New York, Feb. 1 — Moriarty Mailer, a leading direct mail executive responsible for list rental at a major merchandise house, was murdered today in the Midtown offices of the Direct Marketing Association.
Mailer was shot, knifed, strangled, garroted, keypunched, poisoned, stamped, and finally stuffed in a mail chute with “Return to Sender” and bulk mail indicia affixed to his forehead.
The body was found outside the conference room where the DMA's List Leaders Group — which includes among its members all major list brokers and managers — was meeting.
Despite the odd manner of Mailer's murder, all the brokers at the meeting denied hearing any sounds outside the room. “Quiet as a church mouse here,” said one broker.
The police think the murder may have been committed by more than one individual. DMA president H. Robert Wientzen said that it was certainly possible: “The victim seems to have been dup-eliminated,” he said, “as well as merge/purged.”
Mailer was not entirely popular in the list brokerage community. One broker put it best: “My sorrow is tempered by the fact that the Knicks won yesterday.”
New York, March 1 — The New York Police Department has all but given up on the murder of Moriarty Mailer at the DMA last month, a spokesman admitted today. “Far from having insufficient clues,” he said, “it's that we have too many. I've never seen a man killed in so many ways.”
It is believed one of the key clues is that the victim had traces of a McDonald's bacon, cheddar, anchovy, salami and cream puff hamburger on his vest. But the police were pretty sure this was standard fare for list brokers, since the burger was on the fast-food chain's Dollar Menu — about all the DMA springs for at these luncheons.
This morning, the DMA revealed that it had hired a famous private detective to solve the murder. “He's the most famous private detective in the world,” said the spokesman, “and he wishes to remain anonymous for purposes of better detection. But I can tell you that he is Belgian, has a beautifully groomed mustache and pomaded hair. He looks as if he came out of a mystery novel. He speaks English, but with a decided Belgian accent. ‘The DMA, they call,’ he said, ‘j'arrive.’ For the sake of confidentiality, he has asked to be called ‘Hercule.’”
When queried on how he was to proceed, the detective simply said that he would start by interviewing all the attendees at the List Leaders Group meeting. “I know nothing of this organization,” he said, “except that the food served at this luncheon was, 'ow you say, capable of murdering anyone who has high cholesterol. It is surprising that more people are not dead.”
New York, March 6 — The Belgian detective Hercule announced that the case of the DMA murder is solved. He called a meeting at the association's offices of all the list brokers and managers who attended the List Leaders Group session, plus top DMA executives. After lunch (which the detective studiously refused to attend, preferring instead to go to the Four Seasons), when all of the attendees had gathered, the detective entered the room.
“From the first,” he said, “I was certain that the key to this murder lay in the character of the murdered man. And when I interviewed all the attendees at the meeting, and learned what a — I say this in Belgian — beaucoup de beast he was, Hercule began to see the light that is day.”
“He was not the kind of beast who murders people,” Hercule added, “but the kind of personne who robs those with whom he works of their dignity. Ah, mes amis, it was clear that this was the kind of individual who tout le monde would like to kill.” A significant pause followed this statement.
He unfolded a sheet of paper. “Here I have the notes that were taken at the interviews with 10 of the list brokers and managers who were in attendance. This will give you examples of why these brokers and managers disliked him so much.”
Then Hercule distributed copies of his notes to each of the attendees. The notes contained descriptions about Moriarty Mailer, his habits and the experiences that brokers had with him.
Following, in their entirety, are the notes, entitled “Les Mals de Mailer — 10 Interviews.”
Hercule began to read:
“Broker 1: Moriarty gave no information about list results to his broker. ‘How could we do a decent list recommendation,’ asked this person to whom I spoke, ‘when every time we asked how the list had worked we got one of three types of hmmmms? If the sound was high, the list had done pretty well; middle-range, the list was so-so; low, the list had not worked. There were times when I thought I was working for a bad imitation of a doo-wop trio.’”
“Broker 2: ‘In order to get the best possible deal, Mailer intimated that he would give the management of his list to the management arm of our company. The list was huge, and we came down an extra couple of commission points, only to find that Mailer had no intention of taking the contract away from another manager. We'd been had.’” At this point, Hercule paused, looked up, and with a big smile said: “I am learning now about the mail that is direct. You call this a…decoy, no?”
“Broker 3: ‘He uses 14 brokers. Sometimes he gives orders for two different segments of the same list to two different brokers. I'd get these impassioned calls from managers, in the middle of the night,’ said the broker, ‘trying to confirm that we'd ordered three-month hotline male, and another broker three-month hotline female; what should we do with the Sex Unknown? When I complained, it was clear that Moriarty had not even checked his orders. He simply doesn't give a damn.’”
“Sex Unknown?” commented Hercule. “What makes of this your anthropologists?”
“Broker 4: His orders invariably came in three work days before the ship date that he needed. ‘Since he was a very large mailer, our administrative assistants would work through the night — sometimes two or three nights — to get the paperwork done and out to managers, and to oversee fulfillment. When we complained, Moriarty would laugh and book his next weekend in the Bahamas.’”
“Broker 5: ‘From commissions,’ said one broker, ‘this guy was Godzilla.’
“I do not know what means this,” said Hercule. “Is this a religious statement?”
“‘He came in one day demanding a brokerage commission of 3%, while offering us an additional point for every list owner we could con into dropping his minimum guarantee by 10% or more. This was not a great deal. We refused. Mailer dropped his demand. Three sleepless nights for nothing.’”
“Broker 6: ‘He paid late — as a broker, that is. His check would always come in 90 to 120 days from the mail date. As a list owner, his management house would be on the phone with us if our clients were more than 30 days from the mail date. No one ever argued with him. He was too big a mailer, opined one broker. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid. But that doesn't mean I liked it.’”
“Broker 7: ‘His internal computer programs were written in Vaterlandspiel. Some German programmer, inspired no doubt by too many wurtzbrau und kitzbuhl mit schlage for breakfast, had written all kinds of programs in VVB (Volkmeister's Visual Basic) and had sold them to him for a song. Moriarty demanded that we change our internal programming to make our programs compatible with his. When we took a look at the programming, not only was it in German, but the programmer for some reason had taken to inserting comments into the program text: Lebensraum fuer das Volk, to cite just one example. There's a lot of goodwill in our house — a lot of desire to work with our mailers — but redrawing and rewriting our programs in High Gothic? Forget it!’”
Hercule looked up at his audience. With a knowing arch of his eyebrow, he intoned: “A barbaric trick, typical of ze Huns.”
“Broker 8: Before making payments, Moriarty demanded a second and third reconciliation of the order. ‘It was clear that no one at Moriarty's company was checking the first reconciliation — all Moriarty wanted to do was delay payment; he himself had no comprehensive knowledge of what went into a list order. He just wanted the names to mail. What happened after that was our concern, not his. When we started the relationship, Moriarty claimed that money was no object. He really meant it.’”
“Broker 9: ‘I certainly don't mind taking my clients to dinner,’ he said, ‘but Taco Bell's yak enchiladas are only my idea of culinary heaven at a DMA luncheon. Indigestion from Moriarty during the day, indigestion from the restaurant during the night. Face it, the guy was a 24-hour case of gastritis.’”
Hercule said, “This was, my friends, an act tres horrible. The stomach, it rebels just at the thought of this.”
“Broker 10: ‘He was very patronizing to us all. He refused to talk to anyone on the phone at our company under the level of account executive. He was almost impossible to get on the phone a good part of the time.’”
Hercule looked up and beamed: “This reaction, it is called a non-response, non?”
The room fell silent. Each broker cast a secret glance at the broker next to him. It was clear the detective was very close to a solution.
Slowly, Hercule's eyes circled the room.
“Sometimes, mes amis, the wise man, he casts not the blame. Perhaps it is that some people are not made to live. Or perhaps they should live, but if by chance they are murdered, it is Mon Dieu above who should calculate what the punishment should be.
“Some list brokers, they are successful; some are not. But most of them, I think, work very, very hard to conform to a system in which, because of the extreme competition, some mailers cannot resist the urge to take the advantage. Well, that is human, too, but Moriarty Mailer seems to have been a case supreme of a thoughtless and ego-driven client.
“I will not judge this case. I will not name the murderer, whoever he, she or they are. Let us go on with our lives. Who will be the first to pay for a dinner at Boulez?”
Every hand in the room went up.
Postscript: Who was this detective, who had just materialized out of thin air to solve the case and refuse to name the perpetrators? It was clear that he had a gift for investigative reporting, a true knowledge of his own field, the ability to articulate — even if he did not always understand what he was talking about.
His real name (his last name) is Schultz — Ray's long-lost brother. And that's the end of the story.
