So Allan does it for them. His customer negotiates the best price on something, say a car (but it also might be a mortgage, health insurance, or anything that amounts to more than $1,000). Then the customer calls Allan and asks him to beat that price. If Allan does, he gets half the savings. Recently, he made a deal for Morton Mindell, who'd been shopping around Baltimore for a lease on a 2007 Lexus ES 350. The best Mindell could do was $559 a month for 36 months. He'd seen an article in the Baltimore Sun about Allan, so he called Negotiate4U. "I thought the price was high, but I got what, for me, was the best deal I could," Mindell says. "I figured I'd give Allan a try, but how was he going to do any better?"

Allan called around in Baltimore, but he ended up at the same Lexus dealership - with a price of $489 a month for 36 months, a savings of $70 a month, or $2,520 over the life of the lease.

"I did a pretty decent job of wheeling and dealing," Mindell says, "so I was surprised when Allan came back with that price. I paid Allan half the savings - and I was happy to do it."

So how does Allan do it? Is it the joking? The beyond-all-reason enthusiasm for negotiating? The competitive spirit that led him to one-up the Stark Office Supply purchasing agents? The two-way, schmooze­fest? I ask Allan, and he says anyone can do it, "but most people are more afraid of negotiating than they are of a root canal."
A simple matter of chutzpah, then? But if that's the case, Levine wouldn't roll his eyes at the car buyers who keep asking for more, more, more.

By now, I know that Allan's daughters have made big money in sales. One of them, Julie Stark, has already told me she learned everything she needed to know at her father's knee. So I go back to her with a list of questions. "I can't give away all his little tricks," she says tantalizingly, "but I'll tell you this: He takes an interest in people."