Page 115 - Just Deserts

The Sirocco Lites 26K Run for the Money

“Eh?” Holden was caught off-stride again. He had set up this
meeting intending to lay down the law to some scruffy
unsophisticated young punk, but he was constantly one step behind
and on the defensive.
“Well, you know, they’re not going to turn themselves into rolling
cigarette packs for nothing. Ace promised us each a very sizable
consideration for the promotion. Didn’t he tell you about it?”
“Not in any detail. Holden had a brief visual memory of a
television commercial from his childhood: dancing Lucky Strikes
boxes. But women were inside the props. And they had legs, long
beautiful dancer’s legs. “I just knew that he wanted you—that is, all
the, uh, wheelchair racers—to show the colors, as it were.”
Caltrop reached behind himself and withdrew a small portfolio
from a pocket in the back of his conveyance. “Then you ought to
look at this.” He pushed aside the remnants of his meal, wiped his
hands cursorily on a napkin and opened the portfolio flat on the
table. In it were several colored pen sketches, evidently the work of a
commercial artist.
The first drawing was a panorama of Isla View’s main street,
otherwise known as the Coast Highway, as decorated and populated
for the big event. But this was a much grander scene than Ben
Holden had ever witnessed: great billowing banners of gold and
green, the colors of Sirocco Lites, draped the stands at the finish line
and arched across the road. A fifty-yard-long sign proclaimed the
sponsor’s name at street level in front of the old high school
bleachers annually towed into position for spectators willing to pay
fifty cents each.
The councilman nodded slowly. It was an impressive image,
betokening order, cleanliness and prosperity: a politician’s dream
town. Kevin slid out the next rendering. It portrayed the marathon
from a more distant perspective—from the air, in fact. There, against
an azure cloudless sky, hung a great hot air balloon, its gas bag
emblazoned with green and gold stripes and the increasingly familiar
Sirocco logo. Below, as if spread upon a verdant carpet as tribute to
its airborne ruler, lay Isla View and the coastline beyond. This,
thought Holden, is how the world will see us on television. A million
dollars of almost free publicity. Now was the time to tie up some
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