Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

Howards felt Barron measuring him, trying to think holes in his position, knew that he wouldn’t find any because there’s only one hole, and it gives me the big edge, Barron, and you’ll never find that one till you’re in way over your head. Go ahead, smart-ass, try and out-think Benedict Howards won’t be the first man’s tried, won’t be the last to go home in a barrel oil leases Lyndon, Senators Governors doctors nurses tube up nose down throat fading black circle all thought they could get Benedict Howards, and I beat ’em all, conned ’em, bought ’em, destroyed ’em, owned ’em, really think you can get the best of the only man bigger than death, winner over all forces of the fading black circle?

Barron looked at him blankly for a long moment; not an inch of flesh moved, but something changed behind his eyes that Howards could sense from long experience with big men in air-cooled vaults of power to surrender, flunky, Mr Howards, and Howards knew he had bought him even before Barron said: “Okay, Howards. Deal.” And signed his contract in triplicate.

“That’s real smart,” Howards said. “Now you get hold of Sara Westerfeld by tonight, get her signature, and I’ll fly you both to Colorado in my plane for the treatment, save you the air fare, show you even little things go better when you play ball with Benedict Howards.”

Barron smiled a nasty Bug-Jack-Barron smile Howards couldn’t read, arid he felt a small pang of uneasiness, still playing games, what now, Barron? Take it easy, he told himself, once you get him to take the treatment, you got him hogtied same as any other beef.

“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 spontanteous, 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?”