The Spiked Heel

18

Because Griff was back at his old job of tracer, because this job took him to every corner of the factory, he had the opportunity to observe what was happening with Naked Flesh — the way a doctor observes the fever of an epidemic while making his weary rounds.

And because Cost would have kept a close watch on the production of a shoe, because problems would automatically have been brought to Cost, because Griff knew the factory, because Griff was a friend — everyone came to him now with their troubles. Even those who had turned on him, even those now turned to him in their desperation.

“He’s canceled all vacations!” Manelli said. “Griff, he has cancelled all vacations!”

“He can’t do that,” Griff said. “The union’ll jump on his back so hard he’ll—”

“I told him that. I told him our contract calls for a two-week vacation for all factory personnel. He said the contract does not specify when this vacation shall be granted. He says we’ll never meet orders oh Naked Flesh if the factory lays off for two weeks.”

“He’s right. The retailers are snapping up that shoe as if it were—”

“Sure, but what am I supposed to tell the workers? Griff, they’ve been planning on this vacation all year! They’ve made reservations! Don’t you think this’ll upset schedules? Griff, what can I do?”

“I don’t know,” Griff said helplessly.

“I knew this would happen, Griff,” Magistro said. “His orders are pouring in, and we’re short on skins. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

“I don’t understand,” Griff said. “What’s the trouble?”

“I’m the leather buyer for this goddam firm. I’m supposed to make the purchases. All right, you Cost fellows always gave me enough time to do what I had to do. Now he’s got this damn Naked Flesh sweeping the country and it’ll be worse when our ads break next week. He’s got the retailers hot, and next week he’ll have the consumers hot, and I’m supposed to have enough skins to meet these tremendous orders that are coming in. Okay, okay, I can buy the skins.”

“Then what’s the problem, Pete?”

“They’re crap! That’s the problem. They’re crap, and I’ve got to pay thirty-five cents an inch for them!”

“Thirty-five cents!” Griff said. “Pete, that’ll knock our selling price way out of line!”

“Tell that to the dealers, Griff. They know they’ve got me over a barrel, they know I must have those skins. Before this started, I was getting good stuff for twenty-seven cents. Now they want thirty-five cents for crap! And I’ve got to take it. What happens when the cutters get this stuff? How the hell are they going to make a quality shoe out of garbage?”

“I’ll talk to Sven,” Griff said. “I’ll see what he…”

“Sure, and I’ll buy the skins,” Magistro said. “McQuade’s the boss, and he said buy whatever I can get my hands on. So I’ll buy. But don’t ask me what the hell this is going to do to the cost and the quality of the shoe! Damn it, Griff, I wish there was something we could do. I just wish there was something we could do!”

In the Cutting Room, Sven Jored lifted a piece of alligator lizard from one of the benches and held it out so that Griff could see it.

Griff studied the skin. He shook his head wearily.

“Even if the men were on straight time, they wouldn’t be careful with skins like these.”

“What do you mean? Has McQuade…?”

“He’s put my cutters on piecework! Piecework with reptiles! He says he wants faster production and can’t afford a bottleneck in the Cutting Room! He says orders are piling up, says we have to meet delivery dates. So look at the way they’re cutting! They’re breaking their asses to get that money. Reptiles! On piecework! Griff, can’t we do something about this? Is he trying to ruin the company?”

In the Pattern Room, Stan Zibinsky took Griff aside and said, “Sweetheart, your Georgia cracker is driving me nuts.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Except he ain’t going to meet delivery dates on this Naked bitch.”

“Why not?”

“We ain’t got enough lasts. We’re using the 1284’s, but we’re making about ten other shoes on that thing besides the Naked bitch. We can turn out about two thousand pairs of that shoe a week. He’s getting orders for at least five thousand. That means he needs more lasts. We can’t free more than about three hundred woods a day for his goddam shoe. He wants more. So he’s got me nuts shifting lasts around.”

“Which lasts?” Griff asked.

“He switched three shoes to the 1701. Another two shoes to the 1470. Griff, I tell you the truth, I don’t know if we can make those shoes properly on substitute lasts. What the hell happens when our shoes reach the consumer?”

“I hate to think,” Griff said.

“And the worst part,” Zibinsky said, “even after we’re done shifting these other shoes, we still ain’t got enough lasts! If that bastard meets delivery dates, it’ll be a miracle. I told Hengman. I told him just what the story is. Hell, Griff, I don’t want to lose my job because this stupid bastard is ruining our shoes!”

“Griffie!” Hengman said. “Where the hull you been? What’s so ’mportant in d’fect’ry, you can’t stey here in d’uffice?”

“I’ve been checking production on—”

“Listen to what your frand McQued wants!” Hengman said. “He wants I should order anudder five t’ousand pair of the 1284 woods. He wants I should hev dem made opp.”

“Another five thousand pair. Jesus Christ, does he know what that’ll cost us? Five thousand pair’ll run at least—”

“He knows, he knows. He says dis’s ah big shoe. He says we got t’hev more lests. Griffie, what’ll we do wit all dem woods if d’shoe is ah flop? Griffie, what I’m gung to do?”

“Well… I don’t know, Boris.”

“I ordered dem. I ordered five t’ousand woods made opp. He said so, didn’t he? He’s d’boss, ain’t he? All right, so he’s d’boss. So let him have de enswers!”

NAKED FLESH, the ads read. NAKED FLESH, and the ads were carried in all the fashion magazines, and all the national distribution newspapers, and all the local newspapers.

NAKED FLESH, and the name traveled like wildfire. NAKED FLESH, and the housewives, and the debutantes, and the social butterflies, and the hat-check girls, and the chorus girls, and the waitresses, and the dowagers who should have known better, and the dowagers who did know better, and college girls, and highschool girls, and matrons, and mothers, and women all over the country saw the printed word, and the printed word was law, and they wanted NAKED FLESH!

They wanted NAKED FLESH, and they went to their local shoe store and asked for the shoe, and they were promised delivery within a few days, a week at most, and they waited patiently, because NAKED FLESH was something to wait for.

In the factory…

“He’s shifted the Naked bitch to the 1440s last!” Zibinsky shouted at Griff.

“The 1440s? But—”

“He’s stamping 1284 into the shoe as the last number! But he’s building half the pairage on the 1440. Griff, that almost amounts to fraud! Dames’ll be going into the shop thinking that shoe was made on the 1284 last when it wasn’t! Griff, that shoe’s gonna give us trouble. Griff, that goddam shoe ain’t gonna fit right! Somebody’s got to stop him!”

Alec Karojilian said, “I told him we had to keep those shoes on the lasts for at least seven, eight days. Griff, if this sole is going to stay glued to the upper, the shoe has to stay on for at least seven, eight days. I told him this. Jesus, Griff, do you remember when Santoro worked for us? He was a real quality-minded bastard, and he wouldn’t allow a shoe to leave a last for a minimum of fourteen days! I told McQuade.”

“What’d he say?”

“He says he has to free those lasts. He has to meet delivery dates. He says women are screaming for the shoes. Zibinsky tells me he’s building it on the 1440, in addition to the 1284, but he still ain’t got enough lasts. So he’s rushing the stuff through the factory.”

“How many days?” Griff asked wearily.

“Four days, Griff. He doesn’t want that shoe on the last more than four days. Okay, we’ll pull them. I don’t give a damn. But when the shoe falls apart on a woman’s foot, what happens then?”

“Hello, Griff?” Stiegman asked into the telephone.

“Yes?”

“What’s this latest nonsense?”

“What are you talking about, Dave?”

“This memo from McQuade.”

“What memo?”

“About air freight.”

“I don’t know anything about it, Dave.”

“He wants me to ship all orders of Naked Flesh via air freight. He says Julien Kahn will absorb the, additional freight charge. Now what the hell kind of a note is that?”

“We’ll pay the extra freight? Doesn’t he realize how much that’ll cost?”

“How do I know? He wants those shoes in the shops. But tell me something, Griff. Who absorbs that charge? Factory or Sales? This shoe is priced low as it is. He’s overadvertised it, and he’s given a bigger discount, and now he’s slapping this extra freight charge onto it. Who absorbs it?”

“That shoe had better be a tremendous smash,” Griff said. “It had better be the biggest damn seller this company ever—”

“And what about our other orders? Has he got that goddamned factory cutting nothing but Naked Flesh? I’m already beginning to get screams from the retailers. Griff, I’ve got a whole line to worry about. This son of a bitch is in love with Naked Flesh, but Julien Kahn has two hundred and ninety-nine other shoes in the line. What happens if Naked Flesh flops? What the Christ is going to happen then?”

Griff saw the trouble, as they all saw the trouble.

He saw the trouble, and he wondered exactly what he owed Julien Kahn, exactly what he owed Titanic.

And because Cost had become an integral part of his thinking over the years, he automatically thought now in terms of Cost. Item by item, he tallied the additional cost burden McQuade had heaped onto Naked Flesh, and then he put that alongside the selling price of the shoe. He was certain that unless McQuade’s baby produced an unprecedented landslide sale, it would most certainly put the company into the bottom of a deep hole. And even then, McQuade was sacrificing quality for speed, and quality had always been the trademark of Julien Kahn.

There was time to stop him. There was time to advise the salesmen against taking orders which could not possibly be met. There was time to revise the price of the shoe on future orders, so that the increased cost of material and labor could be absorbed. There was time to remember the rest of the line, time to concentrate on selling every shoe the firm made, time to get all those eggs out of that single basket, time to do an honest job and do it well.

There was still time to stop what could turn out to be the biggest fiasco in the history of the firm.

And the only people who could stop it were the people at Titanic Shoe — in Georgia.

He considered the situation gravely, remembering that they had okayed McQuade’s earlier idea, even in the face of contrary supporting evidence. He knew what it meant to buck the chain of command. And there was, too, the remote possibility that, despite the outsized cost load, despite the inferior material and workmanship, Naked Flesh would earn its keep and actually sell the rest of the line besides. If Griff bucked McQuade, if Griff protested to Titanic and then Naked Flesh hit the jackpot…

He considered the situation gravely.

And then he called Danny Quinn.

Danny recognized his voice instantly. “Hi, Griff, what’s up?”

Griff gave it to him fast. “I’m driving down to Titanic Shoe in Georgia,” he said. “I’m starting now, and I’m going to drive until I get there, and I may need someone to spell me at the wheel. How about it?”

“Are you kicking McQuade out?” Danny asked.

“I’m going to try.”

“Pick me up,” Danny said. “I’ll be ready when you come by.”

They arrived in Georgia before the close of the business day on a hot Friday. Griff told his story to the men of Titanic, and the men of Titanic listened. And then they told Griff they would seriously consider all that he had said. They seemed particularly surprised about the figures he mentioned, figures which allegedly proved that a cost-plus operation was ill-conceived and unfeasible. Apparently, they had never received any such figures from McQuade. They’d received only a memo saying he’d got new information which only reaffirmed his decision to disband Cost.

“We would appreciate it,” they told Griff, “if you’d send those figures to us on Monday morning, when you’re back in New York. We shall carefully survey all that you’ve told us.”

On Monday morning, the letter from Halver House — a big retail outfit, in San Francisco — arrived at the Chrysler Building. Dave Stiegman read it, whistled in surprise, and then sent it over to Jefferson McQuade.