The Side of the Angels by Christina Bartolomeo, Kyoko Watanabe

inventive as da Vinci’s blueprints for a flying machine. He was a fountain of what that brilliant adman David Ogilvie called “big ideas,” the overarching concepts without which no campaign is truly a campaign. For my part, I turned out snappy copy that combined sincere emotion with low-key credibility. I laid out ads and brochures for clients who couldn’t afford a real graphic designer. I even pinch-hit as an events planner when I absolutely couldn’t get out of it.
    While I would never have Ron’s flashy way of pitching a story, I grew to know a reliable handful of reporters at key dailies and magazines who’d return my calls because I tried not to waste their time, and who could be counted on to give our side a fair shake in their coverage. Once in a while I hit lucky with TV coverage. Ron was our star media relations guy, but he’d taught me enough that I could back him up when his plate got too full. The whole setup worked far better than I’d hoped.
    â€œBecause we’re small, we do it all” was the motto Ron wanted toput on our stationery, until I convinced him it made us sound like a rental car company.
    Trade union clients like the Toilers were a fairly recent development for Advocacy, Inc. Back when big labor really
was
big labor, the unions didn’t need much help from spin doctors. Now, with union membership down to 18 percent of the workforce and with some politicians putting unions on their hit list right up there with single mothers and evolutionists, a few of the more forward-thinking honchos in the AFL had begun to realize that something was needed.
    We’d come to Weingould’s attention a few years ago when we helped win a first contract for the janitors and maintenance workers union at Windsor Real Estate, the owner of luxury high-rises across Pittsburgh. Ron came up with a “Custodians with a Conscience” campaign, in which lovable members of Local 802, dressed in caps and denim overalls, picked up litter in city parks. This feel-good gag so won the public’s sympathy and the media’s praise (“Big Labor Cleans Up Its Act,” ran the approving editorial in the
Steel City Clarion
) that the janitors wound up with a 6 percent raise and family health insurance benefits. Weingould was impressed with our performance, and one meeting with Ron convinced him that together they could turn the Toilers into the little union that could.
    â€œCan Wendy handle your other assignments for the next two weeks or more?” Ron asked, as Phyllis phoned up to the Big Guy to announce our arrival.
    â€œI guess so. She’d work twenty hours a day if we let her.”
    â€œPack heavy. It’s cold and it’s damp,” Ron said.
    â€œI’ll charge my new longjohns to the office account.”
    â€œYou seem less than enthusiastic, Nicky. It’s not like you.”
    â€œIt’s just that this strike couldn’t have come at a worse time,” I said. “We’ve got the Campsters thing, and the Joseph’s Kitchen canned food drive, and the Reading Ready adult literacy fund-raiser. I don’t know
what
we’re going to do for that.”
    â€œWendy suggested a book-themed house tour. Get six or seven ofthe board of directors who have fancy homes in Georgetown or Dupont to lend them out and deck each mansion out in a theme from some famous book, like netting and harpoons for
Moby-Dick
or fake Spanish moss for
Gone With the Wind
.”
    â€œI don’t think that Tara had Spanish moss, Ron. And I have trouble believing Wendy’s ever read
Moby-Dick
. Or
Gone With the Wind
, for that matter. I’m not sure she has the mental staying power even to sit through the movie.”
    â€œGive the kid a break,” said Ron.
    â€œYou give her a break. It’s your ass her uncle is saving from being dragged through an audit.”
    â€œWhat do you think of her idea, though?”
    â€œThey’ll