Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [235]
“I’m just fine, Mr. Whitcomb. I’ll be leaving for Washington directly after lunch with Clint.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping you’d drop by my office and we could exchange views.”
“About what?”
Pudge smiled that smile of his with his face going lopsided as though someone had hacked his mouth on a diagonal angle with a meat cleaver. He excused himself asking Clint to step into the hall.
“Lovable old codger,” Pudge wheezed.
“Like hell he is. He’s one of the meanest sons of bitches who ever crapped between a pair of GI shoes.”
“Well ... time slows them all up, I guess. He’s earned his right to be grumpy.”
“He was born that way. And he also happens to be one of the most brilliant men in our country.”
Pudge did a repeat of his slash-mouth smile, chortled an asthmatic laugh, and slapped Clint on the back. “See you in the A.M. Big, big think session on the Robson account.”
“Check.”
Clint returned to his office, pushed down the intercom button. “Miss Paisley, make luncheon reservations. ‘21’ okay, General?”
“Ate there once. Too goddamned noisy and they ought to be shot for their prices. While you’re at it I don’t want to sit in one of those restaurants where they line you up against the wall like sides of beef in a butcher window.”
“Check. Miss Paisley, try Charles à la Pomme Soufflée. Tell Maurice I want a table so the general and I can sit opposite each other. Yes ... opposite ... not side by side.”
“Well, Clint, what the hell does a production-control man like you do up to your ass in all this carpet and mahogany?”
Clint chuckled. “I head a specialty group. A team of experts in merchandising.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Whitcomb Associates is the only complete service of its kind in the country. We take a product, build it, beef it, sell it; test market, direct mail campaigns, complete ad agency. The whole works.”
“I guess I follow you.”
They jammed into an elevator which plunged them down to the lobby at a terrifying speed and they became an infinitesimal part of that faceless mass of scurrying ants yelling, ‘Taxi, taxi.”
En route Clint continued his dissertation.
“In this country we build obsolescence into our products. Our national economy is based on waste. People buy because things look good and are packaged attractively. Take toilet paper, for example. We are starting to manufacture it in color. Our test market hops prove conclusively that pale green sells best in St. Louis while pink is big in Boston.”
A look of utter vexation exploded on Hiram Stonebraker’s face.
“We have editors to snag the public by verbal gymnastics; brown isn’t brown, it’s tawny brown. We subtly key in sexually stimulating music to back up radio commercials. We know that men like blue-colored after-shave lotion. Sanitary napkins will soon be packaged in boxes of various shapes with striped and polka-dot wrappings. So who cares how the motor runs as long as the upholstery has eye appeal and the exterior is junked up with enough chrome?”
“What project demands your talents these days, Clint?”
“Television. Big coming field. My team works on visual appeal. Our beer account will have the best-looking foam in the industry.”
They arrived and were seated. General Stonebraker could not believe that the man who sat opposite him was once considered a young genius at locating and solving industrial riddles.
“Clint,” he said sadly, “right after the war you went into a partnership with a real bright guy from Wichita. You formed an efficiency team to fix up sick companies. Clint, I seem to recall that you put a small steel mill back on its feet. What happened?”
Clinton Loveless looked as though he had been struck.
General Stonebraker was telling him now what he had told himself once or twice a month since he came to New York.
The general was intimating that if Whitcomb Associates were blown from the face of the earth, no one would really ever know they were gone.
“The efficiency team was a long time ago, sir. I guess we weren’t doing too badly, but you know how those things are. It would have