Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“Don’t push yours, Howards,” he said. “You can’t buy me only rent me as a free agent. You don’t buy me as a flunky or no deal. You tell me the truth, the whole truth and maybe you rent yourself an ally. You mickey mouse me much longer, and you’ve got yourself an enemy. I don’t think you can afford me as an enemy—if you could you wouldn’t be so hot for my bod.”

“Take my word for it, you don’t want to know what you think you do,” Howards said. “I’m not peddling cars or dope, and I’m not an entertainer. I play for the… the blood. Let it go, Barron, you’re out of your depth. This is so big… it’s none of your business. You got a chance to live forever, don’t blow it by trying to stick your nose in a meatgrinder. Yes or no, Barron, right here, right now. No more fencing.”

“You’ve had my final word,” Barron said, “and you can take it or leave it.”

“Look, let’s not be hasty,” Howards said, again with a weird shift of verbal gears to incomprehensible sweet reason. “I’ll give you a week. Think about it. Think about wormfood—and think about living forever.”

Schmuck! Barron thought. Bennie-boy, you blew it. Bennie Howards doesn’t back down from take-it-or-leave-it unless he thinks the answer will be leave it, and knows he can’t afford a leave it from Jack Barron. You’re hot for my bod, baby, and before you get it, do I put you through changes!

“Okay,” he said. “A week. For both of us to think about it.” And will you get something to think about next Wednesday, Mr Benedict Howards!

“That’s what I want, Vince,” Jack Barron said as Gelardi’s gray basilisk image did a double take on the vidphone screen. “That’s what I want, and it’s my show, and that’s what I’ll get.”

“I don’t get it,” Gelardi said. “This week you give me static for feeding you a call that just played footsie too hard with Howards, and now you want to aim a boot at his testes. What happened between Wednesday and today, man?”

Barron paused, considered, felt vidphone-camera circuitry carrying his image-words to Gelardi camera-to-camera, screen-to-screen-phosphor-dot patterns talking to each other, in control cool, keep it cool. Big stakes, Jack, baby, with free Freeze maybe just for openers, got to see what Howards has in the hole, how many cards he takes on draw. Play your own hand in this game, sorry, Vince, no kibitzers allowed.

“So Bennie Howards happened,” Barron said. “He happened all over this office about an hour ago.”

“So the show did put him uptight?”

“Uptight!” said Baron. “Bennie was uptight like Shabazz is black. I’m going to have to have the rug replaced, and there are still toothmarks on my throat. Howards blew his gourd. He threatened to strong-arm the network, lean on the sponsors, and get his flunkies on the FCC to put me on the shitlist, is all.”

“Did you cool him?” Gelardi asked nervously. Directing show and monkey block’s best gravy train you ever rode, eh, Vince? Barron thought. Get conniptions when I make waves.

“Cool him?” Barron said. “ Cool him? I cooled him, all right, I told him to go take a flying fuck.”

Gelardi made a rude headshaking bellynoise, rolled his eyes upward. Barron smiled calculatingly inward. Need a good wrong reason to do the right thing, he thought, make Vince think highest all-time stakes still the show. Need Bug Jack Barron- oriented reason to knee Bennie in the groin.

“You’re crazy, you know that, Jack?” Gelardi said in dead earnest. “You keep telling me we don’t twist tigers’ tails, and now what do you do, you get Bennie Howards uptight, and then instead of cooling it you tell him to go fuck himself. And now we don’t have enough tsouris, you want a whole show aimed at Howards’ jugular. You on something stronger than our sponsor’s grass?”

“In words of one syllable, Vince,” Barron said, “we are in trouble. Howards was convinced I’m out to get him, and I couldn’t unconvince him. Therefore he informed me that he was going to get me, and we both know he can do it, given the time. At which point, knowing sweet reason would do no good, I told Bennie to fuck off, and I threatened him. I told him that what happened this week was just good clean fun compared to what would happen to him if he got fancy with me. Which is why we go after his ass on the next show—to give proof positive that I mean what I say, that there’s no percentage in really bugging Jack Barron even if you’ve got the muscle Howards’ got. We give Howards a taste of the fire next time, and he’ll back off. He thinks he’s got his Freezer Bill all locked up; I want to show him I can put it in doubt if he gives me reason enough to run the risk. We show him our claws, and he’ll suck in his, comprende, paisan?”

“Oh, my bleeding ulcer!” Gelardi said. “I dig the necessity now, but the network will have a shitfit.”

“Screw the network,” Barron said. “There’s three other networks would love to have Bug Jack Barron, and they know it. As long as we scare Howards off our backs they’ll rant and rave, but they won’t do squat. And that goes in spades for the sponsors. For the bread the show makes for all concerned, they can afford the milk to baby their ulcers. Question is, what kind of call can we count on getting next week that I can use against Howards? We can concoct a put-up job if we have to, but I don’t like that idea very much. If Howards or the network or the FCC found out we were faking calls…”

“How about a deathbed scene?” Gelardi suggested instantly. Good old Vince, Barron thought, give him an angle he can buy and he’s off to the races.

“Deathbed scene?” Barron asked.

“Sure,” said Gelardi. “We get at least half a dozen every week, crank stuff, I got standing orders with the monkey block not to let ’em past the first screen. Some cat’s croaking from something slow, usually cancer, usually on Social Security or Guaranteed Annual Wage, you know, like broke, and the whole goddamn family gathers ’round the vidphone with the prospective corpse as a prop and wants you to get the Foundation to give the old man a free Freeze. Tear-jerker stuff. Chances are we’ll even get one where the dying man does some of the talking. And it’s a safe bet we can add on the race angle again if we want to.”

Yeah, thought Barron, just the right touch. Milk it for maybe ten, fifteen minutes’ worth of hot angry tears, then put Bennie on (you know he’ll be answering his phone this time) for the rest of the show. Give him a taste of the whip, then it’s his option, then the knife again, then he makes more points, then another kick in the balls—cat and mouse, show him just where it’s at. Show him you can kill him stone-cold-dead, but back off the coup de grace, leaving the goose bleeding but with one more chance to give with the golden egg—and a fucking good show in the bargain!

“I like, I like,” Barron said. “But let’s lay off the race schtick this time round. He’ll be ready for that, and we want to hit him where he ain’t. Have the first screen boys feed all deathbed calls directly to you, and give me the best lily-white one you get.”

“You’re the boss, Jack,” Gelardi said. “But personally the whole schtick has me shaking. You hurt Howards too bad and you won’t scare him off, you’ll goad him into a kamikaze. You gonna really have to walk that line, man—and with both our jobs riding on it.”

“That’s the name of the game, Vince,” Barron told him. “You shove me out on the high wire, and I walk it. Trust old Uncle Jack.”

“Trust you like my brother,” Gelardi said.