailing; things like that are really his favorite.”

“All right,” I said. “I have a couple of ideas.”

I remembered researching the $300,000 yacht I got for Zinovy's client. A little homework revealed that Royal Caribbean had a few short cruises from California to Mexico. It was a pretty generic itinerary, but it would be on their brand-new ship. Another few minutes of snooping scored the executive list for the company. I called the company, and once again it couldn't have been easier. I was Michael “the concierge expert,” calling from a national radio show starring Whoopi Goldberg.

The young couple got the captain's suite. It was as if they stepped into an episode of
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,
with every decadent amenity possible on their three-day cruise to Mexico.

The radio show became all about “queen for a day,” and what I could make happen for people. The calls got sappier and sappier over the course of a year, and the callers almost started to compete as to who had the saddest story—and therefore deserved the most free stuff.

“Listen!” Whoopi eventually said. “You can call for liver but you
can't
call him for
a
liver. Michael's the kind of guy who can find the best liver for you—but not
a
liver for you.”

Then I got a call in Abigail Michaels office from Adam Farris. Adam was a developer who owned a couple of apartment buildings in the city. He was toying with hiring Abigail Michaels to provide concierge service in some of his developments. “Let's see how good you are,” he said, like I was on some sort of audition.

“Try me.”
I couldn't stand people who started their communication with such a cliché challenge.

“I want you to get me a PlayStation for my son.”

The PlayStation was
the
toy of the season. If he had asked me months before, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal. But he asked me three days before it was coming out. People were already camping out in front of the stores.

In other words, it was the kind of challenge that stirred up a lot in me. I was completely over
having
to prove myself. But I knew that I was wired to wow people, and I thrived on doing it anyway.

Who do I know at Sony?
I thought.
Who do I know at Best Buy? Who do I know at Circuit City?
I started doing my networking calls, putting my request out to every possible resource. The response was universally negative. “Oh my God,” a typical contact told me. “I don't know. The waiting list is a mile long with names like Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “I know you can't—but you will for
me,
right? I know it's impossible. It's only my whole company's face that rests on this one request. The thing is, Adam's so great. He's
such
a nice guy.”
Why am I still being so old school and begging?
I wondered.
Would it be considered bad if I used my new trump card? Or is that just a new part of my concierge craftiness that I have in my arsenal?

All right, maybe I was being a
little
bad.

I wasn't getting real concrete evidence that anyone was going to come through. Finally, I pulled my trump card with a publicist. “Hi,” I told her. “I do segments twice a week on the nationally syndicated radio show
Wake Up with Whoopi!
”

“How funny. I listen to her show all the time. You're that concierge guy?”

“Yes,” I replied. I made it clear to her that it wasn't for Whoopi herself. But for the first time, I was acting like a “celebrity concierge” who can make things happen—rather than pleading for a client because my ass was on the line. “It's not like you need extra exposure, but it would be such good radio if I could announce to somebody that I got them a PlayStation. And it's a nice message for Sony, don't you think?”

“I don't know,” the publicist said. “I'd have to get clearance. Let me see what I can do.”

“Thanks. This would mean so much.”

I still kept uncovering and reaching out to every contact I could. If you enlist twenty people, four of them will actually try to help you. In the rare event that two of them come through, you might be left with egg on your face—but I wouldn't hold my breath. Rarely, it
does
happen.

A few days later, the radio station called to tell me that I had a box there. I had it messengered to my office—and opened it up to find a PlayStation and half a dozen games with it. That same day, my Sony contact called to let me know that he had scored a PlayStation for me as well.

I took one of them and gave it away on the air, for free, to one lucky listener and made his day. I took the other one of them and gave it to Adam, for a lot of money, and made his son's day. True to his word, he ended up signing Abigail Michaels for his buildings. I considered it my reward for having done what concierges live for: helping the wealthy get things they don't really deserve.

CUTTING THE VELVET ROPE

I never did get a call from Tiffany in Las Vegas, dying to go to Pure and asking for my tips on how to get in. But if I had, I would have told her my plan that almost always pays off and yet no one ever thinks to try.

After September 11, Homeland Security agents were staked out in all the New York hotels. They were mostly undercover, but after seeing the same guy for two weeks in the lobby you could put two and two together. The agent heard all my exchanges with guests, and eventually he approached me and broke the ice. “Wow, where did they end up going?” he wanted to know. “What's that place like?”

We got to talking, and he became intrigued by what I did and how I did it. Then he gave me a “cop's friend” card. “My buddy's in the Nineteenth Precinct,” he told me. “If you ever need something at the clubs over there, I can hook you up.”

Ding!
The lightbulb went off in my head:
Cops. Nightclubs. Liquor licenses. Legal issues. I bet the cops know everything about the clubs
. Of course the cops know all the doormen to the clubs. The doorman's outside all night, while the cop is casing the place to make sure that he's carding people. If a cop sent you to a club, the doorman can't let you inside fast enough.

The other thing people might not realize is that the police really are fraternal—if you knew one, you knew them all. Once I was in with my guy, I could call any precinct. Yes, it took nerve, but I could still pull it off. “I'm the concierge for the InterContinental Hotel,” I'd tell them. “Who's working tonight in this area?”

Granted, the reaction was
never
friendly. They always vetted me. “You're the
what
? Hold on. Wait. What are you looking for?”