The Return of Fat Sally

Back in November I posted a story about Fat Sally, a real estate agent who didn't adapt and washed out of the business. My friend Dick Beals in North Carolina suggested a sequel and he planted this seed. I'd read the original post first called Fat Sally's Cherry Call and then swing back around here for Part 2. Keep in mind you're reading fiction!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Return of Fat Sally

"Hey Baby Corn, been a while."

"Jasmine?"

"Who else calls you Baby Corn?"

Actually, no one else. It was an inside joke between me and the seductive flaming redhead of a badger on the other end of the phone. Only 5'7" I often found myself on the tail end of many short jokes. Lou Grossinger, the manager of Colonial Realty, would bellow over the bullpen of crammed cubicles and stacks of Yellow Pages.

"Lenza, lend me a large ear!" Code for 'Hey, dumbass look at me and stop talking!'

"Lenza's too short to lend you a full grown ear," Jasmine ribbed. Since then she called me Baby Corn.

"Calling to take you out to lunch, Baby Corn. And there will be a surprise guest."

A week later I was waiting at the rear booth of Cavanaugh's, the metal cigar-shaped diner off Highway 33. In walks Jasmine with a young stud trailing behind her. After Colonial imploded from the fallout of Do Not Call legislation, Jasmine Alborelt went on to become a Platinum producer at a high-end franchise. Still sexy as all hell. She even gained a few pounds that rounded out an already sharply sculpted body. Brains, beauty and now bounce. The triple threat of middle age libido.

"Z'up B.C?" Jasmine inflected. What Jasmine could not carry was an MTV crib slang. She looked great and sounded ridiculous, like someone trying too hard to be cool and that someone is the last person in the room who needs to make the effort.

"This is Lorne," she introduced me to her much younger Brad Pitt look-alike escort. Lorne? Wasn't he that old dude from Gunsmoke.

"Nice to meet you Lorne. Please sit down," I gestured.

"Lorne's not staying," Jasmine coldly snarled and half lifted her right hand to stop Lorne's progress towards an empty chair.

"He's got to take my Lexus over for an alignment, still pulls to the left."

Lorne stiffened his shoulders and swung back his golden blond shoulder length hair and in a faint attempt at snatching back the manhood Jasmine just dropped into her open Vendi bag like a roll of nickels he barked "Keys!"

Then he was gone.

"So if Lorne is not the mystery third wheel, Jasmine, who'll be joining us?"

Suddenly the front door swung wide open rocking the newspaper stand off its pegs. In the doorway stood a rather large man with a shock of greasy black hair. His suit was a broad striped dark blue Joseph Abboud, expertly tailored around his gigantic bulbous frame. I was reminded of that toy n the 70's. Weebles waddle but they don't fall down.

Sal's face was ruddy. His protruding eyes were set clear on the opposite side of his head so he resembled an enormous flounder. Flounder eyes with a grainy opaque skin covering the corneas.

Fat Freakin' Sally. Salvtore Fredda. Sal.

"As I live and breathe" was all I could gesture under my breath. Jasmine picked up on my surprise.

"The big man looks good, don't he?"

"Slamming jamming Andrew," Sal bellowed and in less than six steps he was bear hugging me, scenting my body with a liberal aroma of Aqua Velva.

It had been two years since I hung up on a deflated, defeated Fat Sally after the pyramid marketing Cherry Call. This was not that man. He reeked of cheap cologne but he also whiffed of success and confidence. I guessed that Fat Sally was carrying at least five hundred dollars in his pocket. He wasn't driving a school bus. He wasn't tending bar. He wasn't donating blood.

"Sal, what's going on? You look on top of the world." Actually he looked the world.

The fat man then launched into a rags-to-riches-back-to-rags-and-back-to-riches saga of an American success story. He was gainfully employed and back in real estate. My jaw dropped into my tuna salad platter when he handed me his gold embossed business card,

"REAL ESTATE COMMISSION CONSULTANT."

Sal working for the Real Estate Commission? Sal working as a suit? Sal a government man?

"I'm attached to the anti-Fraud unit -- unofficially, of course. A sweet deal. Company car, unlimited mileage. Come and go as I please. Sweet tooth deal."

I've met trained Investigators from the Real Estate Commission. These dandies are college educated. They have backgrounds in finance and accounting. They're in shape. They are everything so not Fat Sally.

"Come again?" I marveled, poorly suppressing my incredulity and petulance, futilely hiding a smart-ass smile that the Fat Man quickly decoded.

"Oh I know for a college squire like yourself Professor Lenza it's tough to see me as a suit but I got something those Ivy League darlings can't buy with Daddy's country club membership..."

"Street cred," Jasmine interjected. She had been uncharacteristically quiet the last five minutes.

"That's right, Jazzy, street cred. I've sold every piece of shit real estate. Condos, land deals, multi-families, the shacks and the mansions."

And Fat Sally had. He sold a shit load of houses in his day.

"My role," continued Fat Sally as he adopted a hushed, less bravado tone, "is to gather intelligence and background information on brokers suspected of certain illegal activities."

That sounded so articulate like someone else wrote his job description.

"You're a rat?"

"Hell no, jackass," he bristled, "As you know I possess a certain flare, perhaps a charisma. People have always enjoyed talking to me. Like a fly on the wall, a rather large and sexy fly on the wall." He winked at Jasmine. That was true, except the sexy part. Fat Sal made friends out of strangers in less time than it took to plug two quarters into a parking meter. He did exude an Everyman's appeal.

"So you're a mole?"

To this Fat Sally raised his fork from his four egg Western omelet seemingly appropriately accused. He waved that fork like he was up on the bench with a cavalier swing of his judge's gavel. Your point is moot. Move to the next issue.

"Well, it's really great to see both of you again," I stammered, trying to plot a polite exit. I was due at a home inspection.

An awkward silence proceeded my botched farewell because it came out so phoney. I became conscious that the entire restaurant was still. The old fashioned diner now felt cramped and confined as a World War II submarine. I felt a strange premonition, a foreboding - as if a Japanese destroyer was filling the racks.

"Don't you want to know why we're here, Andrew? Surely you don't think this meeting is a coincidence?"

Now the room's temperature rose a few degrees and Sally instantaneously adopted a fiercer look. He was not the jolly fat man entertaining neighborhood children with the disappearing thumb trick. He wasn't a flounder anymore either. He was a killer whale circling around a seal, a much smaller seal. Suddenly all of Fat Sally's charisma had been replaced by sheer tenacity.

"Okay, what gives Sal?"

"Hate to tell you kiddo but your name's come up. Yup. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. Andy Boy Broccoli dancing a drunken jig dangerously close to the third rail. Just not his style. But I got collaboration from a third party."

This was almost something out of a Hoffa movie. Cornered in a greasy spoon by a fat man and a drop dead gorgeous woman. The Maltese Falcon perhaps. I thought of Senator McCarthy and those anti-Communist congressional hearings in the 1950's. How three quarters of America thought that schmuck was the biggest asshole behind a microphone but those Hollywood writers who forfeited their careers -- they were less amused.

"Sal, I know enough about the Real Estate Commission that they wouldn't open a legitimate inquiry with you breaking the news over eggs at Cavanaugh's. Are you going to swear my testimony in behind that espresso machine?"

"Don't be a punk. You're a smart kid. Smart I like. Punk, no."

The fat man was getting mad.

"Right now you're a person of interest with the Wakefield mess. There are others, let's say principals and brokers, who have implicated you. They say your involvement went deeper than just writing up a market value opinion. That a larger, much larger compensation was delivered under the table, shall we say."

Sal expanded his gorilla sized hands farther and farther apart for emphasis.

Wakefield was a development company that went bust. Over one hundred purchasers lost their deposits when the builder tanked. For a fee -- and only a fee -- I submitted a market analysis suggested the list price per lot. That was the extent of my involvement. I never represented the builder or purchasers of default transactions.

"That's bullshit and you know it. Why would I have received this fictitious bag of money?"

"For aggressively over valuing the suggested list price per lot which allowed Wakefield to dupe those poor innocent suckers. It is intriguing. Guy like yourself, independent broker, stand up fellow. Real estate instructor. No one considers dirty. But why not? Sort of like's Hitler's propaganda campaign. Tell a big enough lie and folks are bound to buy in."

"Andrew," Jasmine started and placed her clammy hand over mine, "tell him everything if you can. You know Sal. Like a dog with a bone. He's quite persistent and resourceful."

Then I realized that Jasmine had set this meeting up. She was so quiet, absorbed into the faux red leather upholstered booth. Her company was involved with Wakefield. They sold most of the deals. I was no genius but I gathered the killer whale had already bitten off one of her flippers. This wasn't good cop, bad cop.

Jasmine was being squeezed and she in turn was squeezing me. Or may be she was getting gaffed. Flopping like the amputated seal on the whaling deck, gasping for air. Blood spurting helter-skelter out of a flipperless raw meat hole. Trying to survive by ripping a good flipper off another seal flopping alongside her. And him, this detestable excuse of a human. Fat Sal was shaking down old friends for a ride in an Oldsmobile and an expense account. On the government dole. Oh, he did make a comeback in all points reprehensible.

Now when your accuser is so positive of your guilt you begin to doubt your own innocence. Could have I been involved? Could I have received a bribe?

The air in the diner was oppressing hot and putrid. The submarine was drifting lower, the pressure rising. Any second now rivets would start popping out the hull. A depth charge would clank off the metal guide wires starboard side.

Then I remembered I did nothing wrong. I remembered who I was and who raised me. I remembered my own code. I remembered Fat Sally's Cherry Call and who I was up against.

"Jasmine, I don't know what you're mixed up in but I'm not stewing in the same shit pot. I know it and our fat friend here knows it. Street cred? More like bureaucratic bullshit. Isn't that right, Sal? Blow a bunch of conspiracy smoke down in Trenton, spin a few mirrors. Play up the angle that you're going to break open a wide scale fraud just to stay employed? Just to avoid shelling out $4.00 at the pump when you visit your kid way over in Burlington at your ex-wife's place. Supervised Daddy-and-Me time if I remember?"

Now Sal had turned sullen and turned his head away from me, yet I continued. His eyes no longer protruded, they retreated into his cavernous skull like a crab's eyes spotting another combatant.

"Well I have news for you Fat Sal. You'll blew this job, if it is a job, while playing Sherlock Holmes in a garish Barney the Dinosaur suit. Because you're jerking around with real person's lives and the new tools of your trade are gossip and half-truths. Enjoy your fifteen minutes. Then it's back to the bus, back to the bar, back to the Albemarle boarding house."

"We'll see. We'll see wiseass. You should have never hung up on me Lenza when I called for help with my last gig. For old times sake you could have thrown me a bone. I was on the balls of my ass."

Now that was an image I didn't need intermingling with the silent rage welling up my throat.

"That's not how I remember it, Fat Sal," I said rising from my chair and tossing a twenty dollar bill to cover my lunch. Then I paused.

"But you're right. I shouldn't have hung up on you. We shared some good times."

Fat Sally smirked a pleasing little grin, as if he knew my Catholic guilt would creep up on me and pounce. Although he knew I was completely innocent he could count on me for dropping a few names to keep this government charade going. Really, what was the harm? So I fabricate a few stories about some of my diehard competitors. Use the system to block and tackle for me. Play ball and then there'd be me and Jasmine and Fat Sal putting the big hurt on another old friend. Oh, yes, Fat Sal thought. Andrew understands the loyalty thing. He was feeling mighty satisfied.

An explosive rattled around in the riggings. Detonation was imminent.

"Nope, Fat Sal. I shouldn't have hung up on you. I should have agreed to meet you. Then I should have run you over."

(c) Copyright, 2008. Andrew J. Lenza, All Rights Reserved.

Andrew J. Lenza, ABR GRI MBA 

 Broker/Owner     

ANDREW J. LENZA REALTY 

 73 State Highway 34 Colts Neck, NJ 07722    

 Office Telephone (732) 431-9003 

(c) Copyright, 2008. Andrew J. Lenza, All Rights Reserved. 

ANDREW J. LENZA REALTY COMPANY WEBSITE

ANDREW'S PERSONAL WEBSITE

• Members, Monmouth & Ocean County MLS and Middlesex County MLS

All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only. Andrew J. Lenza makes no representations as to comprehensiveness, accuracy, suitability, timeliness, or validity of any information on this site. Andrew J. Lenza will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. Else put -- It's a blog. It's an opinion. Every consumer is urged to perform their own analysis.