The conversation over the table by the fake fireplace at Bert's was strictly sotto voce today. Nick, Polly, and Bobby Jay hunched inward, like revolutionaries discussing bombs in a Paris cafe.
Bobby Jay was livid over this news about Finisterre. When he was governor of Vermont, Finisterre had pushed through a very tough anti-handgun bill — as far as SAFETY was concerned — requiring a forty-eight-hour waiting period and limiting purchases to one per week. Now that he'd bought himself a Senate seat with family money, he could inflict his Neo-Puritanism on the national scene.
"There's nothing wrong," Bobby Jay said, crunching into a large Italian pepper, squirting a bit of fiery green juice onto Polly's dress, "with that little buck-toothed son of a bitch that a hundred grains of soft lead couldn't set right."
Much as it did Nick's heart good to get such sympathy, Bobby Jay's reaction seemed a tad extreme, especially for a born-again Christian.
"Do you have any ideas for me," Nick said, "short of assassinating him?" Nick pulled the carnation out of the vase and examined it closely.
"What are you doing?" Polly said.
"Checking for bugs. As long as we're discussing shooting U.S. senators."
Bobby Jay took the flower and spoke into it. "I have the highest regard for Senator Ortolan K. Finisterre."
"He's just in a bad mood," Polly said, "because another mail carrier went berserk this week and turned a post office into a slaughterhouse.
By the way, I meant to ask you — how was he able to legally purchase a grenade launcher?"
"Do I get on your case every time some drunk teenager runs over a Nobel laureate?" Bobby Jay said. "And by the way, pepper juice doesn't come out."
Nick said, "I believe we were talking about my problem."
"I assume you're backing Finisterre's opponent," Polly said.
"Oh yeah. He's going to be rolling in soft money. And hard money. But that doesn't do us a whole lot of good. The election is in November, and this is now."
"Well," Polly said, "do you have anything on him?"
"He's a fornicator," Bobby Jay said. "Married and divorced three times, and Lord only knows how many pop tarts in between."
"Shocking as that may be to the American people, I was thinking something more, I don't know, lurid. Kink, whips 'n' things? God," she said, exhaling a long, philosophical stream of smoke, "listen to us. I was going to be secretary of state."
"What's the matter?" Bobby Jay said. "Can't stand the heat? Life is a dirty, rotten job and someone's got to do it."
"Go shoot a whale." She said to Nick, "Isn't your guy — Garcia? — on the case?"
"Gomez. Yeah. They're probably going over his credit card slips right about now."
"Don't forget his video rental records. Remember what those swine did to poor Judge Thomas."
"I'm confident," Nick said, "that Gomez O'Neal isn't one to overlook those."
"Won't do any good. They all use cutouts now. Probably has someone on his staff renting his dirty movies. Pharisee."
"He was a bit of a playboy when he was younger. And thinner. He did used to get drunk a lot. Got stopped for DUI once."
"Oh, please," Polly said, "stay off that if you can. Anyway, it's ancient history. He was the one who lowered Vermont's legal BAC to.08, hypocritical bastard. Typical. Just because he used to get loaded and drive, now anyone who takes two sips of chardonnay loses their license for six months. And what are you supposed to do, in Vermont? Call a cab?"
"You realize you're next, don't you?" Nick said. "If he gets away with putting skulls and bones on cigarettes, how long do you think it's going to be before he's going to want to slap them on scotch, beer, and wine?"
"There's no room for any more warning labels," Polly said bitterly. "I'm surprised we don't have to say that you shouldn't swallow the bottle."
"We're all finished," Nick said morosely. "Despair is a mortal sin," Bobby Jay said.
"My entire product line is about to be moved from the cash register over to the "Household Poisons" shelf and the FBI thinks I covered myself with nicotine patches. I think frankly that I'm entitled to a little despair."
Polly put her hand on top of his. "Let's take it step by step."
"She's right," Bobby Jay said. "There's only one way to eat an elephant. One spoonful at a time."
"What is that supposed to be, redneck haiku? Can we please get real?"
Bobby Jay leaned in close. "We have friends inside the J. Edgar Hoover building. Lemme see what I can find out."
"About an ongoing investigation? Good luck."
"You might be surprised. A whole lotta bonding goes on at a firing range. Never know what you might pick up with the empties."
"Well," Nick sighed, "tell them to go arrest some more Islamic Fundamentalists."
"All right, we're making progress," Polly said. "Bobby Jay's taking care of your FBI problem. So now you only have to figure out what to do with Finisterre. He's got to have a weak spot. Everyone does."
"What am I going to do? Attack him on MacNeil-Lehrer for renting Wet Coeds?"
"Heyy," Polly said, taking him by the shoulder, "where's the old Neo-Puritan dragon slayer? Where's the guy I used to know who could stand up in a crowded theater and shout, 'There's no link between smoking and disease'?"
Nick looked at her, and was seized with the old swelling for Polly. But this was no time to think about that, as he was semi-involved with Heather and certainly involved with Jeannette. Pity. He and Polly would be. well, anyway, she was right. You want an easy job? Go flack for the Red Cross.
The waitress arrived to tell them about the dessert specials. She was new; Bert hadn't briefed her that table six was never, ever, to be told about the day's specials.
"We have apple pie," she said, "and it's served a la mode, with ice cream, or with Vermont cheddar cheese, which is real good."
"So," Polly said, once the waitress had been shooed away, "so what's the deal with Fiona Fontaine's hair? Nick? Nick?"
It felt like he was in an isolation chamber, being observed by scientists on closed-circuit TV. He didn't even get to watch his interrogator and the other guest on a monitor. All he'd get was audio — and that lens, staring at him unwinkingly like a great, glassy, fish-eyed, man-eating cyclops.
Koppel preferred it this way — himself alone in the studio, his interviewees off in others. TV news's equivalent of the one-way mirror in police stations. It gave him the advantage of not having to cope with his subjects' corporeality. This way he would not be distracted by their nervous body language and take pity on them. Only special guests got to sit next to him, such as the disgraced former presidential candidate who, months later, selected Nightline to try to explain why — on earth — he had blown his kingdom for a blow job.
"Thirty seconds," Nick heard in his earpiece. He was nervous. He'd been on Nightline before but the stakes had never been this high. He could feel himself being watched, could sense on the other side of the lens the Captain, BR, Polly, Jeannette — watching in the greenroom, a few doors away — Heather, Lorne Lutch, Joey, his proud mother — my son, the tobacco spokesman — Jack Bein and maybe even Jeff Megall, who would be hoping that Nick would fail miserably, for the Lese majeste of having declined his meal of transparent raw fish.
Be cool, he told himself. In a hot medium, coolness is all, limpidity is better, and not picking your nose is key. He did his breathing exercise, a ten-second breath let out in twelve. He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind. Somewhere he had read that it takes Japanese monks twenty years of silence, green tea, and brown rice to empty
theirs. Tonight, however, he wasn't looking for enlightenment, just a reduced pulse rate.
Suddenly through the earpiece he heard — violent coughing. Was it the engineer?
Oh no, for up came the familiar voice-over: "Cigarettes. some estimates are that as many as half a million Americans will die this year from smoking."
Swell, Nick thought, we're off to a fine start: an image of a terminal cancer patient spitting up burst alveoli.
"Yet despite," Koppel continued, "the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 requiring stiff warning labels on cigarettes, people continue to smoke. Now, a U.S. senator. "
Nick did another breathing exercise.
"Good evening. From Washington, I'm Ted Koppel and this… is Nightline."
That trademark pause reminded Nick of the beat that Edward R. Murrow used to insert in his famous wartime radio dispatches from London during the blitz. "This… is London." Dear old chain-smoking old Edward R. Murrow. Dear old, dead old Edward R. Murrow.
". later, we'll be joined by Vermont Senator Ortolan K. Finisterre, author of the Senate bill, and by Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby. But first, this report from correspondent Chris Wallace. "
Wallace's wretchedly thorough report brought up the Lancet study predicting 250 million deaths worldwide from smoking by the end of the century — one in every five people in the industrialized nations. Bitch of a study, that one. Nick made a mental note to try, anyway, to cast aspersions on the world's most respected medical journal.
"Let me start with you, Senator. Cigarettes already carry explicit warnings. Why do you need this additional label?"
"Well, Ted, as you pointed out in your excellent introduction…"
Brown-nose. But — a miscalculation! Koppel was too proud to be blatantly sucked up to, especially by a politician.
"But surely the warning is already dramatic," he riposted. Nick cheered him on. "It states the risks. 'Lung cancer,' 'emphysema,' 'heart disease,' 'fetal asphyxiation.' Why do we need a skull and bones?"
"Unfortunately, Ted, many people in America can't read, or can't read English, so this measure is very specifically intended for their benefit. I think we have a responsibility to those people."
"All right. Mr. Naylor, and I should point out that however people feel about smoking, you've certainly been a front-line warrior for your industry, by virtue of having been recently kidnapped and nearly killed by an apparently radical anti-smoking group—"
"Apparent to me," Nick said.
"Perhaps I should start by asking you if you believe that cigarettes are harmful." A softball.
"Well, Ted, I take what I'd call the scientific position, namely that a lot more research is needed before we come to any responsible conclusion on the matter."
Good, excellent. In a single sentence he had allied himself with Responsible Science.
"Even though there have been to date more than sixty thousand studies showing a link between smoking and cancer alone?"
Nick gave a world-weary nod of the head to indicate that he was not surprised that this raggedy-ass canard had been dragged out. "I think I recognize that figure you just cited, Ted. If I'm not mistaken, it comes from former Surgeon General Koop's book, the one he got a rather substantial advance for."
"I'm not sure what you're suggesting."
"Just that Mr. Koop, like many other political figures, is not without his own agenda."
A bit tortured, perhaps, but he'd at least kicked a little putative dirt onto the shoes of a venerable doctor, a pediatric surgeon, at that. A man who saved the lives of. little children. Don't think about that! Thank God Koop looked like Captain Ahab with that scary beard of his.
He could sense Ortolan K. Finisterre frantically waving his arms in the air at Teacher. "Ted, may I comment on that?"
Koppel, however, was not about to yield his conch shell to a brown-noser who owed his political career to some nut who'd blown up his president-uncle thirty years ago at Disney World.
"I'm not sure if I understand, Mr. Naylor. You're saying that after tens of thousands of studies and, frankly, an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that cigarettes are harmful, that it's still an open question as to whether or not they're harmful?"
"Ted, twenty years ago the scientists were telling us that we were all going to die of artificial sweeteners. Now they're telling us — we goofed, never mind. The more cyclamates, the better. So I think any scientist worth his or her salt — or in this case, sugar — would tell you that the first principle of science is — doubt."
Koppel sounded amused, in a disgusted sort of way. "All right, let's for the sake of argument suppose that it is still an open question. But would you agree that until such a time as there is conclusive evidence that smoking is harmful, that we ought to err on the side of prudence and protect society against the possibility — to use as neutral a term as I can — that it might be harmful, and therefore put Senator Finisterre's labels on cigarettes?"
Subtle bastard.
"Well," Nick laughed softly, tolerantly, "sure, but we're going to have to print up an awful lot of warning labels to cover all the things in fife that might not be a hundred percent safe." But enough palaver. It was time to pull the pin on the hand grenade that the waitress had given him. "But the irony in all this, Ted, is that the real, demonstrated number-one killer in America is cholesterol. I don't know any scientists who would disagree with that. And here comes Senator Finisterre, whose fine and beautiful state is, I regret to have to say, clogging the nation's arteries with Vermont cheddar cheese, with this proposal to plaster us with rat-poison labels."
"That's absolutely absurd. Ted, may I—"
"if I might be allowed to finish?" Nick said, snatching back the mike. "I was merely going to say that I'm sure that the tobacco industry would consent to having these labels put on our product, if he will acknowledge the tragic role that his product is playing, by putting the same warning labels on these deadly chunks of solid, low-density lipoprotein that go by the name of Vermont cheddar cheese."
"Ted! — "