I cut him off. “Get the f**k out of here, Gelfand. And make sure none of the kids in your section start booing Madden or throwing shit at him. I’m serious, okay?”
Howie began taking small steps backward and bowing toward me with his arms extended in front of him, the way a person does when they’re leaving a royal chamber after an audience with a king.
What a fat f**king bastard, I thought. But such a wonderful salesman! Smooth as silk he was. Howie had been one of my first employees—only nineteen when he came to work for me. His first year in the business he’d made $250,000. This year he was on pace to make $1.5 million. Nevertheless, he still lived at home with his parents.
Just then came more rumblings from the microphone: “Uh…excuse me, everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Steve Madden. I’m the president—”
Before he could even finish his first thought, the Strattonites were on him:
“We all know who you are!”
“Nice f**king baseball cap!”
“Time is money! Get to the f**king point!”
Then came some boos and hisses and whistles and catcalls and a couple a hoo-yaaas. Then the room began to quiet down again.
Steve glanced over at me. His mouth was slightly parted and his brown eyes were as wide as saucers. I extended my arms, palms toward him, and moved them up and down a few times, as if to say, “Calm down and take it easy!”
Steve nodded and took a deep breath. “I’d like to start by telling you a little bit about myself and my background in the shoe industry. And then, after that, I’d like to discuss the bright plans I have for my company’s future. I first started working in a shoe store when I was sixteen years old, sweeping the stockroom floor. And while all my other friends were out running around town chasing girls, I was learning about women’s shoes. I was like Al Bundy, with a shoehorn sticking out my back—”
Another interruption: “The microphone’s too far from your mouth. We can’t hear a f**king word you’re saying! Move the mike closer.”
Steve moved the microphone. “Well, sorry about that. Uh—like I was saying, I’ve been in the shoe industry for as far back as I can remember. My first job was at a little shoe store in Cedarhurst called Jildor Shoes, where I worked in the stockroom. Then I became a salesman. And it was…uh…then…back when I was still a kid…that I first fell in love with women’s shoes. You know, I can honestly say…”
And just like that he began giving a remarkably detailed explanation of how he’d been a true lover of women’s shoes since he was in his early teens, and how somewhere along the way—he wasn’t sure where—he had become fascinated with the endless design possibilities for women’s shoes, insofar as the different types of heels and straps and flaps and buckles, and all the different sorts of fabrics he could work with, and all the decorative ornaments he could stick on them. Then he began explaining how he liked to caress the shoes and run his fingers along the insteps.
At this point I snuck a glance into the heart of the boardroom. What I saw were some very puzzled looks on the faces of the Strattonites. Even the sales assistants, who could usually be counted on to maintain some sense of decorum, were cocking their heads in disbelief. Some of them were rolling their eyes.
Then, all at once, they attacked: “What a f**king homo!”
“That’s some sick shit, man!”
“You queer! Get a f**king life!”
Then came more boos and hisses and whistles and catcalls, and now some foot-stomping—a clear sign they were entering phase two of the torture treatment.
Danny walked over, shaking his head. “I’m f**king embarrassed,” he muttered.
I nodded. “Well, at least he agreed to put our stock in escrow. It’s a shame we couldn’t get the papers drawn up today, but it ain’t a perfect world. Anyway, he’s gotta stop with this shit or they’re gonna eat him up alive.” I shook my head. “I don’t know, though…I just went over this shit with him a few minutes ago and he seemed okay. He’s actually got a good company. He needs to just tell the story. I mean, he’s your friend and everything, but he’s a f**king crackpot!”
Danny, tonelessly: “Always has been, even in public school.”
I shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll give it another minute or so and then I’ll go up there.”
Just then Steve looked over at us, and the sweat was pouring off him. He had a dark circle on his chest the size of a sweet potato. I waved my hand in small circles, as if to say, “Speed it up!” Then I mouthed the words: “Talk about your plans for the company!”
He nodded. “Okay—I’d like to tell everybody about how Steve Madden Shoes got started and then talk about our bright future!”
The last two words resulted in some eye-rolling and a little bit of head-shaking, but, thankfully, the boardroom remained quiet.
Steve lumbered on: “I started my company with one thousand dollars and a single shoe. It was called the Marilyn”—Christ almighty!—“which was sort of like a Western clog. It was a great shoe—not my best shoe, but still a great shoe. Anyway, I was able to get five hundred pairs made on credit, and I started going around and selling them out of the trunk of my car to any store that would buy them. How could I describe this shoe to you? Let me see…it had a chunky bottom and an open toe, but the top of it was…well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. The point I was trying to make was that it was a really funky shoe, which is the trademark of Steve Madden Shoes: We’re funky.
“Anyway, the shoe that really launched the company was called the Mary Lou, and this shoe … well, this was no ordinary shoe!” Oh, Jesus! What a f**king fruitcake! “It was way ahead of its time—way ahead!” Steve waved his hand in the air, as if to say, “Forget about it!” And he kept right on going. “Anyway, let me describe it to you, because this is important. Now, it was a black patent-leather variation of the traditional Mary Jane, with a relatively thin ankle strap. But the key was that it had a bump toe. Some of you girls here must know exactly what I’m talking about, right? I mean—it was really a hot shoe!” He paused, obviously hoping for some positive feedback from the sales assistants, but none came—only more head-shaking. Then there was an eerie, poisonous silence, the sort of silence you find in a small town in the middle of Kansas the moment before a tornado hits.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a paper airplane sail across the boardroom in no particular direction. At least they weren’t throwing things directly at him! That would come next. I said to Danny, “The natives are getting restless. Should I go up there?”
“If you don’t, I will. This is f**king nauseating!”
“All right, I’m going.” I made a beeline for Steve.
He was still talking about the Mary f**king Lou when I reached him. Just before I grabbed the microphone he was talking about how she was the perfect prom shoe, priced reasonably and built to last.
I grabbed the mike out of his hand before he knew what hit him, and it was then that I realized he’d gotten so absorbed in the glory of his own shoe designs that he had actually stopped sweating. In fact, he seemed completely at ease now and was entirely unaware that he was about to get lynched.
He whispered to me, “What are you doing? They love me! You can go back now. I got it covered!”
I narrowed my eyes. “Get the f**k out of here, Steve! They’re about to start throwing tomatoes at you. Are you that blind? I mean, they don’t give a shit about the Mary f**king Lou! They just want to sell your stock and make money. Now, go over to Danny and relax for a while, before they come up here and rip off your baseball cap and scalp the last seven hairs off your head!”
Finally, Steve capitulated, and he walked off center stage. I raised my right hand, asking for quiet, and the room fell silent. With the microphone just beneath my lips, I said in a mocking tone, “All right, everyone, let’s give a big round of applause to Steve Madden and his very special shoe. After all, just hearing about little Mary has inspired me to pick up the phone and start calling all my clients. So I want every last one of you—sales assistants included—to put your hands together for Steve Madden and his sexy little shoe: the Mary Lou!” I wedged the microphone under my arm and started clapping.
And just like that—thunderous applause! Every last Strattonite was clapping and stomping and hooting and howling and cheering uncontrollably. I raised the microphone in the air again—asking for quiet—but this time they didn’t listen. They were too busy seizing the moment.
Finally, the room quieted down. “All right,” I said, “now that that’s out of your system, I want you to know that there’s a reason why Steve is so completely off the wall. In other words, there’s a method to his madness. See, the simple fact is that the guy’s a creative genius, and by definition Steve has to be somewhat insane. It’s necessary for his image.”
I nodded my head with conviction, wondering if what I’d just said made even the slightest bit of sense. “But listen to me, everyone, and listen good. This ability Steve has—this gift of his—goes far beyond being able to spot a couple of hot shoe trends. Steve’s real power—what separates him from every other shoe designer in America—is that he actually creates trends.
“Do you know how rare that is? To find someone who can actually set a fashion trend and enforce it? People like Steve come along once every decade! And when they do, they become household names, like a Coco Chanel or an Yves St. Laurent, or a Versace, or Armani, or Donna Karan…or a short list of others.”
I took a few steps into the boardroom and lowered my voice like a preacher driving home a point. “And having someone like Steve at the helm is exactly what it takes to launch a company like this into the stratosphere. And you can mark my words on it! This is the company we’ve all been waiting for since the beginning. It’s the one that’ll put Stratton on a whole new plateau. It’s the one that we’ve been…”
I was on a roll now, and as I continued speaking, my mind started to double track. I began totaling up the profits I was about to make. The awesome number $20 million came bubbling up into my brain. It was a good estimate, I figured, and the calculations were pretty simple. Of the two million units being offered, one million of them were going into the accounts of my ratholes. I would buy those units back from my ratholes at five or six dollars per and then hold them in the firm’s proprietary trading account. Then I would use the power of the boardroom, the massive buying this very meeting would create, to drive the units up to twenty dollars, which would lock in a paper profit of $14 or $15 million. Although, actually, I wouldn’t even have to drive the units up to twenty dollars myself; the rest of Wall Street would do the dirty work for me. As long as the other brokerage firms and trading firms knew I was willing to buy the units back at the top of the market, they would drive the price up as high as I wanted! I just had to leak the word out to a few key players and the rest would be history. (And this I’d already done.) The word on the street was that Stratton was a buyer up to twenty dollars a unit, so the wheels were already set in motion! Unbelievable! To make all that money and not commit a crime! Well, the ratholes weren’t exactly on the up-and-up, but still, it was impossible to prove. Ahhhh, talk about your unbridled capitalism!