Thank You for Smoking

'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