What Joey wanted the first time was for Chason to check out a guy he was thinking of hiring as a salesman. The guy had a great reputation as a salesman, Joey said, but there was something about him that didn't smell kosher, and before he took him on, he wanted to be sure about him, and how much would that cost?
Chason had told him it would probably take about ten hours of his time, at twenty-five dollars an hour, plus expenses, like getting a credit report, and mileage, at a dime a mile, and Joey thought it over a minute and then said go ahead, how long will it take, the sooner the better.
That time, Chason had found out the guy was what he said he was, what his reputation said he was, a hard-working guy with a family, who paid his bills, didn't drink a hell of a lot, went to church, and even, as far as Chason could find out, slept with his own wife.
Chason couldn't figure why a guy like that, who already had a good job as sales manager for the used-car department of the Pontiac dealer in Willow Grove, would want to work in the city for Fiorello. The answer to that was that he didn't. The second time Joey Fiorello called Chason, to do the same kind of a job on another guy Joey was thinking of hiring, Chason asked him what happened to the first guy, and Joey told him he'd made the guy an offer that wasn't good enough-the guy wanted an arm and a leg, Joey said-and that hadn't worked out.
The second time had been like the first job. Only this time the guy was selling furniture on Market Street, and thought he might like selling cars. Another Mr. Straight Citizen. Wife, kids, church, the whole nine yards. And he either came to his senses about what a good job he already had, or somebody whispered in his ear that Joey Fiorello wasn't the absolutely respectable businessman he wanted everybody to think he was. Anyway, he didn't go to work for Fiorello Fine Cars, either.
This last job was something else. This one was a young guy, from Bala Cynwyd, who was a stockbroker. Chason thought there was something fishy about a stockbroker wanting to be a used-car salesman right from the start. Usually, it would be a used-car salesman trying to get into something more classy, like being a stockbroker, not the other way around.
Once he started nosing around, Chason thought he understood why. This guy was a real sleaze, too sleazy even to work for a sleazy greaseball like Joey Fiorello.
One of Joey's salesmen, a young guy wearing an open-collared yellow sport shirt with a gold chain around his neck and a phony Rolex on his wrist, came out of the office with a toothy 'Hello, sucker!' smile on his face.
"Can I be of some assistance, sir?"
"Mr. Fiorello around?"
"Yes, sir," the salesman said. "But I believe he may be tied up at the moment. Is there something I can do for you?"
"No, thanks," Chason said, and walked around the guy and into the office.
Joey's secretary, a peroxide blonde with great breasts who Chason had learned wasn't as dumb as she looked, smiled at him, then picked up her telephone.
"Mr. Chason is here, Mr. Fiorello," she announced, listened a minute, and then hung up.
"Mr. Fiorello said he'll be right with you, Mr. Chason, " she said. "How have you been?"
"Can't complain," Chason said. "How about yourself? "
"Well, you know," the blonde said. "A little of this, a little of that."
A moment later, the door to Joey's office opened and a guy who looked like another salesman came out. Then Joey appeared in the door.
"Hey, Phil, how's the boy? Come on in. You want a cup of coffee, or a Coke or something?"
"I could take some coffee," Chason said.
"Helene, how about getting Mr. Chason and me some coffee. How do you take yours, Phil?"
"Black would be fine," Chason said as he shook Joey's extended hand and walked into the office.
He had to admit it, Joey had a classy office. Nice furniture, all red leather, and a great big desk that must have cost a fortune. The walls were just about covered with pictures of classy cars and of Joey and his family on his sailboat. There was a model of the sailboat, sails and everything, in a glass case.
The blonde delivered two mugs of coffee. The mugs said, "Fiorello Fine Cars. We sell to sell again!"
Joey waited until the blonde had closed the door behind her, then asked, "You got something for me, Phil?"
"I don't think you're going to like it, Joey."
"I pay you to find things out. Who said anything about me having to like it?"
"Mr. Ronald R. Ketcham is a sleazeball, Joey," Chason said.
"How is he a sleazeball?"
"You understand I can't prove anything, Joey. I mean, if I was still a cop, I don't have anything I could take to the district attorney."
"Tell me what you found out," Joey Fiorello said. "That's good enough for me."
"Okay. The truth is, he is a stockbroker. For Wendell, Wilson and Company, in Bala Cynwyd. Before that, he was a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch, here in the city. He told Wendell, Wilson he wanted to leave Merrill Lynch so he wouldn't have to come into the city every day. The truth is, he resigned from Merrill Lynch about five minutes before they were going to fire him."
"Fire him for what?"
"For one thing, he didn't go to work very often, and for another, there was talk that when he did show up for work, he did a lot of business his customers didn't know about. You know what I mean?"
Joey shook his head, "no."
"Stockbrokers work on commission. The more stocks and bonds and stuff they buy and sell, the more money they make. So, if they aren't too ethical, they call their customers up and suggest they sell something he hears is going to go down, and buy something else he hears is going to go up, and maybe his information isn't so kosher. He did a lot of that at Merrill Lynch, but that isn't all. If they have customers that are buying and selling a lot, so their monthly statements are pretty complicated, what some of those guys do-what Ketcham got caught doing-is making trades their customers didn't order."
"Explain that to me," Joey said.
"Like you own five thousand shares of, say, General Motors. Ketcham would sell, say, a thousand shares one day, and buy it back the next. And get a commission selling it, and another commission buying it back."
"The customers don't notice?"
"A lot of the customers don't keep good records," Chason explained. "They get their statement, it says they sold a thousand shares at fifty bucks, and then, a day later, they bought a thousand shares at forty-seven-fifty, which means they picked up twenty-five hundred bucks less the commissions, why ask questions?"
"What if they sold the stock at forty-seven-fifty, and then bought it back at fifty, and they lost twenty-five hundred? Don't that ring bells that something ain't kosher?"
"From what I hear, believe it or not, most people don't catch on right away. The company itself catches more salesmen doing stuff like that than the customers do. And that's what happened to Mr. Ketcham at Merrill Lynch. The company-they call the people who do it 'internal auditors'-caught him."
"But they didn't fire him?" Joey asked. "You said he resigned, right?"
"Like I said, I can't prove this happened to him at Merrill Lynch, but this is the way something like this works, all right? The internal auditors catch a guy doing something like this, what can they do? If they fire the guy because he's been making unauthorized trades for his customer, and they tell the customer, the customer is going to be pissed, right? And take his business some other place, and tell all his friends what Merrill Lynch, or whoever, has done to him. "
"Yeah," Joey said, considering that. "So what do they do?"
"They call the guy in, tell him that they have enough on him to get him kicked out of the stockbroker business for life, and that the smart thing for him to do is have his desk cleaned out by five o'clock, keep his mouth shut, and if he gets another job, to straighten up and fly right. You get the picture."