“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?”