Odd Jobs

by Ben Lieberman

  “How much did you need?” Rocky asks.

  “It might as well have been a million dollars. At that point my drug customers weren’t paying half up front; why would they? They barely knew me. I needed to lay out all the money to get started. For me to make an impact, I had to get a hold of $40,000, and in a hurry, too.”

  “How’d you know you could make that kind of money at Luke’s?”

  “I had no idea. I was trying everything I could get my hands on, but I still couldn’t get close to the kind of money I needed to put my plan for getting rid of Balducci into action. Then lo and behold, I spotted an ad in the paper.”

  “Which paper, the New York Times?” Rocky says with a smile.

  “Nope,” I answer, “the ad appeared in our very own student newspaper, the Gorilla Gazette. It was just a few words, but the right words: SPORTS, more money than you dreamed you can make. I call the number, and the guy says he needs a killer salesman.

  “The truth was, I had sold over the phone and had made some decent money. The one thing I learned was that more than actually selling, you needed to be able to listen. First you listen; then you close. So this guy is barking at me, but he’s also telling me what he needs. So when he fires off some weird questions, I’m ready. I tell him I am hungrier than anyone he will meet. I tell him that if I’m stuck in the ocean with my mother and father and can only save one person, I save myself.

  “He says he’ll give me $500 for the weekend. ‘I know it’s a lot,’ he says, ‘so before you start strokin’ yourself, understand this: after Sunday you’re on commission, so it’s your time and your dime. If you think 500 bucks is a lot of money, you’re in for a nice surprise, because if you can do this, then it’s a tiny shrimp cocktail appetizer to a big motha-fuckin’ steak dinner. How do you think I can pay a pissant like you 500 bucks on a yo?’”

  Then I tell her the rest of the story. The guy gave me the address and the directions to a townhouse in Saratoga. Not too far from the famous racetrack, which I’m sure was not a coincidence. I was greeted by Milo Weeder, the C.F.O. of Luke’s Action Sports, a disbarred lawyer with a nasty coke addiction. He’s a quirky guy, standing 5’3” and all of 105 pounds. He was hospitable enough as he enthusiastically showed me around the townhouse office.

  The basement had a bunch of desks scattered throughout with salesmen howling about point spreads and opportunities into the phones. There was a living room on the first floor with a big-ass plasma TV and plain couches. “We watch the big games together,” Milo informed me. The dining room and other bedrooms were occupied with a few private big producers as opposed to the zoo in the basement. The top floor was Milo’s office, as well as his bedroom. As it turns out, this is Milo’s home. The first thing that crossed my mind was that this crib must be a real hit with the ladies.

  Milo took me to the bedroom to the right of the bathroom. Standing at his desk was Red Sullivan. Milo tried to introduce me, but Red shot him a look and pushed out the palm of his hand like a crossing guard demanding a stop. His headset nearly fell off as he leaned over the desk and screamed, “Luke! Luke!”

  A nasal, high-pitched voice from the bedroom to the left of the bathroom answered, “Yeah, Red, what’s up?”

  “Luke, I got Bailey Zelmo on hold. I just sold him the ‘lock-of-the-year’ for five thousand. What game do I give him?”

  “Give him the Eagles getting three vs. the Vikings,” Luke said.

  “Naw,” Red answered. “He’s got that game already. Gimme another lock-of-the year.” While he’s waiting for Luke to dole out another selection, he says to Milo, “That’s why you never tell the gamblers which game until you know what he’s playing. Why would he pay me if he got bucks on the game already?” At this point I realize that Red was the gruff voice I spoke to on the phone.

  “Give him the Detroit Lions giving seven and a half points vs. the Seahawks,” Luke screamed.

  Red answered, “No way, man, I hate that game.”

  “Holy shit, Red, gimme a break.” With that, Red smiled at Milo and me, finally recognizing that I exist. The nasal voice answered again with, “Give him the New Orleans Saints giving the Jets five.” Clearly, Luke was throwing darts and reaching for anything with his picks.

  With this piece of information, Red said into his headset, “Bailey, the play is the New Orleans Saints. They’re giving five and I don’t care if they were giving 50, we love this play. It’s not part of the regular service and that’s why I have to charge you extra, so please promise to keep this on the QT.” There was a pause while Red listened to his client. “Yeah, big deal, the Jets are home. Don’t let home dogs scare you today. Believe me, we’re in the huddle on this one! Yeah, load up on it; we don’t get this kind of info all the time.” He listened again. “Yeah baby, it’s gonna be great. Hey, you need my home address to send me a bottle of champagne after we win?” Red laughed and says, “Take care, Bailey. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Red wrote all the vital credit card information on a yellow order sheet, crumbled it up in a ball and tossed it at Milo. “Okay, Milo, you ring that up.” Red pointed to me and said, “You the guy I spoke to on the phone?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Leave him with me, Milo. It’s time to learn how to collect fees for prognosticating. He might be in college, but school’s really in session now.”

  I look at Rocky as I pull into our parking lot and say, “So that was the beginning, I’ll show you what I learned when we’re inside the office.” I pull the Saab into my usual spot and say, “You are coming in for show-and-tell today, aren’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” she answers.

  Inside the office on the first floor there are two long tables. Each table holds 15 sales guys. The raw noise coming from these tables is dramatic, like the sound of 100 people vibrating the foundation of the building, pumping the phone lines with hope and greed. Papers and notebooks are scattered throughout the tables, but also adding to the clutter are 15 phones with crisscrossing wires. I explain to Rocky that Gorilla college students are working these phones. Yup, I convinced Red and Luke that if they liked what I was doing, they would love multiplying it by 10 or more. Thus, the Albany office of Luke’s Action Sports was created, complete with its sales manager, Kevin Davenport.

  “These guys are all working for you?” Rocky asks. She has to raise her voice over the chaotic banter that’s filling the room.

  “Override,” I say loud enough for her to hear over the noise. “I get a piece of every sale in here. Override, it’s some concept.”

  “But who are these guys calling? There can’t be this many gamblers to call.”

  “There are. It’s hard to believe, but on the other end of everyone of these phone calls are hard-core gamblers from all over the country. And they all have their own bookies.”

  “But how do these sales guys know who to call?”

  “Good question,” I say. “Luke gets his potential clients from a variety of places. First he takes out newspaper ads in any paper that will let him advertise. But his primary source for clientele is his TV show. He buys TV time for an infomercial that appears several times a week. In this show he is screaming about computer programs and inside knowledge. He always claims to be hitting about 80 percent of his picks.”

  “Is that good? Is 80 percent a good number?”

  “Hell, yeah, if he came close to that it would be amazing. Picking sports games against the gamblers’ spread is tough business. No one, and I mean no one, comes close to 80 percent. Good thing this business isn’t regulated very well.”

  “If people are losing money,” Rocky insists, “how does Luke keep getting customers?”

  “You see these two tables? You see these 30 guys? They are calling the ‘torched’ list,” I say.

  “I can’t wait to hear this,” Rocky shouts over the din.

  “The sports handicapping business has been around for awhile. It’s not surprising that some people didn’t fare so we
ll by listening to the advice of these experts. It’s fair to say these people got torched. Now, the guys who answer ads from the newspapers and Luke’s TV shows are hot prospects.” I point to the row of desks and cubicles along the wall. “Those hot prospects go to the elite salespeople.” Then I point to the noisy table in front of us. “This table is selling to the torched list until they can prove they are real closers.”

  “Isn’t the torched list a complete waste of time?”

  “No,” I answer. “To me, the torched list is incredible. Even though these clowns got burnt, they’re so greedy and so dumb that they’re still ripe. Which I guess isn’t far-fetched, but the thing that cracks me up is that this torched list comes from all of Luke’s competitors. There’s a whole industry of sports prognosticators. All the different sports handicapping businesses know that they need leads, so after one company accumulates a list of guys it torched, it trades it with competitors, fully knowing that the new salespeople at the next sports marketing company will be bad-mouthing the previous prognosticator.”

  Rocky stares as the guys at the table continue pounding the gamblers into submission. “Every one of these guys they are calling has been torched by another service?” she asks.

  “Without fail. You can’t create gamblers from scratch. You can’t just cold call a bunch of people. You need established gamblers with bookies. These salespeople are not asking if guys are interested in gambling. They call and say, ‘Who are you playing today?’ knowing that the person they are calling has been exhausted by Empire Sports, The Sports Doctors, or one of our other competitors.”

  I point out two guys standing next to the table, watching the activity. “See them? They’re salesmen, too. If someone goes to the bathroom, a seat will open up for them.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Hey, Rocky, you want to hear what it sounds like from the other end? You want to listen to a few calls from my office?”

  “Oh, in your office,” she says teasing me for trying to sound like a hitter. Rocky doesn’t let me get away with much. “Yes, let’s view the office.” She smirks.

  Unfortunately, the office isn’t very impressive. The room has a desk, a few chairs and one of the master phone systems. I set up Rocky in the seat behind the desk where I usually sit. Then I pull up a chair next to her. The phone system has two rows of buttons that continue to flash brightly and then briefly go dark as the call ends. As sales manager, I like to see that light go bright again real quickly, signaling a new sales call. “Ready to hear this?” I ask.

  “Ready, Mr. Sales Manager!” She shoots back.

  I can’t get mad at her for busting my balls. She has that smile on. “Okay, there’s one that looks like it’s starting. The idea here is to create excitement and overcome objections. When this guy picks up the phone, it’s going to sound like he’s being pitched on a sports service where he pays a fee, but what he’s really being sold is excitement. That’s what these guys are really looking for. Sports are just the messenger. They want to be players, they want to feel alive. So no matter how much this guy says ‘no,’ the salesman will try to overcome him by creating excitement.” With that, I hit the speakerphone button, press the mute button and press on the newly bright light. “They can’t hear us, so we can talk.”

  I tell Rocky that we’re listening to Don, one of our better sales guys. “Jerry! How are you? It’s Don Moses from Luke’s Action Sports! How are ya, buddy?”

  The other side answers, “Hey, leave me alone. You guys suck!”

  The salesman is ready and says, “I suck? What are you talking about? I’m hitting 82 percent. How ‘bout you?”

  “You guys suck! Suck! I used the Sports Doctors and they crushed me!”

  The tug-of-war is in full bloom now. Don is doing a good job finding out about Jerry’s fiasco with the Sports Doctors. “Look, Jerry, I understand you got burnt, and I’m sorry it happened to you. Honestly, you used the wrong guys.” Don explains that real prognosticators exist and that the scams will piggyback off the legit ones. The trick is to learn the difference between contenders and pretenders. “If you go to a bad restaurant you’re never going to eat out again?” Don keeps bringing up the Giants vs. Redskins game and the inside information he is sitting on. Jerry is wearing down and is asking questions about where the information is coming from.

  “Jerry, we’re in the information business,” Don says. “We spend hours making connections and gathering information. But our real value-added is inside information. We get it from trainers, managers and coaches.” Don pours it on. He needs to touch Jerry in a way that ignites anticipation and pleasure in order to make him cough up a fee. “So here I am today with a combination of information from the home team, the visiting team, the guys that make the line at Union Plaza, Las Vegas and on top of all that, we have a very prominent wise guy who’s interested in the game, so he’s added an insurance policy, if you know what I mean. This game is a human lock. Are you going to tell me you don’t want a game like this?”

  Jerry’s resistance is weakening; Don moves in for the kill. “C’mon, Jerry, shoot me that Visa card! This play alone will wipe out all the bad plays from the Sports Doctors and pay for my service all in one play. This play here is the mother-load!”

  Don won’t let him think it over or call back; it’s go time. “Jerry, it’s something special and you got to be able to go for the jugular. Have the guts to win. This is the one your friends will be jealous of. You’ll wipe out the bad plays and be able to buy your girlfriend something special.”

  ‘‘I’m married.”

  “Hey, don’t be greedy. I don’t know if there’ll be enough left over for your wife and your girlfriend.”

  “That’s pretty funny. At least you have me laughing.”

  “Don’t worry Jerry, we’re gonna have a lot of laughs together. It’s fun to win.”

  It’s just semantics after that. Don obtains the credit card number and gets Jerry to load up on the Redskins and place his biggest bet of-the-year.

  Rocky looks at me, her mouth slightly agape. “Wow!” she says.

  “Pretty wild, but there’s a good chance when we run the credit card through, it’ll be maxed out. These degenerate gamblers often have the nerve to lie to the full-of-shit salesman. Then it becomes a numbers game. Our boy Don will be back on the phone in less than a minute, setting someone up for the exact opposite play by giving the Giants instead of the Redskins. If he’s any good, by the end of the day he should have 10 people playing the Giants and 10 people playing the Redskins. And if he’s really good, he will spread out both sides of four more games as well. If he’s a stud, he’ll have a hundred guys all rooting for different sides of a game.”

  “But what’s the purpose of that?” Rocky asks.

  “Because right after the game he will have 50 people who love him. Tomorrow’s call will offer, in the rarest twist of fate, an even better game. You always need another game to hook them long term. But to get the next one, they have to join the service for six months. No more of this one game stuff.”

  Rocky asks, “So if the Redskins win the game, Don calls Jerry back, and magically there’s an even better game?”

  “Wow, you’re good.” Then I add, “You ready to pick up a phone and start selling?”

  “I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer. What’s surprising to me is that you really do this. It seems so out of character for you.”

  I explain, “You have to get in character. That’s the whole trick. There’s a lot of rationalization happening and neither side are angels. A great salesman named Sean Gallop is an animal lover who hates hunters. When Sean sells, he uses the name Hunter Pierce, and in his mind everyone is some backward-ass hick who is bagging a deer or moose after his phone call, unless the mighty Sean Gallop can bring him down. He’s actually saving animals in his mind. The bottom line is that these salesmen are not themselves. That’s how they rationalize this existence.”

  Rocky looks at the phone lights fl
ashing. “How do you rationalize? What do you pretend?”

  “Me? I don’t pretend. It’s not a joke for me. The stakes are very high and I need a lot of money to nail Balducci. I’m bringing in an ungodly amount of drugs and that costs money. This business is hard to fund, but right upstairs from here I have my bookie operation, and that has huge profit and loss swings. So I guess my motivation remains to get Balducci no matter what. In this case, sell my ass off in this sports scam and keep my head above water and my body above ground. It’s enough for me.”

  “That’s motivation,” she agrees.

  “C’mon,” I say, “you want to see the bookie operation?”

  “How can a girl say no to an offer like that? You really know what to say to a lady.”

  A flight of stairs separates Luke’s Action Sports from the bookie operation. Rocky and I walk up these stairs and I take her to the office marked at eye level by a black name plate and white letters reading Hempstead Equipment. Rocky looks at the name on the door and before she asks, I say, “It was Loot’s idea to pay tribute to our home town and all. Seems harmless enough.”

  “It’s nice to see sentimental guys in this day and age,” Rocky says.

  I open the door with my key, which catches the guys inside by surprise. Carey is seated and running numbers on his spreadsheet. Loot is standing behind Carey, no doubt giving him instructions on what was probably something already done correctly. They’re shaking, but when they see Rocky and me enter the room, they give us a big grin.

  Loot walks over and gives Rocky a hug, which surprises her, as she has been gazing at all the display boards marked up with felt markers. Details like point spreads, underdogs, favorites, home teams, away teams, parlays, teasers and exactas are scrawled on boards that have more numbers than a Wall Street trading floor. When Rocky realizes that she is in Loot’s grasp, she hugs him back. Loot embraces me next and says, “We got some sweet business going.”