Thank You for Smoking (33 page)

"We
believe
you," Polly said, giving him a squeeze.

"Would you please not talk to me in that
soothing
tone of voice. I'm not a mental patient." Nick looked glumly at the
Moon
headline. Front page, but below the fold.

"She did print my quote about how Finisterre put the FBI up to it," Nick said.

Polly read: " 'Leslie Dach, an aide to Senator Finisterre, dismissed Mr. Naylor's allegation as being 'lower than the scum on an eel's underbelly,' adding that it was 'the kind of odious insinuation that has come to typify the tobacco lobby as it becomes more and more desperate to maintain its stranglehold on the American public's lungs and wallets.' I'd say she gave the Finisterre camp equal time to answer your charge."

"Told you that woman was nothing but trouble," Bobby Jay said. "Thank you, Bobby Jay," Nick said. "That's ve
ry helpful just now.

Something to tide me over until you give me your wonderful intel from the FBI firing range."

"I don't think bibulating yourself into stupefaction is going to help."

"Boys, boys," Polly said.

"If I can't smoke, I'm going to drink," Nick said. "It's the only way I know to avoid
karoshi."
"What's that?"

"Japanese for 'sudden death.' It happens to their executives a lot. They work twenty-three-hour days, then one day they're walking along the Ginza, going back to their offices at ten o'clock after a business dinner, they just fall down on the sidewalk and die. One minute they're middle managers, the next, they're on their backs on the pavement like June bugs."

Nick's cellular rang. It was Gazelle and she was whispering. "Nick, it's those FBI people. They're headed your way."

"What do you mean?"

"Nick, I
had
to tell them where you were."

"Why? Did they beat you with rubber truncheons? Oh hell. All right, call Carlinsky. No, never mind,
I'll
call him." "What about your panel this afternoon?" "What panel?"

"The Healthy Heart 2000 panel."

"Call Jeannette. No, call Tyler. And tell him to expect a lot of questions about last week's
JAMA
story about clots.
Clots.
Erhardt's got some stuff on it. It's on my desk somewhere."

Nick hung up, drank the last of his vodka negroni in a swallow. "So, would you like to meet some FBI agents?"

Agents Monmaney and Allman arrived a few minutes later, suggesting that they had hurried, which was not particularly reassuring. Nick saw that they were followed by a uniformed D.C. policeman, which was even less so. Nick's three bodyguards, immediately assessing the situation, made no move to interfere with these more legitimate carriers of guns.

"Mr. Naylor," Monmaney said with his usual charm, "would you please stand up and
move toward the fireplace."

"Why," Nick said, "would I want to do that?"

"Yeah. Hold on a minute," Polly said.

"Ma'am!" the D.C. cop said warningly. What a macho guy, talking tough like that to a size six.

But—what was this? Monmaney unmistakably placing his hand on his gun? "All right, Mr. Naylor, please stand up, keep your hands where I can see them, turn around and move toward the fireplace."

And so Nick found himself spread-eagled over the fireplace, staring down into the fake flames, as Agent Monmaney frisked him. And then handcuffed him. Dimly, he heard the words 'arrest' and the familiar lines about how he had the right to remain silent, et cetera.

"I'd like to see some ID," Bobby Jay said in a steely tone.

"Sir!" the D.C. cop shouted.

"Well you got
that
right, bub."

"Stand up, sir." Then Bobby Jay was being spread-eagled, or in his case, spread-hooked, and frisked by the cop.

"What's this?" The cop found something interesting in the vicinity of Bobby Jay's ankle. A bulge. Now there was a commotion and the D.C. cop had
his
gun out and was pointing it at Bobby Jay i
n what Nick thought was a slightl
y melodramatic way.

"Hunh," Bobby Jay said. "That's—you know, I didn't realize that I was wearing that. See, I live in Virginia and I wasn't actually planning to come in to the District today, and—"

"You're under arrest for possession of a concealed loaded firearm."

"Aw now, come on, there's no need for that. I'm a senior vice president of SAFETY."

"You have the right to remain silent. . . ."

The D.C. cop was stymied as to how to handcuff Bobby Jay's hook.

As Nick and Bobby Jay were being led away, Polly, who looked like she was going into shock, said to them, "I'll . . . get the . . . check."

FBI
Arrests Tobacco Smokesman; Charges Him in Kidnapping Scheme

Nicotine Patch Box
es With Naylor's Fingerprints Ar
e Found at Va. Cabin

Gun Lobbyist h Arrested With Him For Carrying an Illegal Handgun

BY HEATHER HOLLOWAY
MOON
CORRESPONDENT

"What I
don't
understand," Steve Carlinsky was saying, "is why you didn't tell me about these boxes before."

Things were looking a little calmer through Nick's eyes, owing to the 10 mgs of Valium Polly had given him. He would have preferred a couple of stiff vodka negronis, or for that matter a hash brownie, but he refrained from asking for either since it was ten o'clock in the morning. It had not been a pleasant eighteen hours. His fingers still smelled of the stuff they'd given him to wipe off the fingerprint ink, and the rest of him felt stale and clammy, despite the clean shirt, underwear, and socks that Polly—dear Polly—had p
rovided. All night she had shuttl
ed back and forth between the FBI building, where Nick had spent the night being gone over by agents Monmaney and Allman, and the D.C. city jail, where Bobby Jay had spent his night, making all sorts of new friends, many of whom shared his views on gun control. Nick's one consolation was that the quality of person you meet in a fed
eral lockup was, perhaps, slightl
y superior to the ones you met in the municipal jail. At his arraignment, Polly told him that Bobby Jay had inserted his hook deeply into a delicate part of a fellow prisoner who had expressed the desire to share intimacies with him in the toilets. There was now the possibility that a charge of assault with a deadly weapon would be added to the firearms charge, though his lawyer was optimistic
on that count. As for Nick, Car
linsky had persuaded the judge that, grievous though the charge was—conspiracy to commit criminal fraud; criminal fraud; giving false evidence to federal officers; along with a few lesser charges that Carlinsky said were just plain "piling on"—Nick was unlikely to flee to the Canadian border in his BMW, and so he'd gotten him released on bail of $100,000, which the Captain, from his hospital bed, had ordered BR to post. So here he was in the offices of the man upon whom he was now dependent to keep him from being sent away for ten to fifteen
years, doing his best to cope.
"Tell you
what
about the boxes?"

Carlinsky's already close-set eyes narrowed so much that Nick thought they were going to combine into one big eye, like the ones on the prison guards on the planet Alar.

"Nick, how can I help you if you won't help me?"

"Steve, I don't
know
how my fingerprints got on the boxes."

Carlinsky pensively made a steeple with his hands. "Let's review."

"Again?"

"They have ten boxes of NicArrest nicotine patches with your fingerprints all over them at a rental cabin in Virginia that was rented sight unseen over the phone. They have a record of calls made to that cabin from your office phone, the second call on the morning of the abduction, and a piece of paper found in your apartment with the phone number of the cabin. Okay, now any paralegal in my office could get that last piece of evidence thrown out on illegal search, and anyone could have placed the call to the cabin from your office—
provided
we can establish that you weren't in the office at the time it was placed. But the boxes. The boxes are a problem. As evidence goes, fingerprints are very, very tough. I'd rather go up against a DNA match than fingerprints. Do you know why?" Carlinsky was the kind who waited until you said,
Why?

"Why?" Nick said.

"Because your average District of Columbia jury does not
understand
DNA. And being lectured about it makes them feel like they're back in high school, flunking biology. You have to present it to them so
sloowly
and
caarefully
that it makes them feel like idiots. They resent you for it, and little good comes of making a jury feel inadequate. But fingerprints—fingerprints are easy to grasp. Much easier than DNA, or such precious bodily fluids as blood or urine or sperm."

"Are you saying your job would be easier if they found boxes of nicotine patches with my blood or sp . . . ?"

"Nick, are you all right? Wait, we have work to do. Where are you going?"

"To kill someone," Nick said, heading out the door.

Nick stormed out of the Hill Building overlooking Farragut Square and made his way down I Street toward the Academy offices in what passers
-
by could not have mistaken for anything other than what is usually called a towering rage. The only ques
tion he was still trying to
resolve in his mind was—what instrument to use on Jeannette. His first impulse was to drag her, by that tight
little
bun of hair, to his balcony and toss her ten stories down into the fountain. He mused on other, less spectacular but equally efficient
ways to devise her demise. But
it is a scientific fact—and not one of Erhardt's—that in moments of stress we lose twenty-five percent of our powers of reason, and so as the first flush of rage subsided, fantasies of listening to Jeannette's death gurgle as his hands throttled her lovely neck were displaced by images of him being carted out of the Academy by the men in white and being taken across the river to Saint Elizabeth's, where his new padded-cellmate John Hinckley could critique for him, over and over and over, Jodie Foster's performance in
The Silence of the Lambs.

25

T
here were no hurrahs this time for the returning conqueror as Nick made his way through the Academy. It was downright awkward. People kept saying, "Oh—Nick . . ." and kept right on going. Only
Gomez O'Neal, whom he met by the coffee machine, greeted him with sympathy. "You okay, Nick?"

"Fine, fine," grinding away on his back molars.

Gomez put his hand on his shoulder. "You hang in there."

Coffee in hand
, Nick made his way past a gauntl
et of averted glances toward BR's office.

"Oh—Nick
..."
BR's secretary said. "He's busy. He's in with Jeannette."

Nick thought there might be one superfluous word in that sentence. He barged right in, rather hoping he'd catch them
in flag
rante,
whacking each other with riding crops, but they were only going over papers.

"Morning," Nick said.

BR and Jeannette stared in surprise. "Are you all right?" BR asked.

"Fine, fine. There's something about staying up all night protesting your innocence to FBI agents that I find invigorating."

"Would you excuse us?" BR said to Jeannette.

"No,
please,"
Nick said. "I certainly don't have anything to hide from
Jeannette."

BR leaned back in his big black leather chair. "How do you think we ought to proceed?"

"In terms of what?"

"In terms of your situation."

"Oh
that.
Well, as you say, Steve Carlinsky's the best there is. I'm sure he'll figure out something. That's why you're paying him $450 an hour."

"I meant more in terms of the immediate situation. I don't need to tell you what kind of press we're getting. I have a responsibility to think of the organization. Jeannette thought a leave of absence might make sense."

"I have no objections if
J
eannette wants to take a leave of absence."

"Uh, I think we're talking about
you
taking a leave of absence."

"Much too much to do. Finisterre, Mr. Jolly Roger's Neighborhood, Project Hollywood. Gotta keep up the Big Mo." Nick smiled. "Neo-Puritans never sleep."

"I'm not sure that's advisable, at this point. You've sort of become . . ."

"A liability?"

"An issue, certainly." BR held up the morning papers. "Your Ms. Holloway seems to be in hot pursuit of her first Pulitzer. She does have good sources."