Pineapple Grenade by Tim Dorsey Read Free Book Online

dark-haired pretty-boy looks had gotten him the pick at any sorority. In three decades since, they’d matured to nonthreatening leading-man standards, like Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart. He could have done TV commercials, but he did this.
    Malcolm took another left down another hall. He had actually done one TV ad for aftershave.
    Glide made a final turn in the last hall and entered the department’s inner sanctum. He cheerfully waved at a personal secretary and strolled into the director’s office without knocking. The aftershave was Hai Karate.
    The director was on the phone. “I gotta go.” He hung up and smiled. “Malcolm!”—practically running around his desk to shake hands.
    “Mr. Tide!”
    “How many times have I told you to call me Rip.”
    Rip detested Malcolm, but Glide held the strings to key votes that controlled his budget, so he loved him.
    “Rip,” said Glide. “Hate to ask since you’re so busy guarding the safety of every man, woman, and child in America, but I need a big favor.”
    “Name it.”
    “I want you to raise the threat level.”
    “What? Did you hear some overseas chatter? Is it the ports? Airlines?”
    “No. Three of my candidates just dipped below forty in the polls. They’ve unfairly been linked to the latest oil spill in the Gulf.”
    “Are they linked?”
    “Yes. I need something to take over the news cycle.”
    “No problem.” Rip reached behind his desk for the big vinyl threat thermometer. “Uh-oh.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “We’re already at the highest threat level.” Rip pointed at the top of the thermometer. “Remember? You asked me to raise it last week when one of your candidates apologized to the oil company because they were the real victim.”
    “So make up a new color.”
    “I can’t. The colors are set.”
    “You’re the director of Homeland Security. You can do anything you want.”
    “Malcolm, don’t get me wrong,” said Rip. “I’d do anything for you. But my hands are tied. Red’s the top color. There’s nothing scarier.”
    Malcolm opened his briefcase. “What about a darker red? I brought some color swatches.”
    “You might have something there.” Rip grabbed a sample and held it up for comparison. “This one seems more upsetting.”
    “Then it’s done.”
    “I still don’t know,” said the director. “Two reds. They’re pretty close in shade. Won’t people get confused?”
    Glide snapped his briefcase shut. “Confusion’s scarier.”
    “You’re the expert.”
    Indeed, Glide was.
    His motto: All politics is marketing. And in marketing, there are but two variables: product and salesmanship. Malcolm had the best of both worlds.
    He’d cornered the market on fear.
    And when it came to sales, Glide could package utter terror like a tit to a baby. During campaigns, it was his hottest seller.
    It hadn’t always been that way.
    Just a few short years earlier, the firm Glide founded, Nuance Management Group, was renowned throughout the nation’s capital for thorough policy research, unflagging accuracy, strident ethics—and losing a record volume of elections.
    It changed overnight.
    It was a Tuesday.
    Four A.M.
    Malcolm Glide sprang up from his pillow in a cold sweat. Heart pounding like a conga drum. Another nightmare about zombies. Except now they’d learned to walk faster.
    Malcolm grabbed his chest. “Holy Mother! I’d vote for anybody who could stop that!”
    The next morning, Malcolm charged confidently into the boardroom. “Throw away everything.” He walked to an easel and ripped down a chart of international exchange rates. “It’s all fresh.”
    Murmurs around the conference table.
    “We’ve been going at this completely wrong.” Glide crumpled the chart into a ball and threw it at a secretary’s head. “You know how we excruciatingly track swing voters, the base, independents?”
    Various levels of nodding.
    “Fuck that margin of error!” Glide grabbed a marker and scribbled rapidly on the