Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) (9 page)

The frown was now complete. “Ah, yes. Very sad. A longtime and loyal employee. A young man, too, with a family. But the company goes on.” For the first time in our conversation, he looked alert. “It always has.” He paused. “Mr. Samson, isn’t
Probe
magazine somewhat given to sensationalism? What is sensational about a respectable old company that has dedicated thirty years to the education of people all over this country?”

“Mr. Bowen,” I said, gazing directly into his eyes, “
Probe
is a monthly journal that attempts to report on and interpret the significant events and developments of our society.” Artie had given me that one, and I’d never had a chance to use it before. “Sometimes, certainly, those events are sensational. But I’m not on the staff of the magazine. I’m a free-lancer who gets work where he can.”

The old man was no fool. “Just the same, Mr. Samson, James Smith’s death was a sensational one. He was murdered.”

I sighed and shook my head. “Mr. Bowen, I’m afraid that murder no longer qualifies as unusual enough for the national media to bother with. Assassination, yes. Murder, no. Mr. Smith was, undoubtedly, valuable to your company. But his death is of very little interest to a magazine like
Probe.”
It was pretty interesting to one of
Probe’s
editors, but Bowen didn’t have to know that.

He was, or seemed to be, nearly convinced. “It does seem coincidental that this magazine has not shown interest in Bright Future before.”

I affected a world-weary shrug. “Let’s say that the murder brought your company to my attention. I pick up ideas from the newspapers. I suggest those ideas to editors.”

“Ah.” He nodded, relaxing.

“Actually, I expected that you’d be pleased by the possibility of national exposure.” I’d no sooner said “exposure” than I wished I hadn’t, but he had drifted off and away from alertness again so it didn’t matter.

“Perhaps if you’ll tell me what aspect of our institution interests you the most, I can direct you to those departments and persons involved,” he said indifferently.

“The history, of course,” I replied. “And the academic department. Sales. Whatever subsidiary departments those might have. I’m afraid I don’t know much about your corporate structure.”

He nodded. “Let me give you some printed background materials and turn you over to my executive vice-president. We can talk again another time.” He buzzed his secretary, gave her some instructions, and said a polite goodbye.

She, in turn, pulled a few items out of her files, handed them to me, and led me off to another wing of the executive first floor, where she passed me on to another secretary who asked me to wait a moment, please. I sat down and looked at the top sheet of the stuff the first secretary had given me. It was a diagram of the corporate structure. Nothing very unusual about any of it.

I didn’t remember Alan saying anything about an editorial department or an advertising department. Just communications, which, on this diagram, applied to both. Did two vice presidents share one department? That alone sounded like a motive for murder. I glanced quickly through the other papers. They were advertising flyers.

The executive vice president came striding out of his office, a tall thin man with youthful bearing and gray hair. His suit was gray, too, very nicely tailored, and worn with a pale blue shirt and a gray, blue, and red-striped tie.

“Bill Armand,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“Jake Samson.” I took brief but firm hold of his manicure.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I was on the phone. Listen, I’ve got a meeting in just a few minutes. I wonder if I could get you started by taking you over to our sales chief. He knows just about everything there is to know about this place.” Armand flashed a smile that was too good to be true. Were those really his teeth?

I was beginning to feel like a marker in a Monopoly game. If the sales vice president shook the dice again, who knew where I’d end up?

“Howard Morton is one of the most knowledgeable people we have,” Armand was saying as he walked me briskly toward the end of the hallway. “All aspects of the business. Amazing guy. Absolutely amazing. Joined the company just a couple of years ago, and he’s done wonders.”

We passed a door marked “Controller.” I stopped. “I’ll want to meet him, too,” I said, pointing toward the closed door.

“I’m afraid you can’t,” Armand said sadly. “He died.”

I swallowed hard. Another one? “When was that?”

“Last year.” The vice president looked at me coldly. “He was eighty-two years old. He had a heart attack. I’ve taken over that end of things for the time being.” He touched my elbow and got me moving again.

“Did most of your people come out from Chicago?” I asked. I wondered how far back Smith went with the company and how far back the other executives went with Smith.

“Well, let’s see…” he wrinkled his handsome forehead as if he actually had to think to answer my question. “Bowen, of course, is the founder. I joined him out there in 1970. Then of course there’s our communications manager. She first joined the company back in Chicago. Chloe.”

“And what about James Smith?”

He shook his head, sad again. This guy was a total phony. “Oh, yes. He went all the way back with Bowen, back to the fifties. So does old Ed, the man who runs our shipping department.” I thought it was interesting that only presidents and vice presidents had last names. “Old Ed,” presumably, was a mere manager. Like Chloe.

Armand was smiling at the sales vice president’s secretary, who was young, pretty, and a little flashy. “Tell Mr. Morton we’re here to see him, Sandra.” She buzzed her boss.

Howard Morton came bouncing out of the inner office and grabbed my hand. Armand left me with him.

“Come right on in, Samson,” Morton said, his arm around my shoulder. “Always happy to tell the Bright Future story. Always. Happy to. Sit down. Can I have my secretary get you anything? Coffee? Or do you press guys only go for the hard stuff?” I was tempted to tell him I was a teetotaler, but I wanted him to think I was just one of the guys.

“Nothing, thanks,” I said heartily. “Had a little more than I needed last night.” He liked that. Morton had a conversation grouping just like the president, only in white plastic. That’s where we sat, leaning back against upholstery etched with some fictitious animal’s skin wrinkles.

Morton looked like he should be fat but managed, by sheer strength of will, to keep his belly flat. He looked like he’d just shaved. His light brown hair was carefully styled and I was pretty sure there was spray on it. It looked solid, like it wasn’t made up of individual hairs at all. He was wearing a double-knit suit that showed the contours of his bulging thighs and biceps. He looked like a cop wearing a wig.

“Bill says you want to do a little magazine piece on us. Great idea. Tell me more about it.” He had small eyes and he kept them well covered with lid. I explained that the story wasn’t just about Bright Future, it was about home study generally, and how it stacked up against in-class education. His eyes got even smaller.

“Uh huh. You starting with some kind of premise or are you really open to the true story?”

“Open. Totally open, Mr. Morton.”

“Howard.”

“Jake.”

“Great. Really great. Because you know home study just doesn’t have the snob appeal of, say, your trade school or college. But listen, have you seen any of the stuff we print? About the advantages of working at your own pace?”

“Well, I haven’t read anything yet, but I’ve got a bunch of brochures and things. I thought I’d try to maybe get some quotes from the people who know what it’s all about. Tell you the truth,” I added confidentially and untruthfully, “I never went to college myself. Always thought it was overrated.”

I’d gone too far. He looked suspicious, then covered the look with a smile. “Let’s just say that nobody should ever underrate the power and value of any kind of education, Jake. Now what kind of information, exactly, did you want from me?”

That was a very good question.

I wanted information about a dead man; I had to ask for information about the company he worked for.

“Well, let’s see,” I said thoughtfully, “why don’t you tell me a little something about the courses.”

“Better than that.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of brochures. “I’ll give you these to take home with you.” I took them and thumbed through them. Single-fold booklets, each describing a different course. None of the brochures said anything about price. I mentioned that.

He chuckled. “Right to the heart of things, yes sir. Rest assured, Jake. Our prices are competitive, fair, and in the right ballpark. There’s a range, of course. Depends on what the student’s getting. You just pick one, I’ll tell you what it costs.”

“Business English.”

“That’s a good choice. Runs two hundred dollars for the whole thing— twenty lessons, twenty-chapter textbook, and a set of ten learning guides to go with it. Just like having a teacher in your own living room. And tests. They take tests and send them in and get them corrected.”

“Okay, what about Spanish? How do you teach a language by mail?”

“There’s a book, and some support materials, and tapes. They can go all the way through the equivalent of a two-year program if they want. Starts out at two hundred and fifty dollars for the basics.”

“Do a lot of them manage to do it? I mean, how many students do you have?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have the exact figures right off the top of my head at any given time. You got sign-ups who don’t go ahead, you got dropouts. But you could say we’re reaching thousands. Thousands of people.”

“Dropouts?” I landed on the word the way I guessed a good reporter was supposed to. “You get a lot of those?”

“Again, Jake, I don’t have the exact figures right here. But let’s say we’ve got a solid eighty percent completion rate. Of course, the academic department would know more about that. If you need the exact numbers, we can always run something off on the computer for you.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ll get back to you on that once I’ve got the big picture.” I figured Morton could run off just about anything he wanted on the computer, and as far as I knew, the academic department was dead. But I was glad he’d brought up the subject. “And about the academic side of things— who would I talk to about that now? Is there a replacement yet for James Smith?”

Morton looked pained. “Takes more than a few days to replace a vice president, Jake. He ran an important area of the company.”

I nodded sympathetically. I was thinking that if Alan was right about the care that went into the company’s product, they might not bother replacing him at all.

“Speaking of areas,” I said, “I’ve got an organization chart here and I was kind of having a quick look at it. Is it current?” I showed it to him. He nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Tell me a little about your sales operation. How it works. How do your people find out someone wants to buy a course?”

He smiled at me patronizingly. “It’s pretty complicated, Jake. First, I should tell you about the old way, and how it used to work. Real simple. A potential student would see an ad, like one of these.” He got up, went to a bookshelf, and pulled down a book, which he brought back and opened on the coffee table. It was an album full of pages cut from magazines, with Bright Future ads on them. The one he was showing me was dated 1963. The ad showed a lot of little photographs of people saying how studying high school at home had changed their lives. There was a coupon at the bottom.

“They’d send the coupon in to the company, and the company would send them out a brochure. They were then a prospect, and their name was given to a salesman in their locality.”

“Sounds effective,” I said. His patronizing look turned to one of affectionate pity.

He laughed softly. “I’ll tell you, Jake, back in the days when costs were low and business was a whole different ball of wax, methods like that got by. But they don’t anymore. These days, a guy has got to hustle. We’re hustling now, and we’re growing fast.”

I thought about the company’s history, its apparent belt-tightening, its move to smaller quarters in California.

Pre-hustle. And pre-Morton.

“I can tell,” I said brightly, “that you’re a hustler.”

He liked that. “That’s right. That’s absolutely right, Jake. And that’s what I’m doing here. I was brought in to modernize the operation, make it flow, get this company the kind of business it deserves.”

I put on my most eager face. He got up and began to walk around the office. “It’s all in the way you organize things, Jake, and I’ve got one hot sales organization, let me tell you.” Desperately, I tried to think of a way to get him onto the subject of his dead colleague. But it looked like I was going to get stuck with his sales pitch instead.

“I guess everything depends on the product, doesn’t it?” I was hoping to steer him around to things academic, but he wasn’t having it.

“That’s right,” he said, nodding. “Absolutely. You take a good product and a right-on sales structure and you’ve got something, absolutely. And the right kind of sales materials.” He scooped the old advertising album off the coffee table and returned it to the bookshelf. He brought back a loose-leaf binder and opened that up. “See that? This is the kind of support we provide for our people. Entry-level people, so they can move right on up the ladder.” I glanced at the pages he was flipping for me. Sales talks or something.

“That’s terrific,” I said. “What ladder?”

He looked sly. “That’s the thing. That is the thing. With my organization, a man in the field can move right on up. He sells enough and shows enough promise, he can increase his commissions and get himself a whole new ball game of supervisory duties and privileges. Absolutely. I’ll show you something.” He scooped this book off the coffee table, and, like the first, replaced it neatly on the bookshelf. He came back this time with a chart.

The chart seemed to have something to do with the navy. At the top was a box labeled CSO. Below that were several little boxes, each of which had the word “admiral” in it. Under each admiral were several little boxes called “commodores.” Under those were captains, and under the captains were commanders and lieutenants. There were various percentages stuck beside each tier of boxes. The lowest percentages showed up next to the lieutenants.