Detective

already gleaned, preparing myself to tap dance with Murphy.
    He was sitting waiting patiently when Mildred let me back into the office, further indication that Whitney Corp. was a good account.
    “Sorry for the interruption,” I said breezily, going right to my chair and sitting down, as if making an extra effort at efficiency to make up for taking up so much of his time. “Now then, we have 25 thousand units a month at the 50 thousand bracket less 2. Right?”
    “Right,” Murphy said.
    “Fine,” I said. “Well, here’s the deal I had with Albrect. I wanted to increase that order to 50 thousand units a month.”
    Murphy, who had shown only polite interest, perked right up. “Really?”
    “Really.”
    “At what price?”
    “The 100 thousand bracket less 2.”
    “Well,” Murphy said with a smile. “That seems a perfectly normal request. I see no problem with that.”
    “There is one,” I told him.
    “Oh? What’s that?”
    “I’m not really buying them for Whitney Corp. I’m buying them for myself.”
    Murphy stared at me. “Run that by me again.”
    “It’s perfectly simple,” I told him. “I’m a jobber. I want to buy from you at the 100 thousand price so I can undercut you with your own product and score a profit on the Whitney account.”
    Murphy was visibly confused. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I thought you worked for Whitney Corp.”
    “I do.”
    “You buy for them.”
    “That’s right.”
    “And you want—let me see if I understand you correctly—you want to buy for yourself and then turn over the merchandise to your company, thereby making an additional profit for yourself in the process.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You’ll be taking our account with Whitney Corp. and getting us to provide the merchandise at a lower rate by combining it with another order that you will also get at a lower rate, which you will also turn over for a profit, probably by undercutting us with one of our other customers.”
    “You got it.”
    Murphy shook his head. “Mr. Armstrong,” he said, “that is illegal.”
    “Well,” I said, “let’s say it’s unethical.”
    Murphy still couldn’t believe his ears. “Wait a minute. Let me see here.” He picked up the account folder again. “All right, now look. Our 50 thousand bracket price is $4.90 a towel. Our 100 thousand bracket price is $4.80 a towel. So instead of selling 50,000 towels to two different accounts at $4.90 a piece we’d be selling them to you at $4.80 a piece and losing $5,000 a month.”
    Bingo! My class genius had done the math for me. Now I knew what the figures were. I also knew what the product was, which couldn’t hurt.
    “That’s right,” I told him.
    “And,” Murphy went on, “in order to do it, we would have to be party to what you, yourself, describe as unethical.”
    “This is true.”
    “Mr. Armstrong,” Murphy said, shaking his head. “Why in the world would Mr. Albrect ever agree to such an outlandish proposal as that?”
    “Because he needed the money,” I told him.
    Murphy just stared at me. I sat and waited. It was all bullshit, of course. I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was talking about. I knew a little bit about jobbers and bracket prices from my father-in-law, but that was about it.
    The actual logistics of it didn’t matter, though. As far as I was concerned, the only thing that mattered was whether or not Murphy was greedy.
    He was.
    “What do you mean, ‘he needed the money’?” Murphy asked, after a pause.
    I had him.
    “He needed the money,” I told him. “He was hard up for extra cash. In return for handling this little deal for me, Albrect was going to pull down a grand a month. Apparently, he could have used it.”
    I sat back and let that sink in. A grand a month. I could see his mind racing. He probably had some bills—who doesn’t? Who couldn’t use an extra thousand dollars a month.
    Murphy could. He said slowly, “And you’re offering me the same deal?”
    “Bingo, right on the button,” I said.
    “And just how was this supposed to work?”
    “Easy. You increase the Whitney Corp. order from 25 to 50 thousand a month. You still bill the Whitney Corp. on the books, but the actual bills would be sent to a different address. To me. I would pay them in the name of the Whitney Corp. from a special account.”
    “I see. And how would I know that—excuse me—that your credit was good?”
    “You’d have to check me out, of course.”
    “By calling your