'Absolutely none,' said MacMordie. 'Now if this guy Piper was a gay liberationist Jew-baiter with a nigger boyfriend from Cuba called O'Hara I could really call up some muscle. But with a product that screws old women...'
'MacMordie, how often have I got to tell you what the product is and what the action is are two separate things? There doesn't have to be any connection. You've got to get coverage any way you can.'
'Yes but with a British author nobody's ever heard of and a first-timer who wants to know?'
'I do,' said Hutchmeyer. 'I do and I want a hundred million TV viewers to know too. And I mean know. This guy Piper has to be famous this time next week and I don't care how. You can do what you like just so long as when he steps ashore it's like Lindbergh's flown the Atlantic first time. So you get yourself a pussy posse and every pressure group and lobby you can find and see he gets charisma.'
'Charisma?' said MacMordie doubtfully. 'With the picture we've got of him for the cover you want charisma too? He looks sick or something.'
'So he's sick! Who cares what he looks like? All that matters is he becomes the spinster's prayer overnight. Get Women's Lib involved, and that's a good idea of yours about the fags.'
'We get a lot of little old ladies and the Ms brigade and the gays down on the docks could be we'd have a riot on our hands.'
'That's right,' said Hutchmeyer, 'a riot. Throw the lot at him. A cop gets hurt is good. And some old lady has a coronary, that's good too. She gets pushed in the drink is better still. By the time we've finished with his image this Piper's going to be like he was pied.'
'Pied?' said MacMordie.
'With rats for Chrissake.'
'Rats? You want rats too?'
Hutchmeyer looked at him dolefully. 'Sometimes, MacMordie, I think you've just got to be goddam illiterate,' he snarled. 'Anyone would think you'd never heard of Edgar Allan Poe. And another thing. When Piper's finished stirring the shit publicitywise down here I want him put on the plane up to Maine. Baby wants to meet him.'
'Mrs Hutchmeyer wants to meet this jerk?' said MacMordie.
Hutchmeyer nodded helplessly. 'Right. Like she was crazy for me to get her that guy who wrote about cracking his whip all the time. What the fuck was his name?'
'Portnoy,' said MacMordie. 'We couldn't get him. He wouldn't come.'
'Was that surprising? It was a wonder he could walk after what he'd done to himself. That stuff saps you.'
'We didn't publish him either,' said MacMordie.
'Well there's that too,' Hutchmeyer agreed, 'but we publish this Piper and if Baby wants him she's going to have him. You know something, MacMordie, you'd think at her age and all the operations she's had and being on a diet and all she'd have laid off a bit. I mean, can you do it twice a day every goddam day of the year? Well, me neither. But that woman is insatiable. She's going to eat this cunt-lapper Piper alive.'
MacMordie made a note to book the company plane for Piper.
'Could be there won't be so much of him to eat by the time the reception committee down here is finished with him,' he said morosely. 'The way you want it things could get rough.'
'The rougher the better. By the time my fucking wife is through with him he's going to know just how rough things can get. You know what that woman's been into now?'
'No,' said MacMordie. 'Bears,' said Hutchmeyer.
'Bears?' said MacMordie. 'You don't mean it. Isn't that a little dangerous? I'd have to be fucking desperate to even think of bears. I knew a woman once who had this German Shepherd but '
