Thank You for Smoking

"Polly…" But Nick was too morally exhausted to proclaim his innocence twice in an hour. Then it occurred to him that if the FBI was listening in on this conversation — and God knows they were able to listen in on ground lines, too — he'd better at least go through the motions of being outraged. Yet Polly, dear Polly, only made it worse by continuing to say that she didn't care,it didn't matter,she was behind him 110 percent. If there was a phrase to titillate the tappers, surely it was that, from a woman: I'mbehindyou110percent.

Jeannette hadn't been questioned by the FBI, thank God. She'd called because she'd wanted to "do a quick mind-meld" with him on the Finisterre bombshell. She was wondering if it wouldn't make sense to leak it themselves ahead of Finisterre's announcement, so that they could give it their own spin: Pitiful,isn'tit,thatSenatorFinisterre,in ordertogetpeople'smindsoffthefactthathe'sgettingdivorcedyetagain, is grandstandingwiththishystericalnonsense,andintheprocess,insultingthe intelligenceoftheAmericanpeoplebytreatingthemlikeilliteraterats?Not bad, Nick thought. Smart, Jeannette. He complimented her. She purred, "I have a good mentor."

"By the way," he said, sounding suavely casual — no sense in BR freaking out at a time like this over one of his employees being under suspicion—"the FBI is apparently poking around asking dumb personal questions."

"What jerks," she said.

"Yeah, but do me a favor. If they come to you, tell them everything."

"Everything?" she laughed.

"Well," Nick said, "by way of the facts. I don't have anything to hide from them."

"Get an early flight back," she sizzled. "I want you."

Nick was zipping up his garment bag when Jack Bein called, aggrieved that nearly an hour had gone by without Nick's having returned his call. In a city where everything took forever, forty-five minutes was an eternity.

"Jeff thought the meeting went really well, and," Jack said, with the air of announcing the winner of a lottery, "he wants you to come to dinner tonight at his home. Normally, Jeff doesn't invite new clients to eat with him at home. He's a very private person. It's a sign of how much he respects you. It'll be just you, Fiona, and Mace. Plus Jerry Gornick and Voltan Zeig, the producers. He's serving something very special. I can never get the name of it straight, I'm not very good at Japanese — I better get better, right? — but it's transparent sushi. They bring it all the way up from the bottom of the Mariana Trench. From like thousands of feet down, where the really strange creatures are. Jurassic squid. You know, those things with eyeballs on the end of their antennae? Frankly I'm not so crazy for it. Personally, I like fish you can't see through, but it's incredibly rare, and you cannot get this stuff in even the best restaurants. Jeff has a connection through Sumitashi International, which you didn't hear from me about. Usually, Jeff only serves it if like Ovitz or Eisner are coming, so it's a terrific tribute to his feelings for you."

Nick explained that, honored as he was, he'd just been called backto Washington on urgent business. There was a long pause. Jack sounded mortally wounded. "Nick, I don't know how to put this, but what could be more important than this?"

The bellman was knocking on the door. His flight left in — Jesus— fifty-five minutes. "Trust me, Jack, it's big. I'll call you later, from my coast."

20

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."