Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“You mean a flunky,” Barron suggested as the promptboard flashed “3 Minutes.”

“Yeah, thas it, a flunky. I mean, he didn’t hand over that satchel like it was his own money… I don’t care if you old Rockefeller himself, you got to feel something, make some sign, handing over fifty thousand bucks’ worth of your own money… No, I guess he was just some kind of fancy messenger boy.”

“The question is, a messenger boy for who?” Barron said, wondering who could be doing something like that for what? Strictly from old comic books and TV shows—gotta be either Fu Manchu or Dr Sivana behind it… Or, more likely, some slimy old pervert with a lech for tender young… blech! How the hell did I end up with a call like this? Go tell a crazy wop to blow your mind!

“Just what did this man say he wanted your daughter for?” And the promptboard mercifully flashed “2 Minutes.”

“Something about what he called a social experiment,” Franklin said. “Used a lot of ten-dollar words I just didn’t understand, ol’ Jack. Some kinda…, genics or something. Something about heredity and ’vironment and random samples… taking poor black kids and growin’ ’em up with rich white kids, like they was born rich, y’know, send ’em both to the same schools, send ’em both to college, give ’em both what that shade called equivalent childhood environments and see who comes out ahead.

“This shade said it was supposed to prove black kids were as smart as shade kids, what he called herently or somethin’. So I figured how could I refuse, what with doin’ somethin’ fine for Tessie—that’s m’daughter—doin’ my part for black people, like Governor Greene down here’s always saying, and a whole satchelful of money, y’know…”

Barron tapped his left-foot button three times, and Vince gave him the winding-up-for-the-sign-off three-quarters screen as the promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.” Maybe not a Mad Cunnel, he thought. Maybe some crazy black shrink got ahold of big bread somehow, decided he had a mission to prove Negroes as good as whites? Vince really goofed this time, something crazy going on, but strictly garden-variety lunacy, National Enquirer stuff and lousy television. Well, I suppose you can’t be brilliant every week.

“And that’s all you know, Mr Franklin?” Barron asked. “You sold your daughter for $50,000 to a flunky working for some kook you’ve never seen, supposedly to take part in some half-assed social experiment?” Barron paused, trying to time the ending, waiting for the “60 Seconds” signal, at which Vince would give him full screen, and—

“Hey, wait a minute!” Franklin shouted. “Hey, I want her back, you gotta get her back! Look, ol’ Jack, I know I did wrong, an’ I wanna get her back. (The “60 Seconds” signal flashed across the promptboard, but Vince couldn’t cut Franklin out in the middle of a freakout, look real bad, Barron knew, gotta cut him off somehow.) Thas why I called in the first place, that shade musta been crazy—I don’t want my daughter with some crazy nut, not now when I got the money to feed her. Hey, you gotta—”

“I’m afraid our time is about up,” Barron finally squeezed in, signaling to Vince to bleed down Franklin’s audio.

“Yeah, but, hey, what about Tessie, ol’ Jack?” Franklin’s waning voice said as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds,” and Barron saw that his drunk was edging over from lightly-maudlin to guilty-belligerent, and thanked whatever gods there be that the timing was so right. “I didn’t mean to do it… fact is, I had been maybe hitting the corn a little at the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. Yeah, thas it, I was mentally incompetent… can’t hold no man what’s mentally incompetent to no—”

Vince, maybe figuring that Franklin was about to utter The Word, cut his audio entirely and gave Barron full screen.

“Our time’s up, Mr Franklin,” said Barron (thank God!), “but we’ll be right here at the same old stand next week, area Code 212, 969-6969, and you can call in again then, and have the same chance as every man, woman, and child in the United States (in a pig’s ass!) to… Bug Jack Barron.”

And at long last, the promptboard flashed “Off the Air.”

Barren thumbed the intercom switch, his instant impulse was to scream at crazy wop Vince wincing behind the safety of the control-booth glass like a cocker spaniel just shit on the rug and knows it.

But Gelardi beat him to the punch: “Hey, I’m sorry, Jack. He was real funny all the way through the monkey block till he got on the air. Sounded like some crazy spade gibbering about the revival of the slave trade. Last time I feed you any kind of drunk, Scout’s honor. Hey… you don’t think he was on the level, do you?”

Aw, what the fuck, Barron thought, so Vince blew one. My fault as much as his, my head just wasn’t there this week. “Who gives a shit?” he said tiredly. “Let the National Enquirer and the Mississippi fuzz worry about it. Forget it, Vince, let’s all go home and get stoned. Lousy show, is all, we got a right to goof once in a while.”

Yeah, a real stinker all around, Barron thought. And you damned well know why; sixty minutes of pure mickey mouse on top of two real nitty-gritty shows on the Foundation, and that’s where the big-league action’s really at right now. And you can’t touch that now with a fork.

And as he got up, the seat of his pants soaked with sweat from the hotseat, Jack Barron experienced a strange sense of loss; remembering the adrenalin surge of his mortal duel with Howards against the background of this week’s trivia created a weird nostalgia for the taste of playing the big game for the big stakes, a game that was already played out.

Time like this, Barron thought, I wonder why I dig this business in the first place. Maybe there’s a bigger kick somewhere than being a star?

“Don’t say it, Sara, for chrissakes, don’t say it. I know, I know, I laid a dinosaur egg tonight,” Jack Barron said, opening up the front of his sportjac, flopping down flush on the carpet next to Sara’s chair, fumbling in his pocket and pulling out a pack of Acapulco Golds, sticking a joint in his mouth, lighting it, sucking in the smoke, exhaling, all while Sara stared at him blankly. “Thousand-year-old Chinese rotten dinosaur egg with green mold on it, is all.”

“I thought that Strip City bit was pretty interesting,” she said with what he recognized as dumb, infuriating sincerity. “That freako you had on at the end, though—”

“Don’t mention that man’s name,” Barron said. “I know what you’re gonna say, and I don’t wanna hear it, tonight’s show was strictly from old Joe Sw—”

“Hey, I wasn’t going to say anything at all. What’s the matter with you, Jack?”

Yeah, what is the matter with you, man? Barron thought. She’s only trying to make you feel good, and you come down on her with paranoid stomping boots. Come on, man, you’ve done bad shows before, dozens of ’em, never got you this uptight before. Cool it, for chrissakes!

He got to his knees, reached up, pulled Sara’s face down to him, kissed her tongue on tongue, held it for a pro forma moment, but couldn’t get interested. Shit! he thought. My head’s been out in left field ever since I found out someone killed Madge Hennering. Someone… yeah, sure. Someone name of Benedict Howards got my name on his piece of paper, thinks he owns my bod, and maybe he’s right. Kills Hennering because the lox found out some fucking Foundation secret scared him shitless, scared Howards shitless… and what scares Howards shitless…?

Jesus H. Christ! Been staring me in the face all along! Only thing that scared Bennie was me finding out what his immortality treatment was… That’s gotta be what Hennering found out, what they killed him for! And that cocksucker Howards is practically twisting my arm to make me take the treatment!