“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.”
13
Evers, Mississippi, Jack Barren thought as the plane’s wheels contacted the runway. Jeez, it’s been a long time since I was down here, Luke’s original inauguration as Boy Governor (wasn’t it?), all those familiar faces from Berkeley and New York and Los Angeles—every Baby Bolshevik with the black skin entrance-fee zoomed in on Evers like narco-fuzz on a junk party when Mississippi finally went black. Only there wasn’t no Evers then, that’s right, was part of Luke’s original platform: “A New Capital for the New Mississippi.”
Yeah, just like any other Banana Republic, hundred million bucks to build a fancy new Capital, and five years later Luke’s yelling for Federal subsidy of the state budget, Mississippi’s so broke, and fat chance of that! Bread and circuses, is how the SJC took over Mississippi—long on circuses, that is, and short on bread. Way it’ll stay too, unless…
Watch it, Barron! he told himself as the plane taxied toward the spanking-new gull-winged airport terminal (everything in Evers wasn’t made out of old tin packing crates, Coke sign garbage was strictly World’s Fair stuff). Don’t even think about that kind of crap down here, with Luke close enough to play with your live-in-person head. Got enough to handle with Howards & Co without playing Napoleon.
As the plane approached the terminal building, Barron saw a funky-looking crowd milling around between the planes and the building; maybe a couple thousand ragged-looking Evers-slum-type down-and-out Negroes waving dozens of signs he couldn’t quite make out, TV cameras clustered around a late-model Cad limousine, gaggle of reporters and photographers… But the screwy thing was that in the wan, gray, morning overcast every man and woman in the crowd was wearing dark sunglasses.
The plane rolled to a stop, the main door opened as an old-fashioned debarkation ramp was wheeled up for some reason, then there was some kind of commotion at the door between a stewardess and someone outside. Two Mississippi State Policemen, dressed and swaggering like every redneck Southern cop Barron had ever been but black as the proverbial ace of spades, stepped into the plane and sauntered heavily down the aisle, obviously digging the uptighting effect they were having on the white passengers, stopped in front of his seat.
“Mr Barron,” the taller one said with gross formality, “please come with us.”
“Hey, what is this,” Barron said, “some kind of bust? You crazy? You know who I am? Wait till Governor Greene—”