"What we did was to take the 'Some People Want You to Smoke. We Don't' concept, which avoided the whole health issue, and instead tapped into the adolescent's innate fear of being manipulated by adults. You didn't like it."
"Right. Because it was effective."
"It's gone. So now we're going to be blunt, we want to speak to them with the voice of despised authority, nag them, tell them to go to their rooms, turn them completely off."
"I like it already," Nick said.
"Okay." Sven said. "Here we go. He pulled the board into video camera range. All it had on it was type. It said, "Everything Your Parents Told You About Smoking Is Right."
"Hmm," Nick said.
"You know what I love about it?" Sven said. "Its dullness." "It is dull," Nick admitted.
"It's deadly. Kids are going to look at this and go, 'Puuke.' " That would probably be Joey's reaction, Nick mused. "And yet," Sven said, "its brilliance, if I may say so, is in its deconstructability."
"How's that?"
"Say the last three words out loud."
" 'Smoking Is Right.' "
"Gobbles on the outside, grabs you on the inside. A Trojan turkey."
"I think," Nick said, "that I can sell this to my people."
Nick was looking forward to lunch, an hour or two of normalcy with Polly and Bobby Jay. As a Ph.D. in Spin Control, he could certainly understand why the Captain and BR were eager to suction every golden egg from the goose before it died, but fame has its price. As Fred Allen used to say, a celebrity is someone who works hard in order to become well-known and then has to wear dark glasses in order to avoid being recognized. On his way from the Academy to Bert's, he became aware of people staring at him as he passed, saw people nudge each other, whisper, "Isn't that him?" At the corner of K and Connecticut, while waiting for the light, he heard a woman murmur, "You deserved it."
He whirled but the woman kept going and he didn't feel like running after her to ask her if he'd heard correctly. It sent a chill up his spine. Nick was no wimp, he'd been called "mass murderer" and worse by entire crowds of people, often simultaneously; but that was heckling, and usually by card-carrying gaspers or "health professionals." But when pedestrians, total strangers, started coming up to you — at Washington's busiest intersection, in the middle of the day— and expressing solidarity with people who had kidnapped and tortured you, it could be taken as a sign that somewhere along your career path you had taken a wrong turn.
He ducked into the Trover Shop and bought some cheap sunglasses. He made it the rest of the way up Connecticut and down Rhode Island without anyone else wishing him dead.
Once inside Bert's he felt secure again. Bert came over and hugged him and made a big fuss; the regular waiters came over to shake his hand and congratulate him and tell him how well he looked. He was hearing that a lot these days: "You look good, Nick," despite the fact that he had lost ten pounds and his skin was fish gray.
Bert told him that lunch today was on the house and led him personally to his regular table by the fake fireplace, which was flickering away, casting its comforting acetate flames onto the chimney brick.
Bobby Jay and Polly were already there. They both got up to greet him, unsettling Nick. Here of all places he valued the comfort of routine, and no member of the Mod Squad ever got up to greet the other. Among merchants of death, equality rules. Polly actually kissed him and hugged him. It was unsettling. He was tired of being fussed over.
"I'm fine," Nick said. "It's no big thing."
"You look great," Bobby Jay said.
"Yeah, you really do," Polly said.
"You look great."
Nick stared at them. "What are you two, from Hallmark Cards? I look like shit."
Bobby Jay and Polly exchanged glances. Polly touched his forearm. "We're just glad to have you back."
"Don't patronize me."
"Sorry," Polly said, withdrawing her arm, "I didn't realize you were having a bad hair day."
"BR just told me the Captain wants me to go bribe the Tumbleweed Man, who's dying of throat cancer, so he'll stop badmouthing us. I have to accept every goddamn interview request — I'm on Larry King tomorrow night, he and the FBI want to use me as bait to draw out this Peter Lorre maniac — and some woman on the street just hissed at me that I deserved to get kidnapped. Yes, I'm having a bad hair day."
"It's a tough town," Bobby Jay said.
"Tell me about it. Check out my new bodyguards."
"Where?"
"Fooled you, didn't they? The one in the jeans and the woman with the handbag the size of a duffel? Former Secret Service. Do you know what she's got in there? Sawed-off shotgun. I hope they'll try it again. Do you have any idea what a ragged hole a fistful of double-ought buckshot makes?"
"Yeah," Bobby Jay said, "I do."
"They're supposed to blend. Unlike my former bodyguards with the suits and earphones. 'Attention everyone! We're bodyguards! Come attack our client.' Lot of good they were."
"I thought you kept trying to lose them," Polly said.
"Polly," said Nick condescendingly, in tones suggesting that security matters were beyond women, "good bodyguards don't get lost by the people they're supposed to be protecting." He sighed. "Jesus. Look at me. Bodyguards."
"We're all going to need bodyguards soon," Polly said, "the way things are going. Did you see the coverage the fetal-alcohol people got themselves over the weekend?"
"Pathetic," Bobby Jay said.
"Don't you think the Sun sort of debased itself giving that kind of space to those people? I spoke to Dean Jardel over at S and B. They distribute two-thirds of the liquor in the D.C. area, and he says the Washington Sun is going to find itself without any liquor advertising for the next month."
"I wish we had that kind of leverage," Bobby Jay said, "but they don't take gun ads. Not that you can buy a gun in D.C."
"They made it sound like we encourage pregnant mothers to drink. It was so… pc I wanted to. "
"Frow up."
"I'm surprised I didn't get kidnapped on the way to work this morning."
Nick, taking all this in, brooding over the woman on the street, felt suddenly that his nicotine patch of courage was being co-opted.
"Polly," he broke in, "I don't think people who work for the alcoholic beverage industry have to worry about being kidnapped, just yet."
Awkward silence. He'd made alcoholic beverage sound like laxative or pet supplies. Polly did a slow burn, blew a deep lungful of smoke out the side of her mouth in a cool, focused way, her eyes never leaving his, tapped her toe against the floor a few times. "Aren't we unholier than thou, today."
"Look," Nick said, "nothing personal, but tobacco generates a little more heat than alcohol."
"Oh?" Polly said. "This is news."
"Whoa," Nick said. "I'll put my numbers up against your numbers any day. My product puts away 475,000 people a year. That's 1,300 a day—"
"Waait a minute," Polly said. "You're the one who's always saying that 475,000 number is bull—"
"Okay, 435,000. Twelve hundred a day. So how many alcohol-related deaths a year? A hundred thousand, tops. Two hundred and seventy something a day. Well wow-wee. Two hundred and seventy. That's probably how many people die every day from slipping on bars of soap in the bathtub. So I don't see terrorists getting excited enough to kidnap anyone from the alcohol industry."
Bobby Jay said, "You two sound like McNamara, all this talk about body counts. Let's just chill out here."
Nick turned to him. "How many gun deaths a year in the U.S.?"
"Thirty thousand," Bobby Jay said, "but that's gross."
"Eighty a day," Nick snorted. "Less than passenger car mortalities."
"It nets out to even less," Bobby Jay said mildly. "Fifty-five percent of those are suicides, and another eight percent are justifiable homicides, so we're really only talking eleven thousand one hundred."
"Thirty a day," Nick said. "Hardly worth counting. No terrorist would bother with eit
her of you."
"Would you like to see some of my hate mail," Polly said, flushing. Nick hadn't seen her look this up since she went on Geraldo with the parents of an entire school bus that had been wiped out by a drunk driver.
"Hate mail? Hate mail?" Nick laughed sarcastically. "All of my mail is hate mail. I don't even open my mail anymore. I just assume it's a letter bomb. My mail goes directly to the FBI lab. Technicians in lead suits steam-open it. Please, don't even try to one-up me on the subject of mail."
"Why don't we put away the gloves and order," Bobby Jay said, "I'm starved."
"Fine," Nick said, grinding his teeth. Expect a little sympathy… wait, she was being sympathetic until you told her she sounded like a get-well card. There was that awful taste in his mouth again, like there was a cigarette butt under his tongue. The doctors had told him that his system was going to be flushing nicotine for the next three months. Food wasn't tasting very good these days, and spices made it taste like Drano.
Nick forced himself to say, "I wasn't trying to be unholier than thou."
"No big deal," Polly said tersely. The two of them concentrated on their menus so that they wouldn't have to look at each other.
It fell to Bobby Jay to make conversation in the form of a monologue. He bemoaned the upcoming anniversary of the assassination of President Finisterre, as these occasions always occasioned an orgy, as he put it, of calls for gun control on the op-ed pages of newspapers, never mind the fact that Finisterre had been blown away with a scope-mounted hunting rifle. "What are they going to do, take away our deer rifles?"
"Not until they pry them from our cold, dead fingers," Nick murmured, settling on pasta in the hopes that it wouldn't taste like stump dissolver. Bobby Jay said SAFETY was planning some proactive publicity in anticipation of the anniversary. They were also trying to get their friendlies in the Congress to get the White House to sign off on a Firearms Safety Awareness Week that would bracket the anniversary day. The White House was so far stonewalling them, but by their doing so, SAFETY was maneuvering them into a box: We asked the White House, begged the White House, to get behind a national, week-long consciousness-raising initiative, and what happened? Nothing. Additionally, Stockton Drum, having been recently accused on Face the Nation of perpetrating "genocide" among black inner-city youth, had given orders that all senior SAFETY staff were to perform one hour a week of public service with black inner-city youth. This way, the next time some prissy-ass liberal accused him of enabling mass murder, he'd be able to cut him off at the balls. Drum's executive order was being met with mixed enthusiasm by most of the staff though with genuine civic-mindedness by some. One staffer had proposed giving free handgun instruction in the inner city. If these kids were going to turn the city streets into free-fire zones, he reasoned, they might as well be taught how to be accurate so that they'd kill fewer innocent bystanders. Bobby Jay had nixed the proposal. "The sad thing," he said, fixing his special knife into his hook as the food arrived, "is that it's probably not such a bad idea."
The iced coffee had arrived. Polly hadn't said much over the food. Nick was feeling worse about how he'd acted and was working up to a rapprochement when Bobby Jay brought up a story in that day's Washington Moon.
"So," Polly said in a studiously casual way, "how's Feather?"
"Feather?"
"Heather."
"Fine," Nick said. "I guess. I don't know. She's trying to get a job on the Sun. She's interviewing with Atherton Blair."
"That asshole. He's probably the one who decided to put the fetal-alcohol convention above the fold. You know he doesn't drink."
"A newspaperman who doesn't drink," Bobby Jay said. "Things have changed."
"Not only that, he's in AA."
"He is?" Nick said.
"Our information is that he's in AA. He goes all the way out to Reston, so no one will know."
"No kidding," Nick said. "I should mention that to Heather."
Polly frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know. Could come in handy. Maybe she should pitch him a story on how great AA is or something."
"And score points off alcohol-bashing? That's privileged information. Like everything that gets said around this table."
"Well, don't get your panty hose in a knot. I was just—"
"About to pass confidential information to your squeeze."Bobby Jay put in, "I don't think any of us supposes, for a second, that anything that's said at this table goes any further than the sugar shaker."
"Right," Nick said.
"Right," Polly said.
Nick added companionably, "Nothing's, you know, happened, anyway. I've had other things on my mind these last few weeks, like wondering if I'm ever going to get the feeling back in my fingers. Or am I going to need a liver transplant."
"You better get to work if you're developing her as a mouthpiece," Polly said. She looked at her watch and said she had to go. Her wine people were in town from California to work the Ag Committee on phylloxera. Also to brainstorm with their ad agency on how to counter the disastrous misimpression that only French red wine kept you from getting a heart attack.
Nick and Bobby Jay watched her walk out, her bag slung over her shoulder, cellular antennae sticking out of it, heels going clickety-click on the floor. She was wearing a shorter skirt than usual, Nick noticed; sexy, with pleats.
Nick said to Bobby Jay, "Something going on with Polly? She seemed kind of bent out of shape."
Bobby Jay said, "She got a letter from Hector. He wants to try again. But he wants her to come live with him in Lagos."
"Oh, well, hell," Nick said, "no wonder."
Back in his office, Nick was squirreled away with a stack of paperwork when Gomez O'Neal came in and shut the door behind him. "What's up?"
"I don't know," Gomez said gravely.
At a loss, Nick said, "Is this some Zen thing?"
"Watch your back, kid," Gomez said, and left.
14
Nick put in a call to the Captain. He was alarmed when his secretary told him that the Captain was in the hospital. "Nothing to worry about," she told him, "just in for repairs." Apparently some of the fetal pig valves that had been installed in other people had been giving out, and the Captain's doctors didn't want to take any chances. He did not sound well.
"Hello? No, goddamnit, I do not wish to move my bowels. Told you that four times already, it's none of your business. Hello? Nick, son! Bless my heart but it's good to hear your voice. How am I doing? I was doing fine until I was dragooned into this medieval house o' horrors. I'll tell you what's wrong with health care in this country. Hospitals."
In the background Nick could hear the Captain's nurse, who sounded like a large, middle-aged black woman of supreme authority, demanding that he postpone his phone call until he had transacted more urgent business. Being a southerner, the Captain was helpless before her. It made no never mind to her that he was the Captain, titan of industry, the most important man in Winston-Salem. "I'll call you right back," he said, "after I have dealt with this female."
He called back ten minutes later. "It'll be a cold day in the infernal regions before she gives another order." In the background Nick heard, "I'm not going anywhere until you take that pill."
"I took the damn pill. I watched you on the Larry King show last night. You did fine. Superb job. Too bad that fellow kidnapped you didn't call in."
"He probably figured the FBI had a tap on all incoming calls. Say, I'm calling about two things, Lady Bent and Lorne Lurch."
"Yes," the Captain said, "the gas guzzler and the nematode." The latter was a reference to the tobacco plant-eating worm. The first turned out to refer to the former British PM's liberal use of the Captain's Gulfstream. A man with a Gulfstream jet is always in demand.
"BR says you want me to read her the gospel?"
"That's right. You're young, good-looking, you been kidnapped. She'll listen to you. She won't listen to me, I'll tell you that."
"Uh-huh. He also to
ld me you want me to bribe Lutch when I go out to California on that movie project. I think that's not a good idea."
"It was my idea."
"I see some downside potential."
"Every time I turn on the television, there he is croaking through that device to some bleeding heart talk show host about how he's only got two months left and he wants to spend every last minute of it pleading with the youth of this nation not to start smoking. For a man who's running out of breath, he does a lot of talking. Be a whole lot easier if he'd just died from smoking in bed like those others who were suing us, but we can't rely on that kind of luck every time."
Recently, three people who were suing the tobacco companies because they'd gotten cancer had managed to fall asleep with lit cigarettes and die.
"I don't think he's doing us any serious harm," Nick said. "He's just blowing off steam."
"Tell that to my senior VP for sales. Lutch was on Donahue—the thought of those two cozying up to each other gives me the rickets— three weeks ago and sales of Tumbleweed dropped off six percent. Six percent."
"It'll go back up after he goes."
"I wouldn't count on it. This is a very high-level defector. The gaspers are fixing to make a martyr out of him." The Captain lowered his voice to a whisper. "Gomez O'Neal's information is they're gonna start a foundation. The Lorne Lutch Foundation. They're going to build a ranch, for kids with. "He couldn't bring himself to say it.
"Cancer?"
"Gives me the willies just thinking about it."
"Exactly why we need an anti-smoking campaign aimed at kids."
"It's got so every time I turn on the television and see someone who used to do cigarette commercials, I think, What if they get it? Remember all those commercials Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore did for Kent in the sixties? My God, what if she gets it? Can you imagine? America's sweetheart, on the Donahue show, wheezing… I want you to go see him, son. He'll listen to you."
"Why," Nick said, "would he listen to me?"
Thank You for Smoking Page 14