Death and the Motherlode

Chapter Nine

        "See, there's lotsa fellas brighter than Barney Dunbarton, but it don't take cleverness to win. You know what it takes?"

        I shook my head. I thought about making some crack involving the words "slow" and "steady" but gave that up as a bad idea. I needed to keep my job.

        "Customer service, Honey, that's what. You make that customer happy, and he'll keep coming back. You gotta talk to him honestly about the market. Be brutal if you have to. Fella's gotta take his lumps with the rest of us. Ain't no free ride. But just like that motherlode, he'll be with you until he dies. It's all about customer service, Paulette, don't you forget that."

        The phone on his desk rang. Barney leaned back even further in his leather chair and picked up the receiver.

        "Hullo? Put him through." He winked at me and covered the mouthpiece. "See? This is how you make money in this game, Paulette. Pretty soon you have 'em eating out of your hand. Bang for the buck is good, you understand, but customer service is the only way you'll ever get to the motherlode. . . Vern?"

    Barney gave me a sideways smile and began to talk into the telephone—a client, I presumed.

        I sat there awkwardly. I didn't think Barney was finished talking to me yet, and he hadn't told me to leave. Since he had no problem shooing people out when he was through with them, I stayed.

        Barney's conversation started out friendly enough, from what I heard. Something about shares of stock that Barney suggested. But, after all the golf and sports trivia had been covered, Vern must have gotten to the point.

        I hadn't been paying much attention. All the brokers gassed on endlessly about stocks and the market and the economy. Barney's conversation was white noise as far as I was concerned. I took the time to wander around the large office crammed with bookcases.

        One bookcase was much better than I expected. If Barney had actually read any of this, we had some things to say to one another. Keats. Shelley. John Donne. Even Jonathan Swift. Just to be surrounded by such giants was enough to make an ex-English teacher salivate. About the time I recognized a slim volume of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, I was ready to reconsider my position on both sex with married men and the unnatural look of Barney's twelve-month tan. Then again, maybe he'd bought the whole bookcase from an estate sale.

        That's when I heard Vern call Barney a liar.

    I glanced over at Barney to see that he held the telephone about two inches away from his ear, and I heard the word loud and clear. The room was silent as Barney took his feet off the desk.

        When he began again, he almost purred into the receiver. "I don't b'lieve I heard you arightly, Vern," he said. "Are you impugning my character, Sir?"

        Before my eyes, kindly Doc Hollister morphed into Foghorn Leghorn. The change in tone unnerved me. I reshelved the book I had been perusing and slipped cautiously toward the door.

        With the customer service problem he now faced, I figured Barney wouldn't miss me. Wrong. I put my hand on the doorknob when silence invaded the room.

        I wheeled around to face my boss with a sheepish grin on my face.

        Barney had his hand covering the receiver and his eyes trained on my face. "We've got us a deal now, don't we, Paulette?"

        I nodded. I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

        "You won't come in late anymore, and I won't have to cover your butt with Simone."

        My eyes felt as if they were bugging out of my head. Where the hell had that come from?

        He chuckled just a little so I knew I hadn't been wrong about my bug-eyes. "Remember what I said about customer service, Honey," he said. "I'm your motherlode. You gotta treat me right."

        Then he waved. Not exactly a dismissal, although I did leave, his little gesture spoke more of us being friends, almost equals as it were. Before I knew what came over me, I waved back. Our friendship wasn't so much about keeping the secret of Vern and his accusation as it was about understanding the idea of Barney as motherlode.

        When the door closed behind me, I nodded at Becky and wondered how come I'd never before noticed what a good-looking guy I worked for.

        Only later did it occur to me that I still didn't have the slightest idea why Barney did cover for me with Simone. I knew now that he could be one charming son of a bitch, but why had he turned on the juice for little old me?