Dying to Call You Read online

  Dying to Call You

  Copyright © Elaine Viets, 2004

  Originally published by Signet 2004

  Published as an eBook in in 2018 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

  All rights reserved

  eISBN: 978-1-625673-20-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Tiger Bright Studios

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Also by Elaine Viets

  About the Author

  To all the people I called who were in the shower, at supper or asleep: I’m really sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me when you read this book about telemarketing.

  Acknowledgments

  The boiler room in this book resembles none of the telemarketing companies I’ve worked for, except in this way: Most telemarketers have rotten jobs. Hang up on them gently, please.

  As always, I want to thank my husband, Don Crinklaw, for his extraordinary help and patience. My agent, David Hendin, is still the best.

  Special thanks to my editor, Kara Cesare, who devoted long hours to editing and guiding this project, her assistant, Rose Hilliard, and to the Signet copy editor and production staff.

  Many people helped with this book. I hope I didn’t leave anyone out.

  Thanks to Captain Brian Chalk for his help with the boat chase scene, and to Charles A. Intriago, president of Alert Global Media, Inc., and the Money Laundering Alert newsletter.

  Thanks to Joanne Sinchuk and John Spera at south Florida’s largest mystery bookstore, Murder on the Beach, in Delray Beach, Florida.

  Thanks also to Valerie Cannata, Colby Cox, Jinny Gender, Karen Grace, Kay Gordy, and Janet Smith.

  Rita Scott does indeed make cat toys packed with the most powerful catnip in kittendom. They have sent my cats into frenzies of ecstasy.

  Special thanks to the law enforcement men and women who answered countless questions on weapons, police interrogations, and emergency procedures. Rick McMahan, ATF special agent; the Broward County sheriff’s office, and the United States Coast Guard. Thanks to Robin Burcell, author of Cold Case. Particular thanks to Detective RC White, Fort Lauderdale Police Department (retired). Any mistakes are mine, not theirs.

  Jerry Sanford, author of Miami Heat and federal prosecutor for the northern district of Florida, answered many complicated legal questions.

  Thanks to the librarians at the Broward County library and the St. Louis public library who researched my questions, no matter how strange, and always answered with a straight face.

  Thanks to public relations expert Jack Klobnak, and to my friend Carole Wantz, who takes such joy in books and book-selling.

  Special thanks to librarian Anne Watts, the person who lives with Thumbs. Thumbs is a real cat and a real polydactyl.

  Chapter 1

  “Hi, Mrs. Grimes. This is Helen with—”

  “Not interested.” Click.

  “Hi, Mr. Lester, this is Helen with Tank Titan Septic System Cleaner. We make—”

  “I told you people to take my name off this list.” Click.

  “Hi, Mr. Hardy, this is Helen with Tank Titan Septic System Cleaner. We make a septic-tank cleaner for your home system that is guaranteed to help reduce large chunks, odors and wet spots . . .”

  “You just woke me up, bitch. Call here again and I’ll kill you.” Click.

  “Have a good day, sir,” Helen said, as he hung up on her.

  It was ten o’clock in the morning. Helen Hawthorne had made more than a hundred calls all over the country in two hours, waking up people in Connecticut, irritating them in Iowa, ticking them off in Texas.

  She hadn’t sold anything so far today. She was desperate. So was everyone else in the telemarketing boiler room. Desperation was ground into the foul wrinkled carpet. It clung to the dirty computer screens. It soaked into the scuffed white walls.

  How did scuff marks get eight feet up on the walls? Helen wondered.

  “Let’s hear you selling, people,” Vito the manager said, as he prowled the aisles, making sure everyone was calling. “Loud and proud.”

  There was nothing proud about this job, although it was loud. All sixty telemarketers were shouting their sales spiel into the phones.

  Suddenly, Helen’s computer went blank. It crashed again, making it the third time in a week.

  Vita screamed like a wounded animal. “Goddamn it, I’m paying thousands to these computer geeks, and these worthless machines still don’t work. How can I make money when nobody’s calling? Don’t sit on your heinies, people. Everyone in the break room for a pep talk.”

  Vito was always giving pep talks, so the boiler room would meet the quotas set by the New York headquarters. Helen had seen some of the quota makers when they visited the Fort Lauderdale office. They looked like elegant reptiles.

  Getting sixty telemarketers into an eight-by-ten break room was like cramming college kids into a Volkswagen. Her coworkers fell mostly into three groups: Hopeful but poorly educated young Hispanics and African-Americans. Middle-class, middle-aged whites down on their luck. Plus a sprinkling of felons and junkies. Helen was on the run from the court and her ex-husband, so she knew what group she belonged in. At least she did not look twitchy and tattooed.

  Helen suspected Vito, the manager, had been in trouble with the law. During one pep talk, he’d said, “I know this place looks like a shithole, but you sell a product that works, a product you can be proud of. If you didn’t, the ATF guys would come busting through that door, and you’d be down on the floor with guns to your heads.”

  Helen was pretty sure the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives didn’t investigate boiler-room fraud, but she figured Vito knew what a government gun to your head felt like.

  Vito was an energetic package of round, pink muscle. His arms looked like thick rolls of bologna. His fingers were sausages. His head was round and pink. Even his black hair looked muscular.

  He paced back and forth, then pointed at a young woman with skin like brown satin. “Taniqua, why aren’t you selling today?”

  “My computer be acting strange,” she said. “It keep calling New York. They be talking about some kinda terror alert. They scared. Not my fault I ain’t selling.”

  “It is your fault,” Vito said. “So what if there’s an orange alert? I know people are worried about terrorism, but the twin towers have tumbled and you still have to flush your toilet. Life goes on.

  “Richie, why didn’t you sell anything this morning?”

  “Because people got mad and hung up on me. One guy was ninety-seven and said he didn’t need a seven-year supply.”
r />   “So sell him the three-year supply,” Vito said. “People live to be a hundred all the time.”

  A kid from the computer room, who looked like a mouse with a moustache, stuck his head in the door and said, “Computers are up.”

  “Quit wasting time,” Vito said to the telemarketers. “Everybody back to work. I need sales, people. First one to sell gets a free trip to Meyer Lansky’s grave.”

  Helen’s computer started dialing State Center, Iowa.

  “Hi, Mr. Harmon,” Helen began. She made it past the crucial first paragraph. She steamed through the section about “one of your neighbors in State Center gave me your name as a homeowner with a septic tank.” He still didn’t stop her.

  She told him that Tank Titan contained natural bacteria “that will break down and liquefy. And liquidity is just as important in septic tanks as it is in banks, right, Mr. Harmon?”

  “Why, yes,” he said. He was still with her.

  She told him the product was simple and easy to use. “Just flush a package down your commode once a month.” He let her keep talking. She was on her way to a sale.

  She made her final pitch: “We guarantee complete satisfaction with your septic-tank system for seven years, Mr. Harmon, or you’ll get one hundred percent of your money back. Does that sound fair to you, Mr. Harmon?”

  “Why, yes it does,” he said, in his soft country accent. “What’s this gonna cost me?”

  “Right now, we are offering an eighty-four-pack supply that will last you seven years for only two hundred ninety-nine dollars. That’s less than twelve cents a day for septic peace of mind.”

  There was a long silence. Helen feared she’d lost him and the sale. Then he said, “I guess I do need this product. I’ve kinda let things go since my wife died. We were married thirty-seven years. She died last March.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Harmon,” Helen said.

  “I miss her each and every day. I dream about her at night and then I wake up and the bed is empty, and I know she’s never going to be beside me again.”

  Helen had to get him back on track. “I am sorry, Mr. Harmon,” she said again. She started reading from her pitch. “But I am sure our product will bring you complete satisfaction.”

  Ouch. That was a bad choice of words. She expected him to slam down the phone, but he didn’t. “What is your address so I can send it out to you?” she said.

  The lonely man ordered the full seven-year supply, probably just to hear a woman talk to him, even if she was discussing raw sewage.

  Helen recorded her sale on the big board on the scuffed wall. Then she wrote down the address on scrap paper for her records. She’d get a ten-dollar commission, but Helen felt like one of the larger chunks in Mr. Harmon’s septic tank. Too many telemarketing sales were made to the old and the lonely.

  To feel better, she became Telemarketing Goddess. It was a dangerous game. Helen could only risk playing it for ten minutes at a time.

  After each call, telemarketers hit one of eight choices on their computers: NOT INTERESTED. ANSWERING MACHINE. SALE. HAS TANK TITAN. WRONG NUMBER. CALL BACK. DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH. REMOVE FROM LIST.

  “REMOVE FROM LIST” were the three words telemarketing companies dreaded. It meant that person could never be called again. If the company disobeyed the command, it could be fined major money. Vito threw out a different amount each pep talk. Sometimes the fine was ten thousand dollars, other times it was twenty-five thousand. He warned that consumers could record their remove requests and collect in court if their orders were ignored.

  But if the person didn’t say those three little words, they were fair game. Helen was supposed to remove rude people from the list even without the magic words. Tank Titan didn’t want any more enemies. But she ignored that rule when she was Telemarketing Goddess.

  The computer was now dialing Montana, catching septic-tank owners in the morning before they went to work.

  Helen launched into her spiel. An angry man interrupted her with, “You got a lot of balls calling here at eight in the morning.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Helen said.

  He started clubbing her with ugly, unprintable names, but Helen listened with a smile. He’d never said the three magic words. When he slammed down the phone, Helen hit the CALL BACK button. Septic-tank calls would pursue him from eight in the morning till nine at night.

  A woman with a soft voice answered the next call. Helen could hear the lung-busting cry of a newborn. The woman struggled to listen to Helen over the howling baby. “I’m really sorry, but I’m kind of busy right now,” she said.

  “That’s OK.” Helen removed the woman from the list without being asked and sent her to telemarketing heaven. She’d never be bothered again.

  Helen was rolling with her sales pitch on the next call, well into her fourth sentence. “One of your neighbors in Missoula, Mr. Dixs, gave me your name as a homeowner with a septic tank.”

  A voice like an ax blade cut her off. “A neighbor, huh? I don’t have any neighbors, you lying bitch,” he snarled and hung up.

  Helen sent Mr. Dixs to telemarketing hell. Two more nasty men joined him. Thanks to Helen, they’d all get up to seven septic tank calls a day.

  A weary mother with two sick kids (Helen heard one barfing) went to heaven. So did a sad, polite man who sounded like a movie cowboy. When he said simply, “Ma’am, I’m out of work,” Helen gave him a break and rescued him from further calls.

  Helen woke up a sick woman and atoned for her sin by sending her to heaven. If people were having a worse day than she was, Helen took them off the list. They never knew what she did. She enjoyed her secret power: punishing the outrageously rude and helping the downtrodden with a small kindness.

  Nine calls, nine minutes. Her time was almost up. She could only play Goddess once more.

  “Hi, Mr. Richards, this is Helen with Tank Titan Septic System Cleaner. We make—”

  “Mr. Richards?” the man said scornfully. “You’re retarded. What are you, stupid? Mr. Richards doesn’t live here, moron.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Helen said, and happily sent him to hell.

  Two sales later, her shift was over. Vito looked at her sales figures and said, “I’m going to reward you, Helen. Tonight, you work the survey side.”

  Vito was playing telemarketing God. He sent her to telemarketing heaven.

  Helen walked out of the building and blinked at the harsh South Florida light. In the windowless boiler room, she’d had no idea it was a sunny November day. When she’d lived in St. Louis, she’d dreaded November, the gray month that brought the first ice and snow. But winter in Florida was gorgeous. Red impatiens bloomed in planters. Purple passionflowers rioted on garden walls. Palm trees rustled like taffeta skirts.

  As she walked home, she tried to clear her head of the nearly three hundred phone calls that had pounded her ears in the last five hours. Tank Titan telemarketers worked a brutal schedule: The first shift was eight A.M. to one P.M. The boiler room closed in the afternoon, when many people weren’t home. Then the telemarketers came back to work from five to ten P.M. Each shift was five hours straight, with only one five-minute break each hour.

  Helen worked ten-hour days, taking nearly six hundred calls each day.

  For that, she was paid five dollars and fifteen cents an hour, plus a ten-dollar commission on each sale. Three commissions per shift were good. She’d worked there four weeks and made at least five hundred dollars a week. She sometimes earned more, but Vito helped himself to about fifty bucks of her commission each week. That was his reward for paying her in cash. Helen did not want her name in any company computers. She’d be too easy to trace.

  She walked home quickly, stretching her sore arms, neck and back, reveling in the warm sun. Survey work was like a vacation after the slamming boiler room calls. She’d make ten to twenty calls an hour, instead of sixty. It was a reward for the top sellers. The well-spoken top sellers. Telemarketers like Taniqua, who started her spiel with, “I wan
na ax you a queshun” could make a hundred sales a day, and they’d never get survey duty at a snotty place like Girdner Surveys.

  But Helen had a college degree. Helen had once made one hundred thousand dollars a year in a St. Louis corporation. Then she’d come home early on a balmy day like this and found her husband Rob with her next-door neighbor, Sandy. They were buck naked on the sun-drenched deck. Sandy was wrapped around her husband like an Ace bandage.

  Helen had picked up a crowbar lying nearby and felt the satisfying crunch! That crunch changed her life. Now she was on the run, reduced to dead-end jobs. She felt safe in these awful jobs. No one from her old life would look for her in a boiler room.

  This job was a fifteen-minute walk from the Coronado Tropic Apartments, where she lived. Helen loved the swooping Art Deco curves of the old white and turquoise building. On her days off, she sat out by the pool, drinking wine and watching the purple bougainvillea blossoms float on the water.

  Her landlady, Margery Flax, must have heard her walking by. She opened her door and called, “Come join me for lunch by the pool.”

  Helen was happy to forego the scrambled eggs she’d planned to eat. Especially when she saw the spinach salad on the picnic table. It had fat slices of chicken and avocado and lots of crumbled blue cheese. There were hot pumpernickel rolls and chocolate-covered strawberries.

  Margery was opening a bottle of wine that had a real cork. She always wore purple, but today’s shorts outfit looked positively royal. Helen’s landlady was seventy-six, with a face as wrinkled as a shar-pei puppy. She also had some of the best legs in Lauderdale. Today, she showed them off in jaunty purple suede mules.

  “What’s the occasion for a real bottle of wine, not a box?” Helen said.

  “I’ve finally rented 2C, so we’re celebrating,” Margery said. “I swear that apartment had a weird magnet. It’s attracted one wacko after another.”

  Helen wasn’t going to argue with her. The last tenant was a psychic named Madame Muffy. The one before that was still in jail.

  “So who’s the new person?”

  “Persons. A nice normal retired couple from New Jersey. Fred and Ethel Mertz.”