Avila feigned compassion. “Ninety years old? Bless her heart.” He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “Problem is, I’ve got a dozen other jobs waiting.”
“Fifteen thousand,” Ira Jackson said, “if you move me to the top of the list.”
Avila rubbed his stubbled chin and eyed the visitor. How often, he thought, does fifteen grand come knocking at the door? A rip-off was out of the question, but another option loomed. Radical, to be sure, but do-able:
Avila could build the man a legitimate, complete roof. Use the cash to settle up with Gar Whitmark. Naturally the crew would piss and moan, spoiled bastards. Properly installing a roof was a hard, hot, exhausting job. Perhaps desperate times called for honest work.
“I see,” remarked Ira Jackson, “your place came through the hurricane pretty good.”
“We were a long way from the eye, thank God.”
“Thank God is right.”
“Where exactly do you live, Mister Reynolds? Maybe I can squeeze you on the schedule.”
“Fantastic.”
“I’ll send a man out for an estimate,” Avila said. Then he remembered there was no man to send; the thieving Snapper had skipped.
Ira Jackson said, “I’d prefer it was you personally.”
“Sure, Mister Reynolds. How about tomorrow first thing?”
“How about right now? We can ride in my car.”
Avila couldn’t think of a single reason not to go, and fifteen thousand reasons why he should.
When Max Lamb put down the phone, his face was gray and his mouth was slack. He looked as if he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The reality was no less grave, as far as the Rodale 8c Burns agency was concerned. On the other end of the line, easygoing Pete Archibald had sounded funereal and defeated. The news from New York was bad indeed.
The National Institutes of Health had scheduled a press conference to further enumerate the health hazards of cigaret smoking. Ordinarily the advertising world would scarcely take notice, so routine and predictable were these dire outcries. No matter how harrowing the medical revelations, the impact on retail cigaret sales seldom lasted more than a few weeks. This time, though, the government had used sophisticated technology to test specific brands for concentrations of tars, nicotine and other assorted carcinogens. Broncos rated first; Bronco Menthols rated second, Lady Broncos third. Epidemiologically, they were the most lethal products in the history of tobacco cultivation. Smoking a Bronco, in the lamentably quotable words of one wiseass NIH scientist, was “only slightly safer than sucking on the tailpipe of a Chevrolet Suburban.”
Details of the NIH bombshell had quickly leaked to Durham Gas Meat &c Tobacco, manufacturer of Broncos and other fine products. The company’s knee-jerk response was a heated threat to cancel its advertising in all newspapers and magazines that intended to report ‘ the government’s findings. That bombastically idiotic maneuver, Max Lamb knew, would itself become frontpage headlines if sane heads didn’t prevail. Max had to get back to New York as soon as possible.
When he told his wife, she said: “Right now?”
As if she didn’t understand the gravity of the crisis.
“In my business,” Max explained impatiently, “this is a flaming 747 full of orphans, plowing into a mountainside.”
“Is it true about Broncos?”
“Probably. That’s not the problem. They can’t start yanking their ads; there’s serious money at stake. Double-digit millions.”
“Max.”
“What?”
“Please put out that damn cigaret.”
“Jesus, Bonnie, listen to yourself.”
They were sitting in wicker chairs on Augustine’s patio. It was three or four in the morning. Inside the house, Neil Young played on the stereo. Through the / French doors Bonnie Lamb saw Augustine in the kitchen. He noticed she was watching, and shot her a quick shy smile. The black trooper and the one-eyed governor were standing over the stove; it smelled like they were frying bacon and ham.
Max Lamb said, “We’ll catch the first plane.” He stubbed out his Bronco and flipped the butt into a birdbath.
“What about him’)” Bonnie cut her eyes toward the kitchen window, where Skink could be seen breaking eggs at the sink. She said to Max, “You wanted to file charges, didn’t you? Put him in jail where he belongs.”