Erle Stanley Gardner
The Big Squeeze
Pete Quint’s a fast-thinking, chain-lightning supersalesman, but I still claim it was the liar with the one gall us who gave us our opportunity — or perhaps it was opportunity that gave us the liar.
Pete says it’s only once in a hundred years that opportunity really knocks. Most of the time she’s hiding under the bed, or standing right behind you when you’re beefing about how bad business is.
He says a good salesman never waits for opportunity to knock, anyway, but goes out ringing doorbells. That way he calls on her before she’s ready to start out on her own round of door-knocking.
Pete and I are partners. Right now we’re in Los Angeles looking for lines. We already represent a tire company and a milk-bottle concern, but Pete isn’t satisfied. He wants to be a full-fledged manufacturers’ agent. So we’ve hired salesmen to do the leg work, and the overhead’s eating us up. Good lines are as hard to find as gold mines.
We’re at breakfast. Pete’s reading the distinguished-guest list at the hotels. He says lots of times a man can get a good lead that way.
All of a sudden his eyes get bright. “Look, Ed; L. F. Doolittle, vice-president of the Puckley Air-Conditioner Company, has been at the Rose Bowl Hotel for the past three days.”
“What’s that to us?” I ask.
Pete says, “Buckley’s a good outfit. Their business has been growing. They have a coast distributor. Now, why should Doolittle have been here three days? I’ll bet their coast distributor’s got more territory than he can handle.”
“Probably just a trip of inspection.”
“Not if he’s been here three days.” Pete shoves his hand down in his pocket, pulls out his change and picks out a nickel. He says, “The only man who can’t win is the one who doesn’t play,” and heads for the phone booth. I know it’s just another nickel wasted. Doolittle won’t even listen. But you can’t argue with Pete. And while I’m sitting there alone, the waitress brings the check.
Doolittle’s chins hang over his collar, but he has keen eyes, a catfish mouth and close-clipped speech. “Do you,” he asks, “know anything about the desert?”
Pete sucks in a quick breath. “We know all about the desert, Mr. Doolittle.”
Doolittle scratches his head. “I like your style,” he admits. “Your record is impressive, taking what you say at its face value. Our distributor here has too much territory. He can’t possibly cover the desert, and the Refrigerheat Air-Conditioning Company is beating our time. Their outfit won’t do what they claim, but they’re cleaning up. We need desert representation, and need it badly. If I only knew a little more about you—”
Pete never believes in a canned approach, but he has half a dozen different stock lines all his own. Now he interrupts with his showdown clincher line, “Mr. Doolittle, what’s the use of talking? No matter what I tell you, it’s still just talk. You want orders. We want commissions. Give us a territory on trial. If within thirty days we don’t develop three times as much business as you think the territory is capable of producing, we don’t want your line.”
Doolittle reaches in his brief case, takes out a map, says, “Brother, you asked for this, and it’s going to be tough.” He starts filling out a contract.
After we sign up, Doolittle gives us a complete demonstration, loads us down with literature, gives us the low-down on competitive products, and is getting ready to take us over to his distributor’s to coach us on installation when the phone rings.
He answers, says, “Very well, send her up,” and turns to us. “This may be embarrassing. A Miss Bernice Johnson wrote she has connections in Sandyville, which is now in your territory, and thinks she could sell several units. Naturally, we couldn’t give a distributor’s contract to a young woman with no previous experience. However—”
“Sure,” Pete interrupts, “we’ll talk to her.”
Bernice Johnson is a trim little package with long-radius curves. She’s too game to let us see any disappointment as Doolittle tells her about our contract. He introduces us, and Pete goes to work.
“Miss Johnson,” he says, “if you have any leads in Sandyville, we’ll make the sales and pay you a commission.”
She says no. She has connections, but she’s going to sell units on which she can get a full distributor’s contract. She starts for the door.
Pete sits her down at the desk and says, “You’ll want your friends in Sandyville to buy the best. It would cheapen you if you sold them an inferior product. Now, if you’ll give me five minutes, I’ll show you—”
It doesn’t surprise me, because I know Pete, but Doolittle stands back with his jaw propped up by the knot in his necktie, watching Pete do his stuff.
By the time Pete’s finished, she’s given him everything, including a letter to her father, Ole Johnson. He owns the Banner mine, which is Sandyville’s best bet. Although there are some neighboring mines, Johnson keeps a hundred men employed, and the picture show, pool hall, hotel and saloon will all be influenced by Ole. If he says, “Puckley air conditioners,” that’s what it’ll be.
It’s morning on the desert. The long mountain shadows are still purple valleys. Big saguaros push grotesque arms into nightmare silhouettes. Smoke trees look like balls of mist hanging in the still air, ready to float away on the first breeze.
The old gas hog is doing her stuff, and as nearly as I can tell from the road map, it’ll be ten o’clock when we get to Sandyville. Bernice Johnson has told us to start in on a man by the name of Grandis, who owns the movie theater.
“Why’s Miss Johnson so anxious for commissions if her dad owns a gold mine?” I ask Pete.
He says, “Ole Johnson is a plunger. He’s thrown every cent he could scrape together into buildings and machinery — borrowed up to the hilt. There’s a younger sister in college. Bernice thinks there should be some family eggs that aren’t all in one basket. She wants to start a business of her own.”
I’m thinking that over as we speed up to a chap in faded blue overalls that are held up by one suspender. He’s walking east, and the way his feet move up and down, I know he’s accustomed to covering long stretches by leg power.
I tell Pete, “Let’s give the optimist a lift.”
“What makes you think he’s an optimist?”
“The lone suspender.”
We pick him up, and he turns out to be the best catch-as-catch-can liar in seven counties. He’s about fifty-eight, with desert-bleached eyes and a walrus mustache. He’s going as far as Westland, and he tells his lies in a slow drawl, as though he didn’t particularly care whether we believed him or not.
His name is Lingar, and he starts the ball rolling by telling how smart his burros are. He says they watch the flour sack, and when it gets almost empty they know it’s time to go to town, so they hide out in the brush. Then Lingar has to waste a lot of time finding them. “But I got ’em fooled,” he goes on in that slow drawl. “I got a sack an’ padded it with excelsior. When the flour begins to run low, I stuff that dummy in the flour sack, and the burros think I’m all provisioned up. They stick right around camp, and ’tain’t no trouble at all to catch ’em. Heh-heh-heh!”
Pete gives me a quick glance. Any new sales trick interests him, and I can see the idea of using a slow drawl when you’re putting over a fast one is something he’s going to remember.
“Get hot around here?” I ask, just making conversation.
Lingar says, “Well, now, wait a minute, boys, I won’t say definitely about right here,” and he looks around as though trying to get his exact latitude and longitude. “I’m a truthful man, and I ain’t a-goin’ to say anything that ain’t so. Right here, boys, I ain’t spent a summer, so I don’t know.”