Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  “In words of one syllable for us ignorant shades, please,” Sara heard Jack say, still feigning confusion. But, you are faking it now, aren’t you, Jack? she thought. Putting on Luke…Wow, what’s going on? And she felt as she did when she was eleven, peeking in between wooden shack slats and watching naked boy-flesh shapes doing exciting dirty-little-boy things. Like the old Jack in bed beside her, talking big-world phone-talk over her quiet listening-flesh with Luke, and how good, oh how good to be Sara Barron again, watching my man doing his man-things…

  “How’s yes for a word of one syllable?” Luke said. “I just got off the phone with Morris, and, baby, the word is yes. You pulled it off, you made up all the points with the Republican vips you lost by bad-mouthing Morris. After the way you stomped Howards tonight—and they loved the way you linked him with Hennering—they are like hot for your living-color bod. You know what a tight little cabal that bunch is, so when Greg Morris says he can personally guarantee you the nomination if I can deliver the S.J.C., you know that means that all their vips have spoken. And with that word in old Luke’s hip pocket, don’t you worry, we’re home free with the S.J.C. Council.

  “You know what this means, Clive? You dig? We’re gonna do it! We’re really gonna do it, not another Berkeley pipe dream, not a little piece of the action like I have here, but the whole schmear, Jack, all the way, an S.J.C. National Administration, just like you told us in that dirty old attic. It took one hell of a long time for you to remember who you were, but, Claude, it was worth the wait ’cause when you returned to the fold, prodigal baby, you brought more than the bacon back, you brought the whole fucking hog.”

  “For chrissakes, Jack, tell me!” Sara said excitedly. “What’s this all about?”

  Jack grimaced, handed her the vidphone. “Go ahead, Machiavelli,” he said with a peculiar weariness. “You do it, at least you’ll be able to keep a straight face. Tell the little lady what it’s all about.”

  “You mean you haven’t told…?” Luke said incredulously. “Sara, us movers and shapers gonna make this cretin you’re balling the next President of the United States, is all.”

  Jack snatched back the vidphone before she could answer, before she could do anything but gape at him as if he were some mystical avatar suddenly revealed in his full glory by a flash of psychedelic light. Yes! Yes! she thought, where in the world is there a bigger man than Jack, and who can stand against him if he stands naked, the whole total Berkeley-knight-in-soft-flesh-armor JACK BARRON in front of those hundred million people? They’ve got to want him; all he’s gotta do is show the world Jack.

  “I got a one-syllable word for you too, Luke, and it’s even shorter,” Jack said. “The word is no. If nominated, I shall not run, if elected, I shall not serve, and all that Sherman jazz. Okay, let’s say you can get me a Republican and S.J.C. nomination. Let’s say the Pretender gets himself killed, like Hennering, and I end up running against some obvious Howards stooge, and everyone is stoned on Election Day, so I win. What then? I don’t know shit from shinola about being President, and what’s more, I’ve got no eyes to learn. It’s just not my bag.”

  “No sweat,” Luke said smoothly. “You’ll have plenty of political geniuses like yours truly to run things for—”

  “Look, Svengali, I’m nobody’s front-man, not even yours, and I never will be, and don’t you forget it! Think I’m so stupid I don’t know where it’s at? You and Morris want an image-candidate, an Eisenhower, a Reagan, a fucking-mindless-celebrity mouthpiece, is all, someone you can package and sell like soap. And the answer is no. You so buddy-buddy with Morris, why don’t you run yourself?”

  “This is a vidphone, isn’t it?” Luke said bitterly. “Take a good look at the color of my face and say that again, shade.”

  “Sorry, Luke, I’m really sorry,” Jack said with that instant belly-radar reflex-reaction that always seemed to tell him when he had drawn blood, intentional or otherwise, with that inner vulnerable little-boy empathy Sara had always loved behind the kick-’em-in-the-ass exterior, drawing immediately back.

  “You know me, man,” Jack said earnestly. “I really don’t notice your color until it smacks me in the face. I’m not giving you some bullshit come-on. Anyway, I really meant it—you’re the man should be President, not me. It’s your bag, not mine. You’ve worked all these years in that direction even though you knew…what you were up against, and I’ve been off in an entirely different bag, the show biz scene…Which is yet another good reason for my saying no. Who am I to waltz on to your turf and make like top dog? You try and get yourself a phone-in show, and I’ll be out to stomp you dead. Let’s be friends, but let’s each of us stick to his own line of evil.”

  Sara caught a glimpse of poor wounded Luke (hung up over it even in Berkeley days, she thought. Number one type cat always number two, being black and too hip not to know it was where it would always be at), smiling it away (how brave to be black and still be a man she remembered how contained, hard-edged he had been, even in bed), and saying real cool like Luke-cool:

  “You know you’re right, Clyde. I always knowed I was a better man than you, never thought you’d finally up and admit it. (And Sara, through body-remembered senses knew the triple-level—reality-put-on-reality—of Luke’s sarcasm). But the hard fact is that you can do it and I can’t, because you’re a shade and I’m a nigger—it’s as simple as that, and I don’t hold it against you. But that’s why I have to do it through you, why we all have to do it through you. What’s the S.J.C. but a collection of coons, Flower People, Baby Bolsheviks, and just plain losers, think I kid myself? You’re the only big-league shade we got going, only cat that can ring in that Republican bread and support. You could be a fucking chimpanzee and we’d have to go with—’cause you’re the only ape can win.”

  Sara felt a pang of the old remembered thing for Luke with the balls to say the truth and the brains to say it right, and though anyone paled beside Jack, for her, she felt a warm snug satisfaction at the memory of how once she had been able to give Lukas Greene some small balm for that ever-open black wound.

  “Sorry Luke,” Jack said. “The answer’s still no. And you can tell Morris to forget it too. There’s no point in even thinking about it any more. N.O. No!”

  “Okay, B’rer Rabbit, I won’t throw you into the briar patch,” said Luke. “Not today. But I’m telling you right now, I’m gonna stall Morris as long as I can till I can get you to change your mind.”

  “You won’t,” Jack said flatly.

  “Sara,” Luke said, “you tell this prick where it’s at. Maybe you can get in through that concrete skull of his. I’m tired, chillun, gonna go lynch me a brace of rednecks or something, y’know, relax. You listen to that chick of yours, Jack. She knows you better than you know yourself, knows the best part of you, part you still seem to be strangers to. Listen to her, will you, stupid? Later.”

  And he broke the connection, and Jack put away the vidphone, and they were staring at each other—the old contest of silence game; who would yell first?

  “Jack I—”

  “Do I have to hear it from you too, Sara? Does everyone have to tell me what a fucking cop-out I am? Goddamned broken record! You and Luke…you think Luke really knows what’s coming off? You so sure you do?”

  “But, Jack, President…” The word was an enormity in her mouth, choking off the impossible thoughts of what it implied.

  “President, horseshit! A fucking pipe dream! You saw the show. Howards’ got a fifty-billion-dollar slush fund, and whether he can legally spend it or not the muscle’s still there. Bennie Howards is gonna pick the next President, and you better believe it. I let them talk me into that crap, and I have the priviledge of losing—not only the Presidency, but the show too…and maybe a whole lot more. For what, a chance to shoot my mouth off? They pay me to do that every week as it is.”

  “But, Jack (Can’t he see himself as I see him?), you could do it. You’re—”

  “It’s groovy to know
your chick thinks you’re a little tin god. That, and fifteen hundred bucks’ll pay the rent for a month on this pad. What’ll we do if I blow everything by kamikazeing into Howards, open a cat-house, with you as door prize?”

  “But—”

  Again the vidphone chime interrupted. “If this is Morris, I’m gonna tell him to go—”

  She saw his face change abruptly to a mask of cold calculation, and a cold chill came over her as she looked at the vidphone screen over his shoulder and found herself staring at the gray lizardman deathmask, fear-mask of life-and-death power of the man who had brought them together again for reasons of his own, the terrible windowless white face of Benedict Howards.

  “You imbecile! You double-crossing smart ass—” Howards was screaming; Sara could feel hot-leather reptile-stench emotions of fear, rage, hate, carrion teeth all but reaching out of the screen, windowless white teeth around a forked rattlesnake tongue spitting venom at Jack’s throat. The sight of a man of such hideous power, a man who held the secret that could destroy her, destroy Jack and Sara Barron again and forever, in such a black mindless rage, terrified her and she felt like a bird before a cobra indeed.

  But the moment Jack spoke, the spell was broken. “Look Bennie,” he said in what Sara recognized as his put-on lazy-indifferent style, calculated to infuriate and intimidate those with actual power by an illusion of cooler-than-thou calm, “I’ve had a rough day and I’m in no mood to listen to you gibber. This is an unlisted number for obvious reasons, and I didn’t let Vince give it to you so you could scream at me like a red-assed baboon with bleeding piles. You got something to say to me, you take a deep breath, count to ten, light up an Acapulco Gold, and come on real cool-like, or I’m gonna hang right up on you and put my vidphone on ‘reject,’ dig?”

  And in the long moment of silence that followed Sara felt the weight of it heavy upon her. Bennie? Jack called him Bennie! Double-cross? Howards had said “double-cross”! She sensed the electric conflict of wills humming in the silence between Jack and Benedict Howards across the vidphone circuit; sensed that silence operating on multiple levels of power-guile combat; could read from the tiny image of Howards—reptile rage seeming to contract in on itself into a patchwork façade of iron-control—that Jack was somehow the stronger, and that both of them knew it.

  “All right, Barron,” Howards finally said in a voice like steel, “I’ll assume that I’m talking to a rational human being and not a raving lunatic. A rational human being should know what happens when you double-cross Benedict Howards. I thought we had reached an understanding. You were going to get me off the hook, and then you turn around and—”

  “Hey, what’s all this double-cross scam?” Jack said (And Sara sensed this was no put-on. But what’s going on between Jack and Howards?). “I wasn’t gonna get you off anything. I just wasn’t gonna ram the knife home in the last segment, way I could’ve. I gave you the chance to talk about research and make points, didn’t I? Not my fault if you’re not a pro like me. I gave you the perfect lead-in to tell the world how great your immortality research is going, and you blew your big chance to make good in show biz. Come to think of it, you acted pretty funny—almost as if you had something to hide…”

  “Never mind all that,” Howards said coldly. “We’ve got some business to transact, remember? You’ve already cost me Christ knows how many votes in Congress with this last disaster, and it’s about time—”

  “Not on the phone,” Jack broke in. “My office. Two o’clock tomorrow.”

  “Look, Barron, you’ve mickey moused me long enough. No one plays games with Benedict How—”

  Jack laughed what Sara recognized as a calculated laugh. “If you insist, Bennie. Of course I better tell you I’m not alone.”

  Jack stared at her; she could sense worlds behind those eyes, alien worlds of guile and power, Jack-Howards clandestine-combat worlds. And with a pang of fear she wondered if Jack saw the worlds behind her eyes—Howards working on her, twisting her, sending her to him for reasons of his own, (Was that the business they were talking about? Sell-out to Benedict Howards? Am I just a piece of lizardman sure-thing insurance?), and her own plan within Howards’ plan…

  “What?” Howards shouted. “Are you crazy? You want to screw us both? Who—”

  “Relax, Bennie,” Jack said. “Just my once-and-future wife, Sara…Sara Westerfeld nee Barron née Westerfeld. You don’t keep secrets from your chick for very long.” He laughed falsely. “Not as long as your chick can keep secrets from you anyway,” he said.

  Sara felt a moment of pure panic. Does Jack know? About me and Howards? Has the lizardman told him? Or will Howards tell him now, use me against Jack? Should I tell Jack everything now, is it time? Too soon! Too soon!

  But Howards laughed a cold-reptile laugh she knew was for her, knew he was as good as reading her mind. “Far be it from me to interfere in your love life, Barron,” Howards said, and Sara could feel daggers of sarcasm nibble at her as Howards toyed with her, reminded her of his power to destroy her through Jack—and Jack through her.

  “Okay, tomorrow at your office. I’ll fly in tonight. And…and give my regards to Sara Westerfeld.” And Howards broke the connection.

  Jack turned to her, and she felt the hesitation in his eyes matched by her own. Building within her, she felt the tension of subterfuge, a bubble demanding to be burst. Tell him! Tell him everything! But…but is this the time? Will he play our game if…? Or will it be the end of everything that ever was between us forever? Forever, a huge word—and a bigger stake.

  She decided that the decision would be Jack’s, not hers. If he would tell her, tell her all, tell her that Howards was offering him a place in the Freezers, she would know he was as ready as he’d ever be, and she’d tell him what Howards really was, and together they’d destroy him…

  “What was that all about?” she asked blandly, felt the moment, the shadow of his next words, hanging like a dagger above their lives, above all that had been, all that might be…forever.

  Jack hesitated, and she felt the decision-turmoil behind his eyes too, but when he spoke, she felt the pregnant moment shoved aside, a trip to the dentist postponed, as she saw the shield go up behind his eyes, universes of danger sheering off from the mutual moment of mortal truth they both individually knew must soon come.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “But tomorrow I’m going to find out. And…trust me till then, Sara. I just can’t tell you now.”

  Deep within her, she sighed in relief, felt the pattern of lies, cop-outs, evasions as a kind of ironic bond between them. But she knew that that bond of falsehood would not last past tomorrow—that after Jack met with Howards there would either be truth between them…or nothing.

  “Yessir, Mr. Barron, no sir, Mr. Barron, you stink, sir, Mr. Barron,” Jack Barron muttered, toying with the pack of Acapulco Golds, a sardonic invitation amid the clutter of his desk, his day, his head. Goddamn Carrie, he thought. Could understand if she quit her job or got the network to transfer her, who could blame her? Not my fault, not hers. But, no, the bitch’s gotta go on with the show, baby, sit out there with that yes, sir no, sir crap, and that big eat-shit-you-bastard office-smile. Still hung-up on me, or just being a sadist…? Or maybe it’s fun-and-games time, I gotta fire her before she passes “go” or she don’t collect two hundred dollars. Well, screw you, Carrie, you can stew in your own bile till your tushy’s mushy before I play your game and can you.

  Barron pawed out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, lit it, then played tease-games with the potsmoke, sucking it in to the back of his throat, dribbling it out without inhaling, wondering whether it would be smart to have the big showdown with Howards loaded.

  The sweet smoke promised an out from the Lukes and Saras and Carries, all playing their dumb little games for dumb little stakes and expecting Jack Barron to lay his whole bod on the line to back their dumb little action.

  But something held him back, and the fact that he could only s
niff a faint aroma (like a week-dead codfish across the street) of that something really uptighted him. What’s bigger than the Presidency of the United States? he wondered. What’s bigger than fifty billion dollars? What the fuck could be that big? Something is, I can smell it, feel it, like a junkie feels heat coming at him in a squad car fifty blocks away. Man, it’s out there, whatever it is, else Bennie Howards is just plain flipped acting the way he is. And come to think of it, that might be interesting right there, with the cards I’m holding.

  But he wondered if the cards he held were really as unbeatable as they looked, too damn good for the league I’m playing in, is Bennie really that bad? Am I really that good? Goddamn, Bennie knows something I don’t, is what I’m playing this game for in the first place, and you know that whatever that something is it’s the ace in the hole for somebody, and how the fuck can I know whose ace it is until I know what it is?

  And whatever it is, baby, it’s big, big enough to make Howards blow bubbles with his tongue when he had the opening to make points on the show I gave him; big enough to scare him shitless when he caught himself almost blowing it—and big enough to make him blow his cool in the first place, and with a reptile like Howards, that is like big.

  Barron snubbed out the joint in an ashtray. No grass today, he told himself. Today Riverboat Jack’s in the big game for the big pot, and you better be sure your head’s all here when Bennie—

  “Mr. Barron, Mr. Benedict Howards is here to see you,” Carrie’s tinny voice said, dry-icewise, over the intercom.

  “Send Howards in, Miss Donaldson. Thank you, Miss Donaldson, go fuck yourself, Miss Donaldson,” Barron said, the last without breaking rhythm but after he had snapped off the intercom.