Thank You for Smoking (19 page)

There was intense murmuring. "You'll all receive instruction in— what
is
the drill, Carlton?"

"Examining a vehicle for bombs, eva
sive maneuvers, J-turns and bootl
eg turns, proper ramming te
chnique, and surveillance detec
tion."

"Bombs?" said Syd Berkowitz of the Coalition for Health. "Are there
bomb
threats?"

"Just a precaution. I assure you that the FBI is going to have these people in custody very, very soon. In the meantime, we've made arrangements with 1800 K Street to use their basement parking. For the time being, there'll be no parking in our own underground garage."

By now the murmuring was quite loud. BR had to raise his own voice to be heard. "People, people. This is just precautionary. There have been no bomb threats. Anyway, we're on a high floor here. And I'm certain everyone here could handle a
little
smoke inhalation."

Jeannette laughed. No one else did.

After the meeting, BR took Nick aside. He handed him a box of NicoStop patches. Nick held it as if BR had just handed him a fresh, steaming turd.

"Guess what?" BR said. "Sales of your 'deadly Band-Aids' are off
forty-five percent
since your gig on the
Today
show."

Nick handed him back the box with a shudder. No more nicotine for him.

"I feel awkward scoring points off this rotten business, but, God, talk about stepping in shit and coming out smelling like roses.
Look
at this press." He handed Nick a thick folder, a veritable media hero sandwich, clippings sticking out like bits of lettuce and ham. Nick had already seen most of them. He'd been on all the morning network
shows, all the cable shows. The Europeans and Asians, who were still puffing away happily, couldn't get enough of him. Nick had experienced the thrill of being simultaneously translated. The French interviewer, a very fetching and soulful-looking woman, had done a little medical research on vasoconstricting and had put it to him: had it affected his "romantic capabilities"? Nick blushed, said no,
pas du tout,
and broke out in cold sweat. He'd been on Slovakian TV, a very important appearance as Agglomerated Tobacco, the Captain's own company, was moving into the former Eastern Bloc in a big way, introducing a brand whose name translated as "Throat-Scraper." The Eastern Euros, who'd been brought up on cigarettes that tasted like burning nuclear waste, were old-fashioned about their smokes: they demanded more, not less tar. To them, lung cancer was proof of quality.

"Jeannette tells me that
Young Modem Man
wants to do a week-in-the-life story on you," BR said.

"Yeah," Nick said, again annoyed at the Jeannette-BR pipeline, "I'm inclined to pass on that one."

"Japan's very important to us, and they do reach two out of three Japanese men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one." This was the age group known within the Academy as "entry-level."

"I just don't know if I want Japanese reporters hanging out in my office for a week. Or any reporters. I think maybe I'm getting a little overexposed."

"Two out of three, Nick. Millions and millions of young, modern Japanese. You're a hero to these people. That brings a certain responsibility."

"I'll get back to you." The nice thing was that Nick was now a certifiable, eight-hundred-pound gorilla, with I'll-get-back-to-you privileges.

"I spoke to the Captain earlier. He hopes you'll be able to do it." Agglomerated was moving into Japan, too, now that the U.S. trade rep had threatened to slap imported soy sauce with a 50 percent tariff unless they opened their ports and lungs to U.S. tobacco products.

"I'll get back to him, too." Nick was pushing the envelope a little here, but all BR could do was make a face that said,
All right, but I hope you know what you're doing.

All this attention. And Sammy Najeeb had called this morning to

ask—to insist—that he go back on the Larry King show. She and Larry were sure, knew in their bones, that the threatening caller would call in again, and could Nick
imagine
what kind of TV that would make?

"By the
way,"
BR said, full of drama, "Penelope Bent is coming in next week and guess who she wants to meet?" Penelope, now Lady Bent, had recently signed a seven-figure-a-year deal with Bonsacker International, formerly Bonsacker Tobacco, Inc., to lend a little
cl
ahss
to their board and annual shareholders' meetings. This was increasingly common among the Big Six tobacco companies, which were retaining a lot of substantive celebrities—Vietnam-era POWs, former presidents of prestigious universities; they'd even asked Mother Teresa—to shill for them under the guise of celebrating freedom of speech, or the Constitution. The former British PM was their latest acquisition.

"Oh?" Nick said.

"The Captain called me this morning. They're all still in awe of her and haven't been able to get in a word edgewise. She's quite a talker, apparently. Anyway, he thought you might take the opportunity to give her a little gospel so if she gets any hostile questions about the relationship, everyone will be singing off the same sheet of music. Stress diversity. Agglomerated isn't just tobacco, it's infant formula, frozen foods, industrial lubricants, air filters, bowling balls. You know the drill."

"Yes, I do," Nick said, miffed at being given advice on spin control. "I doubt that the Titanium Lady needs lessons on handling the press from me."

"She wants to meet you, Nick," BR said brightly. "You should be flattered."

"Okay, I'm flattered."

"Maybe you'll pick up some tips on how to deal with terrorists. Remember what she did to the IRA after they blew up her bulldogs?"

"Aren't I supposed to be going out to Hollywood?" "We're working on sett
ing up a meeting with Jeff Megall
's people. It's like getting an appointment with God." "The Jeff Megall?" Nick said.

"Himself. But the Captain says he wants you right here where the press can find you until they get tired of you. Frankly, if I'd known that a kidnapping would result in this kind of coverage, I'd have kidnapped you myself. Speaking of L.A., as long as you're going to be out there . . ."

"Uh-huh," Nick said suspiciously.

"Your friend
Lorne
Lutch."

"He's not my friend, BR. All I did was talk you people out of suing him. I ducked into a closet at the Larry King show to avoid running into him."

"He's been hitting us very hard lately," BR said. "Did you see the things he said about us last week? No, of course not, you were still in Intensive Care. Your pal Oprah had him on with the Silver-O's girl. You should have seen them, both talking through their voice boxes. A duet for two kazoos."

It was one Oprah appearance Nick was glad not to have been invited to share.

"It was pathetic. Her being a woman, I can forgive her. But him. The man has
no
sense of personal responsibility."

"He's dying, BR. We should probably cut the man some slack. If it was me, I'd slip him some money, help out with the expenses."

BR said, "I'm not sure that's the approach I'd take, but you and the Captain think alike on this one."

"Okay," Nick said to Sven, who was staring back at him on the video-phone, "does it gobble?"

Sven said, "I want to point out at the beginning that thrilled as we are to be on this account, and we're extremely thrilled, everyone here, what you asked us to produce was an ineffective message that will have no impact on the people it is targeted at."

Nick had the feeling he was being taped. It was like having a conversation in the Oval Office with Nixon at the height of Watergate.

"I just want it clear what our role is," Sven said.

Nick said, "Okay, you've established that your role is the tormented
artiste.
Can we proceed?" Honestly, these creative hothouse orchids. And in Minneapolis, no less. Nick still had frostbite from his visit there six months ago.

"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 Pare
nts Told You About Smoking Is Ri
ght."

"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,
i
f I may say so, is in its decon
structability." "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 h
im and hugged him. It was unsettl
ing. 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 Capta
in wants me to go bribe the Tum
bleweed Man, who's dying of throat
cancer, so he'll stop badmouth
ing 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 f
ormer 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 either 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."