Thank You for Smoking

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 told 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?"

"Because he knows that it was you talked us out of suing his saddle-sore butt when he first started making this fuss. And because of this kidnapping, you been blooded. You've suffered. He's a cowboy, he'll respect that. He's also a snob — I happen to know that personally— and now that you're a big media star, he won't be able to resist. Do it for me, son."

Nick sighed. "All right, but I honestly—"

"Good. Now obviously, we don't want to get into a bidding war with him, so we want our first offer to be impressive enough to get his attention. Where are my glasses? That woman stole them, I know it. Here they are. Now I'm looking at Gomez O'Neal's background report… I see he had a little alcohol problem in his background, couple of bar fights, nothing too out of the ordinary, no wife beating. Stopped drinking… joined AA. No one drinks anymore, do they? It's all about health, these days. Health, health, health, jog, jog, jog. Life used to be so much more interesting. Went out to California myself last year on business, and you go to a cocktail party and all anyone's talking about is their cholesterol levels. The last thing I want to know about a man is the ratio of his bad cholesterol to his good cholesterol. Three children. From the looks of this report I don't think they'll be going too far in life. But there's five grandchildren in their teens. Five times twenty-five thousand dollars…" Nick heard him mumbling through some calculations"… times four makes five hundred thousand. Throw in a little more for his troubles. An even million dollars. We'll pay the IRS's share so everything'll be above-board, all nice and clean and legal. We could always write the check on the Coalition for Health. No, I suppose we don't want any reporter getting his hands on a canceled check. Wouldn't they just go to town over that? Let's make it cash. Anyway, there's nothing so dramatic as a great big pile of cold, hard cash. When I was first starting out in the business, in sales, I'd fill a satchel full of five- and ten-dollar bills and drive around to country stores paying off the owners to give us rack space. Those were the days. Yes, let's make it cash, cash on the barrelhead."

Nick said, "Let me try out a headline on you: dying tumbleweed man rejects tobacco lobby hush money. And that's The Wall Street Journal headline. The tabloid version would probably be something like merchant of death to tumbleweed man: shut up and die!"

"It's not a bribe," the Captain said with feeling, "not at all. You're going out there on wings of angels, son. This is altruism at its finest."

"Now, honestly… "

"Absolutely. A gesture of profound humanitarianism. Here's a man going around calling us merchants of death and how do we respond?"

"By trying to sue him for breach of contract."

"That's water under the bridge. We're proposing to put his grandchildren through college so that they won't have to pump gas and night-manage convenience stores like their parents. Plus we're throwing in a half million dollars just to say, 'No hard feelings.' Talk about turning the other cheek. I think Christ himself would say, 'That's mighty white of you, boys.' And he merely admonished us to love our enemies. He never said we had to make the sumbitches rich."

"You're saying," Nick said, "that we're just… giving him the money?"

"Well, what have I been saying? Of course that's what I mean."

"He doesn't have to sign anything?"

"Not a thing."

"No gag agreement?"

"What's your problem, son. Do you not understand the mother tongue? No. Though, obviously, you might tell him that we would appreciate it if he kept our gesture private. A family matter. You might add that if he'd come to us in the first place, instead of to the press, we would have helped him out. Tobacco takes care of its own."

"Well," Nick said, feeling relieved, "I don't have any problem with that." The Captain, in his hospital bed, contemplating his own mortality, must have decided to make his peace with his enemies.

"The way I see it," the Captain chuckled, "is the sumbitch'll be so damn overcome with gratitude he'll have to shut up. Or if we get truly lucky, he'll have a heart attack at the sight of all that money."

Gazelle buzzed him on the intercom to tell him that agents from the FBI were here to see him.

Agent Allman, the friendly-looking one, shook Nick's hand. Agent Monmaney, looking like he'd just had a lunch of ground glass and nails, merely nodded.

"Did you get them?" Nick said.

"Who?" Agent Monmaney said.

"The kidnappers. Who else?"

Monmaney stared. What was it with him? Nick turned to Allman, who seemed to be giving Nick's office the once-over. Strange bedside manners, these two.

"Am I missing something here?" Nick said.

"The investigation is proceeding," Monmaney said.

"Well," Nick said, "is there something I can help you with?"

"Is there?" Monmaney said. Great, more tough-guy Zen.

Nick said, "Is there something you fellows want to talk about? Or did you just drop by to reassure me?"

Agent Allman was looking at the poster of the Lucky Strike-endorsing doctor. He chuckled. "Funny."

"Yes," Nick said. "My job would have been a lot easier back then."

"My dad smoked Luckies."

"Is that a fact?" Nick said.

"Uh-huh," Allman said, in a tone that made Nick suspect that his father had died a ghastly, protracted death from lung cancer. Swell, just what he needed on his side, an anti-smoking zealot.

"Is he," Nick groped, "was he… in law enforcement?"

"No, he owned a garage. He's retired, in Florida."

Nick felt great relief that Papa Allman was still among the living. Allman said, "The sun'll probably get him before the cigarettes."

"Hah," Nick said.

"Does anyone else use your office phone?" Agent Monmaney said. "My phone? Uh, sure, possibly."

" 'Sure, possibly'?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"No reason."

Nick and Monmaney stared at each other. Allman said, "Have you ever used nicotine patches before, yourself?"

"Me?" Nick said. He was getting a very uncomfortable feeling from this line of questioning. "I used to enjoy smoking. I wish I still could."

"You certainly picked an extreme way to give up," Allman said, holding up Nick's World War I trench-knife paperweight. "This is mean."

"Excuse me?" Nick said. "You said, 'Picked'?"

"I said that?"

"Yes," Nick said firmly, "you did."

"Did I?" Allman said to Monmaney. "I didn't hear," Monmaney said.

Nick sucked in his chest. "Why," he said, "do I get the feeling this is an interrogation?"

"I just saw an article in one of the scientific journals on skin cancer," Agent Allman said. "Pretty scary. You've really got to watch it these days."

"Yes," Nick said with asperity, "you certainly do."

"Mr. Naylor," said Agent Monmaney, "you're getting a lot of favorable publicity as a result of this incident."

"Well, it's not every day a lobbyist is abducted, tortured, and nearly killed," Nick said, "though a lot of people probably think it should happen more often."

"That wasn't my point."

"What was your point, exactly?"

"You're portraying yourself as a martyr. A hero."

"Agent Monmaney," Nick said, "do you have a problem with cigarettes?"

The faintest trace of a smile played on Monmaney's lupine features, not a nourishing smile. "Not since I quit."

"I'd say this," Nick said. "For the first time since I took this job, I'm getting fair publicity. Now at least they wait until the fourth paragraph in the story to compare me to Goebbels."

"Funny," Agent Allman said. Agent Monmaney did not share in the amusement.

The three held a staring bee. Nick was determined not to break the silence.

"You received a raise recently," Agent Monmaney said. "Uh-huh," Nick said.

"A very considerable one. They doubled your salary."

"More or less," Nick said.

"I'd say," said Agent Allman, rising up off the sofa beneath the Luckies doctor, "that you deserve it. You seem to be doing a very competent job promoting cigarettes."

"Thank you," Nick said tardy.

"We'll be in touch," Agent Allman said.