“What?” Howards shouted. “Are you crazy? You want to screw us both? Who—”
“Relax, Bennie,” Jack said. “Just my once-and-future wife, Sara… Sara Westerfeld nee Barron nee Westerfeld. You don’t keep secrets from your chick for very long.” He laughed falsely. “Not as long as your chick can keep secrets from you anyway,” he said.
Sara felt a moment of pure panic. Does Jack know? About me and Howards? Has the lizardman told him? Or will Howards tell him now, use me against Jack? Should I tell Jack everything now, is it time? Too soon! Too soon!
But Howards laughed a cold-reptile laugh she knew was for her, knew he was as good as reading her mind. “Far be it from me to interfere in your love life, Barron,” Howards said, and Sara could feel daggers of sarcasm nibble at her as Howards toyed with her, reminded her of his power to destroy her through Jack—and Jack through her.
“Okay, tomorrow at your office. I’ll fly tonight. And… and give my regards to Sara Westerfeld.” And Howards broke the connection.
Jack turned to her, and she felt the hesitation in his eyes matched by her own. Building within her, she felt the tension of subterfuge, a bubble demanding to be burst. Tell him! Tell him everything! But… but is this the time? Will he play our game if…? Or will it be the end of everything that ever was between us forever? Forever, a huge word—and a bigger stake.
She decided that the decision would be Jack’s, not hers. If he would tell her, tell her all, tell her that Howards was offering him a place in the Freezers, she would know he was as ready as he’d ever be, and she’d tell him what Howards really was, and together they’d destroy him…
“What was that all about?” she asked blandly, felt the moment, the shadow of his next words, hanging like a dagger above their lives, above all that had been, all that might be… forever.
Jack hesitated, and she felt the decision-turmoil behind his eyes too, but when he spoke, she felt the pregnant moment shoved aside, a trip to the dentist postponed as she saw the shield go up behind his eyes, universes of danger sheering off from the mutual moment of mortal truth they both individually knew must soon come.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But tomorrow I’m going to find out. And… trust me till then, Sara. I just can’t tell you now.”
Deep within her, she sighed in relief, felt the pattern of lies, cop-outs, evasions as a kind of ironic bond between them. But she knew that that bond of falsehood would not last past tomorrow—that after Jack met with Howards there would either be truth between them… or nothing.
“Yessir, Mr Barron, no sir, Mr Barron, you stink, sir, Mr Barron,” Jack Barron muttered toying with the pack of Acapulco Golds, a sardonic invitation amid the clutter of his desk, his day, his head. Goddamn Carrie, he thought. Could understand if she quit her job or got the network to transfer her, who could blame her? Not my fault, not hers. But, no, the bitch’s gotta go on with the show, baby, sit out there with that yes, sir no, sir crap, and that big eat-shit-you-bastard office-smile. Still hung-up on me or just being a sadist…? Or maybe it’s fun-and-games time, I gotta fire her before she passes “go” or she don’t collect two hundred dollars. Well, screw you, Carrie, you can stew in your own bile till your tushy’s mushy before I play your game and can you.
Barron pawed out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, lit it, then played tease-games with the potsmoke, sucking it in to the back of his throat, dribbling it out without inhaling it, wondering whether it would be smart to have the big showdown with Howards loaded.
The sweet smoke promised an out from the Lukes and Saras and Carries, all playing their dumb little games for dumb little stakes and expecting Jack Barron to lay his whole bod on the line to back their dumb little action.
But something held him back, and the fact that he could only sniff a faint aroma (like a week-dead codfish across the street) of that something really uptighted him. What’s bigger than the Presidency of the United States? he wondered. What’s bigger than fifty billion dollars? What the fuck could be that big? Something is, I can smell it, feel it, like a junkie feels heat coming at him in a squad car fifty blocks away. Man, it’s out there, whatever it is, else Bennie Howards is just plain flipped acting the way he is. And come to think of it, that might be interesting right there, with the cards I’m holding.
But he wondered if the cards he held were really as unbeatable as they looked, too damn good for the league I’m playing in, is Bennie really that bad? Am I really that good? Goddamn, Bennie knows something I don’t, is what I’m playing this game for in the first place, and you know that whatever that something is it’s the ace in the hole for somebody, and how the fuck can I know whose ace it is until I know what it is?
And whatever it is, baby, it’s big, big enough to make Howards blow bubbles with his tongue when he had the opening to make points on the show I gave him; big enough to scare him shitless when he caught himself almost blowing it—and big enough to make him blow his cool in the first place, and with a reptile like Howards, that is like big.
Barron snubbed out the joint in an ashtray. No grass today, he told himself. Today Riverboat Jack’s in the big game for the big pot, and you better be sure your head’s all here when Bennie—
“Mr Barron, Mr Benedict Howards is here to see you,” Carrie’s tinny voice said, dry-icewise, over the intercom.
“Send Howards in, Miss Donaldson. Thank you, Miss Donaldson, go fuck yourself, Miss Donaldson,” Barron said, the last without breaking rhythm but after he had snapped off the intercom.
As Howards half-stormed half-slunk in through the door, slamming a prop-attaché case stuffed no doubt with prop-documents down on the desk top and sitting down immediately without speaking like a Russian diplomat arriving at the umpteenhundredth session of the Geneva Disarmament Conference, Barron felt a flash go through him as he looked at a Benedict Howards he had never seen before—a stone-seat-grim efficient Texas speculator, who had come from the Panhandle with holes in his pockets and who had fought and connived his way to the fifty-billion-dollar point where he held life versus death power over two hundred and thirty million people, would own the next President of the United States like a deaf
Smith County judge. It was the big leagues, all right, and Barron knew it.
But Bennie knows it too, he thought as Howards stared at him like a stone basilisk, waiting for the man whose turf he was on to make the first move. Seeing Howards, Mr Big League Action himself looking at him with not anger, not quite fear in his eyes but cold and, for the first time, shrewdly-calculating appraisal, Jack Barron dug the image of power mirroring genuine near-fear of the living-color image of himself—and, in Howards’ cold eyes granting him the ultimate compliment of emotionless scrutiny, got a heady muskwhiff of his own power.
“All right, Howards,” Barron said, in a cold voice he saw caught Howards half off-balance, “no bullshit, no pyrotechnics. You’re here to do business, I’m here to do business, and we both know it. Give. Make your pitch, and in words of one syllable.”
Howards opened his attaché case, placed three copies of a contract on the desk. “There it is, Barron. A standard Freeze Contract, in triplicate, signed by me, the assets clause marked ‘Assigned by Anonymous Donor’ and made out to Jack Barron, effective immediately. That’s what you throw away if you don’t play ball, a Freeze, free and clear, and no one can take it away from you.”