Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

They all look like they just fell down a rabbit hole, Barron thought, not even bothering to hide his smug bad-boy satisfaction. One thing’ll always knock power-junkies back on their asses—talk straight to the monkey and avoid the middle men, among themselves they don’t dare admit what they are, so they’re out of their class when they come up against someone who’s got no reason to pretend the Emperor isn’t swishing around in the altogether.

And that, he suddenly realized, is why a lox like Howards, who really isn’t very big in the smarts department, can buy and sell them like used cars. He’s no smarter than they are, he’s just a bigger swine but with no front to worry about. He’s a power-junkie too, but he’s also the biggest dealer in town. And every junkie knows he had better bark when his Man says dog. Which is also why I drive Bennie up walls: he knows I’m one cat not hooked on the shit he peddles.

“All right,” Morris finally said. “I think you’re nuts, but why not? If you do run, we’ve got to keep you on the air anyway—and you’ve got to sink your fangs into Howards. You’ve got a deal, Barron.”

Beside him, Barron felt Luke sigh with triumphant relief. Sorry about that, chief, he thought, and said, “No deal yet. You guys got some mighty fancy competition—like Benedict Howards. I know where you stand now, but before I jump I want to see what Bennie thinks he has to offer.”

“What can Howards possibly offer you that’s bigger than the Presidency?” Morris said.

Barron laughed. “Believe me,” he said, “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I’m not so sure I believe it myself. Tune in next Wednesday, though, and you’ll find out. I guarantee that if I decide to play your game all your questions will be answered. You’ll see the hottest live TV show since Ruby shot Oswald.”

“And tell us in twenty-five words or less what you did on your vacation, Miss Westerfeld,” Jack Barron said, peeling off his sportjac and shirt, kicking off his shoes, and punching a stud on the nearest wall console which slid the glass patio doors open. The chill New York morning air, clean and clear at twenty-three stories up (at least at this hour) began to wake him out of his plane ride semi-sleep stupor, and he walked barechested out on the patio, with Sara in a bleary interrupted-sleep bathrobe following him outside, shivering.

“All I asked is what happened in Evers,” she complained in not-unjustified wounded tones.

Barron shrugged, grimaced, hugged her to him as much to warm himself as her. “The whole scam would make about three one-hour specials,” he said, “but at least I’ll give you the flash. I land at the airport. Luke has a whole fucking circus set up for my benefit. Ye-Olde-Presidential-Trial-Balloon schtick, as much to work on my head as on the press. After I shake that, I talk to this Franklin, find out someone really did buy his kid, find at least four other kids were probably bought by the same someone, put one and one together and come up with Bennie Howards, then back to Luke’s plantation where he’s got Morris, Woody Kaplan, and Deke Masterson all lined up to play the Smoke-Filled-Room number. I messed with their minds for a while, hopped a plane, and here I am, live in person. Satisfied?”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said firmly. “You look like… like something terrible has happened. Like… Jack, for chrissakes, tell me the truth!”

Barron looked out over the morning-clear East River-Brooklyn skyline, like a goddamn postcard-picture against the technicolor blue sky. And in about two hours, he thought, the air’ll be filled with about a trillion tons of muck and filth, the river’ll stink like a sewer, all those smokestacks already starting to stoke up—wonder what they make in all those goddamn factories over there, shit, probably, is all. And what did that cat say? “It is perfectly obvious why Man was created. Human beings are the most efficient organisms in all of Earth’s evolutionary history for converting food into shit.” And, man, am I on a bummer! So tell the little lady, man, they try again, she may be in the line of fire.

“Benedict Howards tried to have me killed,” he said quietly. He felt the muscles of her arms tighten around him, and she pressed her cheek against his naked goosefleshed chest. “Didn’t come very close, though,” he lied. “I dunno, maybe he was just trying to scare me off. Gunzel in the street, strictly Dodge City. Got that poor bastard Franklin, though. Howards really wanted to shut him up.”

“But why?” Sara said. “After all the trouble he went to to get you on his side?”

“Now there’s the $64,000 question. Think I figured out part of it. Howards killed Hennering because he found out something about the immortality schtick that scared him shitless enough to blow the whistle. Howards killed Franklin because he was afraid I’d find out the Foundation was buying children, and he tried to kill me, or at least scare me off, because he was afraid I’d put it on the air. Can only mean that Howards’ boys used those poor kids as human guinea pigs to develop the immortality treatment; and some of ’em must’ve died in the lab, ’cause the only thing that Bennie would risk being tried for murder for is covering up another murder, and the only thing he’d risk killing for in the first place is immortality.”

“What do we do now?” she asked, and her eyes staring up at him were pool-deep tunnels into his own gut into angers from the past into hard metal bee passing his ear Franklin in a pool of blood stretching from Berkeley attic to Evers street to four (five) cop-outs in a nice air-conditioned room in Luke’s plantation house divvying up dreams of desperation and playing power-junkie games “No one crosses Benedict Howards” and the cool professional assassin rifle on the garbage can sharding behind him orange peels and muck flying like a smashed junkie’s skull and hard metal bee passing his ear “The Black Shade! The Black Shade!”—and you know damn well what you want to do, Barron!

He smiled a bad-boy smile at her and asked, secretly rhetorical, knowing almost word for word what he would get back but wanting to hear his old close-to-the-blood self speak through Sara’s lips: “What do you want us to do?”

“Isn’t that all you need?” she asked. “Howards a murderer, and even if you couldn’t prove it you could put the parents of those kids he bought on the air, and then get Howards… But that’s your line of evil, you know just how to destroy the Foundation, you almost did it twice. And we could be careful, not let anyone get at us to… to… I’m not afraid.”

“I wonder if Madge Hennering said that too,” Barron said, but it was only a pro-forma cop-out and he knew it even as he said it. Got Bennie’s ass against the wall now for sure, he thought, and he’s not fucking around with Ted Hennering now, he’s playing chicken with Jack Barron, and I wrote that book. You set up your insurance already, didn’t you? What the fuck can Bennie do? Can’t get you off the air, not with that GOP Fat Cat action from Morris… should be able to keep away from hit-men you know are there. The fucker tried to kill you, you gonna let him get away with that?

“No, goddamnit, you’re right for once, Sara, Bennie’s not gonna get away with this. Not murder. Not sitting on top the whole country on a pile of dead bodies for the next million years, not a cat tried to kill Jack Barren and gets off whole! Yeah, no sweat to kill this Freezer Bill, and with the kind of stink I can hang on Howards, he’ll never be able to hold on to enough Democrats to block the Pretender… Sure I can do him in. And I will. Only…”