Charlie Levine was next in line. Charlie once had a love affair with the English language and believed in finding talent to perpetuate its beauty. As an editor he had to prepare twenty-five to thirty books a year by established authors, mostly bad. There was the business of making contracts with literary agents, fighting the blood-curdling inner-office political wars, giving razz-matazz speeches at sales meetings, belting down two and three martinis at luncheons with visiting royalty among the authors.
Once in a while Charlie ran across a promising manuscript, one that would need a few months of dedicated work. Charlie was too damned tired and overworked to give it the devotion it needed.
Charlie took a dislike to himself upon realization that most books were mediocre and a publisher would push a bad one because of its exploitation value. Not that this in itself was evil. It was the pretending of standing on a pedestal that was evil, when one was really just another Madison Avenue whore.
Charlie decided to become a good whore as long as he was one. Pudge Whitcomb ran a good whorehouse. He now used the words he loved to insult the intelligence of the reader and listener, but if pounded into the brain often enough became part of the bastardization of the language he loved.
On the other side of the table was Gustav Von Gottard, a slick Viennese psychiatrist who was retained at an exorbitant salary to associate products with basic human desires for them.
And there was Clinton Loveless, a production genius.
J. Kenneth Whitcomb III made his entrance.... It was alleged he played some thirty minutes or so on Yale’s varsity before he was booted out of the school. It was known that he saw Pat O’Brien portray a famous coach and never got over it.
“This is the big game,” he began, “and that is why you, you, you, and you are here. You are my first-string team.”
Look at the stupid sons of bitches taking notes, Clint thought.
“We’re picking up the ball on our own ten-yard line and we’re going to hit hard, we’re going to hit fast. We’re going to drive, drive, drive, and we won’t stop ... we won’t stop till we score.”
Pudge’s male secretary dutifully, reverently, placed ten bottles of aspirin tablets in a row on the table.
Pudge lifted the product of Robson Drugs and pushed it forward. “Here’s the ball. Duo-Aspro.”
Robson Drugs had been hauled before the courts four times in six years for unpure products and cited for false advertising ... by those Pinks in Washington.
“Professor?”
Gustav Von Gottard stroked his beard, looked off into space dreamily, swung on the swivel chair. “Ve know zat ze deep colors, ze reds und purples iss making people sink of hangovers.”
Clint winced.
“Zerefore ve muss sink softly ... a soft blue of ze sky... ze pink of a voman’s flesh ... ze color must be subtle ... soft ...”
“Got that Jerry?” Pudge asked his chemist
“Check.”
“Go on, professor.”
“I am sinking zat ven man iss in pain he needs varmth ... he looks for ze vomb ... for ze bosom for comfort.”
“Tit-shaped aspirin ... subtly, of course. Charlie, your play.”
Charlie Levine, former editor, chewed on the end of his pencil sincerely, scanning his notes. “How do we hit this? Do we go with a cold-turkey sell or do the science bit? Do we figure on added new ingredients and make it something unpronounceable but highly medical or do we swing with the doctor in the white coat. This is off the top of my head, but why not stick with the pounding hammers, the bubbles being released in the stomach, and call it pain-go or sooth-o.”
Dick Buckley interjected, “We’ve got to go easy on the man in the white coat. The Pinks have been persecuting Robson Drugs ... because old man Robson gave a big donation to the Republican Party.”
“Dick’s our defense,” Pudge said.
“Check,” Charlie Levine said. “I’ll lay out the blurb with drums pounding and segue to soft music after Duo-Aspro gets in the blood stream.”
“Chopin music,” Gustav Von Gottard said.
“Check.”
“Jerry, got everything so far?”
“You want pink, tit-shaped aspirins with baking soda added.”
“Clint, baby, you’re being awful quiet this morning.”
Clinton Loveless got to his feet and looked grimly from one to the other. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have an important announcement.”
They leaned forward, with bated breath.
“Gentlemen,” Clint said, “the Confederates have fired on Fort Sumter.”
And with that, he departed Whitcomb Associates.
“I’m not going to let you do this,” Judy cried.
“You’re not big enough to stop me. Let’s don’t end ten years of marriage with me knocking you flat on your back.”
“What in the name of God has come over you? What will you do when you come back from Germany?”
“For the next several months Hiram Stonebraker is giving me the opportunity to practice and relearn my chosen profession. Once I saved a little steel mill from going under. I might just do the same thing again.”
“And we ate canned beans for a year while you were doing it.”
“And two hundred people went back to work when I finished the job. Cut it. It’s all talked out.”
“All of it, Clint ... all of it? How about you and me?”
“That’s up to you.”
“I know you love me, Clint.”
“Almost enough to give up my self-respect.”
A half hour later, Clint’s bags were at the front door when the Loveless apartment was graced by the presence of Pudge Whitcomb himself. The slash-mouth smile was more diagonal than usual. Judy said, “Thank God you’re here ... talk some sense into him.”
“Clint, baby, you’ve been playing the game too hard. You’re a little down.”
“Nonsense. I haven’t been working hard enough.”
“You’re our star halfback. Forget the Robson account. One more citation from the Pinks and we’re going to drop them anyhow. In the meantime, here’s a pair of ducats for Nassau for you and Judy and a bonus to cover expenses.”
“I don’t like Nassau. I might want to go someplace crummy, like Atlantic City.”
“Name it.”
“Germany.”
“Clint ... a little over a year ago when I asked you to join the team ...”
“Can it.”
Pudge began to perspire. “Big deal feeding Germans! Don’t you think your own American people come first! This country needs you! The team needs you!”
The doorman phoned up that a taxi was waiting. Clint picked up his bags.
Pudge stood in the doorway. “I’m tearing up the old contract and writing a new one.”
“Spell it out.”
“All right, it goes like this. Vice presidency, stock options, member of the board, twenty-five grand a year, and a five-thousand expense account.”
Judy’s eyes pleaded.
“Ass was always overpriced in New York,” Clint said. He brushed Pudge Whitcomb aside and left.
Chapter Eleven
THE SIGN ON THE desk read: THE BUCK ENDS HERE. Hiram Stonebraker had once seen it on the President’s desk, admired its philosophy, and the President sent him a copy.
The men in his office had been assembled from all over the globe. They had created the first miracle of air transport, the Hump.
“You people,” Stonebraker crackled, “were brought here because you once had a reputation as can-do people.”
Perry Sindlinger, now a full colonel, would serve as chief of staff; Colonel Matt Beck, a flyer’s flyer, would run Operations and as such be chief pilot; Lieutenant Colonel Sid Swing was back at logistics; Lieutenant Colonel Jose Mendoza, considered the most ingenious maintenance man in the old Army Air Corps, was there, as was Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Buck Rogers, who had been spirited away from the Army to supervise cargoes and ground transportation and act as staff liaison with the Army; Lieutenant Colonel Ben Scudder, who set up communications on the Hump, would do it again with the new sophisticated electronic aids.