Big trouble, p.2
Big Trouble, page 2
Eliot thought that the readership of most of these series consisted almost entirely of contest judges. But more and more, he found himself getting ordered to work on megaturds, leaving less and less time for him to work on stories he thought somebody might actually want to read.
The end came on the day when he was summoned to the office of the managing editor, Ken Deeber, who was seven years younger than Eliot. Eliot remembered when Deeber was a general-assignment reporter, just out of Princeton. He was articulate and personable, and he could be absolutely relied on to get at least one important fact wrong in every story, no matter how short. But Deeber did not write many stories; he was too busy networking. He rose through the ranks like a Polaris missile, becoming the youngest managing editor in the paper's history. He was big on issues stories. That's why he summoned Eliot to his office.
"How's it going, Eliot?" Deeber had said, starting things off. "Everything OK with you?"
"Well," said Eliot, "I'm kind of ... "
"The reason I ask," said Deeber, who was not the least bit interested in whether or not everything was OK with Eliot, "is that John Croton tells me you haven't turned in a thing on the day-care project."
The day-care project was the current megaturd. It was going to explain to the readers, in five parts with fourteen color charts, that there was a crisis in day care.
"Listen, Ken," said Eliot, "There are already five people working on the ... "
"Eliot," said Deeber, the way a parent talks to a naughty child, "you were given an assignment."
Eliot's assignment was to write a sidebar about the Haitian community's perspective on the day-care crisis. Deeber believed that every story had to have the perspective of every ethnic group. When he went through the newspaper, he didn't actually read the stories; he counted ethnic groups. He was always sending out memos like: While the story on the increase in alligator attacks on golfers was timely and informative, I think more of an effort could have been made to include the Hispanic viewpoint. The main reason why Deeber's car ignition had never been wired to a bomb is that reporters have poor do-it-yourself skills.
"I know I had an assignment," said Eliot. "But I've been working on this story about ... "
"The pelican story?" sneered Deeber. Eliot thought
Princeton must have a course in sneering, because Deeber was good at it.
"Ken," said Eliot, "it's an incredible story, and nobody else has it. There's this guy, this old Cuban guy in Key West, and he trains pelicans to ... "
"Drop bombs," sneered Deeber. "It's the most dumb-ass thing I ever heard."
"Ken," said Eliot. "This guy is amazing. He actually tried to use a trained pelican to kill Castro. Something went wrong, maybe the bomb malfunctioned, maybe the pelican got confused, but the thing apparently blew up outside a hotel in downtown Havana, sprayed pelican parts all over a bunch of French tourists, and the Cuban government claimed that it was some kind of atmospheric ... "
"Eliot," said Ken, "I don't think we're serving our readers with that kind of story."
"But it's true," said Eliot. He wanted to grab Deeber by his neck. "It's a great story. The guy talked to me, and he ... "
"Eliot," said Deeber, "Do you realize how important day care is to our readers? Do you realize how many of our readers have children in day care?"
There was a pause.
"Ken," said Eliot, "do you realize how many of our readers have assholes?"
Deeber said, "I see no need to ... "
"All of them!" shouted Eliot. "They all have assholes!"
Quite a few people in the newsroom heard that through the glass wall to Deeber's office. Heads were turning.
"Eliot," said Deeber, "I'm ordering you right now to ... "
"Let's do a series on it!" shouted Eliot. "RECTUMS IN CRISIS!" The entire newsroom heard that.
Deeber, aware that people were watching, put on his sternest expression.
"Eliot," he said. "You work for me. You do what I tell you. I gave you an assignment. If you want to keep working at this newspaper, that assignment will be done, and it will be in here"—he pointed to his computer—"before you go home tonight."
"Fine!" said Eliot. He stood up and crossed around to Deeber's side of the desk, which caused Deeber to scoot his chair backward into his credenza, knocking over several journalism contest awards.
Eliot said: "How about I put it in there RIGHT NOW?"
Then he put his left foot through Deeber's computer screen. His foot got sort of stuck in there, so when he yanked it back out, Deeber's whole computer crashed to the floor. In the newsroom, there was a brief but hearty outbreak of applause.
Except for the time a drunk loading-dock employee drove a new $43,000 forklift into Biscayne Bay, nobody had ever been fired from the newspaper faster than Eliot. His coworkers expressed their sympathy and support; in fact, Eliot became a minor cult hero among reporters all over the country. But it was pretty clear he wasn't going to get another job in journalism, especially not in Miami, where he wanted to stay so he could be near his son, Matt, who lived with Eliot's ex-wife.
And so Eliot became Eliot Arnold Advertising and Public Relations, working out of a small office in Coconut Grove. At the beginning, he spent most of his time going around begging people to become his clients. But after a couple of years of hard work, he'd reached the point where he spent most of his time going around begging for his clients to pay the money they owed him. Either that, or he was listening to clients tell him why his work was not acceptable. This is what the Client From Hell was doing.
The Client From Hell's latest brainstorm was Hammerhead Beer, which tasted so awful that the first and only time Eliot put some in his mouth, he spat it out on his desk. Eliot thought Hammerhead Beer was an even worse idea than the Client From Hell's previous project, a theme park for senior citizens called Denture Adventure.
But the Client From Hell actually paid his bills some of the time, so Eliot had developed an advertising concept for the beer. The Client From Hell was looking at it, and offering his usual thoughtful brand of criticism.
"This sucks," he said.
"Well, Bruce," said Eliot, "I tried to ... "
"Listen," said the Client From Hell, who did not believe in letting other people finish their sentences as long as he had any kind of thought whatsoever floating around in his brain. "You know what my business philosophy is?"
I surely do, thought Eliot. Your business philosophy is to take money from your extremely wealthy father and piss it away on moronic ideas.
"No, Bruce," he said, "what is your ... "
"My business philosophy," said the Client From Hell, "is that there's a lot of people in the world."
To illustrate this point, the Client From Hell gestured toward the world. Several moments passed, during which Eliot waited hopefully for amplification.
"Well," Eliot said, finally, "that's certainly ... "
"And," continued the Client From Hell, who had been waiting for Eliot to speak so he could interrupt him, "all those people WANT something. You know what they want?"
"No," said Eliot. His plan was to go with short sentences.
"They want to feel good," said the Client From Hell.
More moments passed.
"Ah," said Eliot.
"Do you know what I mean?' said the Client From Hell. He stared at Eliot.
"Well," said Eliot, "I ... "
"NO YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I MEAN!" shouted the Client From Hell, feeling better now that he was bullying a person who needed his money, which was his absolute favorite thing about being rich. "Because I gave you the perfect concept for Hammerhead Beer. The perfect concept! Which is not this piece of shit here." He made a brushing-away gesture, the kind you make at flying insects, in the direction of Eliot's concept, which Eliot had stayed up late working on. It was a board on which Eliot had mounted a close-up photograph of a hammerhead shark, its mouth gaping between its two impossibly far-apart, alien eyeballs. Underneath the photograph, in large, black type, were these words:
Ugly fish. Good beer.
"What the hell is this?" the Client From Hell demanded. "Why are you saying ugly here?"
"Well," said Eliot, "I'm contrasting, in a kind of humorous ... "
"Listen," said the Client From Hell, whose idea of humor was—he had this on video, and watched it often—Joe Theisman getting the bottom half of his leg almost snapped off. "I don't want to see ugly. That is not the feeling I want. I gave you the concept already! I gave you the perfect concept!"
"Bruce, I talked to a lawyer about your concept, and he says we could get into real trouble with ... "
'"GET HAMMERED WITH HAMMERHEAD!' " shouted the Client From Hell, pounding a pudgy Rolexed fist on Eliot's desk. "That's the concept!"
He stood up and spread his fat arms apart, to help Eliot visualize it. "You have a guy in a boat with a girl, she's in a bikini, she has big tits, they're on a boat, and they're getting hammered! With Hammerhead! The feeling of this ad is, somebody's gonna get laid! In the background swimming around is a shark! The girl has REALLY big tits! It's PERFECT! I give you this perfect concept, and you give me ugly! Listen, if you think I'm paying for this shit, forget it, because I'm not paying for ugly. I can get ugly for free."
You already are ugly, Eliot thought. What he said was: "OK, let me try to ... "
"Don't tell me try. Don't try. I hate the word try. Try is for losers," said the Client From Hell, who got his entire philosophy of life from Nike commercials. "Lemme tell you something." He was tapping his finger on Eliot's desk (his fingernails were fat). "You are not the only ad agency in this town."
I am the only ad agency in this town who is so far behind on his alimony that he will tolerate a moron of your magnitude, thought Eliot.
"OK, Bruce," he said.
"I wanna see it TOMORROW," said the Client From Hell.
I could get a gun by tomorrow, thought Eliot. With those hollowpoint bullets.
"OK, Bruce," he said.
The phone rang. Eliot picked it up.
"Eliot Arnold," he said.
"I need to borrow your car tonight," said Matt, who was Eliot's son and seventeen years old, which meant that he was usually too busy to say hello.
"Hello, Nigel!" said Eliot. "How're things in London? Can you hold for a moment?"
"Nigel?" said Matt.
"Brace," Eliot said to the Client From Hell, "I need to take this call from a client in London about ... "
"I wanna see it tomorrow, and it better be right," said the Client From Hell, banging open Eliot's door, walking out, not closing the door. From the hall—from right outside the next-door office of the certified public accountant who complained whenever Eliot played his stereo—he shouted: "AND SHE BETTER HAVE BIG TITS!"
"Thanks for coming by, Brace!" Eliot called to the empty doorway. "I think we're almost there!" To the phone he said: "Matt?"
"Who better have big tits?" asked Matt.
"Nobody," said Eliot.
"Who's Nigel?" asked Matt.
"Nobody," said Eliot. "I made Nigel up so my client wouldn't think I was interrupting a meeting for personal business."
"Was that the beer moron?"
"Yes."
"Whyn't you just dump him?" asked Matt.
"Matt," Eliot said, "do you have any idea where money comes ... "
"So," said Matt, who was not about to waste valuable non-school time listening to a lecture he'd already heard, "can I borrow your car tonight?"
"What for?" asked Eliot.
"Me and Andrew have to kill a girl," said Matt.
"OK," said Eliot, "but I want the car back at my apartment by ten-thirty, and I want you to promise to drive ... "
"OK thanks Dad," said Matt, hanging up, a busy man.
" ... carefully," said Eliot, into the silent phone.
When she finished cleaning up after dinner, Niña went back to her room—it was called the "maid's quarters," but it was just a little room with a tiny bathroom—and locked the door. She'd started locking it about three months earlier, when Mr. Herk had walked in on her. Niña was getting undressed, down to her bra and panties. Mr. Herk had not knocked; he'd just opened the door and come in.
He was holding a glass of red wine. Niña snatched her robe from the bed and held it in front of herself.
"It's OK, Niña," he said. "I just wondered if you'd like a little wine. You work so hard."
Niña knew he didn't care how hard she worked. She knew what he wanted, because of the way he looked at her sometimes, especially when he was drinking. He liked to come into the kitchen when she was there alone and stand a little too close to her, not saying anything, just looking at her.
Holding the robe close to herself, she said, "No, thank you, Mr. Herk. I am very tired."
He closed the door behind him and moved toward her. "You just need to relax," he said. He put his hand on her bare shoulder and let it slide toward her breast. His hand was wet with sweat.
Niña ducked from his hand and stepped backward, toward the bathroom.
"Mr. Herk," she said, "I don't think Mrs. Anna will like to know you are here."
His face turned hard. "She's asleep," he said. "And I'm not gonna tell her I was here. You're not gonna tell her, either, are you, Niña?"
No, she was not. He was the boss of the house, and she was the maid, and she wasn't in this country legally, and she had nowhere else to go.
"Excuse me," said Niña, and she turned and stepped into the bathroom, quickly closing the door and pressing the lock button.
The doorknob rattled as Mr. Herk tried it.
"Niña," he said, "come out."
Niña stared at the doorknob, not breathing. She could feel his sweat on her, where he had touched her.
"Niña," he said, louder, "this is my house, and you work for me, and I want you to come out now."
Niña stared at the doorknob.
"Bitch," he said.
Niña heard glass breaking, then the hallway door banging open. She waited some more, then opened the bathroom door. There was a dark red stain in the middle of her white bedspread, where he had poured out the wine. He had smashed the glass on her floor. She cut her foot cleaning up.
The next day, when she served him his coffee, with Mrs. Anna there, he acted as though nothing had happened. But she still saw him looking at her. And she kept her door locked. She did not like Mr. Herk, but she needed to keep this job. She needed to make enough money to pay a lawyer so she could become legal, and then to bring her mother and her brother to the United States.
And there were things she liked about working here. The house was like a castle, and Mrs. Anna was very nice, very pretty. Niña could not understand why Mr. Herk could be so mean to such a woman. Niña had heard him yell at her, calling her bad names, making her cry. Niña thought that sometimes he hit her.
Mrs. Anna was nice to Niña. So was her daughter, Jenny, although she mostly stayed in her room, always on the phone, always listening to her music, which sounded to Niña like angry people shouting. She couldn't imagine why anybody would want to listen to shouting.
Niña listened to flute music from her country, on cassette tapes that she played on a Fisher-Price tape player that had been Jenny's when she was a little girl. At night, Niña would open her window (she didn't like air-conditioning) and lie on her bed with the lights off, letting her mind float on the music. It made her feel less lonely.
Across the yard, in his tree, listening to Niña's music, Puggy felt less lonely, too.
Matt picked up Andrew at 8:40.
"Where's the gun?" asked Andrew.
"In the trunk," said Matt. "I love this song." He cranked the volume all the way up on the stereo, which was playing "Sex Pootie," by a band called the Seminal Fluids. The lyrics were:
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
And so on.
"What's a sex pootie?" asked Andrew.
"What do you think it is?" asked Matt, scornfully, although in truth he wasn't sure what a sex pootie was, either. To change the subject, he said: "This sound system sucks." Matt had great contempt for any sound system that was not loud enough to stun cattle.
"Why'd your dad buy a Kia?" asked Andrew.
" 'Cause he's a dork," explained Matt.
Andrew nodded understandingly. His dad was a dork, too. It seemed like everybody's dad was a dork. It amazed Matt and Andrew that their generation had turned out so cool.
"I just hope Jenny doesn't see this car," said Matt.
Jenny was the girl they were going to kill. Matt thought she was hot. She was in his biology class at Southeast High School, and he'd spent many classroom hours looking at her while pretending to look at diagrams of the pancreas and other organs. He'd tried to think of some way to talk to her, but he never came up with anything feasible. But now that he was going to kill her, he figured that would break the ice.
Matt had been assigned to kill Jenny by Evan Hanratty, a Southeast High student who had organized that year's edition of Killer. Killer was a game that surfaced every year at various high schools; it had been vehemently condemned and strictly banned by the school authorities, so it was very popular with the students.
There were various versions of the game, but basically it worked this way: You paid the organizer some money (at Mart's school, it was ten dollars to become a player). The organizer then gave you, in secret, the name of another person in the game; your goal was to kill that person. At the same time, you became the target of some other unknown person, who would be stalking you.
At a given time, the game officially started, and the killing began. After each round, the survivors were given new targets; the game repeated until the last surviving killer collected a cash prize from the organizer.
The killing was done with squirt guns. For the kill to be legal, you had to squirt your victim in the presence of one witness—but only one witness. This meant that you couldn't get your target at school or in a public place like the mall; you had to work by ambush, usually at the victim's home.
