“Hey, Sara!” Barron yelled. “Come on in here, got something for you to sign.”
Barron smiled so blandly as Sara Westerfeld stepped out of a doorway and crossed the living room toward them with a nervous blank face, slowly so damned slow, that Howards felt a real moment of fear, felt the possibility of his control of the situation maybe about to slip away, the irrational fear that Barron was playing with him—has that goddamned crazy whore spilled the whole thing? He saw that Barron was holding all six contracts tightly…about to rip ’em up, go ape? Damn him, how much does he know? That dumb bitch tell him and screw everything up?
Jack Barron toyed with the contracts as Sara Westerfeld stood by the camel saddle he was sitting on like some Saudi Arabian slave dealer, and Howards felt as if it were his neck being fingered as she shot him a look of studied nonrecognition, then looked at Barron with sickeningly worshipful eyes as if to tell Howards that if she was anyone’s whore, she was Jack Barron’s. But how much does he know? Howards wondered frantically, fighting to keep his face blank. She got the brains to keep her mouth shut now?
Barron looked at him with eyes lowered to catch shadows in the deep hollows, what Howards recognized as a calculated Bug Jack Barron cheap trick, and Barron seemed to be reading every knot and convolution in his gut. This prick could be dangerous, Howards realized, more dangerous than I thought, he’s smart, real smart, and he’s crazy as a coot and that’s a bad, bad combination unless I got him bought all the way. Got to get him to fly back with me and take the treatment tonight!
Jack Barron laughed a laugh that increased the tension, said: “Don’t get so uptight, Bennie. Sara already knows everything. She’s my chick all the way.” He paused (or am I imagining things?), Howards thought, seemed to be emphasizing the words for his benefit (or the girl’s?). “We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
Barron handed three contracts to Sara Westerfeld, along with the pen. “Go ahead, sign ’em, Sara,” he said. “You know what you’re signing, don’t you?”
Sara Westerfeld looked straight at Howards as she signed the contracts, smiled a thin smile that could’ve been acknowledgment of the deal completed between them or could’ve been an inside smile between her and Barron, said: “Sure I do. I know just what we’re getting into. Immortality. Jack’s told me everything, Mr. Howards. Like he says, we don’t keep secrets from each other.”
This dumb bitch playing games with me too? Howards wondered. But it doesn’t matter, he told himself as she handed the contracts back to Barron, who sorted them, handed Howards a copy of each. Signed, sealed, and delivered. Got ’em both now, right here in my hand, in black and white. And by the time you go on the air again, Barron, it’ll be in flesh and blood, yours and hers, and who gives a shit whether you know how I used her? She’s done the job one way or the other, is what counts. I got you, I own you, Jack Barron, clean through to your bones.
Howards tucked the contracts safely into his attaché case. “Okay,” he said, “so then I suppose I can talk freely in front of her. (Time for the spurs, Barron, you’ll have to get used to ’em anyway, and your woman might as well get the message right at the beginning, see who’s boss, how’s that grab you, smart-ass?) I’ll send a car for you about seven tonight, take you to the airport. We’ll have plenty of time to put your next show together on the way to Colorado.
“I figure first order of business is to get back those votes in Congress for the Freezer Bill you lost me with your big mouth. What you’ll do is get some jerk on the line who was taken by one of those fly-by-night freezer outfits, maybe a surviving relative of someone who did business with them and had his body rot when they went bankrupt. And don’t worry, I’ll dig someone like that up by Wednesday, or, if I can’t, I’ll get someone to fake it. Then you put a couple of these phony operators on the hotseat—I got a whole list of the worst of ’em—and show what crooks they are, get it? Safety’s the pitch, only a Foundation Freeze is safe and Congress gotta pass—”
“Hold it, Howards,” said Barron. “For openers, you don’t tell me how to run my line of evil. It’d smell like an open sewer if I did an about-face on the Foundation right after the last two shows. We gotta cool it first. I’ll do a couple shows got nothing at all to do with the Foundation, take the heat off. Then three or four weeks from now, I do maybe ten minutes on a victim of your so-called competition at the end of the show, and that’ll set things up for grilling a couple of those schmucks the week after that. Bug Jack Barron’s supposed to be spontaneous, unrehearsed, audience-controlled. Remember? You want me to do you any good, it’s gotta keep looking that way.”
“Like you say, it’s your line of evil,” Howards agreed.
This prick’s gonna be real useful, he thought. Knows his own business just fine, he’s right, gotta be subtle, and Barron knows just how to do it. Let him run his own little piece of the action and he’ll do just fine. Tell him what to do, and let him handle the how.
That’s the best kind of flunky, after all—flunky with brains enough to take orders and carry ’em out better than you could if you had to spell out every word. What they call a specialist, wind ’em up, and watch ’em work.
“We’ll play it your way,” Howards said. “You’ve been at it a long time, and should know what you’re doing.” He got up, feeling a day’s work well done. “Car’ll pick you up at seven, and about two days from now you’ll have had the big payoff. Think about it, getting up every morning for the next million—”
“Not so fast,” Jack Barron said. “I think we’ll pass on the immortality treatment for now, see how things go. We’re both young, there’s no rush, contract says we can exercise the option any time we want, after all.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Howards said shrilly. Then, as he saw Barron’s eyes measuring him, realized he did sound shrill, was treading very thin ice (Gotta get him to take the treatment soon, can’t scare him off, make him any more suspicious than he is), lowered his voice, feigned indifference. “Don’t you want to be immortal?”
“Wouldn’t have signed the contract, if I didn’t, now, would I?” Barron said. (Howards sensed the shrewd, electric danger in his sly voice. Watch it! Watch it! He’s playing that Bug Jack Barron game again.) “Question is, why are you so hot to make me immortal so damned quick?”
Benedict Howards felt the scalpel in the question probing for what the bastard’s been probing for all along—the secret of the treatment. And you’re not gonna find that out nohow, Barron, not till it’s too late. Can’t push him now, gotta back off, damn it, or…Can’t let him get suspicious about the treatment!
“Tell you the truth, Barron,” he said, “I get carried away. Just thinking about it reminds me I’m immortal, really immortal, and I just can’t see why anyone would wait five minutes longer than they had to. But I suppose you can’t feel that now—just wait till you stand where I stand, you’ll understand then. But you do what you want. I don’t give a damn. It’s your life, Barron, your immortal life; I’ve got mine, and that’s all I really care about.”
“Never figured you for a True Believer, Bennie,” said Barron, smiling. (But the smile was guarded, a put-on?) “Don’t worry, I’ll be there to collect when I’m good and ready.”
And I’ll be there to collect you, you smart-ass bastard, Howards thought as he turned to leave. Save your bullshit tricks for Wednesday nights, Barron, we’re both gonna need ’em. You’ll go to Colorado, and you’ll do it soon, or else. No flunky holds out on Benedict Howards!
“For the last time, Sara, we play this my way—not yours,” Jack Barron said, seeing her naked body stiff, half-fetaled, and about as sexy as an old inner tube, lying uptight and pale in the sickly city moonlight that filtered through the bedroom skylight, framing them both, curled face to face untouching like bleached tadpoles on the electrically-warmed bed, like the spotlight of some cheap-jack off-off-Broadway two-hundred-seat playhouse.
“But what the hell is your way?” she said, that old six-years-dead
whine creeping back into her voice, ghost of breaking-up days, and her eyes were glassy mirrors in the darkness, mirroring depths beyond depths—or just an illusion about as deep as a phosphor-dot pattern on a TV screen?
Half the time I think I know this chick through to where she lives, he thought, and the rest of the time I wonder if she lives anywhere or do I just see illusions of depths, my self-projected Sara of the mind on the vidphone screen of her face? And his naked body next to hers felt at this moment like a piece of meat connected to his mind only by the most novocained of sensory circuits.
“Why didn’t we go to Colorado with Howards?” she was saying. “Why don’t we take the treatment right away? Then that slimy Howards’d have nothing left to hold over our heads, and you could start right in on him again next Wednesday. And why did you want to play that stupid game with him, leave him guessing whether I told you everything or not? Why…?”
Why? Why? Why? thought Jack Barron. Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle! Go explain to her; you can’t even explain it to yourself—belly-message is all, smell of danger behind everything, reality behind reality behind reality slippery feel of uncertainty like driving through traffic in rain fogged wind-shield stoned on acid; impossible to know where objective stone-wall reality’s at, but knowing for sure you don’t see it yet, gotta inch along real slow by the seat of your pants or get run over by Howards’ Mack Truck Chinese box lie within lie within lie puzzle…
“Because it’s just what Bennie wants me to do,” he said, if only to cut off the nagging sound of her voice with his own. “He wanted us to have the treatment now, he wanted it real bad, so bad that when I let him know that I knew how hot he was for us to do it, he backed off. And that’s just not Bennie’s pattern, that cat’s gotta be real uptight about blowing something to back water…”
Just don’t add up, Barron thought. Bennie’s too paranoid, and not dumb enough to trust me. Makes no sense, one thing he really has on me now is immortality, I was him, I’d withhold the treatment until I delivered the goods, got the Freezer Bill through at least, only real insurance Bennie’s got. And that he’s hot to throw away! Stick the ace he holds right up my sleeve, put me in the catbird-seat. So, somehow, that immortality treatment’s gotta be his real insurance—his ace in the hole, not mine. But how? It just doesn’t add up. And until it does, Jack Barron doesn’t come within a thousand miles of that damned Rocky Mountain Freezer.
Sara reached out, touched the inner curve of his upper thigh. But it felt mechanical and far away; he just wasn’t in the mood, didn’t think she really was either. “What’re you thinking about?” she asked. “You’re a million miles away.”
“I wish to hell I knew,” Barron said. “I just got the feeling I’m in over my head, is why I don’t want to take that treatment now, got the feeling it’d get me in too deep in something I don’t dig. Everything that’s happened since I got involved in this daisy-chain with Howards seems unreal—this President bullshit…immortality…they’re just words, Sara, words out of some comic book or science fiction magazine, can’t taste ’em, feel ’em, smell ’em, make ’em add up to anything that feels real. But that fucker Howards, he’s real, no doubt about it, he smells real. And there’s something oozing out of him that’s real too, something big and scary, and I’m in it up to the eyeballs and I just don’t know what it is…”
“I think I understand,” Sara said, and her hand tightened on his thigh; she inched closer to him on the bed and he began, almost against his will, to pick up on the warmth of her beside him.
“But isn’t it just because you’re letting things happen, not making them happen? You’re looking at it backwards—you should say to yourself, I’ve gotta stop Benedict Howards, and I’ve gotta keep immortality, and I’ve gotta do whatever I have to to do it. You can’t wait for Howards to give you an opening, and you can’t wait for someone else to do it, and you shouldn’t worry about what Howards could do to us. Believe in yourself, Jack. Believe you can beat Howards no matter what he does; I believe it, and it’s my life too. Oh, Jack, it’s just too big…immortality for the whole world, or that lizard Howards going on and on and on…You can’t cop-out now!”
“Cop-out?” Barron snarled in an instant lash-out defensive reaction. “Who the fuck are you to give me lectures about copping out, after what you’ve done, after the game you played with my head and Benedict Howards?” And immediately he was sorry.
’Cause she’s right, in her own dumb way, he thought. That cocksucker Howards! Sara never was in his league, who is, he uses people, and then tosses ’em away like a snotty Kleenex; did it to Sara, do it to me I give him the chance, do it to the whole fucking country. That’s where it’s at, all right, Howards dealing a bummer to the whole dumb country, and old Jack Barron dealing his power-junk for him on living-color junior high school street corners. That’s exactly where it’s at, Barron, and you can’t con yourself otherwise.
“I deserved—”
“No you didn’t Sara,” Barron said, and drew her asexually to him, hugged her tight, sucking up her plain human warmth, hoping she was getting the same off him ’cause god knows she needs it I need it we all need it, need a little human warmth, little flesh-reality, with a freak-out monster like Benedict Howards running amok, shooting up the world with his lousy paranoid junk. “You hit me a little too close to home, is all. Bravery you’re talking about, courage is all, and right now that’s just a word, too…”
Yeah, courage, cheap commodity, when you’re a punk Baby Bolshevik smart-ass kid and you got nothing to lose you can lay yourself on the line just for the surge. But with a pad like this, four hundred thou a year, and immortality, and Christ knows what else on the line…throw all that away for a bunch of fucking words, words, is all, for two hundred and thirty million slob-loser cowards who wouldn’t risk ten cents for Jack Barron? My life on the line, immortal life, and Howards with Christ knows what up his sleeve to pound me to a pulp, and for what, a chance to pin a tin hero-medal on my chest and give me a fancy kamikaze funeral? You’re asking too much, Sara, I’m no hero, just a cat happened to get stuck in a position where it’s all on his back, sick-joke of Kismet, is all. All I can do is just try to come out of this trip with as much as I can, hurting as few people as possible; that’s the name of the game, game of life, is all.
“Promise you just one thing, Sara,” he said. “I don’t play Bennie’s game or anyone else’s but my own. We’re gonna get ourselves immortality, and we’re gonna keep our skins whole in the process—that’s the prime order of business. But if I get a chance to stomp Howards without losing any of my own flesh, I’ll do it. Bet your sweet ass I’ll do it! I hate that motherfucker more than you do—he’s trying to use me, and worse, he’s got the gall to try and use my woman against me. We’re gonna come out on top, you better believe it, and if we can do in Bennie on the side, that’s gravy. But just gravy.”
“Jack…”
He felt warmth in her voice again, but behind it still the thin edge of that crazy Baby Bolshevik berserker determination, and for some reason he found himself digging it this time, digging his simple good-hearted chick, with her cuntfelt black and white silly-ass ideals should be protected, not stomped on, and in any decent world would be. But we’re all stuck in this world, and here, Sara, baby, there be tigers.
“Know something else?” he asked, feeling mind-circuit connections with his body begin to open, juices flowing into channels of think-feel integration, the skin-on-skin woman-warmth reality against him. “In about five minutes, I think I’ll ball you senseless like you never been fucked before. Whatever else you are or aren’t, you’re good inside, chick, and you deserve it.”
We all deserve it.
Gongingonging—gong! gong! gong!
“Ummph…” Jack Barron grunted, waking up in the disorienting darkness, a weight heavy against his chest. “What the…”
Gong! Gong! Gong!
Uuuh, he thought fuzzily, goddamned vidphone. He half-sat-up against the bedstead
, Sara’s head sliding down his bare chest into his lap, made the connection, stopping the gonging that had been pounding behind his ears like a headache commercial. What the hell time is it? he wondered. What stupid bastard’s waking me up at this time of night?
Grumbling, still trying to shake the sleep out of his head, Barron saw that Sara was still asleep, fumbled the vidphone down on to the bed beside him, turned the custom volume-control knob down to the lowest setting, and squinted sourly at the face glowing up grayly at him from the vidphone screen, wanly phosphorescent in the darkness: long dark hair over a man’s thin-boned face. (Something familiar about this silly schmuck calling me up in the middle of the night, how the hell did he get my unlisted number…?)
“Hello, Jack,” a gravelly whisper from the vidphone said as Barron sleepily tried to place the face. (I know this cat, but who in hell is he?) “Brad Donner. Remember?” the vidphone image said.
Donner…Brad Donner…Barron thought. Berkeley or Los Angeles or someplace, old Baby Bolshevik type I haven’t seen in years…Yeah, L.A., just before I got the show, friend of Harold Spence, some kind of brown-nosing brat-lawyer always talking about running for Congress or something…Jesus Christ, every prick I ever talked to in person thinks he can bug me any time he feels like it…
“You know what time it is, Donner?” Barron snarled, then lowered his voice, remembering Sara’s sleeping against his lap and, boy, what a night, am I sore! “’Cause I sure don’t. Must be four or five in the morning. Where’d you learn your manners, in the Gestapo?”
“Yeah, Jack,” Donner said. (Stop calling me Jack, you brown-nosed mother!) “I know it’s a bad hour, but I had to get to you right away. Got your number from Spence in L.A., you remember, Harry was a big buddy of yours in those days?”
“Nobody’s my buddy at this hour,” Barron said. “If you’re asking me some favor you sure picked a stupid time to do it, Donner.”
Bug Jack Barron Page 20