"Okay," Nick said. Joey could always go to public school.
BR sighed. "Let's do a three-sixty. This guy"—he hooked a thumb in the direction of the White House, a few blocks away—"is calling for a four-buck-a-pack excise tax, his wife is calling for free nicotine patches for anyone who wants them, the SG is pushing through an outright advertising ban, Bob Smoot tells me we're going to lose the Heffeman case, and lose it big, which is going to mean hundreds, maybe thousands more liability cases a year, the EPA's slapped us with a Class A carcinogen classification, Pete Larue tells me NIH has some horror story about to come out about smoking and
blindness,
for Chrissake, Lou Willis tells me he's having problems with the Ag Committee with next year's crop insurance appropriations. There is zero good news on our horizon."
"Fun, ain't it, tobacco," Nick said companionably.
"I like a challenge as much as the next guy.
More
than the next guy, if you want the honest truth."
Yes, BR, I
want
the honest truth.
"Which is what I told the Captain when he begged me to take this on." BR stood up, perhaps to remind Nick that he was taller than him, and looked out his window onto K Street. "He gave me carte blanche, you know. Said, 'Do what you have to do, whatever it takes, just
turn it around.' "
BR was being elliptical this morning.
"How much are we paying you, Nick?"
"One-oh-five," Nick said. He added, "Before tax."
"Uh-huh," BR said, "well, you tell me. Are we getting our money's worth?"
It made for a nice fantasy: Nick coming over BR's desk with his World War I trench knife. Unfortunately, it was followed by a quick-fade to a different fantasy, Nick trying to get a second mortgage on the house.
"I don't know, BR. You tell me. Are you getting your money's worth?"
"Let's be professional about this. I'm not packing a heavy agenda. I'm putting it to you straight, guy-to-guy: how are we
doing
out there? I get this sense of. . . defeatism from your shop. All I see is white flags."
Nick strained to cool his rapidly boiling blood. "White
flags?"
"Yeah, like that stupid proposal you floated last month suggesting we admit that there's a health problem. What was
that
all about, for Chrissake?"
"Actually," Nick said, "I still think it was a pretty bold proposal. Let's face it, BR, no one appears to be buying into our contention that smoking isn't bad for you. So why
not
come out and say, 'All right, in some cases, sure, smoking's bad for you. So's driving a car for some people. Or drinking, or flying in airplanes, or crossing the street, or eating too much dairy product. But it's a legitimate, pleasurable activity that, done moderately, probably isn't that much more dangerous than
...
I don't know . . . life itself.' I think a lot of people would think, 'Hey, they're not such liars after all.' "
"Stupidest idea I ever heard," BR said with asperity. "Stupid
and
expensive. I had to have every copy of that memo burned. Can you imagine what would happen if it turned up in one of these goddamn liability trials? An internal document admitting that we know smoking is bad for you? Jesus Christ on a toasted bagel—do you have any
idea
what a disaster that would be?"
"Okay," Nick shrugged, "let's go on pretending there's no proof that it's bad for you. Since that's working so well
..."
"See what I mean," BR shook his head, "defeatism." Nick sighed. "BR, I'm putting in the hours. This is the first time in six years that my dedication has been called into question." "Maybe you're burned out. Happens."
Jeannette walked in without knocking. "Whoops," she said, "sorry to interrupt. Here's that Nexis search you wanted on 'sick building syndrome.' "
She was attractive, all right, though a tad severe-looking for Nick's taste, business suit and clickety-click heels, icy blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, plucked eyebrows, high cheekbones, eager-beaver black eyes, and dimples that managed to make her even more menacing, somehow, though dimples weren't supposed to do that. She apparently went horseback riding in Virginia on weekends. This made perfect sense to Nick. Put a riding crop in her hand and she was the very picture of a yuppie dominatrix.
"Thanks," BR said. Jeannette walked out, shutting the door behind her with a firm
click.
"Since we're talking 'guy-to-guy,' " Nick said, picking up where they'd left off, "you want to just give it to me straight?"
"Okay," said BR, tapping a pencil on his desk. "For one-oh-five a year, I think we could do better."
"I don't think I'm going to end up talking the surgeon general into deciding that smoking is good for you. I think we're past that point, frankly, BR."
"That's your whole problem! Don't think about what you
can't
do. Think about what you
can
do. You're spending your whole time stamping out wastebasket fires when you ought to be out there setting forest fires."
Forest fires?
"You're stuck in a reactive mode. You need to think proactive. Don't just sit behind your desk waiting for your phone to ring every time someone out there spits up some lung. You're supposed to be our communications guy. Communicate. Come up with a plan. Today's what?"
"Friday," Nick said glumly.
"Okay, Monday. Let me see something Monday." BR looked at his appointment book. "Whaddya know?" he grinned. It was the first time Nick had seen him do this. "My six-thirty
a.m
. slot is
wide
open."
2
H
ere Nick could be himself. Here he was among his own.
The Mod Squad met for lunch at Bert's every Wednesday, or Friday, or Tuesday, or whenever. In their line of work, things—disasters, generally—tended to come up at the last minute, so planning ahead presented a problem. But if they went much longer than a week without a lunch or dinner together, they would get nervous. They needed each other the way people in support groups do: between them there were no illusions. They could count on each other.
The name Mod Squad was not a reference to the 1960s TV show about a trio of hip, racially and sexually integrated undercover cops, but an acronym for "Merchants of Death." Since they consisted of the chief spokespeople for the tobacco, alcohol, and firearms industries, it seemed to fit. Nick said that they might as well call themselves that since it was surely the name the press would give them if they ever got wind of their little circle.
They were: Nick, Bobby Jay, and Polly. Besides having in common the fact that they all worked for despised organizations, they were also at that age in life—late thirties, early forties—where the thrill of having a high-profile job has worn off and the challenge of keeping it has set in.
Bobby Jay Bliss worked for SAFETY, the Society for the Advancement of Firearms and Effective
Training of Youth, formerly NRB
AC, the National Right to Bear Arms Committee.
Bobby Jay was a soft-speaking, curly-headed 220-pounder from
Loober, Mississippi, population 235,
where his father had been sher
iff, mayor, and the principal collector of tax revenue by virtue of arresting every third driver who went through Loober, regardless of how fast he was going. He kept a variety of speed-limit signs, which could be changed on the spot as required. Bobby Jay, whom he had first deputized at age eight, instilling in his son a lifelong regard for law enforcement (and handguns), would hide in the bushes and change the signs depending on how fast the person had been going while his father pulled him over and berated him for driving so recklessly through downtown, despite the fact that there really was no downtown, per se, in Loober, Mississippi.
Following the Kent State shootings, Bobby Jay, then seventeen, hitchhiked all the way into Meridian
in order to sign up for the Na
tional Guard, in order that he too could shoot college students; but the National Guard recruiter was out to lunch and the Army recruiter next door, recognizing a good thing when he saw one, offered to pay for his college education. So Bobby Jay ended up shooting at Vietnamese instead, which was almost as good as college students except that they shot back. Still, he enjoyed his two tours in Southeast Asia and would have signed up for a third, only the tail-rotor of a helicopter blade got the better of his left arm up to the elbow during a hasty evacuation of a red-hot LZ. He was one of the few Vietnam-era soldiers to receive a welcoming parade on his return home, though the parade, attended by all the residents of Loober, could not truthfully be called a huge one. Still, parades being rare in those troubled times, it made the papers and caught the attention of Stockton Drum, the legendary head of SAFETY. Drum had taken a run-down gun-owners' organization and turned it into the equivalent of the world's largest standing army, thirty million strong and nothing if not vocal, as any senator and congressman could tell you. With his colorful Southerner's way and steely left hook, Bobby Jay was a natural spokesman for the cause of gun ownership in America, and he prospered, rising to become SAFETY
'S
chief spokesman. Along the way he repented of his sinful ways and became a born-again Christian, and not at an easy time, either, what with all the television evangelists going to jail for unevangelical behavior. He carpooled in from suburban Virginia with a group of fellow SAFETY born-agains, and on his way home to his wife and four children, they would stop at a firing range and discharge the tensions accumulated during the day by blasting away at paper-target silhouettes of vaguely ethnic attackers.
The Moderation Council, formerly the National Association for Alcoholic Beverages, represented the nation's distilled spirits, wine, and beer industries, and it had made a smart choice when it promoted Polly Bailey as its chief spokesperson. Faced with a rising tide of neo-puritanism, neo-prohibitionism, and disastrous volumetric decline, they resolved that a new approach was needed. So as beer commercials switched from bikini blondes and bibulous dogs to oil-coated baby seals being heroically rescued, as wine promotions began to emphasize its cholesterol-reducing qualities, and as liquor ads turned from ice-cold, dry martinis to earnest pleas for responsible driving, their trade association turned not to the traditional tough-talking, middle-aged white guy in a business suit, but to a talking head that could turn heads. Pretty, dark, a petite size-six, with lively, challenging blue eyes and (naturally) long eyelashes, Polly would not have looked out of place in a soap commercial; so when you saw her on the TV screen challenging the latest government report on alcohol-related car crashes or fetal alcohol syndrome, instead of talking about how she only used Ivory soap, the effect was downright arresting. It was her genius, Nick had noted, to wear her hair long, well down over her shoulders, suggesting youth and vitality, instead of the usual dutifully professional style that women feel they must adopt in order to show that they are willing to suppress natural beauty for the sake of gender assimilation, if that's what it takes to make partner, senior VP, or cabinet secretary.
Polly smoked—chain-smoked, in fact—which gave her voice a nice husky rasp, so that her flawless equivocations on the subject of blood alcohol content, phenolics, and excise taxes sounded downright sexy, as if she were sharing them with you in bed, with the sheets rumpled, jazz on the stereo, the candle flickering, smoke curling toward the ceiling. She was a stylish dresser too—unusual in Washington, where stylishness in women is suspect—favoring Donna Karan black and white suits, especially the ones with the oversized collars that manage to impart a touch of the schoolgirl while also announcing that it would be very foolish to take this woman lightly. All in all, an effective voice in Washington for ethanol.
The liquor industry had been using women to sell its stuff since time began, rubbing them up against phallic bottles, displaying their gams while they cooed about how the new boyfriend drank their brand of scotch; why, Nick wondered, had it only recently occurred to them to use a good-looking lady while pitching public policy? Weren't congressmen and senators who decided on health warning labels and excise taxes as susceptible as anyone else to sex? Indeed, Nick himself was now in the midst of justifying his own traditional white-male self to his own boss, who seemed increasingly eager to replace him with the telegenic Jeannette.
Polly had come from southern California and gone to Georgetown University with thoughts of entering the foreign service, flunked the foreign service exam, gone to work on Capitol Hill, where she spent a good deal of time running from congressmen who had more than cloture on their minds.
She ended up as assistant staff director for the House Agricultural Committee, her member being the ranking majority member. He was from northern California, whose vineyards at the time were being virtually wiped out by the phylloxera parasite; it was Polly who brilliantly maneuvered an alliance of convenience between her member and the member from the citrus region, screwing the members from the avocado and artichoke regions out of their subsidies in the process, but all's fair in love and appropriations. Her member rewarded her hard work and diligence by passing her over and appointing someone else staff director, so when the genuinely grateful head of Wines at the Moderation Council called to congratulate her on her brilliant victory and mention in passing how he wished he had someone like her on his staff, she leapt.