“So what happens?” Conn continued. “Obviously, M/L/R sees the account slipping away and they panic, yelling that we’ve lifted their ideas in an attempt to buy them more time with Foreman.”
“Sounds pretty implausible,” I countered. “After all, early on, Acker Foreman sees all the advertising the agency has prepared for Cherr-o-key—he’s got to approve it. So when your advertising came out on television and wherever else, he must have had a pretty good idea that it had been swiped or leaked. And all that’s going to do is make him angry at M/L/R.”
“Mr. Goodwin, creativity is a funny thing. I’ve been in this crazy business a lot of years, and more than once I’ve seen competing brands come out with remarkably similar advertising,” Conn said, switching gears smoothly. “Let me give you a case in point: We had a soap account … oh, it’s been fifteen years ago or more now, and we put together a TV campaign that referred to the brand being ‘as gentle as a mother’s lullaby.’ Almost simultaneously, the brand’s major competitor came out with a television commercial with a jingle that included the words ‘soft as a serenade.’ We never suspected the other agency of stealing from us and, as far as I know, they didn’t think we were idea-thieves, either.”
“As you said earlier, you have no theories on why Swartz was murdered?” I asked.
Conn shook his head and studied the table again. “None. And I gather the police don’t either—or if they do, they didn’t bother sharing them with me.”
“What kind of an employee was he?”
“A damn good one,” Conn said. “Creative, worked hard, put in long hours—although, hell, that comes with the territory in this business. And he was damned ambitious, which I like to see.”
“Ambitious to the point of wanting to climb over other people?”
“Umm, well, I wouldn’t necessarily term it that way. He was always after more money, though,” Conn said with a grin. “I think he wanted to be a millionaire before he was thirty-five.”
“And did you give him more money?”
“He got his share of raises and bonuses, and then some.”
“Enough to satisfy him?”
Conn laughed. “As much as a guy like Andy could be satisfied, I guess. He had, shall we say, unlimited confidence in his abilities, and wasn’t reluctant to point out his successes to his superiors.”
“Were you ever worried about losing him to some other agency?” I asked.
“That’s always a peril in this business. And, yes, I’d have to say that in Andy’s case, that concern did come up in discussions among management. But as far as I know, Andy wasn’t contemplating leaving us. He never mentioned other job offers to me, anyway.”
“How did his co-workers view him?”
Conn moved forward in his chair and took a deep breath. “Andy was a live wire. His personality was such that he could get away with self-congratulation without seeming arrogant, probably because he also knew how to make fun of himself. I never heard a complaint about him from anyone else in the shop.”
“What do you know about his social life?”
“Mr. Goodwin, I make it a point to stay out of the private lives of my employees,” Conn said, giving me a peek at his pompous side.
“I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. But doesn’t the agency have social functions from time to time—picnics and parties and the like?”
“Yes, a couple of times a year. Andy normally came to those, too. The police asked me the same thing, and I’ll tell you what I told them: He usually brought an attractive young lady, not always the same one. In fact, I’m not sure I ever saw him with the same woman twice.”
“No serious relationships?”
“Not that I ever heard of.”
“Did he date within the agency?”
“Again, not that I’m aware of. Pardon me, but just what are you investigating—murder, or what you insist on calling idea thievery?”
“Maybe both, if they’re connected.”
“Nonsense!” Conn railed, jerking upright and smacking the table with his palm. “We’ve already been over that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get ready to fly to Detroit for Andy’s funeral. That’s his hometown.”
“Just a couple more things,” I said, making no effort to rise. “First, I gather from what you said earlier that you don’t have a terribly high opinion of Mills/Lake/Ryman as an ad agency.”
“You could say that.” He had regained his composure.
“Then why did your agency try to buy them?”
That caught him, and he twitched. “Is that what they told you?”
“Let’s just say I heard it in my travels around town.”
“All right, there’s some truth to it,” he snapped, making fists of both hands, opening them, and clenching again. “We—I—did try to initiate talks, oh, about eighteen months back. But frankly, I got absolutely nowhere with the partners. And Rod Mills in particular was downright rude in telling us to take a hike.”
“If you had taken them over, how would you have juggled the two cherry drink accounts? Doesn’t that constitute some kind of conflict of interest?”
“Oh, very much so. One brand would have had to go, and that would have been Cherr-o-key, mainly because AmeriCherry is a bigger chunk of business, probably between three and four times greater, although we aren’t privy to exactly what M/L/R bills on Cherr-o-key.”
“But Cherr-o-key’s such a big part of Mills’s business. Why would you even want the agency without its top account?”
Conn smiled sheepishly. “Mr. Goodwin, when I spoke negatively about M/L/R a little while ago, I’m afraid I was letting my anger with the way we were treated by them get in the way. In candor, they have some fine creative talents—among them Boyd Lake, Sara Ryman, and that young woman who I understand was with you when … you know. Our hope was to buy them basically intact and maintain them as a separate entity, making them a ‘boutique agency,’ to use an industry phrase.”
“Which means?”
“That they would have remained small and would have handled only a few clients, upscale accounts where a special combination of creativity and impeccable taste are required in the advertising—such as with our fine china account, for example.”
“So you’d both gain a tony subsidiary and get rid of a pesky competitor in the cherry drink field?”
Conn smiled again, but this time it wasn’t sheepish. “You said that, I didn’t,” he replied lightly. “And as I told you before, it was—is—simply a matter of time before Foreman dumps them anyway.”
“Did Foreman know about your attempt to buy the agency?”
Conn shrugged his superbly tailored shoulders. “Can’t say. I’ve never even met the man. But I can tell you this: Word of our proposal must not have gotten out, because there was never a word of it in the ad columns in the Times, Daily News, or Gazette. Or in the trade papers, for that matter.”
“Did that surprise you?”
“Oh, not particularly. Mills/Lake/Ryman really didn’t have all that much to gain by letting word of our proposal leak out. At the risk of sounding immodest, we are a damn prestigious shop, but in this business, mergers take place every ten minutes. It was interesting about Lake, though.”
“Try me.”
“Oh—of course, you probably don’t know. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to tell you, given the result. A few weeks after our discussions with Rod Mills, I got a visit from Boyd Lake. He wanted to come to work for us.” Conn was smug, both in tone and expression.
“But you didn’t take him on?”
He smiled indulgently. “No, Mr. Goodwin, I didn’t take him on. As I told you a moment ago, the man is a talent—no question. But he has an inflated opinion of that talent. He expected to join us very near the top of the pyramid. Very near the top.”
“And he’s not good enough for that?”
“He’s good, I give you that. But I dislike being dictated to, Mr. Goodwin. And I don’t like to hear people bad-mouthing their co-wo
rkers. Once disloyal, ever disloyal.”
“What did Mr. Lake say about his fellow employees?” I asked.
“I honestly did not intend to bring this up,” Conn said, again the smoothie oozing sincerity. “But what the hell, you ought to know about the people who have hired you and Nero Wolfe. Right in this room—” Conn tapped the table with an index finger—“Boyd Lake told me that Rod Mills was a pain in the ass to work for and that Sara Ryman hated his guts because he was a Brit and also because he’s smarter than she is.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Mr. Goodwin, it’s not even a case of believing him. Rather, it’s, ‘Do I want someone like this working for me?’ When I made the original pitch for M/L/R to Mills, I did so largely because of the reputations of Boyd Lake and Sara Ryman. Now, having met Lake, I’m glad we didn’t buy them out.”
“Interesting. Getting back to Andrew Swartz, just what was his role on the AmeriCherry campaign?”
“As creative director on the account, he oversaw all the advertising we did for them: TV, print, outdoor, even some of their point-of-purchase stuff—the works.”
“Did he come up with the ideas for the ‘AmeriCherry crew’ commercials and the sweepstakes with the bottle caps that had endangered species on them?”
Conn hesitated for a heartbeat before answering. “Yes,” he said.
“And you approved them?”
“I did. I would have had to, or the client never would have seen them.”
“Did the company like them?”
Another hesitation. “They … weren’t perhaps quite as enthusiastic as on some other campaigns, but, yes, yes, they gave them both their blessing, and I think they’ve been generally happy with them since. The sweepstakes has gotten a lot of good publicity for AmeriCherry.”
“Would you term Swartz a talented creative person?”
“That’s a silly question, Mr. Goodwin,” Conn huffed. He pushed back his leather chair and got to his feet. “Of course Andy was talented—very talented; after all, AmeriCherry is one of our five biggest accounts. We bring in more than twenty million dollars yearly on AmeriCherry. We’d hardly put a novice on it now, would we? Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“Were both those campaigns put together unusually quickly?”
“You told me you had just a couple more questions, yet you just keep on spitting them out like a machine gun. You’ll have to admit that I’ve been very patient, Mr. Goodwin, but I really must go now, and I frankly don’t see where all this is headed.” Conn brushed something invisible from his lapel. “I’ve got to be on a plane in less than two hours.”
“Just two more questions—I promise. What time did Swartz leave the office Tuesday?”
“The police asked the same thing. I hadn’t seen much of Andy that day—I’d been tied up in a bunch of meetings. But his secretary says he left early, around four. Said he had some errands to run.”
“Is that unusual for him?”
Conn shrugged. “Andy normally puts in long hours, but we’re not a punch-the-clock operation here. The work day is flexible—God knows we all spend enough nights and weekends here.”
“Can you account for your time Tuesday between four and six o’clock?”
“The police also asked that one,” he replied icily. “I was offended when they posed the question and I am offended now.”
“Sorry to hear that. What did you tell the police?”
He exhaled loudly. “That I left here around quarter past five—which is early for me—and walked down to a health club I belong to on Thirty-third near Park. I try to walk at least a couple of miles every day,” he said, patting his relatively flat stomach by way of explanation, “and I also try to work out a couple of times a week, my work schedule permitting. But when I got to within about a block of the club, my right leg began bothering me—an old college basketball injury. So I flagged a cab and went home; my wife and I live on East Eighty-first.”
“So you got home when?”
“About six-forty,” he said in a still-frigid voice. “And now, good-bye.” He folded his arms, waiting for me to get up, which I did, and he followed me out of the conference room, steering me toward the elevators.
He didn’t hold out a hand, which was okay with me; I didn’t feel like shaking it. But he waited there, silent and expressionless, until a car came and I got in. As the doors closed, the last thing I saw was Harlowe Conn, walking toward the inner sanctum and shaking his head as Tight Lips glanced briefly his way and returned to her crossword puzzle.
THIRTEEN
WOLFE WAS SETTLED IN AT his desk disposing of the mail when I returned from Madison Avenue at eleven-twenty. Normally, I slit all the envelopes and stack them on his blotter, ready for him to plow through after the morning orchid session. But when I’m away, Fritz handles that chore.
After getting a cup of coffee from the kitchen, I came back to the office and slid into my chair, swiveling to face Wolfe. “I’ve been to the aerie and talked to the Eagle himself. Are you ready for a report?”
Wolfe disdainfully dropped the last of the mail into the wastebasket and rang for beer. “Confound it, yes,” he murmured.
“Your enthusiasm is electric. For starters, the gentleman in question is every bit as pompous as our clients had suggested.” I then proceeded to give Wolfe the usual verbatim recitation, interrupted only by Fritz’s entry with beer. As he normally does during my reports, Wolfe leaned back in his chair, eyes closed and fingers laced over his center mound. When I finished, he blinked and levered himself forward in the chair.
“Based on your narrative, I suggest unctuous rather than pompous as a descriptive adjective for Mr. Conn. Now I—”
He was interrupted by the doorbell. I could have let Fritz do the honors, but I was curious, so I made for the front door, heading him off as he entered the hall. “Thanks, but this is mine,” I told him. “I owe you one for taking care of the mail this morning.” He did an about-face and went back to the kitchen while I took a gander through the one-way glass.
“This is getting to be a habit,” I told our visitor after I’d pulled open the front door. “Is Mr. W. expecting you?”
“No, but I think he’ll want to see me,” Inspector Cramer snapped, crossing our threshold for the second time in two days. I didn’t try to stop him, but I did take the lead down the hall, beating him by a length to the office door.
“He-r-r-r-re’s Cramer!” I said as I went in ahead of the inspector, but of course that bit of silliness was lost on Wolfe, who had never caught Johnny Carson’s late-night TV show and likely never would. He looked up from his book with an expression that would have stopped a charging elephant, but it bounced harmlessly off Cramer, who made his usual crash landing into the red leather chair.
“I sincerely hope this intrusion is warranted.” Wolfe spoke the words softly, spacing them for effect.
“I’ll let you be the judge of that,” Cramer responded without emotion. “It concerns your client.”
“Proceed.”
“We’ve talked to friends of Swartz,” Cramer said. “He had an active social life.”
“As do many people in Manhattan, or so I have been led to believe.”
“Yeah, me too, although I suspect we’ve each had about the same amount of first-hand experience,” Cramer retorted. “Anyway, one of those drinking buddies of Swartz’s that I mentioned when I was here yesterday said that he—Swartz—had been seeing, among others, a woman who works for another advertising agency, but on the q.t.”
“Annie Burkett?” I ventured.
“Nope—that was my guess, too. But the guy, he’s a bond trader named Chris Morrow, knew it wasn’t her, because he’d met her once when a big group, Swartz among them, went out someplace together, sailing I think he said. And the Burkett woman was along with another man. She and Swartz were just casual acquaintances, according to Morrow.”
“That squares with what Annie told me,” I said. “She mentioned that she and Swartz
had been places together, but with different people. So who’s the mystery woman?”
“Morrow doesn’t know—he never met her.” Cramer went into his cigar routine, pulling one from a pocket and jamming it unlit into his mouth. “He says Swartz told him, about eight months ago, he thinks, that he was spending time with a woman who worked for, quote, a competing agency, end quote, and that he was keeping the relationship very quiet.”
“Did Mr. Swartz get any more specific?” Wolfe asked.
“No. Morrow says he and Swartz were in some bar late one night and had had several drinks when Swartz mentioned this to him. He told us it never came up again in conversation.”
“What about that address book you mentioned the last time you were here?” I put in.
Cramer waved away the question with a thick hand. “Nah, there were a dozen women’s names in the book, including his sister in Toledo and Miss Burkett. We checked out the others; four he’d gone out with two or three times each, nothing serious, at least according to the women. One worked for a book publisher; one for an insurance company over in Newark; two were with a big accounting firm—roommates, in fact, and one had introduced him to the other, if you can figure that out. The last two in the book turned out to be his secretary at Colmar and Conn and his aunt in Lexington, Kentucky.”
Wolfe scowled and finished the beer in his glass. “Why did you say your visit concerns our client?”
“Because Swartz told his friend that the woman worked for a competitor.”
“Sir, need I remind you that Mr. Swartz’s employer handles dozens of products other than their cherry beverage? Conceivably, almost every advertising agency of any size in New York has a client that competes with one of the products or services that Colmar and Conn does advertising for.”
Cramer scowled. “Yeah, but Swartz spent every bit of his time on the AmeriCherry account. To him, ‘competition’ meant Cherr-o-key and Mills/Lake/Ryman, plain and simple.”
“You are doing a lot of assuming,” Wolfe cautioned, waggling a finger.
“Maybe I am,” Cramer allowed, “but you’re the ones who are making such a big thing out of the supposed goings-on between the two agencies, specifically the idea-stealing. If that isn’t competition, I don’t know what the hell is. And it figures that if information really was being leaked by someone at M/L/R, Swartz was its recipient.”
Fade to Black (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 5) Page 11
