"Nick, Jeff wants this to happen, so it's going to happen. Don't worry about the numbers. We'll make the numbers fit. Now, Jeff met with Mace and Fiona's reps and here's the situation vis a vis them…."
* * *
Nick stared into Bert's fireplace and watched the rotating purple and yellow light pretending to be flames. Bobby Jay had not found out anything from his FBI contacts. And Polly thought he ought to hire Steve Carlinsky right away, which annoyed Nick so much he changed the subject.
"Mace McQuade and Fiona Fontaine have quote qualms unquote about quote glorifying smoking unquote."
Bobby Jay shook his head as he stirred his coffee with his steel hook, a custom Polly found uncouth. "Qualms," he snorted, "from people who make their livelihood glorifying sex and violence."
"What about your Durk Fraser ad campaign?" Polly said. "He made his millions playing a savage policeman, and now he's your poster boy. 'I'm on SAFETY.' "
"Durk Fraser is a highly moral human being," Bobby Jay said, "who always stood up for what was right and fine."
"Right, while torturing confessions out of minorities."
"That was one movie, and the fact is that most crime is committed by minorities, a point that some bleeding heart liberals find difficult to admit."
"Just because I find Durk Fraser repellent—and a bad actor— doesn't make me a liberal."
"Durk Fraser," Bobby Jay said, "is five times the actor Mace McQuade is, and he never had to wiggle his bare butt on the screen. If I were Nick, I'd tell that boy and his agent to go straight to hell and don't even stop to clean the bugs off the windshield. And as for that Rahab… "
"Who?"
"The painted whore of Babylon." Two espressos and Bobby Jay became a flame-snorting Old Testament moralist. "I am familiar with the complete oovre of Fiona Fontaine, and while I do not deny that the Lord endowed her with natural beauty — which she defiled by having her tits pumped full of plastic — I do not frankly see what all the fuss is about. Not wearing underpants does not make you an actress."
"So," Polly said, "does this mean no smoking in Sector Six?"
"Oh no," Nick said, "two million dollars — each — goes a long way toward qualm abatement. I have to hand it to Jeff Megall; for a guy who eats transparent sushi, he's very smart. He came up with a brilliant solution: shooting duplicate scenes, in which Mace and Fiona smoke, but only for foreign distribution. This way no one here at home will see them smoking. Just billions of Asians, who want to be just like Mace and Fiona. Jeff calls it 'product-smart placement.' Like the bombs."
"That is smart. So Mace and Fiona don't mind quote glorifying smoking unquote as long as it's for the benefit of… "
"Gooks," Bobby Jay said.
"I hate that word," Polly said.
Bobby Jay held up his hook. "I left twenty pints of blood and half an arm over there," he said, "so I suppose I can call them anything I please."
"He's got a point," Nick said. "Megall came up with even another idea: shooting the scenes with blank cigarette packs, then they can digitalize in different brand names, according to country."
"Wow," Polly marveled.
"So in the movie print that goes to Japan, they're smoking a Japanese brand, in the one that goes to Indonesia, Indonesian, and in the Hungarian print, a Hungarian brand like Throatscraper. An actual name. In Eastern Europe they want more tar and nicotine."
"Smart."
"Actually," Nick said, "I don't know why we didn't think of it. It's already being done abroad, using transponders to superimpose logos on satellite TV transmissions. So the Madonna concert in Spain becomes the Salem Madonna concert in Hong Kong. You can do things over there you just can't here. Laura Branigan, Tiffany, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Huey Lewis, Luciano Pavarotti, Tom Berenger, Roger Moore, James Coburn, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe have all endorsed cigarettes overseas, either directly or indirectly. And they don't get any grief about it here, because nobody sees it."
"But what about here? The whole idea was to promote the product here, wasn't it?"
"Jeff says no problem. It's only the big actors who pull down eight, ten million a picture who can afford the luxury of quote qualms unquote. He says we'll be in three Christmas movies. By this Christmas."
"How would I go about getting in touch with Jeff Megall?" Polly said.
Under the circumstances, Nick thought it made sense to meet Heather not at Il Peccatore but at a more out-of-the-way place, so he picked the River Cafe in Foggy Bottom. He got there first. It had been a trying day, listening to threats by the governor of Vermont, among others. He ordered a vodka negroni on the rocks, but reminded himself, as it massaged its way up his brain stem, of the need for mental clarity. On tonight's agenda was not how to get Heather into the sack, but how to keep Heather from getting him sacked. At this point, she seemed hotter to impress her prospective employers at the Sun than she was for him.
She arrived, right on time, all smiles, and in a dress that surely had been put on after work, for his benefit. It would have created havoc in any newsroom.
"Hi!" she said. "Am I late? I came right from work."
They started with a little small talk, then moved on to major media gossip — who was going to replace Morton Kondracke on The McLaughlin Group. Boy, Nick thought, the things we care about in Washington.
Finally, after they'd both refused dessert and settled in with their decaf cappuccinos, Heather ventured: "You know, the more I think about the FBI investigating you, the more burned I get."
"Appalling, isn't it?"
"That's why I think it's so important to get it out there. Your tax dollars at work. I think they'll back off the moment this sees print."
"Is this seeing print?"
"Yes," she said nervously, "I was able to confirm independently that they're looking into you. So I wouldn't be violating any confidence."
Nick suppressed the urge to congratulate her on having sunk to his own chthonic ethical level. He merely nodded. "Fair enough."
Heather seemed surprised by his compliance. "You're not pissed?"
"No. Actually, I think you're right. I think they probably would back off. Write as you will. Though I'd certainly appreciate it if you didn't quote me."
"No, of course. You're sure?"
"Sure. In fact," he leaned forward in his best revolutionary hunch and whispered, "completely, utterly, and totally off the record, that would be kind of… for the best."
"Oh?"
The hook was in.
"Let's get out of here," Nick said.
They walked down I Street toward the Watergate. An appropriate direction, given what he was up to. Heather said, "What did you mean, 'for the best'?"
"Well," Nick laughed, "would you want the FBI going through your drawers?"
"Nick, are you trying to tell me something?"
Nick grinned. "Only that people will do amazing things if the stakes are high enough."
"You did kidnap yourself?"
"I didn't say that."
He dropped Heather off at her front door with a chaste kiss, confident that there would be no story. She would now have her eyes set on a much bigger story, and there wasn't one. She'd end up stuck in gridlock.
22
Ordinarily, Nick enjoyed appearing before Senate subcommittees. It made you feel that for a brief, shiny moment, you'd taken part in the great serial drama of American history. The bright TV lights, the pitcher and glass of water", the green felt tabletop, the hum and thrum of the spectators, the senators trying to look like Roman busts, the crab-scuttling of their aides as they pretended to avoid the TV cameras, and now, Nick noted, this new twist on stenography — stenographers speaking into cones held over their mouths.