by Deaver Brown
Tilting her head thoughtfully, she said in a burst of frankness, “It sounds like a very inefficient way of operating to me. But if that’s the way you do things, I suppose I have to live with it. Just so long as you’re not trying to tell me not to talk to Chairman Rossi.”
“Of course not,” he said soothingly.
But she was not through.
“If we can’t have Dr. Schumacher in person, then we’ll simply have to find a way to introduce the testimony he would have given. Now, it’s lucky that we have a really interesting study done by one of the anti-smoking groups on the tobacco industry’s program to hook teenagers. I’ll just run upstairs and get it for you. I’m sure I ought to be able to do better than just introduce it into the record. It can be used to draw parallels.”
Harry Hull was now anxious to end this interlude, if possible without giving offense. His career in Washington depended on how well he avoided embarrassing himself and—even more important—embarrassing the influential colleagues who could make or break him. So far Rossi was only mildly irritated, but let this woman make a laughingstock of his hearings, and he would be on the warpath. If Mrs. Underwood were allowed to reenter the bar carrying reading material, there was no way a second round of drinks could be avoided.
“Tell you what,” he said, rising swiftly to his feet. “Why don’t you bring that report to my suite. I have an appointment there in fifteen minutes but I’ll be able to take a quick look at it.”
He had pulled out her chair and was guiding her from the lounge before she knew it. It was an impromptu contrivance, but Harry Hull was beginning to think that every minute not spent in public with Madeleine was a real gain.
Now that he had set the clock ticking, he was not surprised to have her make record speed down from her quarters several flights above his. At least the report she produced had the merit of being professionally competent. Harry wasted no breath trying to persuade her there was a difference between a poisonous alkaloid well-established as habit-forming and a product irreproachable in its chemical components. Instead he killed time with a show of interest in various paragraphs until the welcome sound of a brisk tattoo on the door. By then he was so eager to end the tête-à-tête he would have hailed an orangutan.
“Sorry to be late,” said Roger Vandermeer. “Hi there, Maddy!”
Until the committee hearings, Mrs. Underwood had been unaware of Vandermeer’s existence. Sean Cushing had carefully described the Soft Drink Institute as an important friend, but Madeleine preferred friends who were real people. Trade associations did not register until they became personified. Unfortunately, this one had become embodied by a man she detested on sight. Everything about Vandermeer, from his sleek affability to his overpolished manners, rubbed her the wrong way.
Maddy was the last straw.
And, although she did not know it, relations were scarcely likely to improve. Three days ago Vandermeer, regarding Mrs. Underwood as potentially useful, had been on his best behavior. It was now several hours since he had written her off, and when he lowered people in his pecking order, he reverted to the natural man.
“I’d like to get started as soon as possible, Harry,” he announced. “There are different ways Rossi can go.”
Determinedly Madeleine thrust herself forward. “That’s what we’ve been discussing. If you ask me, Chairman Rossi has already made some mistakes.”
“That so?” Vandermeer said vaguely without bothering to look at her. “We’d better get cracking, Harry. I’ve only got half an hour.”
Madeleine, conscious that as founder of NOBBY she was the anti-Quax movement, bristled at the thought of a conference on the subject from which she was excluded.
“I am not quite finished, Mr. Vandermeer,” she announced in a voice calculated to depress pretension.
Hull opted for appeasement. “I’m afraid we’ll have to end now, Madeleine, if I’m going to keep on schedule,” he said with an apologetic smile. “In any event, I’ll need more time to study this report. So, if you wouldn’t mind leaving it with me . . .?”
For one hideous moment he thought he was going to have a scene on his hands. Then Madeleine decided to underline the distinction between friend and foe by accepting his olive branch.
“A good idea,” she said, adopting Vandermeer’s policy of ignoring third parties. “But you’ll want to take a look at the Surgeon General’s estimate of the report as well.”
“Oh, for God’s sake—”
“Why don’t you get yourself a drink, Roger,” Hull said hastily. “We’ll be done in a second.”
Folklore insists that more flies are caught with honey than with vinegar. Mrs. Underwood took her own good time riffling through the briefcase dumped in a corner before extracting a slim folder and depositing it with Hull. Then, quite unnecessarily, she drew his attention to several underlined passages at the same leisurely pace. Finally, restored to good humor by this petty vindictiveness, she parted from Hull amiably before turning to Vandermeer with steely graciousness.
“Good-bye, Mr. Vandermeer, and I do hope that you have a productive conversation.”
Then, purse in hand, she flicked out the doorway with the triumphant swagger of a woman who had accomplished what she had set out to do.
Dumping empty glasses in the bathroom half an hour later, Harry Hull was relieved to be rid of both his guests. Madeleine in her folly and Vandermeer in his arrogance were two of a kind. Both assumed they were the most important feature on this congressman’s horizon when what he really wanted was to focus his attention on his colleagues. This evening’s executive session was going to be rough enough, but some constructive suggestions at the ready would help.
The tap at the door would have signaled an unwanted interruption no matter who the caller was. But when Hull found Mrs. Underwood on his threshold he had to fight back a lowering frown.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Harry, but I forgot my briefcase,” she murmured complacently.
The bright-eyed anticipation told its own story to Hull. This damn fool of a woman had probably been waiting around the corner for Vandermeer to leave, confident that with an excuse for reentry she could extract an account of the recent meeting. It was just the kind of silly trick she would pride herself on inventing. Thankful that he had picked up his jacket and already inserted one arm, Harry was brisk and businesslike.
“You’re lucky you caught me, Madeleine. I’m just on my way to dinner with Leon.”
Projecting impatience and remaining glued to the doorway, he forced her to scurry in for her property and join him in a prompt exit. Disregarding her cheerful prattle, he made sure she had punched the up button on the elevator before committing himself to down.
Just as well, he reflected, that Madeleine was ignorant of what had been said. It would have been a real eye-opener for her to hear Vandermeer’s brutal description of her ineptitude. But far more painful would have been his assumption that she no longer had any role to play in the great battle against Kichsel.
“We can’t let that stupid broad go on lousing up,” he had said.
When Vandermeer’s clients got their crack at the committee, they would punch the groundswell of consumer alarm at stumbling across Quax sandwiched between root beer and ginger ale. But their description would omit any reference to NOBBY or to Mrs. Underwood.
“Not that it will do much good, considering the harm that bitch has already done,” he said pessimistically. “It’ll be a month or so before everyone forgets about her. Right now they’re having too much fun cracking jokes.”
“All that will pass,” Harry had replied.
“Listen, the guy from one of those breweries out west was saying they ought to pass the hat to send her to the FDA. That way they’d be sure of getting a clean bill of health for anything they peddled.”
With Roger Vandermeer, you were either with him or against him. He saw himself as the chosen champion of his clients, the one who secured victory by blasting away all impediments, b
y destroying enemy encampments and, of course, by discarding treacherous or incompetent allies.
Hired gun would be more like it, Hull thought contemptuously as he entered the dining room and spotted Leon Rossi’s bulky form.
Fortunately, the chairman’s focus was always on ways and means rather than personalities.
“We’ll have to cut her short, that goes without saying. I’ve already had Kichsel on my neck, demanding that his people get equal time not only for the SDI presentation but for all her drivel as well.”
“Absolutely, it’s just a question of how,” Hull said, entering into the spirit of Rossi’s approach. Conscious that he was not yet being blamed for today’s exhibition, he nonetheless felt it necessary to make some acknowledgment of his role. “I never thought she’d turn out to be such a loose cannon. Her printed material and speeches aren’t half bad.”
“Amateurs!” Rossi snorted. “You never know how they’ll turn out. The main thing is to have two approaches prepared. Unless NOBBY has rocks in its head, another spokesman will turn up on Wednesday.”
The words were more impersonal than those chosen by Roger Vandermeer, but the result was the same. Madeleine Underwood had been permanently removed from the game.
Chapter 9.
Social Drinking
This decision was more than reinforced as the night wore on. It was standard operating procedure for all interested groups to retreat into strategy huddles after the day’s hearings. Even before Leon Rossi and Harry Hull left the dinner table to join their colleagues, the SDI contingent and Roger Vandermeer had gathered in one hotel suite while a clutch of Kichsel competitors was ordering up bar service in another. Nothing could have demonstrated NOBBY’s basic amateurism more clearly than the fact that they alone were taking the evening off.
As news of Paul Jackson’s courtroom bombshell percolated into each one of these meetings, any remaining toleration for Madeleine Underwood vaporized on the spot.
Leon Rossi simply exploded into profanity at yet another blunder by one of his star witnesses.
“You say she’s the one who chose the Ludlums for her test case, the case she wanted to blab about at my hearing? Christ, how dumb can you get?”
Roger Vandermeer, more constructively, immediately began to plan a future course of action.
“This settles it. It’s not just Underwood who goes. We can forget about NOBBY too.”
The breweries began looking to an unclouded future.
“That should take care of Mrs. Underwood nicely,” said one CEO, reaching for a brandy. “Now, how big do you think the market for non-alcoholics sold as a soft drink will be?”
But at Paul Jackson’s table at the Four Seasons it was, metaphorically speaking, champagne all the way.
“Well,” he demanded, his eyes sparkling, “what did you think of my timing?”
For once Dean Kichsel had been stirred to warmth.
“It was perfect, just perfect.”
This opinion was silently endorsed by Theo Benda and Claudia Fentiman on one side of the table, by John Thatcher and Elmer Rugby on the other.
But Alec Moore went further. “This should just about do it for Underwood. On top of the fiasco in court, she made an idiot of herself in the hearings. This will be the last we hear of NOBBY.”
Claudia abruptly stopped nodding. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Alec. Neither of these events will make the top news story on CBS. Probably most of NOBBY’s members will never hear about them.”
As the ailing Lancer’s substitute, Thatcher was delighted to hear the voice of caution from Kichsel’s management. Particularly as he and Rugby were supposed to be joining them not only to celebrate but to plan ahead.
“Oh, come on, Claudia. I’m not saying it will happen tomorrow. But every time the woman opens her mouth she takes mutually incompatible positions. Let her talk long enough and everyone’s bound to notice.”
Fifteen years in marketing had not left Claudia with a high opinion of logic. “You’re not making enough allowance for emotional response.”
“Congressional committees and trial judges aren’t big on emotional responses,” Moore retorted.
“Claudia isn’t talking about them,” Elmer Rugby objected. “She’s talking about those ladies picketing my shop downtown. They were afraid their kids would end up like the Ludlum boy long before Quax was ever invented, and you sure can’t blame mothers for that,” he said in twanging accents of sympathy. “Then some spellbinder comes along and convinces them Quax is going to make a bad situation ten times worse. So they lose their heads and panic.”
Having delivered this analysis, he refreshed himself from the only stein on the table. John Thatcher, assuming that an evening spent with brewers would see a fair amount of beer consumption, had been amused earlier when Dean Kichsel had commenced the serious part of dinner by calling for a wine list.
“Have the protesters been troublesome for you?” Thatcher asked Rugby.
“Hell, no! I’ll say one thing for you people here in New York. You’re used to having flyers pushed into your hands. It doesn’t seem to bother my customers one little bit. But that’s not to say a couple of them aren’t going to read the handout and believe it.”
Alec Moore’s jaw set. “That was yesterday. All right, so we’re not making headlines. I have to go along with that. But Mrs. Underwood hasn’t finished testifying. Before you know it, she’ll be challenging the experts, like the one who said the real way to control teenagers drinking is by the behavior of the parents.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Theo Benda said mildly. “We’re not the only ones watching her. Somebody at NOBBY must have figured out by now that she’s a lot better at talking to the troops than to congressmen. They’ll pull her and send in a substitute.”
But Paul Jackson was not ready to dismiss Alec Moore’s remarks. Leaning forward alertly, he asked, “What else did that expert say?”
Dean Kichsel had practically memorized every treasured word. “He said that the two principal factors during formative years are the parents’ example and peer pressure.”
A smile of satisfaction appeared as Jackson sank back. “I like it,” he murmured. “In fact, I may use it.”
“Why bother?” said Alec. “Surely you’ve won the case. What jury is going to make an award to those people now?”
Jackson was reproachful. “Look, you didn’t hire me just to get a jury verdict in your favor. You hired me to give Quax as much publicity as possible and to stick a spoke in the wheels of NOBBY. And I try to see that my clients get what they want.”
“Well, every nail in the coffin helps,” Alec said cheerfully. “And I appreciate all the publicity I can get. But as far as that woman goes, the funeral date is already set. You can talk all you want about that bunch in front of Rugby’s not knowing what’s going on, but you’ve overlooked the main point. Madeleine Underwood is a publicity hound and she wants to be the center of attention. As soon as they start criticizing over at NOBBY, as soon as they replace her at public events, she’ll lose interest.”
“Or,” Benda mused, enlarging the possibilities, “she’ll tank right over them and come swimming back to the hearings.”
“Not after they’ve convinced her it would be bad for NOBBY, that wouldn’t make sense,” Moore said confidently. “Besides, even if she could come up with some twisted justification for staying in the spotlight, she’ll bury herself with all those silly claims about studies and research. My God, the country is filled with AA chapters and support groups and therapists who’ve been dealing with alcoholism for decades. There are a lot of people who really do know what they’re talking about.”
To John Thatcher it was clear that Moore had settled everything in his own mind so firmly that he was surprised and impatient to find lingering qualms in others. The rest of Kichsel, while certainly optimistic, remained aware that selling a brewery product as if it were ginger ale was likely to rasp certain sensitivities. Benda and Dean Kichsel could be ex
plained on the basis of adult lives passed in an industry open to criticism. But the fact that Claudia Fentiman had picked up the prevailing wariness, that Elmer Rugby, barely across the threshold, could comprehend his antagonists, suggested that Alec Moore, in spite of his contempt for Madeleine Underwood, might have a few king-sized blind spots himself.
Paul Jackson was simply thinking along different lines. By nature a combatant, he openly enjoyed the battlefield. With that predilection it was only natural that he tended to dismiss any theater of operations in which he was not actively engaged.
“But what it boils down to is that NOBBY, in one guise or another, will continue to present its position to the Rossi Subcommittee,” he said. “And Ludlum versus Kichsel still has a lot of time to run. I set off today’s firecracker to coincide with Underwood’s appearance at the hearings, but I’m not done by a long shot. I’m not claiming I can ever get us to page one. But by now the city editors are aware that NOBBY is bursting out in three separate New York locations. Sooner or later we’ll get some ironic human-nature touch they can’t resist. And then it’ll be a double column on page two.”
During his long successful career Jackson had learned as much about space allocation in the dailies as most of the professionals in the field. His estimate, Thatcher knew, was likely to be right on the button.
Jackson’s over-the-top zeal, however, made Dean Kichsel nervous. “You’ve done a fine job establishing the boy’s drinking patterns. So we don’t really need a full-scale character assassination, do we?” he reasoned.
“Christ, no!” Jackson agreed heartily. “No matter how much trouble one of these kids is, no matter if he’s a vicious, violent criminal, the minute he’s dead he becomes a young life cut down too soon. That’s sacred ground. From now on I’m leaving Junior strictly alone and focusing on Daddy. By the time I’m through, the jury will be ready to string him up.”
“Does that mean you have few more surprises up your sleeve?” Thatcher hazarded.
“One or two little squibs,” Jackson purred modestly.