The waiter sets our salads in front of us, escarole for me, farro and quinoa for her, and asks if we want any more iced tea. Tea? I want a martini.
“Read this column in Adweek right after I started at Marterelli. Headline was ‘Making Stuff Happen,’ but what the columnist wrote about was making shit happen. Especially for account leaders. That was all I needed. It spoke to me.”
“You’ve got a great track record,” she says, “a strong, unique résumé, that’s for sure. Loaded with references.”
“Thank you! Hey—I’m an ex-Marine. Heard the call, 9/11 changed my whole perspective on life. Signed on for two years right out of Columbia University, and ended up in Iraq, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, Platoon Leader.…”
“Thank you for your service! Where?”
“Fallujah. Second Battle—the bloodiest conflict of the entire Iraqi war. We lost a lot of soldiers. They lost more. Tough stuff. I saw things I’ll never be able to erase from my mind. But we ran the insurgents out and took the city back. And I helped make it happen.”
“Your résumé isn’t quite that…colorful.”
“That was a lifetime ago. Honorable discharge, and I leverage my journalism degree and my leadership experience from the real world into a starting job with Marterelli. Fabulous, for a little while. Did the CrawDaddy thing. Then we lost the account—no fault of ours, hell, we made history with that spot, blew their business through the roof! Anyway, back then the agency was far from flush, had to pare down. So I jumped ship, painful for both Paul and me. Landed the job at Thompson—where I ended up running the Burger King business, as you know.
“Couple of lifetimes later Paul and I reconnect, over beers. They’ve grown to a fabulous midsized agency by now, and we simply had to get back together! We did, ‘partners,’ in theory, and now I’ve got the biggest job in the agency—unless they want to make me president.”
“Maybe they should…”
“If it were up to me…but, Paul’s not ready to go, not even close. So, there’s nothing left for me to accomplish there. Time to move on.”
The waiter’s back with our main courses—strozzapreti for Linda and the seared scallops pour moi.
My iPhone’s in my pocket, and vibrates with a text message. Of course, I ignore it.
“Another question: what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in this business?”
She’s good.
“Oh, man, where to start?” I say, which evokes the laughter I was hoping for. “The biggest mistake? Giving up box seats for the 2007 Super Bowl, when the Giants, the wild-card team, come all the way back and beat the undefeated Patriots! The Eli Manning fourth-quarter comeback. The David Tyree one-handed helmet catch?”
“What the hell were you thinking?” she asks, wearing a teasing grin from ear to ear.
“Gave ’em to a client—and the asshole puts us in review six months later. Sure wasn’t thinking about that!
“But seriously, folks…a few years ago I had a chance to hire David Hale, and didn’t. He went on to semi-greatness, as you know, and it could have been with us. Woulda, coulda, shoulda—but I regret that one to this day.”
“Hard to see untapped potential sometimes,” she says. I note the empathy.
“The chemistry just wasn’t there, then,” I answer. “And sometimes that’s everything.”
“I feel a good chemistry here, though,” I hear her say. Which means she can’t tell my heart is beating a hundred miles an hour.
She signals for the waiter, and the check. Another iPhone text vibration…
“I’m looking for a partner, someone capable of helping me run the agency. There’s a couple of other people I want to talk to, but I definitely want to reconnect with you. And soon. You’ve got a lot to offer.”
“Fantastic!” I say. “Thank you. Want to split the check?”
“Oh, please,” she says, with a laugh.
Back out on 9th Avenue on this stunning fall afternoon, the sidewalk’s alive with New Yorkers acting as if they’ve got places to go, things to do.
So do I.
“I’ve genuinely enjoyed meeting you,” she tells me, “and look forward to seeing you again soon.”
“Same here. And count on it!”
A firm, eye-to-eye handshake, and we part company on a great note. Her driver pulls up for her and she climbs in the backseat.
I hail a cab and check my texts. They’re from Chris Berardo, our creative director:
Where the hell are you?
And…
You need to get your ass here NOW!
Chapter 6
“East 11th Street, between Third and Fourth,” I tell the cabbie.
Marterelli & Partners’ office is across town in the East Village, south of Union Square Park. It’s a classic New York neighborhood, and Union Square is a great place to hang out during lunch, or for other stuff.
What the hell is Chris so excited about?
We reach 11th and Third and my stomach drops when I see a cop car parked sideways at the intersection with his red and blue lights flashing, blocking the entrance to 11th Street. There’s yellow tape stretching all the way across, from one side of the street to the other.
This looks bad. Real bad.
“Far corner,” I say, and pay the cab driver.
I approach the officer sitting in the driver’s seat and explain who I am. He lets me through after I show him my agency ID and driver’s license.
Halfway down the block I can see four police cars and an ambulance double-parked in front of our building, lights flashing.
Jesus. It’s worse than I thought.
Looks like the entire agency is outside, on the sidewalk or in the street.
I get there just in time to see two medics jump out of the ambulance, open the rear doors, and pull out a wheeled gurney. Oh, God—they’re headed inside the agency building!
As soon as I’m in front of our brownstone, a dozen coworkers are surrounding me.
Maureen, our receptionist, is shaking like a leaf, crying. Middle-aged, widowed, pleasantly overweight, with a face that’s usually beaming, Mo’s the agency den mother. I take her hand and pull her in close. She leans on my shoulder and loses it.
“What the hell is going on, Mo?”
“It’s awful. Unbelievable.” She’s sobbing.
I spot Chris Berardo out in the street. Lanky, shoulder-length hair pulled back in an attempt at a ponytail. He’s white as a ghost. He shoves his hands up in the air and looks at me as if to say It’s about goddamned time you got here!
“What? Jesus, talk to me, Mo!”
“There’s somebody up on the roof. Dead! Somebody who lives next door saw the body and called the cops. They got here about an hour ago and cleared the building, and still aren’t allowing anyone back in.…”
“Oh, my God!”
“And for all they know the killer’s still inside!”
Paul Marterelli’s down the sidewalk, beyond the building entrance, with a reporter and a cameraman. I recognize Chuck Esposito, the Emmy Award–winning crime reporter from the local NBC affiliate, Channel 4. Damn—bad news travels fast in New York. Paul looks like he’s shaking his head more than he’s talking.
“Hang on, Mo, let me see what I can find out.”
A couple of plainclothes cops are standing on the top step, blocking the front door, eyes fixed on the crowd out front.