Bug Jack Barron

12

Jeez man, what’s the matter with you, Jack Barron thought as they rolled the final commercial, Real stinkeroo tonight. So acid’s legal under Strip City SJC jurisdiction, but maybe illegal under Greg Morris’ California State Law, so Morris has his Attorney General demand access to the Strip City Narcotics Licensing Bureau records, to make Woody Kaplan look like either a criminal or a stoolie, and the mayor of Freakoutsville says “nyet.” Big fucking deal. Should’ve suggested the state-fuzz bust into the Strip City offices, grab the records on a state writ,then the hippy cops could bust ’em for breaking and entering under local law, and the state cops bust the local fuzz for interfering with state police, and you’d have all the cops in the County of Los Angeles arresting each other on street corners, good for laughs, at least. Which is about all the last 45 minutes could’ve been good for.

But I even blew that, just can’t keep my mind on that kind of crap, not with the real action that’s going on.Madge Hennering run over by a truck! Hit-and-run by a Hertz rental with the plates removed, impossible to trace, try to tell herself that wasn’t a pro job! Try to kid yourself you don’t know who bought the hit, Barron… Man, oh,man, would I like to get Bennie on the line now and hit him with that! Yeah, and what would he hit me with, a safe falling off the Empire State Building, or a lawsuit and the FCC and the kitchen sink…?

“Course it all could be coincidence, or the Hennering clan could have other enemies she didn’t talk about. Yeah, sure, and the Mars Expedition’s gonna find out Mars is made of red cheese. What the hell am I mixed up in anyway?

Snap out of it man, you’ve got a show to run, gotta try and pull something out of tonight’s fiasco. And the promptboard said “60 Seconds.”

“Hey Vince,” Barron said over the intercom circuit, “we got any real kook calls come into the monkey block tonight?”

Gelardi’s face was sour and worried behind the control-booth glass (Vince smells the egg we’re laying too), but he grinned wanly as he said, “You kidding? This is still Bug Jack Barron, just barely maybe, but we still got every freako in the country calling in.” And the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.”

“Okay,” Barron said, “give me the screwiest call you got, don’t even tell me what it is. My head’s just not on straight tonight, and I want something’ll really blow my mind, get some action going. But no politics, for chrissakes, I want a real Little Old Lady from Pasadena type, good, clean, All-American kook.”

“Have I got a kook for you,” Gelardi said in a thick Yiddish accent as the promptboard flashed “On the Air.”

Looks like he meant it, Barron thought as the monitor screen split down the middle; on the lefthand side the gray on gray image of a wasted Negro face, uncombed semi-happy hair, black on black jaw-stubble shadow, over a fancy fifty-dollar gold-filigree-collared sportjac half unbuttoned revealing a torn old T-shirt, semifocused watery eyes staring across the monitor at his living-color image in an obviously advanced state of alcoholic stupefaction.

“This is Bug Jack Barron, and you’re on the air,” Barron began, coming alive with old-fashioned freak-show anticipation, remembering that Los Angeles Birch-grill Peeping-Tom dock-and-hotseat show where the whole thing started when he turned around the third degree light and rubber hose of old Joe Swyne—and, Joe, baby, wherever you are, this looks like one that would’ve been right down your twisted little alley.

“Name’s Henry George Franklin,” a rheumy basso said, and behind his head the screen showed vague slat-shack outlines beyond the rococo shape of the most gigantic pseudo-Arabic TV-stereo console the world had ever seen. “Y’can call me Frank, ol’ Jack Barron, jus’ call me Frank.”

“Okay, Frank,” said Barron, “and you can just call me Jack. And now that we’re on a first-name basis, let’s hear what’s bugging you.” Come on, come on, freak out already, got about twelve minutes to turn tonight’s turkey into instant Salvador Dali. And Vince, anticipating, split the screen in a crazy jagged diagonal, with Henry George Franklin above Barron like a custard pie about to be thrown.

“Well, y’see, ol’ Jack, it’s just like this,” Henry George Franklin began, waving a horny finger in front of his wet lips, “yeah, just about zactly like this. Fella like ol’ Frank down here in Mississippi, sharecropping little ol’ cotton farm, he’s got t’have him a woman, right? I mean, poor or no poor, mouth to feed or not, woman she comes in mighty handy, fixing supper and breakfast and givin’ him a little pleasure inbetween. I mean, you can afford her or not, don’t matter, no matter how poor you are, woman she hauls her own freight.”

“Apparently you meet a better class of chick than I do,” Barron said dryly. “Maybe I oughta drop down and look around. But I hope you haven’t called just to discuss your love life. Interesting as I’m sure it must be, we can both get in big trouble if it gets too interesting.”

“Ain’t had no love life—’cept a night in Evers every week or so for seven years, ol’ Jack,” Franklin said. “Not since the old lady kicked off sticking me with a daughter. Thas what I mean, see? Don’t seem like a fair trade, do it, woman for a daughter? Daughter eats almost as much as a woman, but it’s like keeping one of them there parakeets, just eats and jabbers and don’t do nothin’. Means y’can’t even afford another woman, not regular like. So it just makes good sense, you stuck with a useless mouth to feed, somebody makes a real nice offer, sensible man’s gotta take it and sell her.”

“Huh?” grunted Barron. “I think one of us has had one too many. Sounded like you were saying something about selling your daughter.”

“Well, sure. Ain’t that what I called you about in the first place, ol’ Jack…?” Franklin said fuzzily. “Didn’t I tell y’all? Maybe I didn’t. Thas what’s bugging me, I mean me being a rich man now I kinda miss the little critter, now that I can afford her. I want y’all to help me get her back. Seems to me that buying someone’s daughter, that might just not be legal. Thing to do is maybe find her and make the police get her back. Ain’t had no doings with the police before… not from that side of things, if you know what I mean. Thought ol’ Jack Barron was the man to get to help me.”

“You… ah… sold your daughter?” Barron asked as the promptboard flashed “8 Minutes,” and Vince inverted the diagonally-split screen showing wry, cynical Jack Barron now uppermost. Boy, this cat’s loaded! Even money he never had a daughter. But what’s the schtick, why did Vince feed me this lush?

“Hey, don’t look at me that way!” Henry George Franklin said indignantly. “Not like I sold her to some pimp or something. That fancy-looking shade fella, he said they were gonna take real good care of her, feed her nothing but the best, dress her nice and fancy, and give her a college education. Seemed like I would just be a bad papa I didn’t let her have all them shade-type advantages—and besides, that shade fella gave me fifty big ones in United States money.”

Could be he’s on the level? Barron wondered. One of those illegal adoption rackets? But don’t they usually go after infants? Not seven-year-olds, not seven-year-old Negroes. What he say, five hundred dollars? Going price on a nice WASP baby on the black market can’t be much more than that, how can any adoption ring make a profit paying five hundred bucks for some seven-year-old Negro—and what was that about a college education?

“Five hundred dollars is a lot of money,” Barron said. “Still I—”

“Five hundred?” Franklin yelled. “Hey, what kind of man you think I am—sell my own flesh and blood for five hundred dollars? I said fifty big ones, ol’ Jack. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“You’re… you’re trying to tell us that someone bought your daughter for fifty thousand dollars?” Barron said archly as the promptboard flashed “5 Minutes.” “Nothing personal, Mr Franklin, but why would anyone want your daughter, or anyone else’s for that matter, bad enough to shell out fifty thousand dollars?”

“Why you askin’ me?” Franklin said. “You the big, smart, expensive shade, ol’ Jack, you tell me. How should I know why some fancy shade’s crazy enough to hand me fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, whole satchelful of money, for my worthless daughter? You gotta understand I was dirt-poor at the time. I never saw so much money in my whole life, never expect to again. Sure, I figured the shade was crazy, but that money was the real thing, and when a crazy man hands you a satchelful of money, who’s gonna stop and say, ‘Hey, you actin’ crazy, man giving me all this nice money?’ You just gotta hope he stays crazy long enough to give you the money and forget your address.”

Something (too loaded to make up a story like that, too defensive, got past the whole money block, dig that sportjac he’s wearing, and that crazy jukebox of a TV-stereo must’ve cost at least a thousand dollars) told Barron that Henry George Franklin, raving though he was, wasn’t lying. Some lunatic bought this cat’s daughter for a satchelful of money, whether it came to exactly fifty thou or not, and this load of garbage was far gone enough at the time to take it. Some Tennessee Williams screwball-millionaire-colonel type cracker’s running around in his Confederate-Gray longjohns… who knows, maybe he just never conceded the 13th Amendment and bought this jerk’s daughter and sold her to some adoption ring at a big loss just so he could tell himself he was keeping the darkie slave trade alive? And this Franklin cat is so rank, now he’s trying to double-cross the Mad Cunnel and keep the bread too! Real American Gothic; poor old Joe would cream in his pants over this one, just his bag.

“This cat you say bought your daughter,” Barron said as Vince gave Franklin three-quarter screen, “what was he like?”

“Like…? Why, he was just this fancy-dressed shade with a satchelful of money, and anyway, y’know even though he was dressed real rich-like, I kinda got the feeling he was some kind of what-you-call-it, like one of them English butlers…?”

“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!

Barren flopped down on the floor again, took another drag. There it is, he thought, Rome to which all roads lead. Howards’s willing to risk killing a goddamned Senator over it, he’s so scared someone will find out. But… but then, why does he want me to take the treatment? Don’t make sense, if he’s so uptight about keeping it secret. Why? Why? What the fuck’s going on?

“What’s wrong Jack?” Sara asked. “You look like you’re about to turn purple… and that kiss was about as sexy as a bowl of raw chicken livers.”

“I don’t know, baby (can’t tell her Howards is going around murdering people, just uptight her), I just smell something bad in the air, nothing personal intended.”

“Couldn’t be that you’re pissed at yourself for just screwing around tonight when you really wanted to go after Howards again?” she asked, half-knowingly, half-hopefully.

“That too,” Barron muttered. “But not for your gung-ho Baby Bolshevik reasons. Cutting up Bennie was good television, last week’s rating was the best in three years, goddamn hard act to follow. And Woody Kaplan’s insanity and some gibbering drunk’s the kind of crap that went out with old Joe Swyne. Boring is all, when you’ve played in the big leagues there’s not much kick in being a hero in the bushes. Yeah, that’s all it is, a letdown from two real winners…”

“You’re sure you really mean that?” she asked, and he saw what she was fishing for; shit, all I need is another round of that cop-out crap on top of—

The vidphone began to chime.

Barron got up slowly, letting it chime—a nasty premonition that it was Luke with more bullshit, more Jack-you-fucking-cop-out-you, more waving of the Baby Bolshevik let’s-you-and-him-fight-bloody shirt—finally reached the vidphone, made the connection and felt a weird adrenalin-thrill punch pulsing into his brain as the old familiar black and white image of Benedict Howards looked out of the vidphone screen at him with crackling paranoid eyes.

“Kill it, Barron. Sit on it, I warn you!” Howards said, his voice shrill-edged and threatening.

“Sit on—(what?, Barron was about to say, stopped himself, realizing something was really uptighting Bennie, best way to find out what is to make like you know, he seems to think I know, let him know I don’t, maybe he’ll clam)—it? Why, whatever do you mean? Far as I know, there’s nothing to sit on.” And the last with a number one dirty smile.

“No more games,” said Howards. “No more screwing around, you’re working for me now, and you jump when I say frog, and don’t you forget it. Or else—”

“Or else what, Bennie?” Barron drawled, knowing on one level that in the game Bennie was playing it’s the Big Or Else, is all; on another level unable to take seriously the whole cops-and-wops hit-man scene. “What do you think you can do? I got your name on paper too, remember? I got Greene and Morris anxious to jump into my corner in case you get too feisty with me. I got Bug Jack Barron—and I got immortality legally free and clear any time I want it. You couldn’t afford to have me sue you for breach of that contract, and we both know it. Time you got it through your fat little head you can’t own Jack Barron… or you’re gonna get hurt, Howards, hurt real bad.”

And Barron saw Benedict (fifty-billion-dollar power of life-over-death Senatorial-assassin immortal) Howards fighting for self-control, forcing a sickening rictus that was almost a smile, actually eating crow.

“Look Barron, so we don’t like each other. Know why? ’cause we’re too much alike, that’s why. Two strong men, and neither of us has ever been number two to anyone. We both want it all, and we both want it on our own terms—and that’s the only way to fly. Well, we just can’t both be number one, and isn’t that what we’re really fighting about? But it’s stupid, Barron, pig-headed stupid. In the long run we’re both on the same side, right? I mean the real long run, million-year long run, we both got the same thing to lose.

“Let me show you, you and your wife fly out to Colorado, let me make you immortal like me. Then you’ll taste how much we both got to lose every time you breathe. Make a different man of you, Barron, make you more than a man, take it from the only man who knows firsthand. Jack Barron immortal’d have to see he’s on the same side as Benedict Howards immortal—us against them, life eternal against the fading black circle, and, believe me, that’s all that counts, everything else is shit for the birds.”

He really means it, Barron realized, and maybe he’s right. But you know he’s sure he’d be numero uno in that set-up for some reason… and Ted Hennering died because he found out what the immortality treatment was. Found out and had his choice of being Bennie’s flunky and maybe President, or risking his life—and a phony cop-out like Hennering told Howards to get stuffed. And Bennie killed him. And he wants me in that position, thinks he can somehow get me there by making me immortal…

“I’m still passing,” Barron said. “I just don’t trust you.” And he felt the adrenalin-surge of the smell of danger, took a quick drag of pot on top of it, picking up on the kick of being back in the big league again, playing for life-and-death stakes, and said: “And I know a few things you don’t know I know, Howards, and I’m not gonna tell you what they are, gonna let you sweat a little, it’s good for the soul.”

He saw fear and anger fight each other in Howards’ eyes, knew he was biting flesh, turned and saw Sara’s eyes shining with that berserker Berkeley fire drinking him in, found himself digging the pure my-man my-hero heat she was giving off for him, felt ten years younger than tonight’s lousy-turkey of a show, full of piss and vinegar and good pot and an old line from a childhood book (The Dying Earth, wasn’t it?) drummed like a chord inside him: “Danger goes with me.”

“I’m warning you, Barron,” Howards said, his eyes now crocodile-cold, “you put that Franklin lunatic on the air again, and you’ve had it—you’ve really had it. Benedict Howards plays for all the marbles, and he plays for keeps.”

Franklin? That crazy sot? That’s what’s uptighting him? Don’t make sense, what’s that kook got to do with Howards?

“Don’t tell me how to run my show,” Barron said. “Maybe I’ll do another show on Franklin or a piece of a show, depends on the next Brackett Count ( if I got the stomach to look at it after this week’s fiasco).”

“I’m telling you, and I won’t tell you again, don’t put Franklin on the air again!” Howards shouted.

Just what I said! Barron thought. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe hottest Foundation show of all’s tied into raving nut Henry George Franklin? Bennie sure thinks so. But how?

Barron smiled nastily. “You know, the more you tell me not to, the more I think it’d make a good show. You and me and Franklin and a hundred million people, nice and cozy. How’s it grab you, Bennie?” (Hey, why in hell am I doing this? he wondered, feeling his unknown belly calling his shots.)

“You can push me too far,” Howards said. “Push me too far, and no matter who you are you get fed to the fishes. Even—”

“Even a United States Senator?” Barron suggested. “Even, oh, say, someone like fer instance, Ted Hennering…?”

Even on the vidphone screen, Barron could see Howards go pale. Paydirt! How’s it feel to play patty-cake with a murderer? A kick, is all! He fingered the Acapulco Gold in his hand. What they putting in these things these days?

“You…” Howards stammered. “I’m warning you for the last time, Barron, lay off the Franklin thing, or no one’ll ever warn you about anything again.”

Jack Barron felt something snap within him. Nobody threatens Jack Barron like that and gets away with it! Think I never spit in death’s eye, Bennie? You should’ve been in Meridian, whole fucking mob with blood in their beady little eyes, me and Luke and Sara and a couple dozen others against a thousand rednecks, death on the hoof, and I faced ’em down ’cause I know the secret you don’t—murder’s a coward’s game, is all, and deep inside murderers know it, you just gotta let ’em know you know it; never run from a wild animal, I read somewhere. Cop-out maybe, bullshit artist maybe, but Jack Barron doesn’t run from any man!

“You can take your silly-ass threats,” Barron said, feeling the words like hot lava bubble out of his throat, “and you can write ’em on broken coke bottles and shove it up your ass! Threaten me, and you won’t be worrying about your precious immortal life much longer, you’ll be too busy wishing you were never born. Know what I’m gonna do, Bennie? I’m gonna fly down to Mississippi and have a long man to man talk with Mr Henry George Franklin, and, who knows, when I’m through, maybe I’ll do two shows or ten or a hundred on him—and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it! I’m sick of you, Howards! I’m sick of listening to you play big man ’cause you’re not a big man, you’re the kind of thing that crawls out from under wet rocks, coward, is all, kind of coward I eat for breakfast, and you’ll be pissing in your pants scared shitless till the day you die if you live a million years. You bug me, Bennie, know that, you bug me. And you haven’t even got a taste yet of what happens when you really bug Jack Barron.”

“I’ll kill—”

“Aw, go stick your tongue out at babies!” Barron shouted. “Maybe you’ll have better luck there, ’cause you don’t scare me, Howards. And I’m tired of looking at your ugly face!” And he broke the connection.

And wondered in the next moment just what the hell his big mouth had gotten him into—and why.

“Do you really mean it this time?” Sara asked, her eyes wide as saucers.

“Bet your sweet ass I mean it!” Barron snapped, surprised that his anger was still mounting, not cooling. “I’m tired of listening to that motherfucker threaten me, treat me like some fucking flunky! Who the hell does he think he is, fifty billion or no fifty billion, immortality or no immortality, telling me how to run my show, run my life? Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re in this too, you got a right to know what I’m playing around with. I’m pretty sure Howards had Ted Hennering murdered, ’cause the good Senator tried to cross him. That’s the kind of man you want me to go after—sure you wouldn’t rather have a nice safe cop-out in your bed now?”

“Are you afraid of him?” Sara asked quietly.

Who knows? Barron thought. Way I feel right now, I’m too pissed to be scared of anything. And he felt the blood singing the berserker Berkeley Jack-and-Sara battle-song behind his ears, and man, oh, man, it felt good, like a hard-on of the mind.

“No, I’m not afraid of him. He packs a big switchblade sure, but Bennie’s nothing but a punk, fifty-year-old fifty-billion-dollar immortal punk. Punk is all! You never saw me back down from no punk. Maybe I should be geared, shit, maybe I am, but I’m sure as hell not gonna act scared.”

“Then I’m not scared either,” she said with a pure girlish grin, and hugged him to her. He kissed her, hot, wet, tongue on tongue hard., felt the juices rising, in him. Jeez, it feels good, he thought, my woman in my arms the night before the battle, haven’t felt like this in ten thousand years.

“Eat drink and make Mary,” he muttered into her ear, “for tomorrow we die…” That ain’t so fucking funny.

“What’re you gonna do now?” she asked, pulling away half-playfully to arm’s length.

“Gonna play arpeggios on your quivering bod,” He said. “But first, I’m gonna call Luke, have him locate Mr Henry George Franklin for me, then hop a plane right on down to Mississippi, just like I told Howards. Be gone only a day or two, and if anyone asks, you don’t know where I am. I want this to be strictly between you and me and Luke and old Henry George.”

“And Benedict Howards,” Sara said. “Be careful. Jack, please be careful.”

“I’m glad the bastard knows I’m going,” said Barron. “Show him I know he’s bluffing. Come on, baby, don’t worry about me, it’s all on Luke’s turf, remember? I’m supposed to be the ‘black shade’ down there, or so they tell me. I’ll keep out of dark alleys. Bennie won’t dare try anything with a guest of the Governor.”