Thank You for Smoking (31 page)

Today, however, Nick was not enjoying his small role in the great serial drama of American history. Today was more of an exercise in waiting, a combination of jury selection and Disney World. It was now a few minutes to four, and Nick had been waiting to testify since ten
a.m
. Finisterre's petty revenge. At first he wasn't even going to allow Nick to appear before his subcommittee, but he relented when Senator Jordan privately threatened to cut off his highway improvement funds. (After the Captain privately threatened to cut off his free jet.)

So far, Nick had listened to tobacco—and himself in particular—be denounced by adversaries familiar and new: Mothers Against Smoking, Teenagers Against the Exploitation of Youth
(what
a bunch of dweebs), the head of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse (Finis
terre, subtle fellow that he was, wanted to jackhammer home the point that tobacco was just another drug, like crack), and the Coalition for Ethical and Responsible Advertising (a rather small group). At four, after a weepy Hispanic woman finished a lurid description of how her husband, Ramon, had been killed by the evil weed—"He no can read so he no know is so bad for him"—Finisterre tried to adjourn the proceedings for the day. At which point Senator Plum Rudebaker of North Carolina, tobacco's man on the subcommittee, growled into his mike that this "lynchin' " had gone on long enough and demanded that Nick be heard, today.

Nick graciously thanked Chairman Finisterre for the opportunity to present his views before such a distinguished committee. How proud the founders would have been of the senators before him: over two thousand bounced checks between them, a seducer of underage Senate pages, three DUIs, one income-tax evader, a wife beater whose only defense was that she'd beat
him
up first, and a case of plagiarism, from, of all sources, a campaign speech of Benito Mussolini. (The senator later blamed the episode on an "overzealous staffer.")

As soon as Nick launched into his prepared statement, which consisted of an eloquent plea not to turn the American tobacco farmer into the Dust Bowl Okies of the nineties—complete with tear-duct-pumping quotes from
The Grapes of Wrath
—two of the senators ostentatiously stood up and left, without even going through the usual pretense of telling the chairman that the safety of the Republic depended on their immediate presence elsewhere. Nick paused in his recitation long enough to reflect that it's a sorry state when seducers of teena
gers and Mussolini-quoters feel
morally superior to you. He would shore up his prepared statement by proudly pointing to the Academy's vigorous anti-underage-smoking campaign. That done, Rudebaker tossed out the softball, right on cue.

"Ah'd lak to thank Mistuh Nayla fuh his courage in attendin' today's hea'ngs," he intoned in his Tarheel baritone. "And ah'm not just speaking to his mor'l courage, but his
physical
courage." Nick mode
stly
lowered his eyes, an appropriate gesture, considering that he'd ghostwritten these very words of the senator's. "For it's mah understandin'," Rudebaker continued, "that he has been
threatened
by a number of mah distinguished colleague from Vuhmont's con-stit-uents."

"Just what," F
inisterre barked, "does the gentl
eman from the tobacco-producing state imply by that remark?"

"Ahh'm not
implyin'
anythin'." Again o
n cue, Plum held up a fistfu
l of papers, spilling them all over. Photographers, by now near coma from boredom, fired away, filling the room with the cricket-sound of motorized drives. "An' neither do these death threats,
all
o' which are postmarked from the great state of Vuh-mont." Murmur murmur, gavel gavel.

"I certainly hope that my distinguished colleague
..."
Amazing, senatorial courtesy. ". . . isn't suggesting that these
alleged
letters were somehow the result of some coordinated effort—"

"Ah'm not
sayin'
or
suggestin'
or otherwise
hintin'
at
anythin'
of the
sort.
Ah'm merely sayin' that it's a saad day when a man whose only crayhm is representin' the interests of a
legal
product becomes a hunted man. In that regahd, ah'd like to point out to the distinguished chairman that Mistuh Nayla has already suffuhd kidnappin' and tor-cher fuh doin' his job. An' now he's got to live with thiyuss. Myself, ah don't know who put these cheesemongerin' assassins on his case, but ah
am
proposin' that their elected representatives show a little leadership and call off these dogs of wah, before someone gets
hut."

"Gets
what?"
said a reporter sitting behind Nick.

"Plum certainly rose to the occasion," BR said the next day as he and Nick scanned the media coverage,
finisterre disavows threats
against tobacco spokesman.

"Don't think it's not going to cost," the Captain said over the speakerphone. It was dark in BR's office. The new "tempest-hardened" curtains that Carlton had had installed were drawn. They were supposed to foil electronic eavesdropping. Between the FBI investigation of Nick and the tobacco lobby's frontal assault on a U.S. senator, the paranoia level was rising like the Mississippi during a wet spring. "But," the Captain continued, audibly short of breath, "we got the sumbitch on the defensive. Brilliant idea, son, brilliant."

Nick, exhausted from another night of making whoopee in the wee hours with Jeannette, yawned. "We're not going to win this one, Captain. Leg Affairs says it's going to pass committee by twelve to five. And when it hits the floor, watch out. We might as well face it. We're going down."

"Don't talk defeatism to a southerner," the Captain said.

"I'm just trying to be realistic."

"What about your Kraut doctor's report?"

Erhardt's Institute for Lifestyle Health
had cranked out a document entitl
ed
The Silent Killer,
estimating that over two million Americans a year were dying from Vermont cheddar-clogged arteries. (Based, to be sure, on the assumption that anyone who ever ate so much as a mouthful of Vermont cheddar cheese had ultimately died from it.) Nick was recommending against releasing it. Indeed, was recommending that all copies of
The Silent Killer
be immediately shredded.

"Gomez?" the Captain said in a lowered voice.

"We're pretty sure he made a pass at an au pair a couple of years ago," BR said.

"A what?"

"A foreign nanny. Icelandic g
irl, twenty-one, named Harpa Jo
hannsdottir. She's back in Iceland. I have a man over there now looking for her. It may take some time. The Icelandic phone book is listed by first name and—"

"Can I interject?" Nick said. "Much as I regret to say it, I think we need to start planning, and now, for a post-skull and bones labeling environment."

"That's Appomattox talk." The speakerphone filled the room with the Captain's coughing. He didn't sound well at all. There was talk of installing a new fetal-pig heart valve.

Nick felt badly for the old boy and wished he had more positive thoughts for him. "Maybe," he said, "there's some way we could make it
our
skull and bones."

"What does
that
mean?" the Captain said.

"I don't know yet. Let me get with our creative people and try to work something up. In the meantime, maybe Gomez's man in Reykjavik will come up with an Icelandic love child with buck teeth."

Gazelle was waiting for him outside BR's office, looking worried. "It's them," she whispered.

"Them who?"

"FBI."

"Well don't look so guilty," Nick said, annoyed.

They were in his office. Monmaney, to Nick's considerable annoyance, was looking over the top of his desk. Airman—the more humane of the two—was looking with bemusement at the Lucky Strike doctor.

Nick closed the door behind him and said, "So, you've found them."

"Who?" Allman said pleasantly. "My kidnappers." "Oh," Allman said.

"Are you planning to travel, Mr. Naylor?" Monmaney asked.

"What?"

"Travel."

"No."

Agent Monmaney read aloud off the memo paperclipped to Nick's plane tickets. "Dulles-LAX. Mahmoud will meet you at the gate."

"Oh, that. Business. I thought you meant pleasure." Agent Monmaney gave Nick his timber wolf stare.

"Why are you asking me this?" Nick said.

"Don't worry," Allman said. "He's just that way. Could we see your apartment?" "My apartment?" "Yes."

"Well
...
are you looking for something?"

"In cases where there's loss of memory due to trauma, it makes sense to take everything into account."

"You understand," Agent Monmaney said, "that this is a request. You're not required to comply with it."

"I'm not?"

"No. You're only required to comply with a search warrant."

"Right," Allman said. "But we don't have a warrant."

Nick thought: was there anything in his apartment he needed to worry about? Anything indelicate? No . . . Jeannette was so meticulous about picking up the limp love zeppelins. . . . Oh Christ.
The hash brownies in the freezer.
Whatshername, Paula, the stewardess, had brought some over one night two years ago. His cleaning lady had eaten one by mistake and cleaned the toilet with the vacuum cleaner. He meant to throw them away.
Why
hadn't he thrown them away? Fool! Idiot! Sent to prison for stale hash brownies!

Agents Monmaney and Allman were looking at him.

"Uh, yeah, sure. When would you like to stop by?"
"What about right now?"

"Now?" Nick said looking at his schedule. "Now . . . today . . . kind of. . . How about tomorrow?"

That look again. Monmaney said, "You're going to Los Angeles tomorrow."

"Right." He took out his keys and handed them over. "Help yourself."

Monmaney shook his head. "It would be preferable if you were present."

"I'm trying to help, but it's kind of hard to run a staff meeting and give two interviews and prepare for a panel on secondhand smoke but . . . fine." He buzzed Jeannette and asked her to cover for him.

He drove in the back of their sedan, imagining his next ride in it, handcuffed, on the way to being booked for possession of drugs. He foresaw it all:
You say her name was Paula? What airline did she work for?
Allman, the cheery swine, was intent on making small talk. It was difficult to rehearse your explanation for possession of narcotics while making small talk with a fed.

Wait a minute, that's not my refrigerator!

"1 don't see why you're so worried," Polly said.

Nick had convened an emergency meeting of the Mod Squad. Bobby Jay had been a bit put out since this was his bowling-prayer-and-pizza night with the born-agains, but recognizing the note of panic in Nick's voice, he was here. At night, the flames from
the fake fireplace looked slightl
y more realistic.

Nick was sucking down his third vodka negroni.

"You're kind of guzzling that," Polly said.

"You still haven't explained what the problem is," Bobby Jay said. "Since they didn't find your
drugs." "Shh,"
Nick said. "Jesus." "Let's leave Jesus out of this."

"He had his hand right
on
it," Nick said, reliving the horror afresh: Agent Monmaney opening the freezer, feeling around amidst the frozen bagels and the
cookie-dough ice cream and pin
a colada concentrate. "I was going to try to grab it out of his hand and try to eat it when the other one, Allman, comes into the kitchen with this look on his face like he's saying,
I found it."

"Found
what?
What could he have found?"

"I don't know. It was this silent thing between G-men. Whatever it was, Monmaney caught it. He stopped feeling around in my freezer. They said goodbye and left."

"But what could they have found?"

"Nothing."

"You're sure you didn't have any more
drugs
stashed away somewhere?"

"Will you please shut up, Bobby. And what happened to all that male bonding at the firing range? Instead I call you up and you're out bowling for Jesus."

"I'm
working
on it."

"Well work harder, would you, please? If this is the best you can do, no wonder the handgun control lobby is getting the upper hand."

23

T
he
next night, Nick was riding in Mahmoud's great white whale, on the way from the airport to the Encomium, when he looked out the window at the Los Angeles skyline and saw the billboard, bold as one of his lies. It showed a huge skull with crossbones. The copy beneath read:
don't smoke death cigarettes.