He paused, tapped his left foot-button once—and nothing happened. Behind the control booth glass, Gelardi shook his head “no”. Barron tapped the foot-button again; again Gelardi shook his head. Barron slammed his foot against the floor. Vince groaned silently then capitulated, and Howards’ face filled three-quarters of the screen.
“You tell ’em, or I’ll tell ’em,” Barron said, tapping his right foot-button twice for a commercial in two minutes, almost grinned as Vince brought his hands together in a mock prayer of thanks.
“Barron, listen, it’s not too late, Barron,” Howards whined, and the rage was gone from his face, whited-out by a craven feral fear. “Not too late to stop the fading black circle closing in closing in.… I won’t tell, I swear I won’t tell. We can live forever, Barron, you and me, never have to die, young and strong, smell the air in the morning, it’s not too late, I swear it, you and me and your wife…”
Barron signaled to keep the screen split as is, said softly, measuredly, letting something harder than sorrow and colder than anger gleam in his image’s eyes: “My wife is dead, Howards. She jumped twenty-three stories, twenty-three stories. Suicide… but not from where I sit. From where I sit, you killed her sure as if you pushed her. Afraid now, Bennie? Can you guess where my head is at?”
Incredibly, the total fear on Benedict Howards’ face took a quantum jump, it was more than terror now, it was abysmal paranoid despair. And all he could do was mutter, “No… no… no… no… no…” like some obscene million-year-old infant, trembling wet lips of incredible age forming a baby’s drool. He knew.
Barron signaled for and got full screen and solo audio as the promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.” “Let’s talk about why my wife died,” he said, his voice and face purposely composed into an artfully-ill-concealed ersatz calm that was far more wrenching than any histrionics could ever be.
“My wife died because Benedict Howards made her immortal,” he said. “He made her immortal, and it killed her, now ain’t that a bitch? She couldn’t live with herself after she found out… Sara wasn’t the only one her immortality killed. There was someone else she never saw who died so she could be immortal—a poor kid whose body was irradiated by the Foundation till it was one living cancer, so they could cut out his very special glands and sew them into my wife. And make her live forever.
“But she won’t live forever, she’s dead; she killed herself because she couldn’t stand living knowing what had been done to her. I loved that woman, so you’ll pardon my thinking it wasn’t just guilt. She told me why, just before she jumped. She knew that he would get away with it, live forever, kill forever, buy or kill anyone that stood in his way unless… unless someone was desperate enough or dumb enough or didn’t care enough about living to scream from the mountaintops what he was doing. Sara Westerfeld died to make me do just what I’m doing now. She died for you! How does that grab you, suckers?”
Barron felt himself cloaked in the crystal mist of legend: the studio, the monitor, the figures behind the control booth glass were things that couldn’t possibly exist. The things he had said were things that were never said in public, not in front of a hundred million people. What was happening did not ever happen in front of cameras, you could watch the glass tit forever and not see anything like this.
But it was happening, he was making it happen, and it was the easiest thing in the world. History, he thought, I’m making fucking history—and it’s nothing but show biz, is all. Moving images around and making myth…
He foot-signaled and got Howards back at one-quarter screen, with his audio back on. But Bennie was as stiff and mute as a still photo.
“Go ahead, Howards,” he said, “now’s your big chance, tell ’em the rest. Tell ’em why you made Sara Westerfeld immortal, tell ’em who else you made immortal. Go ahead, time to hit back, isn’t it?”
Howards remained silent, didn’t even seem to hear, as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.” His empty eyes looked off into the dreadful landscape within. Barron knew he had him sick and bleeding—set him up right, and after the commercial, he’d start to shriek.
“All right,” Barron said with razors in his voice, “I’ll tell ’em!” He reached into a pocket, pulled out the same blank papers he had used before.
“See this, folks? This is a Freeze Contract, a very special Freeze Contract. It entitles the client to have the Foundation for Human Immortality make him immortal…”
He paused, waved the paper at the camera like a bloody shirt.
“This is my contract,” he said.
And the promptboard flashed “Off the Air.”
The commercial rolled, and behind the glass of the control booth Barron could see the confusion, the deathwatch smell, and Vince’s face seemed ten years older as he stared through the glass and then spoke into the intercom circuit:
“Jack what are you—”
“Keep me on the air, Vince,” Barron said.
“What in hell is going on? Do you realize what you’re doing?”
Do I realize what I’m doing! Barron thought. Did I ever realize what I was doing before tonight?
“Just keep me on the air, Vince,” Barron said, “and make damn sure Howards stays on the phone.”
Gelardi hesitated, and Barron could read the pain on his face as he said: “The network brass is screaming. You’ve laid them open to the biggest libel suit in history. They’re ordering me to keep you off the air. I’m sorry…”
“This is my show, Vince,” Barron shouted, “and you can tell those fuckers to get stuffed! You can also tell them that every word I’ve said is true, and the only way they can avoid a libel suit is to keep me on the air and let me prove it.”
“That’s pretty dirty pool,” Gelardi said as the promptboard flashed “60 Seconds.”
“It’s a pretty dirty world, Vince,” Barron said, and he broke the intercom connection.
How’s this for the old power-junk, Barron thought. Benedict Howards totally raving out of his mind, and I’ve got him trapped on my turf where I make all the rules, can change ’em anytime I want. Howards, with all his power, with his dirty fingers in every Democratic pie, I can do more than save myself—that’s no real sweat now—I can kick the whole cabal that runs the country to pieces, throw the next election so wide open anyone might win. Right here, right now, live!
A dream, yeah, a Jack-and-Sara dream, just me standing at the focus of everything and kicking the whole rotten schmear apart. Dream made reality—I got the monster that knows where all the bodies are buried (shit, who you think buried them in the first place!) right where I want him, ready to pick him apart…
Sara! Sara! If only you were here to see the show now, baby! Bug Jack Barron goes down, it’ll go down with a bang that’ll take the whole sorry mess with it. Sara… Sara… it’s the only way I know how to cry for you.
He stared at the meaningless commercial on the monitor as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds,” and knew that in half a minute his image, a reality that was realer than real, would burn into a hundred million eyes as if they were in the room with him.
No, they would be sucked in deeper than that, they would be in his head, behind his eyes, seeing and hearing only what he wanted them to, nothing more and not a phosphor-dot less.