Red Rag Blues

by Derek Robinson

  The client was Brandon LeBeq, ad manager for Snowy Mountain Coffee, the stuff which kick-started half of America into a better day. LeBeq had been an intelligence officer all through the Pacific war. Then, men’s lives depended on his judgment. Now he sold coffee.

  Somebody mentioned Korea. “Looks like that mess is finally over,” LeBeq said. “Three bloody years. I suppose it was worth it.”

  “Sure it was,” one of the suits said. “Communists had to be shown that aggression doesn’t pay.”

  “They keep pushing, don’t they?” the other suit said. “The Berlin blockade, then Korea. Couple of months ago, some MIGs took a pot at an American weather plane near Alaska! I mean, where next?”

  “They’ve got China,” LeBeq said. “You’d think that would satisfy any dictatorship.”

  “The Chinese have got China,” Julie said. “Just to keep the record straight.”

  “We should never have let Stalin get his hands on Eastern Europe,” the first suit said. “Big mistake. I mean, did we win the war just so Russia could have an empire? I think not.”

  Eugene stood up so fast his glasses jerked sideways. “Russia beat the Nazis,” he said. “Not America. Start to finish, two-thirds of Hitler’s army was fighting on the Russian front. Two-thirds!” He was so excited, he was spitting slightly. “Twenty million dead in the USSR!”

  “Cool it, Eugene.” Julie tugged his sleeve. “Nobody’s arguing.” He sat down.

  “Sure, the Russians fought a hell of a war,” LeBeq said. “Cost them plenty. So for the life of me I can’t understand why they want another. Damn it, they’ve turned Eastern Europe into a barracks for the Red Army. I’ve seen their Iron Curtain and—”

  “First World War!” Eugene announced. “Germany attacks Russia! Also …” He counted them on his fingers. “Hungary attacks Russia, and Austria, Bulgaria, Poles, Czechs, Turks, all attack. Nobody here remembers Turkey invaded Russia. But Russians remember.”

  “Save the history for another time, Eugene,” the second suit said.

  “History? This is my childhood! German army invaded Russia, took Odessa, took Kiev! Like someone invaded the East Coast and we lost Pittsburgh.”

  “That’s not such a bad deal,” Julie said, and got a laugh from the others. She was trying to flag down a waiter, get the check.

  “Forget Pittsburgh.” Eugene was unstoppable. “But remember the West sent its armies into Russia in 1919. British army, French, American, Japanese, Czech. We don’t teach that in our schools.”

  “The fog of war,” LeBeq murmured.

  “But Russians remember, and twenty years later Germany invaded them again! So I ask you, Mr. LeBeq. It is 1945. You are Stalin. Three times in thirty years your country has been invaded from the west. Twice your country has sacrificed millions of citizens. So what does military intelligence tell you to do?”

  LeBeq flicked some crumbs from a sleeve. “Very interesting,” he said.

  Julie gave the waiter a pile of bills. “No change,” she told him. They began to stand, but Eugene wasn’t finished. “You’d make damn sure it wouldn’t happen again, wouldn’t you. Make a buffer zone between you and the goddamn bloody krauts, right? Build an iron curtain and keep the bastards out.” His shoulders were hunched.

  “Thank you, Julie,” LeBeq said. He had a good smile, and he knew when to use it. “You know more good restaurants in New York than Gourmet Magazine.”

  “We’re too many for a taxi,” the second suit announced. “Eugene and I will walk back. We need the exercise.”

  The art director was sacked that afternoon. “It was a straight choice,” Julie’s boss told her. “Either we lost Eugene or we lost Snowy Mountain Coffee.”

  “LeBeq thinks we’re soft on Communism, is that it? Eugene’s been putting too much red in the Snowy Mountain artwork?”

  “Wise up, kid. LeBeq can’t take the risk, and neither can we.”

  “Sure. And if we all hold our breath, Russia will disappear. It worked with China.”

  Julie went around the agency and tried to organize a petition. Dead loss. Eugene had gone. Signatures wouldn’t change that, but they might get other people fired. She told her story to the reporters who covered the ad industry. Some wrote it up. NBSM fired her. The publicity was small but lethal. No other agency would hire her. “I told you already,” she said to Luis. “Blacklist is just a word. You can’t look it up in the public library. But everybody knows, so it adds up to the same thing.”

  They were strolling toward the Studebaker, hand-in-hand, which stimulated the supply of blood to Luis’s brain, and he said: “There’s nothing to stop me getting a job with an ad agency. You could stay at home and create the advertising.”

  She squeezed his hand until it hurt. “That’s the worst idea you’ve had so far.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll just have to go back to being a contract killer for … um … thingummy.”

  “Stevie. She wasn’t going to pay you in money.”

  “That’s true.” They stopped, and looked at each other. The bruise under his eye was a deep purple. She remembered the fight, and laughed. He said, “This is a very serious matter, you know.” It exhausted their conversation, so they kissed. “That simplifies things,” he said. They kissed again. “And now?”

  “Oh…” she said. “You know.”

  He tapped her head. “Brain like a runaway dynamo,” he said. “Whatever that is.”

  3

  Next morning they taxied down to Schrafft’s on Fifth Avenue so they could have breakfast and watch the commuters hurrying through the heat to get to their offices because the Long Island Railroad had broken down again, poor slobs. Luis had a small steak and eggs with home fries. He was feeling thin. Julie had about a pint of orange juice and stole bits of his steak. She was feeling sleepy.

  “That’s twice you’ve robbed me of my virginity,” she said. “Mind you, it was in pretty crappy condition to start with.”

  “I’ve been thinking about our future,” he said, “and I want to make it clear that I can’t support you in the manner to which you’re accustomed.”

  “Christ, I hope not. Poverty stinks.”

  “That was my joke. You stole my joke.”

  “This is New York, buster. Nobody waits.”

  “I’m waiting for an answer to my idea. I get a job with an ad agency. You write the ads.” He signaled for more coffee.

  “You wouldn’t last a week, Luis. The ad game’s a serious business.”

  “So was the Double-Cross System. We told people what they wanted to hear. Some of it was almost true. Like advertising.”

  Julie propped her chin on her fists and studied his face. Good looks meant zero, she knew plenty of handsome men who were pure Jello and some uglies who were heroes. Luis wasn’t a hero. He thought he was indestructible when he was just highly resilient. How would she feel about him if he crawled out of a car wreck with only half a face? Everything was luck. Enjoy it while you have it.

  “What have we got to lose?” he asked.

  They went back to the penthouse. She scanned the columns in the Times and the Trib that reported comings and goings in the ad industry; made a few phone calls; and told Luis she’d fixed him up with an interview at an agency called Dent & Bellamy Inc. “I’ve got a pal there, a secretary willing to help as long as the job’s not for me. You meet Joe Steel at noon tomorrow. The agency’s just won a pharmaceuticals account, Drexon. They need copywriters.”

  “Easy.” Luis wrote in the air with his finger. “Attention rheumatism-sufferers! New magic drug ZX40 cures all aches and pains! See? Piece of cake.”

  “Horseshit. You can’t say ‘magic’ and you can’t say ‘cures.’ Most you can say is the stuff relieves pain. Nothing cures anything permanently.”

  “Except death.”

  “Which can’t be patented. Read this. Memorize it.”

  She had created a career for him. It began with Young & Rubicam in San Francisco, moved to Ted Bates in Chicago, then McCann-Er
ickson Ltd. in London, England, followed by six months with Rotblat Advertising in New York, and ending up with Benton & Bowles in LA.

  “I move around a lot,” he said.

  “Good copywriters do. Joe Steel won’t check you out. Too late in the day to phone London, too early to phone LA He can’t ask Rotblat because Phil Rotblat blew his brains out when the agency went bust. Here’s some proofs you can show him. I was with Benton & Bowles for a while, out West. Worked on some pharmaceutical campaigns.”

  Luis flicked through the proofs. “Why are all these people smiling?” he asked. “They’re suffering dreadful afflictions. What is there to smile at?”

  “You have a lot to learn about the ad game,” she said.

  Dent & Bellamy had offices on Madison in the high Forties, above a bank which Luis felt reasonably sure he had robbed by proxy. Joe Steel had a corner office on the fifth floor. His body was so bulky that he looked as it he was wearing two suits. His heavily muscled face had been battered by teenage acne and never fully recovered. But he was pleasant and courteous. He read the CV at a glance and seemed to like the proofs. “Ever had piles?” he asked. Luis said no. “Me neither. But two out of five Americans get them. Drexon manufactures this stuff.” He gave Luis a tube labeled 4DT. “People won’t go into a drugstore and ask for hemorrhoid cream. Embarrassing. But they’ll say 4DT. All the product information you need is in this leaflet, and here’s some ads from Drexon’s competition. Give me five or six full-page ads for 4DT. Headlines, scribbles for pix, forget the body copy.”

  “When d’you need them?”

  “Yesterday. Let’s say in half an hour.”

  His secretary gave Luis a block of paper, a chair and a nice smile.

  In twenty minutes he was ready. Steel was impressed.

  “My guess,” Luis said, “is that a major difficulty with advertising this type of product is that newspaper publishers won’t let us illustrate what we’re talking about.”

  Steel blinked. “It’s a pain in the ass. Everyone knows where their ass is. Don’t they?”

  “Everyone knows where their brain is, but the makers of headache remedies show pictures of heads.”

  “Uh-huh. So what?” Steel sat at his desk like a giant bump on a small log.

  “So we can’t illustrate the product at work, and we can’t even ask the reader: Do you suffer from this unspeakable ailment? Which is why the best that our major competitor can do is tell his story beneath one large word which he hopes will attract attention. That word is: Because.” Luis showed the proof.

  “Move it along. I’ve got to catch a train in five hours.” Steel was beginning to slump.

  “My idea trumps that campaign. It also conveys to the sufferer the great benefit of applying 4DT without using an illustration.” Luis held up a sheet of paper.

  Steel had slumped another six inches. He stared without expression. The headline read: Insofaras.

  “Should be two words.” His voice was as flat as his desk. “Insofar as. Two words.” He looked up at Luis without moving his head. “This is a joke?”

  “Wordplay, perhaps.”

  “No, this is a joke. My ass is on fire, I’m desperate for help, and Drexon’s 4DT wants to tell me a joke. What else you got?”

  Luis showed him another rough. The headline said Piledriver.

  “More funny business.” Steel glanced at the CV again. “You ever taken a loyalty test?”

  “You mean I have to demonstrate my American patriotism before I’m allowed near the nation’s piles?”

  “Damn right you do.”

  “If you don’t like Insofaras, how about Uppermost? Slightly less brutal.”

  “You spent too long in London,” Steel said. “This ain’t Socialized Medicine. We take our health seriously. We don’t joke about health.”

  “I was in England when they were planning their National Health Service,” Luis said. “I’d have voted for Socialized Medicine.”

  “You’re a Lefty. A Comm-Symp. Get out. I wouldn’t hire you if the Red Army was marching down Park Avenue.”

  “Were marching. Subjunctive.” Luis got out fast. Steel was heaving himself up from his chair, and it wasn’t to shake hands.

  *

  He bought a stupendous sandwich: liver paté, cream cheese, smoked salmon, lettuce heavy with mayo, the combination thick enough to strain his jaws. “Excellent choice,” the counterman told him. “Enjoy it with pride.”

  He nibbled his way into it, sitting on the steps of the public library at 42nd Street, quietly sweating through his undershirt. The penthouse would be cool but he wasn’t ready to tell her he’d failed.

  He felt better with food inside him. Failure wasn’t an absolute. It was like poverty, it was relative. Nearby, a yellow cab and a city bus intercepted the same point in space. There was a bright bang that turned heads. A fender got ripped off. A shouting-match broke out. Luis felt even better. “What happened?” a woman asked. “Difference of opinion,” Luis said. “I didn’t want the lousy job anyway.” She wasn’t listening. “People ain’t safe nowhere,” she said. “Cops don’t care. You see a cop? It’s worse’n Russia, this city.”

  “There’s a cop.” Luis pointed. “In fact, there’s two.” She glared at him, said: “Smartass. Fuckin’ smartass.” New York women were dangerously unpredictable. He moved away, heading up Fifth for no especial reason.

  Scribners Bookshop looked a good place to escape the heat and the traffic and the madwomen. He was browsing the shelves when he came upon a section marked Intelligence/Espionage, and was surprised to find that most of the books were about the spy, not as hero, but as traitor. The words “betrayal” and “treachery” often appeared in titles. Atom scientists, diplomats, politicians, businessmen, soldiers, spycatchers, everyone down to clerks and copy-typists had sold out. “Heaven help us,” Luis murmured, “is nobody to be trusted?” The answer rang in his brain like a great bell.

  4

  Kim Philby was eating toast and marmalade and doing The Times crossword more easily than was proper. The telephone rang; he ignored it. Another wrong number, probably. Every summer the trees grew, the branches scraped the phone lines, result: more wrong numbers, for which some poor bugger had to pay the GPO, when the sodding GPO should send a man round to prune the damn trees. Aileen came into the kitchen. “It’s for you,” she said. “Harding. British Consulate. New York.” She had a tumbler of whisky.

  “Isn’t it a bit early for that?” he asked.

  “Yes. I like to start early, in case there’s none left, later.”

  The phone was on the hall table. “My dear chap,” Philby said.

  “Good morning, sir. It’s about that new book you were interested in reading. I’ve had a phone call from the author. He says he’s made changes.”

  “I see. Did he elaborate?”

  “Heroes have become villains, and villains have let the side down. His very words.” Short pause, while the transatlantic cable softly hissed and buzzed. “He quoted Alfred Hitchcock: the better the villain, the better the story.”

  “Did he, by Jove?” Philby found a chair.

  “He says he has to pay the typist a thousand dollars. I told him to contact me tomorrow.”

  “Many thanks, Mr. Harding. I’ll get back to you.”

  Philby phoned Peter Cottington-Beaufort. An hour later they met in a pub car park on the edge of Sevenoaks. Kim got into Peter’s car, an old Armstrong-Siddeley. It smelled like a warm afternoon in the House of Lords.

  “I knew he’d come back,” Peter said. “They always do.”

  “And now his heroes are villains. Could mean anything.”

  “Don’t fool yourself, Kim. He’s threatening exposure.”

  “But he has no proof,” Kim said. “I know precisely where in MI6 Cabrillo worked. He was nowhere near my show. He’s bluffing, Peter.”

  “Not the point.” Peter turned his head and sniffed the tiny, creamy rose in his buttonhole. “Point is, Cabrillo’s dangerous, even if he i
nvents everything. He might invent something about you that’s more convincing than the real thing.”

  “He’s good at that.”

  “Go to New York, tonight. 7 p.m. flight, Pan Am. The ticket will be at Heathrow. Mr. Cabrillo is good for nothing, Kim. Go and nullify him.”

  “All right.” Kim stared through the windscreen at a pair of sparrows, dogfighting around the car park. Such energy, from such small and unimportant creatures. “It might be easier if I had a thousand dollars to offer him.”

  “Yes. And you’ll need money to live on. All will be arranged.”

  They shook hands. Kim got out of the Armstrong Siddeley and into his own grubby Fiat. The sparrows were still hard at it. “She’s not worth it,” he told them.

  5

  A black man with a salt-and-pepper crewcut, wearing a white singlet, slacks and tennis shoes, was dribbling oil onto Julie’s naked body when Luis came in. She was lying face-down on a bath towel on the kitchen table. “Hello, uncle,” she said. Luis came to a stop and breathed so deeply that his ribcage creaked. He thought she looked as sleek and as slim as a dolphin. Did dolphins have neat bottoms with little dimples? Probably not. He cleared his throat. “I see you’ve met my daughter,” he said. The man smiled. “This is Carl,” Julie said lazily. “Ask nicely and he’ll massage you too.”

  “Um … Not today, thank you.”

  “You’re scared. You think the blackness might rub off his hands. Ain’t that true, Carl?”

  “Hush yo’ mouth!” he said. “Whatever that means.”

  Luis took a shower, changed his clothes, counted his money. Carl had gone. Julie was wearing a white cotton robe, printed with soft yellow lemons. “That’s new,” he said.

  “Yup. I opened a credit account at Lord & Taylor. We’re rich, and you’re working at Dent & Bellamy, so we can afford it.” She kissed him on the ear. She ran her fingers through his damp hair. She rubbed a leg against the inside of his thigh. “Wealth is such an aphrodisiac,” she whispered.