Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“Okay, okay,” Jack Barron said as Franklin’s watery, bloodshot, livery eyes pinned him, eyes of a man who’d done wrong and knew it, but didn’t quite know why, guarded eyes of a man who didn’t see himself as a criminal, or a louse but a loser, congenital black-skin-predestined loser, stupid, ignorant mark taken in some con game based, as they all were, on his desperation, on the difference between being a spade and being a shade, eyes that accused Barron, himself, his daughter, the child-buyer, the nature of the universe, saying: “It’s not my fault I’m a shit, it’s what you made me, all of you, it’s what I’ve been born.”

“I’m on your side,” Barron said. “Yeah, comes nitty-gritty time, gotta be on your side whether I like it or not. I don’t know what I can do, but whatever it is I’ll do it, right now, tonight. Okay? Show you what happens when you bug Jack Barron. We’re gonna go straight to the Governor’s Mansion and I’ll have Luke Greene put every fuzz in the state on it, run you through the files on every kook in the country. Come on, let’s split.”

Henry George Franklin stared at him in stupefied, disbelieving awe. “You mean it, man! You really mean it? ol’ Jack, you ain’t jus’ puttin’ me on, you gonna take me up there to see the Governor, top nigger what runs the whole state? You gonna tell him what to do?”

“Bet your ass I’m gonna tell him what to do!” Barron told him. (Fucking Luke owes me plenty for not shafting him today, let him do what he’s paid for, for a change, give him less time to mess with my head.) “Bigger men than Governors are gonna do what I say when I get back to New York.”

Abruptly, he remembered what had really dragged him to Mississippi was not Franklin at all, was Benedict Howards. First time in nearly a month I’ve gone a whole day without thinking of that fucker. But there’s the stink of Bennie all over this, he half-threatened to do me in over it, scared shitless I’d find out something from this cat. But what? He’s just a poor dumb fucker don’t know his ass from his elbow. Makes no sense. Not unless…

“You okay, man,” Franklin said as he got up from the table. “Y’know that, ol’ Jack, you’re pretty fuckin’ all right for a shade TV star… Who knows maybe you got black blood back there somewhere, maybe you are a black shade?”

Outside, King Street had passed over the midnight line: people coming from more than going to, junkies either fixed or in the deep shakes, quick-throw whorehouses, past their peaks, winos far gone or sleeping it off in pools of vomit, paddy wagons raking up the fallen human leaves, a London-fog of potsmoke rancid grease spilt beer drunken piss settling down on the buildings, gutters, alleyway in a funky-spent film.

Beside him, Henry George Franklin was stone-silent, like a hunched-forward wino who had made the price, passed through the flash, and was now out of it whether busted in the tank or pissing in his pants blotto in an alley; he had done his thing for the night and till the bleary dawn came entrusted his fate to the hands of the gods. And Barron, picking up on the wasted roach-end mood thought: throw the whole damn thing in Luke’s lap and forget it. What else is there to do?

He stared up the street looking for a cab—nothing in sight but a paddy wagon, couple trucks, and two funky old 70s cars. New York reflexes, Barron began walking up the street, some reason you never get a cab in the ass-end of nowhere just standing around, and besides, on a street like this, gotta keep moving, is all. Franklin trailed after him a glassy-eyed zombie.

Half a block up King Street, Barron got a flash. Something was wrong, out of tune, blowing a cold wind down the back of his neck. It made him break his stride, twist around to look behind him—

Like a sudden slap in the face, an unreal firecracker-backfire sound, a hard metal bee buzzed by his ear, and a sharding scream of tin as a garbage can between him and the wall of a nearby building exploded in a flash of metal, gray slop and wet orange peels.

Barron dove to the sidewalk face forward, arms covering his head rolled behind a parked car as another shot split the air around a low sickening moan saw Henry George Franklin clutch at his belly as he folded; then a third bullet smashed Franklin’s skull, flipped him backward to the sidewalk like a bloody ruined doll.

Across the street people were shouting as they ran in both directions from the mouth of an alley, and he saw a man resting the barrel of some kind of snub-nosed assassin-rifle on the lid of a rusty garbage can behind which he crouched.

A smoke-flash from the rifle, and a bullet exploded through two layers of car-window, ricocheting off the wall behind him and blowing the tire by his leg with a soft cush of air as it sprayed him with glass. Another backfire-sound, and the car body shook twice against his cheek as a bullet tore through the double metal walls of the far door, then spent itself in the door against which he huddled.

Down the street two cops were running toward the alley from the paddy wagon, and the siren sounded as the paddy wagon began to back jaggedly up King Street.

A clatter of metal as the gunman fled up the alley, kicking over the garbage can.

Barron got to his feet, both pants-knees torn and the flesh beneath abraded and bleeding lightly. He was shaking. Five shots in as many seconds—the first five bullets he had ever faced.

A yard or two away lay Henry George Franklin, blood pooling on his stomach, his smashed face mercifully hidden by a clot of amorphous red. Barron retched once, turned away, saw one of the cops racing across the street toward him, and, in a flash of adrenalin, the reality of the moment penetrated the time-delay circuit to his head.

First shot was for me! Me! déjà vu gunshots cowboys Indians racing up the hill at Iwo Jima Eliot Ness Zapruder film capgun-marching soldiers Oswald folding Viet Nam-headline war-images echoed in his mind… but the blood on the sidewalk in gallons and quarts was the same stuff in nicks on his own face cut shaving, same as the light redness on his skinned slightly-burning knees, pieces of Henry George Franklin white slivers of skull in sickening red wetness was same stuff inside him, just as sticky-soft vulnerable bag of pulsing slimy organs was him, kept him alive.

Dead… I could be dead, laying there a lump of decomposing meat, no difference except he missed me. And he didn’t mean to miss me, first shot was at my head, and after he got Franklin he went after me again, the motherfucker tried to kill me, really tried to make me dead. Some son of a bitch wanted me dead!

How’s that for your nitty-gritty street-reality, smart-ass? Some Oswald-Ruby-Sirhan loonie whips out a—

Image of a man resting a gun on a garbage can flashed on the playback screen of his mind, zoomed in on the gun: a cool piece of lightweight, high-powered, purposeful steel. High-powered, rapid-fire, no mail-order .22 no Manlicher-Carcano. A pro gun.

And a pro job.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Five shots just like that, first one right on the old button, if I hadn’t moved off-rhythm, next two right into Franklin, and then right into the car. A hit-man contract job for sure!

“You all right?” The cop had reached him, taken one quick look at the ruined body, then ignored it like the rest of the ugly refuse littering the street. The cop’s square face like any other cop’s face, hardly noticed it was black.

“Nothing broken…” Barron muttered, his thoughts elsewhere, back in the apartment, Benedict Howards saying, “Don’t talk to Franklin, or else—” Howards scared shitless, Hennering’s plane exploding, his widow smashed by the wheels of a rented truck.… Or else… or else…