“You see that?" a U.S. park policeman said to his partner as they sat in their cruiser on Constitution Avenue near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"Late for joggers," the other yawned.
"Better check it out." They got out and walked toward Constitution Gardens and shone their flashlights at the object of their curiosity. It was a male, Caucasian — though the skin had a strange, lifeless hue and texture to it — six feet, 170 pounds, brown hair, athletic build. He was stumbling at the edge of the lagoon. Doper, for sure.
"Sir. SIR. Stop and turn around, please."
"Did you see his face?"
"Yeah. Like a deer on speed. What's that all over his body?" "Bandages?"
"Anything about any escapees from Saint E's?" "Nothing. Son of a bitch is fast. Look at him go." "Coke?"
"Nah, that's angel dust."
They cornered him on the small island in Constitution Gardens, where the preamble to the Declaration of Independence is carved into granite beneath your feet, along with the signers' names.
"Sir?"
"Get away from me! I don't even like your movies! I hated Casablanca1."
"What's he talking about?"
"Easy does it, buddy. No one's going to hurt you."
"Get me the surgeon general! I have urgent information for the surgeon general]"
"Okay, pal, we'll go see the surgeon general." "No one must know but her!"
"That's right, buddy. What's that around your neck?" "It's a sign."
" 'Executed for crimes against hominy.' " " 'Humanity.' "
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know, but for someone who's been executed, he's moving pretty fast."
"He looks like he's been executed." "Oh boy, stand back."
"That's okay, pal. Take a deep breath. I never saw anyone spew like that."
"He's on some dope. Better call the medics. Whup, stand back, there he goes again."
"What's the matter, pal, something you ate?"
"You know what they look like — those smokers' things, the patches."
"Joe Rinckhouse tried those things. He's still smoking." "I bet he didn't put on that many. Hey buddy, you okay?" "No, he's not okay. Look at him." "Think we oughta do CPR on him." "Be my guest." "Uh-uh. It's your turn."
"Let's wait for the medics. I don't like this. It could be some new sex thing."
"Good thinking."
"Coming through!" "What do we have?"
"John Doe, four plus agitated, vomiting, dry as a bone. BP two-forty over one-twenty. Vomiting, erythema. Pulse one-eighty and regular. Looks like PAT."
"Sir? Sir, can you hear me? SIR? Okay, let's get a Nipride drip going. Get up verapamil, ten milligrams IV push. Today, please."
"Coming."
"What are those things all over him?"
"Looks like nicotine patches, a lot of them."
"Maybe it's the new suicide of the nineties."
"Let's get them off him. Fast. There's enough here to kill a horse."
"Ouch, this poor guy is going to be sore."
"This guy is going to be dead. Sir? SIR? What is your name?"
"Uh-oh. V-fib!!"
"Okay, he's going to have to ride the lightning. Crank it up to max. Gimme the paddles. Ready? Stand back." Vvvvwvvwu mp. "Again. Clear." Vwvwvvvvump.
"I like it! I like it! Back on sinus rhythm. Start the lidocaine drip."
Nick awoke to the sound of bleeping machines and a headache that made him wish that he had not survived. His mouth tasted like it had been filled with hot tar and pigeon droppings. His hands, feet, and nose were cold as ice. He was conscious of wires leading to his chest and tubes leading in and out of every bodily orifice but one, thank God.
He'd had this very strange dream. Dr. Wheat had gone bonkers while Nick was on the table hooked up to the DC current machine. He increased the voltage enough to power the Washington Metrorail system, while cackling maniacally to Nick that this was his big opportunity of getting into The New England Journal of Medicine.
"Ohhh," he groaned, alerting a nurse, who scurried off for a doctor. People in white came and hovered. There were hushed conversations. A voice addressed him.
"Mr. Naylor?"
"Urrr."
He heard dimly the word morphine, followed by a warm sensation in his arm, followed by. visions of a voluptuous red-haired woman, with glasses, naked, on a horse.
Horse?
Suits entered the room.
"Mr. Naylor? I'm Special Agent Monmaney, FBI. This is Special
Agent Allman. We've been assigned to your case. Can you tell us what happened?"
Nick peered through the druggy haze at the cavalry. Monmaney was tall, rangy, with intense, pale, timber wolf eyes. Graying at the temples. Good, a G-man with experience. Allman was stocky, built like a fireplug. Excellent. He could be the one to beat Peter Lorre's face into rennet custard. He had a ruddy, almost jovial sort of face that made him look Eke everyone's favorite high school teacher. Nick would have preferred him to look leaner and meaner, like Monmaney, but that was all right, as long as they functioned like a team and their guns were oiled. He saw Peter Lorre, on his knees, begging them for mercy as they emptied their 9mms into his chest.
A tsunami-sized wave of nausea rolled through him. Nick's eyes went groggily back to Monmaney, who was peering at him without sympathy. Yes, a real killer, this one, looked like he flossed with piano wire.
They asked questions. Many questions. The same questions, over and over and over. Nick told them what he knew, which was that he had been abducted and tortured by a dead Hungarian movie star. He told them about hurling his cappuccinos at the bum. Surely someone on K Street had witnessed that. His last memory? Feeling like his heart was trying very urgently to exit his body, along with everything he had eaten in the last two years. Speaking of which, boy was he hungry. Gazelle had brought him Double-Stuff Oreo cookies, the kind with extra cream filling inside, but the nurses took one look at it and carried the bag out of the room like it was toxic waste.
Agent Monmaney made him go over it again and again and again, until he was tempted to start making things up just out of sheer boredom. Agent Allman merely stood by, nodding pleasantly, looking jovial. A little sympathy would have been nice. But it was all detail, detail, detail. Nick became annoyed. He was tempted to ask them what was their last assignment, driving tanks in Waco?
Mercifully, Dr. Williams came in and they left. As soon as they were gone he started telling jokes about J. Edgar Hoover wearing pink tutus. Dr. Williams was Nick's new cardiologist, a very pleasant fellow in his early fifties with a hearing aid that was the result of having served as a navy doctor aboard destroyers during Vietnam.
The idea of being in the care of a cardiologist at only age forty alarmed Nick, but Dr. Williams set him at ease by explaining in a clear and friendly way exactly what had happened.
He had had a very close call. The massive dosage of nicotine had caused a condition called paroxysmal atrial tachycardia, which he likened to driving along at sixty miles per hour and suddenly shifting into first gear. The heart is asked to do things it wasn't made to do, namely pump at an insanely fast rate. In the Emergency Room, the PAT had degenerated into ventricular fibrillation, where the fibers of the heart muscles go wormy and stop pumping blood efficiently, thus depriving his brain of oxygen. The massive electrical charge administered, in microseconds, through the defibrillator paddles arrested all the heart's own electrical activity and permitted its own pacemaker to restore vital functions as a pump. Nick took it all in, struggling against great weariness. It occurred to him, during the portion of the lecture on defibrillation, that between Dr. Wheat and now this, he had spent a lot of his life being electrocuted. Dr. Williams said that, ironically, it was his smoking that had probably saved him. That many patches on a non-smoker would almost certainly have brought about cardiac arrest sooner.
The second morning, a nurse came in to check on his wires and tubes and noticed that his chest had been smeared with nitroglycerin jelly, a precaution to offset the toxic effects of nicotine. She went pale, then looked angry as she wiped it away, muttering, "Jesus Christ," which got Nick's attention. At first she was reluctant to say what the problem was. Finally she. told him that NTG was always to go on the arms, never, ever, ever on the chest. Why? Because if his heart had gone wormy again in the middle of the night and they'd come running in with the cart and put the paddles on his chest where the nitroglycerin was. she made a boom gesture with her hands. She stormed off in search of the orderly, leaving Nick to wonder if he might be safer in his own bed at home.
He had many visitors. His mother brought Joey, who was technically fascinated by the story of how the orderly had turned his father into a human bomb, and peppered Nick with questions as to where he could buy nitroglycerin jelly and defibrillators.
Bobby Jay and Polly came with flowers and fruit baskets and illicit cheesburgers and Bloody Marys, compliments of Bert. They also brought the fake fireplace from Bert's Grill, just to make him feel at home, a very thoughtful gesture, though the nurse forebade them to plug it in. Polly got all teary-eyed when she saw how pale he was; and blue, in parts, from where the vasoconstricting nicotine had shut off the blood to his extremities. Nick hadn't yet started entertaining sexual thoughts, but he hoped, how he hoped, that when he did, the shutoff of blood would not have had long-ranging effects on those particular extremities.
Jeannette came, twice, sometimes three times a day. She was very concerned, very caring about it all. Nick wondered if he hadn't misjudged her. It's tough being a woman in a man's world, so, clearly, some women get tough, but that doesn't mean they're dykes or dominatrixes. She brought truffles and strawberries from Sutton Place Gourmet and flowers, interesting flowers that, well, seemed rather sexual, frankly. Could she do anything for him? Check on his apartment? Pick up his dry cleaning? Clear his messages? Take Joey to his Little League games?
BR came by, acting like Patton on a surprise inspection, storming off to notify the hospital's chief administrator that this was one Very Important Patient in Room 608 and by God he expected Nick to be treated as such, even if she had to bring the bedpan in herself at four in the morning. He called Nick five times a day with a progress report. The Academy — the entire tobacco industry — was enraged by this and was calling in all its congressional chits, demanding that tobacco state members call on the White House to put pressure on the attorney general to put pressure on the FBI. (Perhaps that explained Agent Monmaney's brusque bedside manner.)
The Captain called regularly with his progress reports as he worked his way through his congressional Rolodex. He had spoken with Senator Jordan, the Gulfstream-hogging whore, informing him that he expected him personally to call the President and instruct him to tell the FBI to get on the hump and nail these sons of bitches. Or he'd had his last free ride on his G-5.
It was very gratifying. Nick was extremely touched. Tobacco takes care of its own.
Heather snuck in after visiting hours so that she wouldn't run into any Academy staffers. She and Nick had decided to keep their little thing between them, just for security's sake. He didn't want BR and everyone else to know he was sleeping with the enemy; not that she'd written an entirely unflattering piece, but in BR's book, all reporters were the enemy.
She sat at the foot of Nick's bed, wearing a light summer dress with her hair up in a Gibson girlish sort of way, strands of hair dribbling down her neck. She looked quite alluring. Nick, however, lacked the energy to talk amorally, her kind of verbal foreplay, so he just listened to her talk about how she'd gotten a job interview with Atherton Blair, the rather self-satisfied, bow-tie-wearing, Ivy League assistant managing editor of the Sun, Washington's legit paper. She was working on a story about the new image guy that the President had hired; she had information that he'd once done some consulting for a close relative of Erich Honecker, the former East German dictator who'd built the Berlin Wall.
Jeannette called the next day to say that she had "convinced" Katie Couric of the Today show to do a live remote interview from his hospital bed. Nice as Jeannette had been, Nick doubted she'd had to do much arm-twisting to bring about an interview. Nick was frontpage, above-the-fold news, for crying out loud. They'd been deluged with interview requests.
"I don't want you to think that we're in any way capitalizing on this," she said, "but if you're feeling up to it, I don't think we should pass this up."
True enough, Nick's kidnapping had been a godsend, after a fashion. The gasper groups were falling all over themselves trying to distance themselves from the "nico-terrorists" — as the perpetrators had been dubbed by the tabloid press — and were busily denouncing this "deplorable," "extreme," "repellent," "intolerable" act. Even Nick's Oprah punching bag, Ron Goode, was quoted in Newsweek as saying that no matter what his personal opinion of Nick was, he certainly didn't deserve to be murdered for his views. Doubtless, he'd been coached, swine; and just as doubdess, it had killed him to say it.
"Thanks, Bryant. Four days ago, Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby, was abducted outside his office in Washington,D.C. He was found, later that night, with a sign around his neck that
said he had been, and I quote, 'Executed for crimes against humanity.' His body was covered with a lethal number of nicotine patches, the kind prescribed for smokers who want to give up. According to doctors at George Washington University Hospital, he was near death when he was brought in. The FBI is investigating the case, which seems to indicate that at least one element of the anti-smoking movement has adopted the tactics of terrorists. Mr. Naylor joins us this morning from his bed at George Washington University hospital. Good morning."
"Good morning, Katie."
"I know this has been quite an ordeal for you. My first question to you — How did you survive? Reports are that you were literally covered with patches."
"Well, Katie, I guess you could say that smoking saved my life."
"How?"
"As a smoker, a pastime I happen to enjoy along with fifty-five million other adult Americans, I was able to absorb the dosage, though it did almost kill me. If those policeman hadn't found me when they did, I wouldn't be chatting with you today."
"We'll get back to the issue of smoking—"
"If I might point out, Katie, this just goes to prove what we've been saying for some time now, namely, don't mess with these nicotine patches. They're killers."
"But not if you use them as directed, surely."
"Katie, out of respect for your viewers, I won't go into what these things did to me, the nausea, the projectile vomiting, the paroxysmal atrial tachycardia, the cutting off of blood to the brain, the numbness and cold in your extremities, the horrible skin rash, the blurred vision and migrainous neuralgia. So I won't go into all that, except to say, If that's what a bunch of these patches can do, well, huh, I can only imagine what just one could do to a normal, healthy smoker. So put me down for a big resounding, Just say no."
"We understand that a note from the kidnappers was delivered to the Washington Sun."
"I'm not sure I'm supposed to comment on that, Katie."
"It's in today's edition."
"It is?"
"So it's already out there. Would you like to hear what it says?" "Uh. "
"Quote, Nick Naylor is responsible for the deaths of billions—" "Billions? Millions, surely." "No, it says billions."
"Well, that's absurd. I've only been with the Academy for six years, so even if you accepted the 435,000-a-year figure, which of course is completely nonsense anyway, I would only have been quote responsible unquote for what, two-point-six million. So I don't know where this individual is getting 'billions' from? What am I, McDonald's?"
"Should I go on?"
"Please, yes, by all means, I'm fascinated."
"He was dispatched as a warning to the tobacco industry. If they don't stop making cigarettes right now, we will dispatch others."
"Was this by any chance written on the surgeon general's letterhead?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I thought I recognized her style. No, of course, I'm kidding, Katie. Humor, you know. The best medicine…"
"Do you have any idea who might have done this to you?"
"No, but if those people are listening, as I'm sure they are, being probably big fans of yours as I certainly am, I'd like to say to them, Come forward, turn yourselves in. I'm not going to press charges."
"You won't?"
"No, Katie, I think people who would do something like this need help, more than anything."
"That's a very tolerant point of view."
"Well, Katie, you can't spell tolerance without the t in tobacco. Our position all along has been, we understand there are people who care strongly about smoking. We're saying, Let's work together on this. Let's get some dialogue going. This is a big country, and there's plenty of room in it for smoking and nonsmoking areas."
The first call was from the Captain. "Brilliant, son, brilliant."
BR called. "I gotta hand it to you, Nick, you blew us all away. We're out of breath here."
Jeannette came on. "Nick, you give great talking head."
Polly called, laughing. "What was that all about?" "It's not up to me," Nick said. "I just hope it turns out to be Virginia they took me to and not Maryland." "Why?"
"Because," Nick said, "Virginia has the death penalty."