Page 23 - Just Deserts

The Decimator

door. “You did like it, didn’t you?” he asked Sunderbar. The great
man nodded, a slow tilt of the head.
Keller grinned broadly and left the room.
Hathaway half-grimaced. “As I said, a brilliant mind but rather
eccentric.”
“I think those excerpts are right on the money,” Sunderbar
pouted, his finely-chiseled lips pursing. “But that guy gives me the
creeps.”
“Me, too,” Hathaway concurred with his client. “Since you appear
satisfied with his work, I will fire him tomorrow. He doesn’t really fit
in here, anyway. We prefer employees with a rather more polished
presentation. But he did what we hired him to do. All that’s left is to
integrate the clips into state-of-the-art campaign commercials,
drawing the viewer from one mythic image into another, your
candidacy. And we have a staff of highly trained media people to
produce the finished product; Keller would be superfluous at best, a
loose cannon at worst. We do have one thing to settle before we go
into production: who owns the rights to those old films? Are we
going to have to pay royalties?”
“No problem there,” said the former Decimator. “I bought out
Sandor Landsman’s interest in the series years ago—lock, stock and
barrel. He didn’t think they’d do well on TV, but that was before
home video. Producers aren’t as smart as they like to think. I’ve got
all the rights in every market, and I’ll license them to you for one
dollar. How’s that?”
“Great. I’m glad this is wrapped up. We have plenty of lead time
to get the commercials ready for the blitz in the last three weeks of
the campaign. I assume you intend to keep a low profile until the
election?”
“You bet!” Sunderbar laughed heartily. “Last thing I want to do is
get out there and blow my lines in front of some punk reporters!”

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