Bug Jack Barron

11

Better be it, or I feed you right to the fishes, enough crapping around Barron, and I gotta come to this crazy joint too? Benedict Howards thought as he sat down on some screwy iron-and-leather kite of a chair, stared across at Jack Barron perched like some oily Arab trader on a silly-ass camel saddle, framed by the open terrace behind him palm trees or whatever you call the dumb things look like cheaphotel phony rubberplants hot and cold running whores in Tulsa or San Jose or some other nowhere boom town with plenty of money and no class—yeah, it figures Jack Barron would go for that kind of California horseshit.

Howards opened his attaché case, took out two contracts in triplicate, handed them across to Barron along with his old-fashioned 14-carat-gold felt-tip pen. “There they are, Barron,” he said. “Contract for you, contract for Sara Westerfeld or Barron or whatever her last name is—made out to Sara Westerfeld, since that’s her legal name at the moment. All signed by me, paid up by ‘anonymous donor,’ and standard Freeze Contracts except for the immortality option clause. Just sign all the copies, and we can get down to your end of the bargain.”

Barron leafed through one of the copies, looked up, measured Howards with those goddamned smirking eyes of his, said: “Let’s get this straight, Bennie, once I sign these contracts, you can’t welch, I send one of my copies to a very safe place, with instructions to release it to the press with the whole scam on your having an immortality treatment, in case anything should happen to me, dig?”

Howards smiled. You’re so smart, Barron, think you’re two steps ahead of Benedict Howards, think I don’t know what you’re thinking—Jack Barren’s got his insurance, where’s yours, Howards, smells too easy? Chase your own tail, Barron, never figure out your insurance is really my insurance till it’s way too late and I own you down to the soles of your feet, and you’re too far in to ever back out till it’s your immortal life million years strong young cool-skinned women, air-conditioned arenas of power forever to lose same as mine, and then you’re my man all the way, like Senators, Governors, and goddamn it, President too, Mr Howards, despite goddamn idiot Hennering.

“You don’t even have to trust me that far,” Howards said with carefully-guarded casualness. “You and your wife can exercise the immortality option the moment you sign, if you want to. In fact you can fly back to Colorado with me tonight, have the treatment, and be back better than new in time for your next show. With Deep Sleep recovery, it’s all over in two days. You don’t have to trust me at all; you can collect your payoff before you have to deliver anything.”

Barron’s eyes narrowed even as Howards anticipated his suspicion. “That smells like a dead flounder to me. I don’t figure you for the trusting type, Bennie, and it looks like you’re trusting me, and that, baby, I don’t trust at all.”

Keep on thinking that way sucker, Howards thought. Go home in a barrel thinking you can out-con Benedict Howards.

“Who trusts you?” Howards replied smoothly. “I got it set up so neither of us has to trust the other, and you better believe it. I can play the press-release game too, and where would that leave you, Mr Champion of the Underdog? On public record, selling out to the Foundation. How long you think you keep your show then? You may be a lot of things, but I don’t think you’re stupid enough to blow everything just to double-cross me. We both got our names on dangerous paper, and neither of us can afford to make it public. It’s a double insurance policy, Barron.” And once you have the treatment, it’ll be more than your silly career, it’ll be your life, your million-year-life in my hands, if you think about pulling a fast one.

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?”

“Wouldn’t have signed the contract if I didn’t, now, would I?” Barron said. (Howards sensed the shrewd, electric danger in his sly voice. Watch it! Watch it! He’s playing that Bug Jack Barron game again.) “Question is, why are you so hot to make me immortal so damn quick?”

Benedict Howards felt the scalpel in the question probing for what the bastard’s been probing for all along—the secret of the treatment. And you’re not gonna find that out nohow, Barron, not till it’s too late. Can’t push him now, gotta back off, damn it, or… Can’t let him get suspicious about the treatment!

“Tell you the truth, Barron,” he said, “I get carried away. Just thinking about it reminds me I’m immortal, really immortal, and I just can’t see why anyone would wait five minutes longer than they had to. But I suppose you can’t feel that now—just wait till you stand where I stand, you’ll understand then. But you do what you want. I don’t give a damn. It’s your life, Barron, your immortal life; I’ve got mine, and that’s all I really care about.”

“Never figured you for a True Believer, Bennie,” said Barron, smiling. (But the smile was guarded, a put-on?) “Don’t worry, I’ll be there to collect when I’m good and ready.”

And I’ll be there to collect you, you smart-ass bastard, Howards thought as he turned to leave. Save your bullshit tricks for Wednesday nights, Barron, we’re both gonna need ’em. You’ll go to Colorado, and you’ll do it soon, or else. No flunky holds out on Benedict Howards!

“For the last time, Sara, we play this my way—not yours,” Jack Barron said, seeing her naked body stiff, half fetaled, and about as sexy as an old inner tube, lying uptight and pale in the sickly city moonlight that filtered through the bedroom skylight, framing them both, curled face to face untouching like bleached tadpoles on the electrically-warmed bed, like the spotlight of some cheapjack off-off-Broadway two-hundred-seat playhouse.

“But what the hell is your way?” she said, that old six-year-dead whine creeping back into her voice, ghost of breaking-up days, and her eyes were glassy mirrors in the darkness, mirroring depths beyond depths—or just an illusion about as deep as a phosphor-dot pattern on a TV

Half the time I think I know this chick through to where she lives, he thought, and the rest of the time I wonder if she lives anywhere or do I just see illusions of depths, my self-projected Sara of the mind on the vidphone screen of her face? And his naked body next to hers felt at this moment like a piece of meat connected to his mind only by the most novocained of sensory circuits.

“Why didn’t we go to Colorado with Howards?” she was saying. “Why don’t we take the treatment right away? Then that slimy Howards’d have nothing left to hold over our heads, and you could start right in on him again next Wednesday. And why did you want to play that stupid game with him, leave him guessing whether I told you everything or not? Why…?”

Why? Why? Why? thought Jack Barron. Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle! Go explain to her; you can’t even explain it to yourself—belly-message is all, smell of danger behind everything, reality behind reality behind reality slippery feel of uncertainty like driving through traffic in rain fogged wind-shield stoned on acid; impossible to know where objective stone-wall reality’s at, but knowing for sure you don’t see it yet, gotta inch along real slow by the seat of your pants or get run over by Howards’ Mack Truck Chinese box lie within lie within lie puzzle…

“Because it’s just what Bennie wants me to do,” he said, if only to cut off the nagging sound of her voice with his own. “He wanted us to have the treatment now, he wanted it real bad, so bad that when I let him know that I knew how hot he was for us to do it, he backed off. And that’s just not Bennie’s pattern, that cat’s gotta be real uptight about blowing something to back water…”

Just don’t add up, Barron thought. Bennie’s too paranoid, and not dumb enough to trust me. Makes no sense, one thing he really has on me now is immortality, I was him. I’d withhold the treatment until I delivered the goods, got the Freezer Bill through at least, only real insurance Bennie’s got. And that he’s hot to throw away! Stick the ace he holds right up my sleeve, put me in the catbird-seat. So, somehow, that immortality treatment’s gotta be his real insurance—his ace in the hole, not mine. But how? It just doesn’t add up. And until it does, Jack Barron doesn’t come within a thousand miles of that damned Rocky Mountain Freezer. Sara reached out, touched the inner curve of his upper thigh. But it felt mechanical and far away; he just wasn’t in the mood, didn’t think she really was either. “What’re you thinking about?” she asked. “You’re a million miles away.”

“I wish to hell I knew,” Barron said. “I just got the feeling I’m in over my head, is why I don’t want to take that treatment now, got the feeling it’d get me in too deep in something I don’t dig. Everything that’s happened since I got involved in this daisy-chain with Howards seems unreal—this President bullshit… immortality… they’re just words, Sara, words out of some comic book or science fiction magazine, can’t taste ’em, feel ’em, smell ’em, make ’em add up to anything that feels real. But that fucker Howards, he’s real, no doubt about it, he smells real. And there’s something oozing out of him that’s real too, something big and scary, and I’m in it up to the eyeballs and I just don’t know what it is…”

“I think I understand,” Sara said, and her hand tightened on his thigh; she inched closer to him on the bed and he began, almost against his will, to pick up on the warmth of her beside him.

“But isn’t it just because you’re letting things happen, not making them happen? You’re looking at it backwards—you should say to yourself, I’ve gotta stop Benedict Howards, and I’ve gotta keep immortality, and I’ve gotta do whatever I have to to do it. You can’t wait for Howards to give you an opening, and you can’t wait for someone else to do it, and you shouldn’t worry about what Howards can do to us. Believe in yourself, Jack. Believe you can beat Howards no matter what he does; I believe it, and it’s my life too. Oh, Jack, it’s just too big… immortality for the whole world, or that lizard Howards going on and on and on… You can’t cop-out now!”

“Cop-out?” Barron snarled in an instant lash-out defensive reaction. “Who the fuck are you to give me lectures about copping out, after what you’ve done, after the game you played with my head and Benedict Howards?” And immediately he was sorry.

“Cause she’s right, in her own dumb way, he thought. That cocksucker Howards! Sara never was in his league, who is, he uses people, and then tosses ’em away like a snotty Kleenex; did it to Sara, do it to me I give him the chance, do it to the whole fucking country. That’s where it’s at, all right, Howards dealing a bummer to the whole dumb country, and old Jack Barron dealing his power-junk for him on living-color junior high school street corners. That’s exactly where it’s at, Barron, and you can’t con yourself otherwise.

“I deserved—”

“No you didn’t Sara,” Barron said, and drew her asexually to him, hugged her tight, sucking up her plain human warmth, hoping she was getting the same off him ’cause God knows she needs it I need it we all need it, need a little human warmth, little flesh-reality, with a freakout monster like Benedict Howards running amok, shooting up the world with his lousy paranoid junk. “You hit me a little too close to home, is all. Bravery, you’re talking about, courage is all, and right now that’s just a word, too…”

Yeah, courage, cheap commodity, when you’re a punk Baby Bolshevik smart-ass kid and you got nothing to lose you can lay yourself on the line just for the surge. But with a pad like this, four hundred thou a year, and immortality, and Christ knows what else on the line… throw all that away for a bunch of fucking words, words, is all, for two hundred and thirty million slob-loser cowards who wouldn’t risk ten cents for Jack Barron? My life on the line, immortal life, and Howards with Christ knows what up his sleeve to pound me to a pulp, and for what, a chance to pin a tin hero-medal on my chest and give me a fancy kamikaze funeral? You’re asking too much, Sara, I’m no hero, just a cat happened to get stuck in a position where it’s all on his back, sick-joke of Kismet, is all. All I can do is just try to come out of this trip with as much as I can, hurting as few people as possible; that’s the name of the game, game of life, is all.

“Promise you just one thing, Sara,” he said. “I don’t play Bennie’s game or anyone else’s but my own. We’re gonna get ourselves immortality, and we’re gonna keep our skins whole in the process—that’s the prime order of business. But if I get a chance to stomp Howards without losing any of my own flesh, I’ll do it. Bet your sweet ass I’ll do it! I hate that motherfucker more than you do—he’s trying to use me, and worse, he’s got the gall to try and use my woman against me. We’re gonna come out on top, you better believe it, and if we do in Bennie on the side, that’s gravy. But just gravy.”

“Jack…”

He felt warmth in her voice again, but behind it still the thin edge of that crazy Baby Bolshevik berserker determination, and for some reason he found himself digging it this time, digging his simple good-hearted chick, with her cuntfelt black and white silly-ass ideals should be protected, not stomped on, and in any decent world would be. But we’re all stuck in this world, and here, Sara, baby, there be tigers.

“Know something else?” he asked, feeling mind-circuit connections with his body begin to open, juices flowing into channels of think-feel integration, the skin-on-skin woman-warmth reality against him. “In about five minutes, I think I’ll ball you senseless like you never been fucked before. Whatever else you are or aren’t, you’re good inside, chick, and you deserve it.”

We all deserve it.

Gongingonging - gong! gong! gong!

“Ummph…” Jack Barron grunted, waking up in the disorienting darkness, a weight heavy against his chest. “What the…”

Gong! Gong! Gong!

Uuuh, he thought fuzzily, goddamned vidphone. He half-sat-up against the bedstead, Sara’s head sliding down his bare chest into his lap, made the connection, stopping the gonging that had been pounding behind his ears like a headache commercial. What the hell time is it? he wondered. What stupid bastard’s waking me up at this time of night?

Grumbling, still trying to shake the sleep out of his head, Barron saw that Sara was still asleep, fumbled the vidphone down on to the bed beside him, turned the custom volume-control knob down to the lowest setting, and squinted sourly at the face glowing up grayly at him from the vidphone screen, wanly phosphorescent in the darkness: long dark hair over a man’s thin-boned face. (Something familiar about this silly schmuck calling me up in the middle of the night, how the hell did he get my unlisted number…?)

“Hello, Jack,” a gravelly whisper from the vidphone said as Barron sleepily tried to place the face. (I know this cat, but who in hell is he?) “Brad Donner. Remember?” the vidphone image said.

Donner… Brad Donner… Barron thought. Berkeley or Los Angeles or someplace, old Baby Bolshevik type I haven’t seen in years… Yeah, LA, just before I got the show, friend of Harold Spence, some kind of brown-nosing brat-lawyer always talking about running for Congress or something… Jesus Christ, every prick I ever talked to in person thinks he can bug me any time he feels like it…

“You know what time it is, Donner?” Barron snarled, then lowered his voice, remembering Sara’s sleeping against his lap and, boy, what a night, am I sore! “ ’Cause I sure don’t. Must be four or five in the morning. Where’d you learn your manners, in the Gestapo?”

“Yeah, Jack,” Donner said. (Stop calling me Jack, you brown-nosed mother!) “I know it’s a bad hour, but I had to get to you right away. Got your number from Spence in LA, you remember, Harry was a big buddy of yours in those days?”

“Nobody’s my buddy at this hour,” Barron said. “If you’re asking me some favor you sure picked a stupid time to do it, Donner.”

“No favor, Jack,” Donner said. “I’ve been working here in Washington as public relations counselor to Ted Hennering these three years, anyway till he was killed…”

“Bully for you, Donner,” Barron grumbled. Figures that this putz with all his SJC bullshit would end up as flack for a lox like Hennering! Now with Hennering dead, I’m supposed to get him another job—at four a.m.? Jesus—

“I just got woke up myself,” Donner said, “by Ted’s widow Madge. She’s all shook, Jack, scared out of her head since Ted was killed. Came over to my place, woke me up, said she had to talk to you right away, and I think you’d better listen, after the hell you just gave Benedict Howards. Mrs Hennering?”

Donner’s face was replaced by what once must’ve been an old-fashioned “handsome matron” in her fifties, thick gray hair in semidisarray, prim little lips trembling, and wild frantic eyes staring up from the vidphone screen. What’s going on? Barron thought, coming full awake. Madge Hennering?

“Mr Barron…” Madge Hennering said in a voice that seemed accustomed to being snotty-patrician-calm but was now edged with shrill frenzy. “Thank God! Thank God! I didn’t know where to turn, what to do, who to go to, who I could possibly trust after they… after Ted… And then I saw your program, the things you said about Benedict Howards, and I knew you were one man I could trust, one man who couldn’t be involved with that murdering… You’ll believe me, won’t you, Mr Barron? You’ve got to believe me, you’ve got to tell the country how my husband died…”

“Take it easy, Mrs Hennering,” Barron said soothingly, slipping half-mechanically into Bug Jack Barron cool vidphone-circuit consciousness. “I know how you must feel, that terrible accident, but try to—”

“Accident!” Madge Hennering screamed, loud enough even at minimum vidphone audio to make Sara stir in his lap. “It was no accident. My husband was murdered. I’m sure he was murdered. There must’ve been a bomb on his plane. Benedict Howards had him killed.”

“What?” Barron grunted. She’s gibbering, he thought. Hennering was Bennie’s stooge all the way; nobody lost more when he died than Howards. This poor old bat’s gone round the bend, I gotta be a shrink too, at four in the a.m.?

“Don’t you think that’s a matter for the police?” he said. “Assuming, of course, that it’s true.” Get the hell off my aching back, lady!

“But I can’t go to the police,” she said. “There’s no evidence. Howards planned it that way. There’s nothing left of Ted or his plane… nothing…” She began to sob, then with an effort Barron could not help admiring, set her jaw, said, icy-calm: “I’m sorry. It’s just that I was the only witness, and I’ve got no evidence to back it up, and I just don’t know what to do.”

“Look,” Barron said wearily, “I realize it’s bad taste to talk politics at a time like this, but I guess I have to. Howards had no reason in the world to kill your husband, Mrs Hennering. Your husband was a cosponsor of the Foundation’s Freezer Bill, and it was an open secret that Howards was backing him for President. To be blunt, your husband was Howards’s too—er, ally. Howards had nothing to gain by killing him and everything to lose. Surely you know that.”

“I’m no fool, Mr Barron. But the day before Ted died he had a long phone conversation with Benedict Howards. I only heard part of it, but they argued and called each other terrible things, terrible things. Ted told Howards he was through with him, would have no part of the Foundation anymore, said Howards was a filthy monster. I’ve never seen Ted so furious.

“He told Howards that he was going to publicly withdraw his support from the Freezer Utility Bill, make a statement to the press about something awful he had found out the Foundation was doing. And Howards said, ‘No one backs out on Benedict Howards, Hennering. Cross me, and I’ll squash you like a bug.’ Those were his exact words. And then Ted said something terribly obscene, and hung up. When I asked Ted what it was all about, he got mad at me, but he really seemed terribly frightened—and I’d never seen my husband really scared before. Ted refused to tell me anything, said it was too dangerous for me to know, he didn’t… didn’t want my life to be in danger. And then he flew back home to talk with the Governor, but… but he never got there. Howards had him killed—I know he had him killed.”

Crazy paranoid bullshit! Barron thought. Bet your ass Hennering was involved in forty-seven slimy deals with the Foundation, went from State Senator to Congressman to Senator on Bennie’s bread, anybody with brains enough to read the funny paper knows that. Real touching lady, old college try to make your husband a dead hero instead of Bennie’s late stooge, Democrat front-man for Foundation muscle. Deathbed repentance yet, and just before he’s conveniently blown to kingdom come. Ted Hennering, Noble Martyr. Yeah, sure, after a hundred million people saw him two weeks ago gibbering like… like…

Jesus H. Christ! Was that why Hennering was so uptight? Shit, it does figure! Hennering was killed on Thursday night, which means he could’ve had it out with Howards either on Wednesday or Thursday, like she says, would’ve known whatever was supposed to have turned him off the Foundation when he was on Bug Jack Barron. Would sure explain why he was so out of it…

“You do believe me, don’t you Mr Barron?” Madge Hennering said. “Everyone in Washington says you’re an enemy of Benedict Howards. You’ll want to use this against him, you’ll want to put me on your program and help me tell the country how my husband died, won’t you? And not just to save Ted’s reputation. Mr Barron, I was married to Ted for twenty-one years. I really knew him, I know he wasn’t a great man, and I know he did cooperate with Howards, but he wasn’t a bad man or a coward. He found out something about the Foundation for Human Immortality that infuriated him, sickened him, something so terrible he feared for his life, and for mine, just because he knew it.

“I don’t know much about politics, but murdering a United States Senator is something that even a man like Benedict Howards wouldn’t risk doing unless… unless he felt he couldn’t afford not to. I don’t know what this is all about, but something terrible has to be going on for Howards to resort to politicial assassination. A lunatic with a gun is one thing, but this… this is something out of European history books… the Borgias… Ted, oh, Ted!” and she began to shake, sob convulsively, convincing Barron that at least the woman wasn’t trying to put him on.

But cold-blooded political assassination, he thought, that’s gotta be pure paranoia. So maybe Hennering did find out something rank enough to turn him off the Foundation (but what the fuck could be rank enough to make a phony like Hennering get enough religion to throw away Howards’ backing for the Presidential nomination?), maybe he did have a fight with Howards, and maybe Bennie did threaten him (how many times has Howards given me that squash-you-like-a-bug schtick?). But blowing up airplanes, the whole Borgia bit… pure coincidence, is all. This hysterical chick adds up one and one and gets three, is all.

Donner replaced Madge Hennering on the vidphone screen. “Well, Jack,” he said, “what’re you going to do? Should I have her call in Wednesday? This is big, scary—”

“Yeah, it’s scary all right,” Barron said. “What scares me is the thought of the lawsuit Howards could slap on everyone in sight if that woman gets on the air and accuses him of murdering without a scrap of evidence. You’re supposed to be a lawyer? Don’t even know libel when it’s screaming in your face! Not only could Howards sue, but the FCC would have me off the air quicker than you could say ‘yellow journalism.’ Forget it, Donner, I may be crazy, but I’m not out of my mind.”

“But, Jack—”

“And don’t call me Jack!” Barron snapped loudly. “In fact, don’t bother to call me at all.” And he broke the connection as Sara’s eyes finally blinked half open.

“Uh… whazzat…?” she grunted.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” said Barron. “Just a crank call, is all. Just a couple of screwballs.”

Yeah, he thought, just a pair of nuts. Bennie may be a little flakey, but he’s not about to go around killing people; he’s got too much to lose, his precious immortal life in the electric chair… .

Nevertheless, his back against the bedstead began to itch faintly.