Red Rag Blues (14 page)

Julie killed the set.

“The schmuck,” she said. “The prize prick. He finked on us. What an asshole.” Her voice was harsh. “All that shit about telling the Committee to go fuck themselves! What a … what a …” She couldn't think of a bad enough word and it was making her so furious that Luis took the highball glass from her hand before she threw it. That was a five-dollar glass.

“Okay, so Max is a schmuck and a pig and he's betrayed all his finer principles,” Luis said. “But what actual harm has he done anyone?”

“He sold Billy down the river.”

“Billy was already so far down the river, he was lost at sea. Besides, he has no TV. He'll never know.”

“Jesus Christ! Whose side are you on?”

“Posterity. I'm for the winners. The rest is noise. Thunder and blunder.” He was impatient with her rage. So Max fluffed his lines; who cared? They were crappy lines to start with.

But any second now, he or she would say the unforgiveable and bang! all today's enjoyment would go out the window. They were saved by the bell. Bonnie Scott phoned. Julie answered and they swapped profanities. Luis finished both martinis and went out, ate a hamburger, saw a movie at the Biograph.
Casablanca.
The audience knew every line. When he got home she was in bed.

*

They understood each other well enough to stay apart for a while. She took the train to Westchester, met some old friends, came home late. He explored New York in his Studebaker. He stopped often at diners or coffee shops: the great American invention, he thought. Iced tea, iced coke, chilled milk. Then out in the baking heat again. He got lost, often. Didn't matter. Had money, wouldn't run out of gas. Got home late.

She was fresh out of the shower. Her hair was still wet; it coiled like a mass of little black snakes. She was wearing old jeans and one of his new shirts, loose. He approached cautiously, kissed the side of her neck, and sniffed. “Peachy,” he said.

She opened his shirt and licked the hollow above a collarbone. “Salty,” she said.

So that was all right.

They had dinner at a small French restaurant where they could eat in a quiet courtyard: onion soup, chicken grilled with tarragon, a bottle of chilled rosé. “I used to bring clients here,” Julie said. “That was before I got caught in the flood.”

“Everyone else knows your scandalous past.” He poured more wine. “So tell me.”

She was tired of not telling him. She told.

She had worked for Newport, Bowie, Scutt, Mayo, an ad agency. She was what they called “copy-contact.” Most agencies used account executives to present the stuff; NBSM believed in letting the client meet the creative people, especially when she had good legs.

Julie was at lunch with her client, plus a couple of suits from NBSM and—unusually—the art director who worked on that account. Eugene Sulakov, born in St. Petersburg a few years before it became Leningrad, father killed fighting the Austrians, mother escaped to America. Eugene was medically 4F: he wore glasses as thick as ashtrays, and spent World War Two in Kansas, designing camouflage for the army. That was about all anyone at NBSM knew of him. If you smiled, he smiled. Eugene let others talk. He ate.

The client was Brandon LeBeq, ad manager for Snowy Mountain Coffee, the stuff which kick-started half of America into a better day. LeBeq had been an intelligence officer all through the Pacific war. Then, men's lives depended on his judgment. Now he sold coffee.

Somebody mentioned Korea. “Looks like that mess is finally over,” LeBeq said. “Three bloody years. I suppose it was worth it.”

“Sure it was,” one of the suits said. “Communists had to be shown that aggression doesn't pay.”

“They keep pushing, don't they?” the other suit said. “The Berlin blockade, then Korea. Couple of months ago, some MIGs took a pot at an American weather plane near Alaska! I mean, where next?”

“They've got China,” LeBeq said. “You'd think that would satisfy any dictatorship.”

“The Chinese have got China,” Julie said. “Just to keep the record straight.”

“We should never have let Stalin get his hands on Eastern Europe,” the first suit said. “Big mistake. I mean, did we win the war just so Russia could have an empire? I think not.”

Eugene stood up so fast his glasses jerked sideways.
“Russia
beat the Nazis,” he said. “Not America. Start to finish, two-thirds of Hitler's army was fighting on the Russian front. Two-thirds!” He was so excited, he was spitting slightly. “Twenty million dead in the USSR!”

“Cool it, Eugene.” Julie tugged his sleeve. “Nobody's arguing.” He sat down.

“Sure, the Russians fought a hell of a war,” LeBeq said. “Cost them plenty. So for the life of me I can't understand why they want another. Damn it, they've turned Eastern Europe into a barracks for the Red Army. I've
seen
their Iron Curtain and—”

“First World War!” Eugene announced. “Germany attacks Russia! Also …” He counted them on his fingers. “Hungary attacks Russia, and Austria, Bulgaria, Poles, Czechs, Turks, all attack. Nobody here remembers Turkey invaded Russia. But
Russians
remember.”

“Save the history for another time, Eugene,” the second suit said.

“History? This is my childhood! German army
invaded
Russia, took Odessa, took Kiev! Like someone invaded the East Coast and we lost Pittsburgh.”

“That's not such a bad deal,” Julie said, and got a laugh from the others. She was trying to flag down a waiter, get the check.

“Forget Pittsburgh.” Eugene was unstoppable. “But remember the West sent its armies into Russia in 1919. British
army, French, American, Japanese, Czech. We don't teach that in our schools.”

“The fog of war,” LeBeq murmured.

“But Russians remember, and twenty years later Germany invaded them again! So I ask you, Mr. LeBeq. It is 1945. You are Stalin. Three times in thirty years your country has been invaded from the west. Twice your country has sacrificed millions of citizens. So what does military intelligence tell you to do?”

LeBeq flicked some crumbs from a sleeve. “Very interesting,” he said.

Julie gave the waiter a pile of bills. “No change,” she told him. They began to stand, but Eugene wasn't finished. “You'd make damn sure it wouldn't happen again, wouldn't you. Make a buffer zone between you and the goddamn bloody krauts, right? Build an iron curtain and keep the bastards out.” His shoulders were hunched.

“Thank you, Julie,” LeBeq said. He had a good smile, and he knew when to use it. “You know more good restaurants in New York than Gourmet Magazine.”

“We're too many for a taxi,” the second suit announced. “Eugene and I will walk back. We need the exercise.”

The art director was sacked that afternoon. “It was a straight choice,” Julie's boss told her. “Either we lost Eugene or we lost Snowy Mountain Coffee.”

“LeBeq thinks we're soft on Communism, is that it? Eugene's been putting too much red in the Snowy Mountain artwork?”

“Wise up, kid. LeBeq can't take the risk, and neither can we.”

“Sure. And if we all hold our breath, Russia will disappear. It worked with China.”

Julie went around the agency and tried to organize a petition. Dead loss. Eugene had gone. Signatures wouldn't change that, but they might get other people fired. She told her story to the reporters who covered the ad industry. Some wrote it up. NBSM fired her. The publicity was small but lethal. No other agency would hire her. “I told you already,” she said to Luis. “Blacklist is just a word. You can't look it up in the public library. But everybody knows, so it adds up to the same thing.”

They were strolling toward the Studebaker, hand-in-hand, which stimulated the supply of blood to Luis's brain, and he said: “There's nothing to stop me getting a job with an ad agency. You could stay at home and create the advertising.”

She squeezed his hand until it hurt. “That's the worst idea you've had so far.”

“Oh. Well, I'll just have to go back to being a contract killer for … um … thingummy.”

“Stevie. She wasn't going to pay you in money.”

“That's true.” They stopped, and looked at each other. The bruise under his eye was a deep purple. She remembered the fight, and laughed. He said, “This is a very serious matter, you know.” It exhausted their conversation, so they kissed. “That simplifies things,” he said. They kissed again. “And now?”

“Oh…” she said. “You know.”

He tapped her head. “Brain like a runaway dynamo,” he said. “Whatever that is.”

Next morning they taxied down to Schrafft's on Fifth Avenue so they could have breakfast and watch the commuters hurrying through the heat to get to their offices because the Long Island Railroad had broken down again, poor slobs. Luis had a small steak and eggs with home fries. He was feeling thin. Julie had about a pint of orange juice and stole bits of his steak. She was feeling sleepy.

“That's twice you've robbed me of my virginity,” she said. “Mind you, it was in pretty crappy condition to start with.”

“I've been thinking about our future,” he said, “and I want to make it clear that I can't support you in the manner to which you're accustomed.”

“Christ, I hope not. Poverty stinks.”

“That was my joke. You stole my joke.”

“This is New York, buster. Nobody waits.”

“I'm waiting for an answer to my idea. I get a job with an ad agency. You write the ads.” He signaled for more coffee.

“You wouldn't last a week, Luis. The ad game's a serious business.”

“So was the Double-Cross System. We told people what they wanted to hear. Some of it was almost true. Like advertising.”

Julie propped her chin on her fists and studied his face. Good looks meant zero, she knew plenty of handsome men who were
pure Jello and some uglies who were heroes. Luis wasn't a hero. He thought he was indestructible when he was just highly resilient. How would she feel about him if he crawled out of a car wreck with only half a face? Everything was luck. Enjoy it while you have it.

“What have we got to lose?” he asked.

They went back to the penthouse. She scanned the columns in the
Times
and the
Trib
that reported comings and goings in the ad industry; made a few phone calls; and told Luis she'd fixed him up with an interview at an agency called Dent & Bellamy Inc. “I've got a pal there, a secretary willing to help as long as the job's not for me. You meet Joe Steel at noon tomorrow. The agency's just won a pharmaceuticals account, Drexon. They need copywriters.”

“Easy.” Luis wrote in the air with his finger.
“Attention rheumatism-sufferers! New magic drug ZX40 cures all aches and pains!
See? Piece of cake.”

“Horseshit. You can't say ‘magic' and you can't say ‘cures.' Most you can say is the stuff relieves pain. Nothing cures anything permanently.”

“Except death.”

“Which can't be patented. Read this. Memorize it.”

She had created a career for him. It began with Young & Rubicam in San Francisco, moved to Ted Bates in Chicago, then McCann-Erickson Ltd. in London, England, followed by six months with Rotblat Advertising in New York, and ending up with Benton & Bowles in LA.

“I move around a lot,” he said.

“Good copywriters do. Joe Steel won't check you out. Too late in the day to phone London, too early to phone LA He can't ask Rotblat because Phil Rotblat blew his brains out when the agency went bust. Here's some proofs you can show him. I was with Benton & Bowles for a while, out West. Worked on some pharmaceutical campaigns.”

Luis flicked through the proofs. “Why are all these people smiling?” he asked. “They're suffering dreadful afflictions. What is there to smile at?”

“You have a lot to learn about the ad game,” she said.

Dent & Bellamy had offices on Madison in the high Forties, above a bank which Luis felt reasonably sure he had robbed by proxy. Joe Steel had a corner office on the fifth floor. His body was so bulky that he looked as it he was wearing two suits. His
heavily muscled face had been battered by teenage acne and never fully recovered. But he was pleasant and courteous. He read the CV at a glance and seemed to like the proofs. “Ever had piles?” he asked. Luis said no. “Me neither. But two out of five Americans get them. Drexon manufactures this stuff.” He gave Luis a tube labeled 4DT. “People won't go into a drugstore and ask for hemorrhoid cream. Embarrassing. But they'll say 4DT. All the product information you need is in this leaflet, and here's some ads from Drexon's competition. Give me five or six full-page ads for 4DT. Headlines, scribbles for pix, forget the body copy.”

“When d'you need them?”

“Yesterday. Let's say in half an hour.”

His secretary gave Luis a block of paper, a chair and a nice smile.

In twenty minutes he was ready. Steel was impressed.

“My guess,” Luis said, “is that a major difficulty with advertising this type of product is that newspaper publishers won't let us illustrate what we're talking about.”

Steel blinked. “It's a pain in the ass. Everyone knows where their ass is. Don't they?”

“Everyone knows where their brain is, but the makers of headache remedies show pictures of heads.”

“Uh-huh. So what?” Steel sat at his desk like a giant bump on a small log.

“So we can't illustrate the product at work, and we can't even ask the reader:
Do you suffer from this unspeakable ailment?
Which is why the best that our major competitor can do is tell his story beneath one large word which he hopes will attract attention. That word is:
Because.”
Luis showed the proof.