Chapter 22: The Last Straw
Elena was by the glass doors when Walter's pickup rolled past the customer spots and stopped in the service lane. He always parked out back with the staff. Except on days like this. Elena had learned to read that small choice the way sailors read the weather.
She met him inside. "Bullpen. He has no idea."
"Thank you, Elena." His voice was quiet, as always, but his face carried something she had rarely seen. Not anger. Weariness.
"My office?" she asked.
"Yours," Walter said. "Mine's a borrowed room here. Would you ask him to join us?"
Chad was at his desk, feet up, scrolling through his phone. His feet hit the floor when he heard Walter's name.
"What, now? Is this about the windbreaker guy? Because the guy asked about sedans and walked. That's not on me."
Elena's jaw tightened. "Now, Chad."
He followed her down the hall with the slouch of a man who could talk his way out of anything. Then he saw Walter by the window, hands in the pockets of a worn flannel shirt, and the slouch went away.
"Chad." Walter gestured to a chair. "Sit, please."
He pulled the other chair around and sat facing him.
"I want to talk about three people," Walter said. "Listen to the whole of it before you answer. Can you do that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Edith Larson." He said the name gently, like setting something fragile on the table. "She came in a month ago, shopping for her grandson's graduation. You told her perhaps she'd be more comfortable somewhere in her price range."
Chad shifted. "Sir, she came in wearing house slippers. She was wandering. She never asked about pricing. I was managing my time."
"She told me what you said to her, word for word," Walter said. "Two weeks ago I drove to her house and apologized. She bought her Sovereign last week. Through Maya."
"I didn't know she was a buyer."
"No," Walter said. "You didn't. The second person is me."
A muscle twitched in Chad's jaw. "Mr. Sterling, I apologized for that morning. I didn't know who you were."
"That is precisely the problem," Walter said. "You did not know, and it never occurred to you to find out before deciding I belonged on the pre-owned lot across the street. Now the third person. Tom Beckett."
"He came in asking about six sedans," Chad said quickly. "A man in a windbreaker who wouldn't give me a credit app or a business card. What was I supposed to do, hold a lot tour for every tire kicker?"
"He was the fleet buyer for the Desert Palms hotel chain," Walter said. "He left here on Monday. On Wednesday he signed a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar order with our competitor."
Chad stared. "He never said he was a fleet buyer."
"He said he was buying six sedans. What more did you need?"
Chad's hands were clasped between his knees, knuckles white.
"I've been the top closer three quarters running," he said, his polish gone. "I've moved more iron than anyone on this floor. That has to count for something."
"It counts," Walter said. "And it is not enough. Three people walked through those doors and you decided, before one question was asked, that none was worth your time. An older woman in house slippers. An old man in worn boots. A quiet man in a windbreaker. Every time, you were wrong."
"So I'm supposed to spend an hour with every walk-in who can't afford the tires?" Chad's voice cracked.
"I started as a lot attendant at nineteen," Walter said. "My wife Ruth told me the day I sold my first car that respect is the first sale. Everything else follows it, or nothing does."
Chad looked up. "I've signed the improvement plan. I've done the modules. You're moving the goalposts."
"The goalposts never moved," Walter said. "You have been given every chance this company knows how to give. A conversation on the floor. A written plan. Extra coaching. And the pattern did not change. It got worse."
"It was one bad morning," Chad whispered.
"It was three," Walter said. "And I am done watching people pay the price for them."
He stood, and Chad stood a beat too late, like a man rising for a judge.
"Sir," Chad said, the word raw. "Please. Just tell me what to fix and I'll fix it."
Walter looked at him for a long time. "The problem was never that you didn't know how to sell. The problem is that you never learned to see the person in front of you."
He picked up his keys from Elena's desk. "Go home. Tomorrow at eight, you and I and Elena and our counsel will sit in this office and discuss what comes next. Do not be late."