Bug Jack Barron

15

Wonders of Modern Science, Jack Barron thought as he turned the rented car off the access road and back on to the highway to Evers. As the car picked up speed he glanced at the thin Manila folder beside him on the leatherette seat.

Take school-attendance records and birth certificates for the last fifteen years, punch ’em on cards and put ’em into the old computer for a cross-correlation, and you get the cards of all the kids who should be in school but ain’t; much smaller pile you feed back into the computer and run ’em off against death-records, out-of-state transfer records, for the same fifteen years, and you get maybe a couple thousand cards of kids truant from school, alive, and in the state for more than a month; and you whittle that pile down against hospital and loonie-bin records, and down again by running a cross-correlation with parental destitution, and after a final shuffle of the old cards for a fifty-mile-from-Evers radius you get four little cards, four little visits, four nitty-grittys out of the whole fucking state. Simple as that.

Four cards, four Negro children, ages seven to ten, with parents either on the edge of broke or on some kind of welfare. Four kids that disappeared from the face of the earth.

Four visits to four crummy slat shacks. Four new cars outside four traditional Southern niggertown shitholes, ranging from a Buick to an honest-to-Christ Rolls. Four crazy fairy tales: another “Educational Foundation” schtick, one kid supposedly visiting relatives for six months, a none-of-your-fucking business, and that incredible dumb motherfucker actually believed his kid is now the adopted heir to the kingdom in some nonexistent black African state. And four satchelfuls of untraceable cash money left by four different high-class shades.

No doubt about it, Barron thought as he moved over into the lefthand lane, whoever’s doing it is flush as hell. Plenty of cash and a mighty smart operation, five tries and five sales and in situations all carefully selected to make the fewest possible government paper-waves. Adds up to someone with private access to a mighty expensive computer, rich enough to buy an expert on the Mississippi State Records filing system—or even to buy a top man on the inside. At an average of fifty thou a kid, that’s a quarter million right there, not to mention what it takes to buy the computer or the computer time, at least five flunkies, grease to get hold of government records… millions of dollars just to make off with five kids!

How could it be anyone else but that crazy fucker Howards?

And why did he kill Hennering who didn’t know a thing about this? Or did he? Hennering found out the Foundation was buying kids so Howards killed him…? Millions of dollars and dangerous murders just to get hold of children super-cool-like? Bennie just ain’t the frustrated father type. Only one thing could make Bennie act like such a paranoid spender—immortality, his life, gotta know his hide’s somehow at stake. But why risk his precious immortal life over… ?

Schmuck,” Barron grunted aloud. Sure, that’s gotta be it—only thing that would make Bennie risk murder-death-sentence is covering up prior murders, and the only thing would make him risk murder in the first place is his goddamned immortality. Jeez, it figures… He must’ve used those kids like guinea pigs to develop that immortality treatment, whatever it is, and that’s why he gets so uptight anytime anyone gets near the subject. And that’s why it was worth three murders to keep it cool!

For the first time in years that he could remember, Barron felt a flash of pure feral anger, a selfless, uncalculated anger that served no cause but its own. Murdering children to buy his own rotten immortal life! Murdering Hennering and his wife and Franklin to keep it quiet! Buying a Congress and maybe a President soon to cool it, to stand on a pile of bodies on the neck of the whole country for paranoid nightmare million years! Yeah, and buying me to ram it down their throats—sell snuffing out lives in Frankenstein laboratories for the secret of life eternal for the fat-cat few to Brackett Audience Count estimated-hundred-million suckers!

“And if you don’t, Barron, I just hire a hit-man to kill you too…!”

Barron slammed the accelerator to the floorboards in a spasm of fury, held it there, and fought the car mano a mano as it screamed down the highway like a scalded cat.

Everybody’s got his price he thought and immortality buys anyone, eh, Bennie? Think you know it all? But that’s ’cause you’re shit, Howards, pure shit clean through. Don’t dig that there are men aren’t like you, men you can push just a little too far. Well you pushed, you motherfucker, and you’re gonna find out the hard way what happens when you push Jack Barron too far. Immortality… sure, what’s done is done, can’t bring back those kids paid for it with their lives by throwing it away. But my way, Bennie, not yours—over your dead body, is all. Try to make me a murderer like you, Bennie, okay you made it, so now I’m a killer, but the corpse is gonna be your own!

His hands on the wheel seemingly sensing every crack in the pavement as the car tore down the highway, Barron felt a strange déjà vu Berkeley attic Jack-and-Sara exhilaration, realized it was nothing but hate had made the Baby Bolshevik bag go ’round. Yeah, just where it was at, we hated everything that wasn’t the way we wanted it to be. Our strength and our weakness—we knew just how to react, black versus white, to everything. Anything wasn’t totally right was totally wrong, and you could hate it, had to hate it knowing Us Anointed were on the Side of the Angels, everything against us was on the side of wrong. Not to hate, we called a cop-out. Never trust anyone past thirty—’cause when a boy becomes a man he stops seeing that sharp hateline between right and wrong, and if you stay in the Movement then, you’re an opportunistic phony, a fucking politician… a hag-ridden Lukas Greene.

There’s your definition of politics, grown men playing kid games, hate-games, to get same simple kicks I get off Bug Jack Barron, living-color, man-up-front, self-image is all. And that’s cool. But the real difference between show biz and politics is nothing fancier than hate. Think you could understand that, Luke? You’re the cop-out, not me, playing the politics-hate game, dead Berkeley-game you can’t even feel.

Yeah, but there’s something about hate that comes on like junk—thinking about it, you know it’s a loser, but oh how good that dirty old surge feels! Gives you something certain to build your whole schmear around—go get what you want, and feel it in your gut. Pure dumb groove to nail Benedict Howards’ head to the old barn door…

Driving the car at a reckless speed which demanded full physical commitment, the wheel alive and deadly in his hands as the flat land flashed by, Barron grooved on the heady feel of life-and-death riding on his reflexes, his consciousness not trapped in a point behind his eyes but diffused through his hands and through prosthetic metal linkages to the car body and wheels.

Through electric circuit feedback loops, he anticipated the parallel kick of total total commitment reaching out through satellite-network-vidphone senses to the coast-to-coast hundred million Brackett Count audience, to Luke, Morris, SJC, Republicans hot for his bod, all integrated by amplified-power circuitry into his electronically-extended Bug Jack Barron being, alive in a new way, jaw to jaw with death (with Howards as with the highway), in total war of total commitment for total revenge, and immortality, the most total of stakes.

I’ll do you a show, Howards, you’ll never believe. I’ll chop you to pieces, and be alive and immortal when you’re nothing but a lingering bad taste in a hundred million mouths, fried to a crisp in the electric chair, you Frankenstein ax-murderer you!

He eased off the throttle as he felt the heat of the moment pass through him leaving him a wash of post-adrenalin warmth behind. You’re out of your mind, you know that, man? Only schmucks and Sicilians hate like that…

Yeah, he thought, clinging to the memory of total hate, but a cool head should know how to use even his own glands.

“My mammy told me about these here Smoke-Filled Rooms, but this is getting ridiculous,” Lukas Greene said. The smoke level in the conference room, air-conditioned though it was, was beginning to get rather impressive as Sherwood Kaplan lit another of those godawful mentholated filtertipped (’They get you high and keep you kool’) Kools Supremes, and Deke Masterson rolled another Bull Durham (where in hell they still making that stuff, Greene wondered) tobacco cigarette, and Morris’ cigar smoldered wetly in the cut-glass ashtray opposite Greene, at what in his mind was the foot of the square table, like the rotten green cock of a decomposing corpse.

Now that, thought Greene, is what we call in the trade symbolism—the GOP is indeed a slowly-decomposing corpse, and green or no, Greg Morris is certainly a rotten prick. But at least a rotten prick I got in the old bag.

“I zuppose you are all vundering vhy I zummoned you here tonight?” Greene said in a thick Lugosi accent. Morris scowled at him primly, but he didn’t count now—Kaplan and Masterson were the real targets for tonight—and Woody’s petulant, aging-cherub face cracked a faggoty false smile. But Deke was still a pudgy-faced black sphinx.

“Cut the crap, Luke,” Masterson said in that cultivatedly-gravelly voice of his. “You dragged us here to sell us on Jack Barron; we all know that. Where in hell is your so-called Black Shade?”

“Jack’ll be down any minute,” Greene said, “but you’ve got it ass-forward, Deke, the problem isn’t selling you on Jack, but selling Jack on running. Try and remember that when he gets here.”

“What is this shit?” Kaplan said with ill-concealed jealousy. “Running Jack for President’s crazy enough, and playing footsie with that (he pointed the Kool at Morris, ostentatiously wrinkled his nose, but Morris, pro all the way, put him down the way you put down Woody the best, by ignoring him), makes it lunacy in spades and now you’re telling us that that goddamned phony’s gotta be treated like some fucking virgin prima donna?”

“Let’s get right down to the uglies,” Greene said, “so we don’t end up washing our dirty linen when Jack’s here. President or no President, you and Deke have one very good reason to play ball with me, and Governor Morris already knows who that reason is…”

“Russ Deacon,” Masterson said as if it were a dirty word.

Kaplan grimaced. And Greene thought, yeah, poor old Russ gotta be the boy that gets the shaft. Deke and Russ been at each other’s throats since they been in Congress over whether the State SJC Chairman should be black or white, Deke’s boy or Russ’s, whether Harlem or the Village should run the New York SJC show, and up till now, with all our New York shade money men in Russ’s corner, Deke hasn’t had a prayer of throwing Russ out, and, oh, how he knows it.

“That’s right, our soul-brother, Representative Russell Deacon,” Greene said. “Now you know I got nothing personal against Russ at all, but I want Barron for President, and the two of you, added to what I’ve already got lined up, can swing all the votes I need on the National Council, so if I gotta deliver Russ’s head on a silver platter to get ’em, it’s Deacon for dessert.”

“I’m listening,” said Kaplan. “But how do you expect to get Deacon out of the way?”

“I can’t,” said Greene. “That’s just the point: I can’t, but Jack Barron can. Look, Woody, Deacon’s got the Village, and the way things are set up now, that means the New York SJC. You got Strip City, and except for some noise from the Bay, that means the California SJC. A Mexican stand-off. But with Deacon out of the way you’d be the Grand High Poobah of Hip, just like you always wanted. You’d control all the East Coast hippy action and California besides.”

“What’s the point?” said Masterson. “This is a broken record. Why knife each other in front of the good Governor of California?”

Greene smiled as Morris sat there silently with amused contempt on his broad face. Which is cool, Greene thought.

“Okay, in words of one syllable,” Greene said. “The three of us want different things. If we play ball with each other, we all get ’em. Deke, with Woody in control of the Village SJC instead of Deacon, the New York SJC’d be your baby ’cause he’s off in Strip City running that show, and with a blackstate SJC that cuts the floor right out from under Malcolm Shabazz and his back-to-Africa phonies been bugging you in the bargain. You can afford Woody as hippy-faction leader ’cause he’s three thousand miles away and he’s got no eyes to run New York, better him than Deacon, right? And Woody, it’s no skin off your teeth to have Deke run New York so long as there’s only one Grand High Poobah of the Hippies. And me, well, you know how thick I am with Jack, he wins, I’m the black power behind the Shade house throne. (Morris smirked. That’s cool, Greene thought, let him.) So those are the stakes. Now, ask yourself, fellas, guess who’s a bigger magic name in the Village than Russell Deacon?”

“Jack Barron…” Kaplan said slowly. “In his own half-assed way…”

“Yeah, but you’re looking at the other half of his ass,” Greene said, smiling smugly. “Jack couldn’t care less about party politics, in the infighting I’d just work his head. And our friend Governor Morris couldn’t care less about what goes on inside the SJC. So it’d be no sweat to use Jack to squeeze out Deacon, once he’s the titular head of a coalition. Dig?”

Masterson smiled. “You got a point,” he said. “Okay, let’s say I’m with you, provided Barron convinces me he’ll play ball.”

“That’s where I’m at too,” Kaplan said. “Hey… you don’t think Jack could actually win?”

Watch it! Greene thought. This is the kicker. They know who’d be running the SJC if Jack actually won; play dumb, let ’em think you’re just a kamikaze schmuck they’re getting the best of. “Who knows?” he said. “I think it’s worth a try, with the Republicans on our team… Sure, it’s still a long shot, but it’s the best chance us chilluns will ever have. We gotta try it, way I see it, isn’t that right, Morris?”

“You know what I think of you and your kind, Greene,” Morris said, “and you know how fond I am of Barron. But it’s either Barron or some Democratic stooge Benedict Howards picks. With the Foundation against him, Teddy the Pretender hasn’t got a real chance. Call it a truce, gentlemen, till we kick the Democrats out. After that, I’m sure the… best party will win.”

“That’s the nitty-gritty,” Greene said. “That’s why we need Barron, just his running would shake things up, win or lose, bust up that Democratic-Foundation cabal if nothing else. But for chrissakes, remember Jack’s playing Reluctant Dragon, and where his head’s at it just could be real. Play it cool when he gets here—and remember, we’ve got to sell him.”

Well that’s it, Greene thought, all set up and waiting; waiting for fucking Jack who started it all in that attic, and now the chicken’s come home to roost.

Greene tasted twin pangs in the heavy waiting silence: bitterness and hope. Whatever happened now, it would be the climax of his whole career, the moment of truth; he had ridden the SJC as far as he could go.

Far as any nigger can go, he thought. Handpick your own shade front-man, your own bosom-buddy, shade buddy, of course. Jack wins, you’re President by proxy; Jack’s lost the taste for nitty-gritty politics. A nice clean shade candidate-image to front for me, is all. Not like you’re using him, man, you don’t have to, he doesn’t want to get his… lily white hands dirty and anyway, he is on our side; Founding Father and all that bullshit. He wins, he’ll only be too glad to suck up the glory and let me do the dirty work.

President-by-proxy, black power behind the lily-white throne—face it, you nigger you, that’s precisely as far as any black man can go. And wouldn’t you know it’d all depend on convincing some cat like Jack Barron’s got it all for the taking he oughta take it? Way the world is, number one nigger in the country still gotta make it riding the back of some shade. Even a “Black Shade.” (Ain’t that one a bitch!) All riding on what crazy Jack does in the next few minutes.

And don’t put yourself on, man, even you could never tell which way Jack Barron’s head would go.

So we’re gonna do that schtick again, Jack Barron thought as he entered the conference room and recognized the three men seated around the table with Luke, recognized who they were, what they were, where they were at, and what they wanted from him. Bugged at Luke though he was, some instinct told him to cool it, play with their minds, now that the whole crazy Presidential schtick was a potential component in the electric circuit of power-confrontation, along with bought children immortality-power of life against death, power of Brackett Count estimated hundred million people, that he was beginning to wire around Benedict Howards. And the easiest cats to use are cats think they’re using you.

Before Luke could go into his spiel, Barron crossed the room in three long strides, sticking an Acapulco Gold in his mouth as he moved, lit it as he sat down on the edge of the table beside Luke’s chair, smiled his best number one brat-smile, blew a cloud of sweet uptighting potsmoke in the general direction of Gregory Morris, and with heavy knowing cynicism said: “Gee, fellas, a surprise party just for little old me? I forgot it was my birthday. On the other hand, who knows, maybe I threw this little… Electoral College smoker for you?” And he shot a quick knowing look at Luke for the benefit of the others.

Luke’s face went totally blank for a second, Masterson went tense, and that psychopathic prick Woody Kaplan almost laughed as he clocked his late arch-enemy Gregory Morris half-rolling his eyes as if to say “Fucking smart-ass Jack Barron,” and Barron knew that he had pulled the rug out from under Luke, from under whatever this grotesque cabal had been hatching, that he was now in the good old upper-right screen quadrant catbird-seat, was now his show all the way, strictly show biz all the way, and these cats got no more on the ball in the flesh than on the vidphone.

“Shall we skip the traditional bullshit, gentlemen, and get right down to the nitty-gritty?” Barron said. “You’re here to sell me on running for President on an SJC-Republican coalition ticket; I know it, and now you know I know, so just make your pitch without waltzing me around the block, ’cause it’s been a hard day’s night.”

Poor fucking Luke! Barron thought as he sensed Greene’s head trying to catch up to his. And he clocked Governor Gregory Morris of California, Mayor Sherwood Kaplan of Strip City, US Representative Deke Masterson, so-called movers and shapers, all completely off-balance, not knowing what was coming off next, and it came to him in a laughing flash just what a total shuck the whole Great Man bag was.

Dig: four cats in a smoke-filled room with star of television and groin-kneeing Jack Barron got the power to run me for President they say the word and Bennie Howards can buy the whole lot of ’em out of petty cash, and Bennie’s nothing but a prick with fifty billion dollars I can think immelmanns around with my head tied behind my back. Thing is, it’s all show biz, is all, politics is nothing more than show biz with no class, and these high-powered vips are men just like me, only a little dumber. All a game of Bug Jack Barron and even without a promptboard, they don’t have a chance ’cause they’re dead serious and I’m playing it strictly for show.

Kaplan, maybe because of the envy-thing that went way, way back, recovered first. “Haven’t changed at all, have you, Jack? But don’t kid yourself, the game’s not the same. This is for all the marbles.”

“All your marbles, maybe,” Barron said, “but not all mine, and you better believe it, all of you, ’cause you’re just wasting your time thinking I’ll jump through hoops and say ‘Yes, Massah’ just for the chance to be your front-man. You got your fish to fry and I got mine. We can use the same fire, that’s groovy, but otherwise—later.”

“All right, so we’ll play by your rules,” Masterson said. “Let’s lay it right on the line. I don’t know what you want, but what I want is Russ Deacon’s head on a pike. And Woody wants the same. You can deliver that, we got enough votes on the National Council to put you over.”

So that’s it, Barron thought, yeah, it figures, poor Russ. Yeah, poor old Russ who’d be here playing the same dirty game, Luke thought he held the right cards. It ain’t power that corrupts, it’s the changes you put your head through getting it. Woody, Masterson, Morris, Luke, Howards—five different bags, but it don’t matter, because the same monkey’s working all five heads. Power-junkies, is all.

Barron took a deep drag on the Acapulco Gold. “You mean to tell me you’re not really a band of patriots gathered together in Holy Council to pick a Moses to lead the Children of Israel out of the Wilderness? Come on, fellas, don’t destroy my innocent, childlike illusions.”

“Before you get so high you start to gibber,” Morris said, speaking like the wise old toad for the first time, “maybe you should just shut your big mouth for a change and listen. I couldn’t care less about the crap that goes on inside the SJC—it’s got all the charm and grace of a Chinese Communist Party Central Committee meeting—and it really doesn’t matter that you’re a neo-Bolshevik punk, because I think we really understand each other, Barron. We don’t like each other, but what counts is that we’ve got common enemies, like Benedict Howards, or, who knows, maybe even Teddy the Pretender. We’re wasting our time trying to con each other. You interested in making a deal, or not?”

Something to be said for a cat who’s a swine and doesn’t care who knows it, Barron thought. Better an unselfconscious GOP Fat Cat than these three fucking cop-out Heroes of the Underdog. And to think that the SJC was my baby! How’s that for a case for legalized abortion?

“Sure, I’m interested in making a deal,” he said. “Question is, what kind of deal? What’s in it for you, and what’s in it for me?”

“You sure going through changes, aren’t you, Jack?” Luke said, trying to regain control. “So, as long as you seem to be playing Boss Tweed tonight, let’s just riff it out in words of one syllable. We can all walk out of here with an agreement that you’ll be the coalition candidate for President on a common anti-Howards platform if you can convince Deke and Woody to throw in. Morris and I and all the southern votes on the National Council are already committed and the Republican vips are ready to go along the moment they’re guaranteed an SJC nomination. Woody and Deke will throw in, if they’re assured that Jack Barron, as head of the SJC national ticket, will put the screws on Russ Deacon. That’s the nitty-gritty, Claude—you willing to let us use your fan club in the Village against Deacon, you can be President of the United States.”

“With you as Vice-President,” Barron said on sudden impulse, clocking Morris blanching at the thought of a Baby Bolshevik nigger on his precious Republican ticket. (Better see just how far you’ll go, Morris.) “What’s about it, Morris, are you that hot for my bod? I don’t even think about running without Luke on both tickets. Will you ram that down your party’s throat?”

“Hey, wait a minute—” Luke began.

“Cool it,” Barron snapped. “You got me into this, Luke, and I’m dragging you in after me whether you like it or not. What about it, Morris, you still in the game?”

“If I accept Greene,” Morris said, fingering his cigar, “that means we get to pick the Secretaries of State, Defense, Transportation, Labor and Commerce, a majority on the FTC, the NLRB and the FCC when appointments come up, the first two vacancies on the Supreme Court, the head of the Bureau of the Budget, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Attorney-General, and no questions asked. Ask your SJC friends if they’re still in the game.”

Barron cocked his head at Luke, was not surprised but wished he could’ve been as Greene said, “You’re faded,” and Masterson and Kaplan nodded in instantly-calculated agreement. Politics! Politicians! Where’s the difference between my boys and Morris? Junkies’d sell their own mothers to a Saudi Arabian slaver, you wave the shit under their noses hard enough…

“What about Deacon?” Masterson asked coldly.

“What the fuck do I care about Deacon,” Barron answered with measured cavalierness. “You want a candidate, right, not another politician. You’re up to the ears in politicians, and they’re all losers. You just want me to front for you, right? So I let you cats handle the politics, you want to use my name against Deacon, that’s cool, but don’t expect me to do your dirty work for you.”

“Gentlemen,” Luke said with a big shit-eating smile, “I think we’re in business. Now the question would seem to be how and when we announce our—”

“Not so fast,” Barron said. “Now that we’ve all gotten together on what I can do for you, the question before us is what are you gonna do for me?”

“You flipped?” Luke said. “We’re gonna make you President of the United States!”

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t go into ecstasy,” Barron said dryly. “But for openers, you’re just gonna make me a Presidential candidate, is all, and just between us chickens, I don’t think I have a Chinaman’s chance of winning. I don’t think anyone except Bennie Howards’ handpicked Democrat has a prayer, not unless Teddy pulls off a bona fide miracle at the Convention. And if Teddy gets the nomination, we’ve had it. There’s no way to tie him to Howards, because the only way he can get the nomination is over Bennie’s dead body. But even that’s not the main point. I don’t have eyes for running, and I have even less eyes for being President. I find the whole thing a king-sized drag, fellas. Believe it or not, I’m in a bigger game elsewhere, and the only reason I’d consider running is because I need your backing in that game, Morris. I need you to keep Bennie Howards off my back. That’s my price.”

“Just what’s this ‘bigger game’ you’re talking about?” Morris said, and his eyes betrayed him, betrayed smug assurance that he could certainly control a Jack Barron who didn’t even want to be President in the first place, and isn’t that cool? And Luke and the boys were getting the same happy look.

“That’s none of your business at the moment,” Barron said. “It’s all still up in the air right now. If I end up not needing your muscle, wild horses wouldn’t get me to run, and if I do need you, don’t worry, the whole country will know why. It’s all riding on the next show. Let’s just say that if I get into a war with Howards, I want your fat cats to see to it that I don’t hurt for sponsors, that Bennie can’t lean hard enough on the network to make ’em drop me, and that the FCC situation will likewise be cooled.

“You see, the only reason I’d run is if I need you to save my ass, because I don’t think I’d win, and that means I gotta make sure I don’t blow Bug Jack Barron. I want insurance because, ladies and gentlemen, whether you dig it or not, that show is where I’m at, where I want to be at, and I don’t intend to blow it for no one or nothing. That’s show biz, boys.”

“Show biz!” Luke snapped. “We’re talking about the Presidency of the United States, and you come on with show biz?”

Barron smiled wolfishly. “I was in your shoes, I’d be mighty happy to hear me talk that way,” he said. (Might as well lay it right on the line, spell it out in black and white for these pricks.) “I mean, why are you so hot for my bod in the first place? Because I’m show biz, is all. Dig: being President and running for President are two entirely different bags. Cats who would be best at being President lay turkey eggs as candidates. Or am I wrong, and did Stevenson beat Eisenhower? You know I’m right, or Morris anyway wouldn’t touch me with a fork. I don’t have eyes for being President, and I don’t have any qualifications either, that’s politics, which is just not my bag. How groovy for you guys if you should happen to elect me—it’d all be your show after Election Day, and you can fight it out among your own sweet selves who runs it, far as I’m concerned it’s horseshit either way. But, if I need that GOP muscle to keep me in show biz, I’d hold my nose and be the best fucking candidate you could get from central casting, and you better believe it. Running for office in the good old USA is show biz all the way. Remember Ike? Remember Reagan? Remember JFK? Don’t knock show biz, boys, whether you know it or not, it’s your stock in trade. Well, what about it, Morris, you back my play if I back yours?”

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.”