Thank You for Smoking

by Christopher Buckley

  " — Womjep'?"

  "Woman in jeopardy. Alien meets Dune meets Star Wars and Darth Vader is gay. A screamer. I've seen the script. It's a very funny part, an Oscar part. The hero is a disgraced space baron with an alien kid sidekick who can turn into anything. The girl is the emperor's daughter who's run away and gotten into some seriously bad company. It's called Message from Sector Six. The effects are going to be amazing. Half an hour of morphing. You know what morphing is? What they did in Terminator 2."

  "They're calling it Morph and Mindy," Jack said.

  "A million dollars per minute. They've already reserved advertising space on the fuselage of a space shuttle launch. They've budgeted a hundred and twenty million dollars. It will be the most expensive film ever made. And they're making it in Mexico."

  "I heard they're already up to one-forty."

  "It better be good. UFA is going to be wide open to product placement."

  "Cigarettes?" Nick said. "In outer space?"

  "It's the twenty-sixth century," Jeff said. "They're not bad for you anymore. In fact… in fact… "

  "What?" Jack said.

  "They're good for you. The Sleeper idea. That reminds me, I need to call Woody, though I don't know what I'm going to tell him. Jack, call Bill Hyman, Jerry Gornick, Voltan Zeig, set up a meeting for this afternoon."

  "Done."

  "I've gone blank. Ginseng depletion. Who's directing?"

  "Chick Dextor."

  "Going to be a loong shoot."

  "Tell me about it."

  "Nick," Jeff said, "this could be very exciting for all of us."

  "I… but don't you explode if you light up in a spaceship? All that oxygen?"

  "It's the twenty-sixth century. They've thought that through. That can be fixed with one line of script."

  "It sounds like… I don't know… "

  "Nick. The leads in this movie are Mace McQuade and Fiona Fontaine."

  "No kidding."

  "No kidding. Can you see them, sharing a post-sex cigarette in their spaceship, in a round bed with satin sheets and a clear bubble top. The galaxies go whizzing by, the smoke curls weightlessly upward. That doesn't prime your pump? You don't think that would sell a few cartons?"

  "Yeah," Nick said. "I guess it would."

  "I'll tell you something else. It's not my role to get involved in this part of it, unless I'm asked, but if I were you I would right away get started on launching a whole new brand of cigarettes and launch it simultaneously with the movie. Sector Sixes. No one has ever done that with cigarettes."

  Jeff stood. The meeting was over. He shook Nick's hand. "You've done something to me that I try very hard to resist. You've gotten me emotionally involved."

  Outside, Sean was working on a crossword puzzle. In the elevator, Jack said, "You should be pleased with yourself. Jeff really liked you."

  18

  Lorne Lutch lived on an avocado farm sixty miles west of L.A. Feeling the need to have his own hands on the wheel, Nick dispensed with Mahmoud and his Great White Whale and drove himself in a rented red Mustang, with his bodyguards following in their own rented tan sedan with the half million dollars of cash. Maybe Lutch would appreciate the symbolism of Nick's showing up in a Mustang. Or maybe he'd come out with a double-barreled shotgun and blow Nick out of his bucket seat. It could go either way.

  He'd read Gomez O'Neal's amazingly thorough briefing book on the man's personal and financial history, detailed enough to make the wiretappers at the National Security Agency blush — where did Gomez get all this stuff? — already he knew to the penny how much Lorne Lutch was carrying on his Visa and MasterCard and how much albumin he had in his last urine test. Gomez's boys had their fingers in every urine test that affected tobacco, avid for traces of dope.

  This was a very strange mission, one he would only have taken on for the Captain. The night before, he'd placed a call to Polly, the only person, aside from Bobby Jay, to whom he could turn for pointers on bribing dying product spokesmen. Polly had whistled when he told her what he was up to.

  "Hm," she said, "if I were you I'd put a get well card in it, leave the bag by the front door, ring the bell, and run like hell." Actually, not a bad idea.

  While he was on the phone with Polly, Jeannette called, all sex and heavy breathing, wanting to know if she should be jealous of Fiona Fontaine yet. And while she was on, Heather called, lighting up the third button on the phone console and making Nick feel like an air traffic sex controller.

  Heather wasn't calling to whisper sweet num-nums into his ear long-distance. She was all business, except to complain about the Washington heat and the cab drivers. Most cab drivers in Washington are recent arrivals from countries where driving is the national blood sport; confronted in the rear-view mirror with an attractive female passenger with a nice figure in a thin summer dress, they tend completely to ignore the road ahead while suavely propositioning their passengers with the likes of You like Haiti food? Today, Heather had had enough of being hit on by sweaty Tonton Macoutes. What she wanted from Nick was what he knew about the bill Ortolan K. Finisterre was reportedly gearing up to introduce. They were being very close-mouthed about it on the Hill, and that was very unusual. She said that the Sun had called her back for more interviews, so now was definitely the time for her reporting to shine. Nick said he was a little out of the loop out here in Hollywood, but would see what he could find out from Leg Affairs.

  "By the way," Heather said, "what are you doing out there?"

  "Not much," he said, "just pumping up our West Coast office. Morale-boosting visit with the troops."

  "Uh-huh." Silence. She was too good a reporter to swallow that. The Senate gearing up to something big, and you're in L.A., for no good reason? "What are you really doing?"

  "Off the record?"

  "Okay." She sounded a little offended.

  "I'm out here to bribe the Tumbleweed Man, who is dying of lung cancer, to stop attacking us in the media."

  Heather laughed. "You know, I wouldn't put it past you."

  It left Nick a little unsettled that she hadn't believed him. Polly was annoyed at having been put on hold for five minutes.

  "I was talking to a reporter," Nick said, invoking a reliable Mod Squad dispensation.

  "Heather Holloway?" said Polly.

  "No," said Nick, "Just… a reporter."

  "'A reporter'?"

  "I'm not sure I even remember her name."

  Why, he wondered, after getting off, was he lying about Heather to Polly?

  The Lutch avocado spread was a modest one called Fault-Line Farm, a name that made sense when Nick saw a gaping crevasse across the scrubby field in front of the house, rimmed by a tangle of dead avocado trees.

  He took the attache case from his bodyguards and ordered them to stay in their car. They argued about letting him disappear behind enemy lines without protection. Mame, the detail commander, made a persuasive case that Lutch had very little to lose by shooting Nick. Nick considered bringing her along for a moment, but then contemplated the headline, tumbleweed man slain in shoot-out with tobacco spokesman's security guard and decided it would be good to avoid that, so he put his foot down and started up the steps alone. A large Rhodesian Ridgeback lazed in the heat on the porch, barely looking up at Nick as he approached. There were a number of steel bottles on the porch labeled oxygen.

  Nick took a deep breath and banged on the screen door. Today, he said to himself, you will earn your salary.

  He felt a poke in his back, and heard a croaky voice say, "Don't move or I'll blow a hole the size of a grapefruit in you. Now raise your hands and keep 'em where I can see 'em."

  Nick did as instructed.

  "Now turn around. Slow."

  Nick slowly rotated and found himself facing Lorne Lutch himself. He was still recognizable as the Tumbleweed Man, even fifty pounds lighter and with yellow skin. He was in a bathrobe and slippers and wouldn't have looked at all threatening without the shotgun that was aimed at Nick's
stomach.

  He peered at Nick. "You're Nick Naylor, aren't you?"

  "Yes sir. I was just… " Passing through, carrying half a million dollars in cash. "Do you, could I, do you have a minute? If it's inconvenient, I could, uh, come back."

  Lutch said suspiciously, "What do you want here?"

  "Just… to talk."

  "All right," he said, lowering the shotgun. He pushed open the screen door with the muzzle. They sat. "Didn't mean to startle you," he said. "But someone's been following me."

  Gomez?

  He croaked, "Roberta, company." It made him cough. And cough, and cough.

  Mrs. Lutch entered, took one look at Nick, and went cold as a bucket of liquid nitrogen. Lutch continued to cough, leaving Nick to stand there waiting for it to subside so that he could be introduced. It was awkward, frankly. When Lorne's coughing showed no sign of subsiding, Nick mouthed a "Hello."

  "What do you want?" she glowered with such intensity that Nick almost regretted leaving his Praetorians outside in the car. He hadn't counted on being shot by the wife.

  "Now now, Roberta," Lutch wheezed, wiping his mouth, "let's not be rude to our guest. I don't suppose he's come all the way out here for no good reason. Remember he's the one talked the company out of suing me for breach of contract."

  "I'd as soon feed him to the hogs as have him in my house." Fixing Nick with one last copper-jacketed shot of eyeball, she turned her back and started to leave. On her way out, she stopped and said, "You want some more morphine, hon?"

  "No thanks," Lorne said, "I'm doing just fine. But maybe our guest would like something."

  "Some morphine would be fine, thank you," Nick said. Mrs. Lutch disappeared, probably to mix Drano in with Nick's morphine.

  "I'll tell you," Lorne said, settling back into a big, torn armchair, "about the only nice thing about dying of cancer is the dope. The dreams I've been having… and in technicolor."

  "Must be amazing," Nick said.

  "Do you know what the word 'heroin' comes from? It's German. It was the Krauts who first come up with it, back in the nineteenth century; nicest thing Germany's ever done for the world, let me tell you. Heroisches. That's what it made people feel like. Heroic. Do you know, when I first started in on the chemotherapy, people for miles around here started bringing me marijuana brownies. Keeps the nausea down. You can get it in pill form, but they make you jumpthrough flaming hoops for it and then they put it in sesame seed oil so you won't get high. Don't you love that? God forbid people dying in pain should have a little pleasure on the way out. Anyhow, I got about ten pounds of pot brownies in the freezer."

  Nick thought: wouldn't Gomez love to know that, tumbleweed man arrested on drug charges.

  "Reckon I must have enough to get me sent away for the rest of my life," Lutch said. "You want one?"

  "No, thanks," Nick said. "Just the morphine. I better not mix."

  Lutch laughed, which made him cough again. This one went on longer than the last. Mrs. Lutch came running out with a nebulizer.

  "Excuse me," Lutch said, recovering finally. "Do you smoke?"

  "No," Nick said. "Since the kidnapping, I haven't been able to."

  "I read about that. Saw you on — weren't you on the Larry King show? Roberta said you were on same night as me. Funny we didn't run into each other in the studio."

  "Yeah," Nick said.

  "That must've been something. My doctor said you were one lucky son of a bitch." Lutch chuckled. "Said a few other things, too, I won't share with you. You know, doctors used to promote cigarettes."

  "That's right," Nick said, "twenty thousand six hundred seventy-nine physicians say, 'Luckies are less irritating.' "

  "I wonder how they're doing?" Lutch said caustically. "Strange business. In the early fifties, they had the first cancer scare, so they started making filter cigarettes. Then they got worried that men would think filter-tips were for pussies. That's where I came in."

  "You were great," Nick said. "I used to want to be you. I mean, when I was growing up. We all wanted to grow up and be cowboys."

  "Don't I know it. You know a song by George Jones, 'Hell Stays Open All Night Long'? I listen to it over and over."

  "You're being kind of tough on yourself, aren't you?"

  "Last year, after I got diagnosed, I flew East to attend the annual stockholders' meeting of Total Tobacco. And I stood up and told them that they at least ought to limit their advertising. And do you know what the president said to me?"

  Nick did know, but he shook his head.

  "He said, 'We're certainly sorry to hear about your medical problem. Without knowing your medical history, I don't think I can comment further.' Then they tried to pretend I never worked for them. I couldn't believe it. Even when I showed reporters my pay stubs, the company went on saying it wasn't me in those photographs. Then when I kept on making a fuss, they told me they were going to sue me — for breach of contract! I guess you were the one to put a halt to that."

  "Yeah," Nick said. "I told them it was a pretty dumb idea. Well, they can be assholes, there's no doubt about that."

  "Tell you something else. I never even smoked Tumbleweeds. I smoked Kools."

  Nick laughed.

  "You look like a nice enough fellah. What are you doing working for these assholes?"

  Somehow the usual business about needing to pay the mortgage didn't seem appropriate here. Nick looked about at the things on Lorne's wall — rodeo trophies, stuffed trout, family photographs mounted on brightly lacquered wood — and said, "I'm good at it. I'm better at doing this than I ever was at doing anything else."

  "Well hell, son, I was good at shooting Koreans, but I didn't make it a career."

  Nick laughed. Lutch looked at him for what felt like a long time, and said, "I suppose we all got to pay the mortgage somehow." Nick could have kissed him.

  "I was good at playing my role. People used to recognize me and ask me for my autograph. I don't know how much that's going to count for at the Pearly Gates, but I was just a dumb cowboy who wanted to be in pictures, whereas you," he smiled slyly, "look like about twenty thousand dollars' worth of college education." The smile was gone. "So why'd you come all the way out here for?"

  "Good question," Nick said, staring balefully at the attache case.

  "You here to talk me into shutting up? Is that what's in that case of yours?"

  "Yes, basically," Nick said. "No, not basically. That's exactly it." Lutch gave him a steely stare. "Look here," he said, "my dignity ain't for sale."

  "No," Nick said, "it's more complicated than that."

  "How do you mean?"

  "This is supposed to be an outright gift, no strings attached. The taxes have all been paid. You get to keep it no matter what you do. You're free to go bad-mouthing us. The idea is that you'll feel so guilty about trashing us that you might just say no the next time a producer for Oprah calls."

  Lutch stared at Nick. "Were you supposed to tell me all this?"

  "No. Just apologize, give you the money, and leave."

  "Then why are you telling me this?"

  "I don't really know," Nick said. "Not for reasons you might think. I don't believe in the Pearly Gates, or an open-twenty-four-hours hell. I like the guy I work for, the one who cooked up this idea, even though I told him we ought to just leave you alone. He's just freaked out, like the rest of them. And, I'll probably go on doing what I do. So I don't know why I'm doing it. Beats me."

  "You're a strange fellah, Nick."

  "I know people who'd agree with that. No," Nick said, "I should be honest, for once. I know why I told you."

  "Why?"

  "Because this way, you'll take the money."

  "Why would I do that?"

  "Because you're mad. The first thing you'll do is call the L.A. Times, KBLA and tell them to get out here right away."

  "You're damn right about that."

  "By the way, don't forget CNN. And insist on Bonnie Dalton, their top L.A. person. Do you rememb
er her from the cracks in Hoover Dam story last year? She's got the perfect touch for something like this. She does very good controlled outrage without going overboard. Also, she's good-looking. Bonnie Dalton. Tell them no Bonnie, no story, they can watch it on KBLA."

  "Okay," Lutch said. "Bonnie Dalton."

  "Now if I were you, I'd open up the case and dump all the cash out onto the floor."

  "Why?"

  "It'll look much more effective. Here, look." Nick dumped the money out. "And shake it like this to get the last bundle out. Also, it would be great if you could cough while you're doing it. The whole time you're dumping, you should be denouncing, sort of build up to the last piece of silver. You might even call it that. You know, as in the thirty pieces of silver, from the Bible, the Judas payoff. Then you tell them what you're going to do with it."

  "What am I going to do with it?"

  "You're going to give it to the cancer ranch. Of course."

  "Well, I do have a family. "

  "Whoa, Lorne. You can't keep the money."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "How's that going to look? Denouncing us and then keeping it? It's blood money. Look at it." They both stared at the bundles of hundred-dollar bills on the floor. Lot of money.

  "I'm going to have to talk this over with Roberta," Lutch said, shifting uneasily in his seat.

  Nick drove back to L.A. fast. He got pulled over for going ninety-two miles an hour. The cop wrote him up for the full amount. Nick didn't argue.

  The next morning Gomez O'Neal called Nick at the Encomium. "We just heard that Lorne Lutch canceled out of a local TV talk show for next week. Nice going."

  The Captain called five minutes later. "Gomez O'Neal tells me it worked. I knew it would. Good work, son."

  BR called. "I gather things are going well out there."

  Nick hung up and called Lutch. "Lorne," he said, annoyed, "what's going on?"

  "Roberta and I are still thinking about it," he said.

  "Look, it's not going to do any good to denounce us a week or a month from now. Outrage is like fish, it's got to be fresh. Do it today. It really should have been yesterday."

  "Suppose," Lutch said, "I denounced you for giving me a hundred thousand dollars? Would that be all right with your people?"