Payback (5 page)

Leo said, “The category seems to be money.”

George gave Mitchell an inquiring look and then waited for his nod. “Then in that case,” George said, “you better fill me in. Have you dealt with the recall?”

Mitchell said he had. “The FDA told me three different lots had contaminated packets, and they added, So far.”

“And what did they say about recalling them?” George had a pencil in his mouth.

“So far?” Mitchell said. “So far they want us out of Los Angeles County—and I mean across the board—every lot we ever made—and the same thing applies to the boroughs of New York.”

Cy made a noise.

“All things considered,” Leo told him, “you're in luck.”

“Bullshit,” Mitchell said. “Somebody dies in Mount Kisco—I'm in luck? No. I'm pulling all three lots across the map and I scrammed from both states.”

“California and New York? All the biggies,” Leo said. “Too bad it's not Delaware. Nice small state you'd be a hero for a dime.”

“That's exactly,” Cy exploded, “that's ex
act
ly why I came. Because you piss away money every second you're in—”

“
Cy
,” Zef commanded. “As the old consigliori here and keeper of the rules, I'd like to remind you that you don't have a vote. Also that you're here on sufferance, I believe, so why don't you—”

“Jesus.
Suf
ferance,” Cy said. “Why I'm
here
is to represent the family interests. Good God. We have to talk about con
tain
ing this disaster, not spreading it.”

Momentary silence in the room. George turned around and looked quizzically at Cy. “That's what we were just talking about, wasn't it? Widening the recall?”

“Widening the loss,” Cy said. “You know what this'll cost us?”

“Exactly,” George said. “And if we don't get our pants sued off us, and if everything stops right now, and if they round up the killer in the next seven days, then you're playing in the ballpark of eighty million bucks. Beyond that, you're staring into Chapter Eleven and the failure of the brand. So I promise you, Cy, the additional recall is a drop in the bucket.”

Zef said it lowered the risk of liability.

George said it was a tax deduction anyway.

Mitchell kept his mouth shut and listened to the MBAs do their stuff.

Leo said he thought it was worth it for the image. He said, “I think it builds a kind of corporate attitude.”

Mitchell said, “You sound as though it
isn't
the attitude.”

“The
at
titude,” Cy said, “is let's tiptoe out of this smelling like a rose. That's the actual attitude so let's cut the bullshit. You want my opinion, we'll be healthy in a month. We don't want to overreact to this. We don't want to start throwing our money out the door. And one other thing. If we
do
hustle out of it, we've got to put the money into propping up the brand and not piss it into research. As Burt and I've said.” He looked up at Mitchell. “And said and said.”

“And been heard.”

“And ignored.”

“Absolutely,” Mitchell said. “And will be again. I tell you something, Cy. I'm not entirely convinced this is really happening. I keep thinking it's a bad movie. And then
you
walk in, I think it's fucking cartoons. You're not real, Cy. You bear no resemblance to actual persons living or dead. You're an animated bug. So unless you want to buy another million shares of stock—and who knows? if the price keeps falling, you can do it—but until then I think you better freeze and bug out.”

There was deafening silence. Cy turning dangerously red beneath his tan and then scraping his chair back, rising. “You think I'm gonna
take
this?” he said. “I
need
this bullshit? I
need
this grief? I need to come in, be insulted by a schlepper doesn't even wear a
suit?
Fuck
you
, Mr. Mitchell.” He paused dramatically. “But then, come to think of it, you're already fucked.”

Cy did the long march out of the boardroom like a tail wind was on him.

Silence you could cut.

Mitchell shook his head.

Zef said, “He's mad as hell and he's not gonna take it anymore.”

Leo said, “Besides, he's got a breakfast date at Schwab's.”

Mitchell said amazedly, “‘Freeze and bug out.' Where the hell did I
get
that?”

“From the sandbox,” Leo said.

“Fuckin A.” Mitchell nodded. “Listen—you want to talk public relations, then I think count me out.” He went over to the table and poured a cup of coffee. “Just continue,” he said. “Ignore me. Go on.” He was pacing to the window. His leg was in a spasm and he needed to walk it, or soak it in a tub, or take a couple of capsules that would knock him for a loop. So he kept on walking it, listening to voices: Losses for the quarter could be X million dollars. The stock would very likely drop X more points. If the killer wasn't captured, the brand could go under. If the factory was negligent, there went the game.

Zef said he'd have to call the expert in his office on product liability.

The voices went on.

He paced down the carpeted hall to his office. Telephones were ringing. Secretaries in, wearing bright-eyed expressions. Murder. Adventure. Their week was being made.

He went into his office and over to the cupboard where he kept a few bottles, and poured himself a Scotch. He was missing nothing in the ongoing talk. The futile discussions would rage around the clock, new voices would be added, but for all that got decided, postulated, feared, the facts would be the facts—impervious to argument, oblivious to hope.

There were seven people dead.

He drank and went over to the balcony again. The 7:30 sun had been burning through the smog and he looked at the boulevard, cars on the street, somewhere the ricocheting sound of a bullhorn, “This is the police,” warning the citizens not to use the product he'd hustled and angled and hurried to produce.

Billy McAllister was probably laughing like a fucking hyena.

Leo, from the door, said, “Well. Here you are.”

Mitchell turned slowly, “If you want to stick around, you have to keep very quiet.”

“Who me?” Leo settled in a wrought-iron chair. “I'm as quiet as a mouse.”

Mitchell glanced over.

“I only have one single question,” Leo said.

“No.”

“Just one.”

“And you already asked it. You asked me if I'd have a press conference and I said no.”

“Then I quit,” Leo said.

Mitchell turned around and then peered into Leo's unblinking blue eyes. “You wouldn't do that.”

“Oh no? Now hear,” Leo said. “You want to keep going as a press-shy eccentric—for reasons I have yet to begin to comprehend—you can go with someone else. Right now, you're the only way to salvage this company. You're all that we've got and you're smart enough to know it. The head of a company ducks and he's dead.—You want to save the company?” Leo stood up.

Mitchell didn't answer.

“Do you?” Leo pressed. “Your plant in Guatemala. Your sacrosanct research—you want to save that?”

Mitchell had to nod.

“Good. Change your clothes. You got matters of moment and state to attend to? Fine. But you'll put on a nice blue suit, take a nice close shave and be ready for the media at—” Leo checked his watch. “I can write you one hell of a statement by—why don't we call it High Noon.” He turned in the doorway. “I'll see if I can get Grace Kelly for the girl.”

Leo went off.

Mitchell just stood there, smoking for a while, trying to decide if the analogy was apt: Gary Cooper going off to face guns.

He decided it wasn't. Cooper'd been defending his honor and his town but he'd also been facing down the threat to his future. Mitchell would be gambling with the threat from his past. That old smoking gun.

He rubbed at his leg. He finished his whisky in one hard swallow and tossed his cigarette, watching it dive like a plucky little bomber; living in fame, going down in flame.

Then he took his car keys and headed for the door.

5

Joanna woke to Richard's mumbling at the telephone. She heard him say, “Jesus!” then he said, “Christ!” then he sort of whistled, then he said, “I'll be there,” and bolted from the bed.

She lay there. She liked to be the first to get up. Get into the bathroom; nullify her breath and splash a lot of cold water on the newly risen face, which she'd noticed wasn't rising quite as fast as it used to. Her face in the morning kind of lay there for a while. She wondered if she ought to write an article about it. Call it “The Face on the Bathroom Floor.”

She rolled over slowly and squinted at the clock: 7:47. Richard flushed the toilet. Richard did many things that drove her up the wall. Like peering in the bowl; opening his legs and kind of craning down
in
there. Yesterday she'd asked him exactly what he saw. “Would you say it's like reading tea leaves, or what?”

Richard hadn't laughed. He'd looked at her angrily and called her “Voyeur.”

“Voyeuse,” she'd corrected, “and I'm not the one that's looking. I just wondered if you got any messages about it. You know—‘I have seen the future and it's shit'?”

Richard washed his hands.

“Been
in
to,” he said. “If you want to quote Lincoln Steffens in the morning, what he said was, ‘I've been
in
to the future and it works.'”

And she'd looked him in the eyes, and then quite unexpectedly she'd said to him, “It doesn't.—Work.—Does it.”

“What?”

“Us.”

And Richard had looked her in the eyes and said, “No.”

Yesterday morning. At 8:45.

It was, she now reflected, just a question of time.

In the bathroom, he was shaving. Buzz buzz buzz. (“Hollywood's abuzz with the latest in imported Japanese shavers.”) Oh God, she thought wearily, I need an idea. The
New West
editor was after “something kicky,” he'd told her. Soccer? she'd thought. Or had he said “kinky”? It was all getting blurred. She could do another interview for
Television News
if she could think of who to interview. (Linda Evans or Linda Evans or else Linda Evans.)

Richard came out of the bathroom in a rush. Boxer shorts. Fifties haircut. Ralph Lauren odor. Christ, she thought, how could I have dreamed this'd work? Though in fairness, she hadn't. She'd simply had the feeling that it might be okay. Or better than nothing. And once she'd gotten into it she'd heard her mother's voice saying, Oh Joanna, give the boy a chance.

“Incredible,” he said. “That was Zef.” He was reaching for another white shirt. “Tate Pharmaceuticals is sitting on the burner and about to go up.”

His metaphors were cloudy.

She lit a cigarette.

“Listen, would you turn on the radio, Joanna? There ought to be something.”

“About what?”

“Just do it, would you?”

She reached for it, yawning, circling the dial till the newscaster told her, “—and sixty-four degrees on this February morning …”

Richard was reaching for another red tie. A corporate lawyer always dressed like a flag. Red, white and dark blue single-breasted serge.

The radio was saying, “… that two more bodies have just been discovered is as yet unconfirmed. And repeating this message: The artificial sweetener Naturalite has been linked by officials to seven known deaths. The product, it's confirmed, has been lethally poisoned with—”

Joanna said, “The psychopaths are out to take the world.”

Richard said, “You want to take my shirts to the laundry? And see if you can pick up some NutraSweet, huh?”

Richard took off.

She lay there for a while, unregenerately, lazily, smoking in his bed, another thing he hated. He feared for his sheets, his insurance premiums; the ashes on the night table drove him insane. Joanna lacked charity where Richard was concerned and occasionally attempted to do something noble. Like not smoke in bed. Like not make a crack about corporation lawyers, or use the word “Republican” only as an adjective synonymous with “stiff.”

She was—as he had yesterday accused her of being—an aging hippie. The “aging” had hurt. The age of thirty-seven wasn't really very cute, but as long as he didn't spell hippie with a “y,” she'd decided not to worry. Her body was good. For a natural redhead, her skin wasn't bad. For a freelance writer, at the age of thirty-seven, she was drifting, and not very slowly, up the creek. The fact that she could do it in a fashionable boat didn't cancel the direction. Fashion, as a matter of fact, was the problem. She hadn't set out to be a fashionable writer. Back in the seventies, she'd hungered for issues. Politics. Environment. Underdog positions. But she'd work on an article, sometimes for a month, and then nobody wanted it. Too controversial. Too angry. Too down. Not sexy. The seventies were clamoring for sex. The cult of the body. The cult of personality.

She started doing interviews. Celebrity sketches that were always the same. Celebrities were always the same. They were always convinced that God was on their side, that He listened to the Carson show—even when Joan Rivers was in charge—and applauded their efforts. “The most important thing in my life is my personal friendship with God”: Pat Boone. They were all of them the same. The television starlets and the real estate magnates and the wonderboy directors; the Flavors of the Week, as a friend of hers called them. What they all had in common wasn't talent but an absolutely terrifying drive.

She did a piece about drive. A little pop-sociology for
Money
magazine.

And some How To's for
Cosmo
. How to Get a Man. How To Get a Job. How To Get a Blow-Job. How To Blow a Man. Endless permutations on the same stupid shit.