Passing Through the Flame (40 page)

“I really do appreciate this, Ivan,” Stein said. “Jango’s been absolutely avoiding me since all this happened. A sure sign that there’s some angle in this deal for him.”

Ivan laughed. “You don’t think the treatment you’re giving this Sunset City project might have something to do with it? Why would Jango Beck want anything to do with saving a paper that’s kicking the shit out of his baby?”

“You’ve got the chicken before the egg. Aside from the fact that Sunset City is shaping up as one of the great capitalist rip-offs of all time, we’re beating on it so hard to give Beck a reason to help us get out from under Marvin. Laying off Sunset City hopefully will be my
quid
for his
pro quo.
”

“Hoo-hoo-hoo! Pretty damn Machiavellian!”

“Who are
you
to put me down for being Machiavellian?” Ivan Blue drained his wineglass, poured himself another. “Who’s putting you down?” he said. “That’s a compliment. You know what I think of so-called revolutionaries who think they’re too pure to use Establishment tricks against the Establishment. That’s why I like you, Barry, you’re not a schmuck.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week.”

A commotion near the entrance to the big square room drew Stein’s attention. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Jango Beck walking across the room toward their table, nodding and waving to every table on the raised walkway around the central pit, touching men on the shoulder, patting women on the waist, in general acting like the lord of the manor. He was wearing a pure white suit, white boots, a white shirt, and an off-white ascot. AH this deepened the darkness of his eyes, emphasized his great bush of black hair. Stein felt a twinge of dread as Beck reached their table. Maybe it was stupid to trick Jango into seeing him this way.

“Hello, Jango,” Ivan said blandly. “This is Suzanne, and of course you know Barry. Happened to run into him on the way here.”

“Hello, Ivan. Suzanne.” Beck sat down across from Ivan, between Stein and Suzanne, looked at Stein for a moment with a deadpan expression. “Barry.”

“Do you have any grass on you?” Ivan asked. To Suzanne, he said, “Jango always has superfine dope.”

Jango withdrew a green jade case from his jacket pocket, took out a fat joint. He put it in his mouth, lit it, took a drag, transferred it to Suzanne’s mouth with a little smile, a passing eye contact. He blew out smoke and said, “You always were an up-front mooch, Ivan.”

“That’s because I own nothing,” Ivan said. “Everything I have belongs to the people.”

Suzanne passed the joint to Ivan and glanced covertly at Beck. “And vice versa, right?” Jango said.

“Takes one to know one.”

Blue took a long drag, handed the joint to Stein. Stein sucked in a lungful—Acapulco Gold, strong, tasty and smooth. Ivan blew out a long plume of smoke, savoring it like wine as it rolled out over his full sensual lips. “Very nice.”

“Want to buy a pound?”

“You know I don’t anything,” Ivan said. “Want to lay some on me?”

Jango laughed. Stein handed him the joint, and for a moment their eyes met. He found it impossible to read anything from Beck’s face—no warmth, no surprise at seeing him, no hostility, no nothing. It was like looking into a psychic vacuum; he felt energy draining out of him into Jango Beck. How am I even going to broach the subject of having him get Marvin off my ass?

Beck turned his attention back to Ivan. “I find it hard to believe you came down here from San Francisco just to talk me out of some free dope,” he said.

Ivan put a forkful of Stroganoff into his mouth, took a sip of wine. “Oh, that’s only for openers,” he said. “What I’m really here for is to find out just how much the Sunset City festival is going to contribute to the Movement.”

Beck leaned back in his chair, hung the burning joint from his mouth, puffing on it softly. “You’re a real comedian,” he said.

“I’m serious, Jango. You’re going to have a quarter of a million people at this thing, and they represent a piece of our constituency, isn’t that right, Barry?”

Good old Ivan, I wish I could be as smooth as he is, Stein thought. Without being quite so cynical. “That’s right,” he said.

Jango took the joint out of his mouth, held it out to Suzanne, looking her in the eye. “I know exactly what Barry thinks about Sunset City,” he said coldly. “He’s been printing enough downer bullshit about it.”

“I’ve been reading the
Flash
too,” Ivan said. “There’s a lot of money in this thing. A couple dozen live albums—all by Eden and Dark Star artists, if I can believe what I read in the papers. This rip-off exploitation film. Tons of media coverage.”

“So?” said Beck, with naked belligerence.

Suzanne passed the joint to Ivan, her eyes still fixed on Jango Beck. Stein saw that Ivan was finally picking up on this little byplay; a shadow of annoyance darkened his face, and his expression became almost ominous.

“So I figure that the Movement should benefit from this thing, that something should come back to the people.”

“Which means?”

Ivan took a long drag on the joint, held it, exhaled. “Which means,” he said, “like ten percent of the gross of the film and ten percent of the record album royalties contributed to Movement causes.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind!” Beck said angrily. He looked at Suzanne, smiled. “Your old man is out of his fucking mind,” he said more sweetly.

“We could dicker,” Ivan suggested. “Maybe we’d settle for seven percent. But one thing I’m very firm on: I want to run the political program. Speeches between the acts, large consciousness-raising sessions, votes of the people to condemn militarism, racism, sexism, exploitative capitalism, ecological rape. And of course, full media coverage of all these events.”

Jango Beck stared at Ivan. Stein stared at him too, scarcely believing his chutzpah, the sheer stupidity of trying to hold Jango Beck up like that. This is a disaster! What does this have to do with saving the
Flash
?

“You know, I like your style, Ivan,” Beck said very slowly. “Anyone else tried to pull something like this on me would find his ass disappearing. Permanently.”

Ivan laughed. “Spare me the theatrics,” he said.

“I kid you not, Ivan. Ask around. See if you can come up with a warm body that tried to hold me up for the kind of bread you’re talking about.”

Jango looked across the table at Ivan. Stein couldn’t see Beck’s face from this angle, but he could see the changes move across Ivan’s face: his smile replaced by disbelief, then unease, then something very close to fear. Suzanne’s eyes shifted from Beck to Ivan; there was a distancing in them, a diminishing of Ivan in her esteem. She shifted her attention back to Beck, and now her eyes were shiny and excited. Ivan didn’t seem to catch this at all; his attention was totally focused on Beck. A tremor of fear went through Stein. Man, I’ve never seen anyone do a thing like this to Ivan Blue!

Ivan laughed again, this time quite hollowly. “All right, Jango,” he said, “I see I can’t bullshit you like a mortal man. I never expected to pry the bread out of you anyway. It was just a talking point for what I really want.”

“Talk,” said Beck, in a cold, hard voice.

Ivan took a nervous drag on the joint and passed it to Stein. Stein sucked on it hard, trying to draw courage from the sweet smoke. I’ve never seen Jango like this. I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never seen it. This guy has had people killed. I can smell it. I can taste it.

“First of all,” Ivan said, “I’m dead serious about establishing a political orientation for Sunset City. This is simply too good a chance to miss, this has to begin where Woodstock left off. Run whatever numbers you want, but give us enough time onstage to run a decent political program. Four hours a day out of twenty-four isn’t much to ask, is it?”

Jango Beck continued to stare at Ivan. “A first of all implies a second of all,” he said in a poisonous tone of voice. “What else do you want?”

Ivan leaned back, cracked a small satisfied grin. Hell, man, Stein thought, you’re misreading him completely! “Barry here has some problems with a greasy gangster you set him up with—”

Jango Beck whipped around to face Stein with a hardened jaw and a look that made Stein’s guts curdle. “You really are a fucking ingrate, Stein!” he snapped. “I’ve been avoiding you because I knew you’ve been trying to see me with this whining little story, but now that you’ve finally set me up for your groveling act, let me tell you something. You were going down for the count, and you begged me to do something to save you, and I did, I found someone stupid enough to want to invest in your situation. Turns out you weren’t even smart enough to handle a schmuck like Harry Marvin, so now you want me to save your stupid ass again. And you’ve been bumming Sunset City in the
Flash
for weeks—”

A surge of rage burned through Stein’s fear of Beck. “You
knew
what a gangster Marvin was! You set me up! Now I lose the paper if I can’t keep up the payments on the printing plant he palmed off on me, and I can’t afford to keep the fucking printing plant because it’s bankrupting me. You sold the
Flash
down the tube.”

“You sold
yourself
down the tube,” Beck said. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Get Marvin to let me give him back the printing plant and keep the paper.”

“What makes you think I could do that?”

“You could do it.”

Jango Beck’s face became cold, emotionless, reptilian. “Assuming I could and I assuming I did,” he said quietly, “what would be in it for me?”

Stein held his breath, trying to read Beck’s face for some clue to how he would react, failed, and plunged ahead. “You might find Sunset City starting to get much more favorable coverage in the
Flash
,” he said. “In fact, I could guarantee it.”

Beck steepled his hands. “So that’s it,” he said. “The Movement punishes its enemies and rewards its benefactors.” His voice was utterly neutral, sending hope coursing through Stein. Maybe we’re really going to pull this off.

Beck took the joint from Stein’s hand, puffed on it, leaned back, looked at Stein, then at Ivan, then at Suzanne. “Let me get this deal straight in my mind,” he said, and Stein thought he could sense warmth stealing back into Beck’s voice. “If I get Harry Marvin to take back his printing plant and let you keep the
Flash
, and if I let you use four hours a day at the festival for political bullshit, Sunset City gets cooperation from the Movement and the underground press.”

“I think we could guarantee that,” Stein said.

“And if I don’t?”

Stein cocked his head, shrugged. Ivan Blue mimicked the gesture.

With the sudden swiftness of a striking rattlesnake, Jango Beck sprang out of his chair, his face contorted with rage, his voice filling the room, commanding the attention of everyone in the High Castle.

“You cheap blackmailing punks! You can take your Movement and your paper and your rotten blackmail schemes and shove them straight up your assholes! Nobody runs a blackmail number on Jango Beck! There will be no political program at Sunset City, there will be no speeches, there will be nobody on the stage or exhibiting anything unless
I
say so, and I say no, no,
no
to dirty rip-off artists who think they’re going to use
my
rock festival to stir up a lot of stupid communistic bullshit that will hurt the gross of my film and my record albums! You can print
that
in your cheap, rotten little rag! Up yours, you chiseling rotten little pissants! Go fuck yourselves!”

Beck grabbed the edge of the table and heaved, flinging the table over, spilling food on the floor and in Ivan Blue’s lap, smashing glasses and the wine bottle, which shattered on the floor, creating a pool of what looked like blood. Continuing the motion, he threw his arms into the air in a gesture of fury and disgust, then stalked across the now silent room and out of the High Castle.

For a long moment after he was gone, the silence hung in the air. “Wow,” Suzanne sighed, and then people were talking everywhere at once, filling the big room with an excited, frantic buzz that made the blood ring behind Barry Stein’s ears. That stinking son of a bitch! That fucking capitalist pig! That egotistical rip-off bastard is going to find out he can’t shit on the people!

“Find me a place to stay in town, Barry,” Ivan Blue said. His fair skin was pink with rage, his hands balled into fists. “We’ve got work to do. Nobody runs a number like that in public on
me
!”Stein had never seen Ivan like this. A vein was throbbing in his temple. His lips were practically turning purple.

“Oh, Ivan,” Suzanne said in a thin, skeptical voice, “what do you think you can do to someone like
that?”

Ivan whirled on her. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do!” he snarled. “We’re going to take over this fucking festival! We’re going to rip it off from Jango Beck and return it to the people. Are you with me, Barry?”

“Right on!” Stein found himself saying. “That miserable mother-fucker did that just to humiliate us. Bet your ass I’m with you!”

But as they walked across the room toward the exit, Stein saw that no one dared speak a word of encouragement to them, no one even dared meet their eyes, and he wondered if their asses weren’t exactly what they would be betting. Their asses against Jango Beck’s.

But wasn’t that what being a revolutionary was all about?

Frank Bellows leaned against a rock, caressing the barrel of his bazooka, getting more and more uptight. McCracken lazed against a tree, sipping bourbon from a flask. Chris Sargent lay on his belly at the crest of the ridgeline, looking down the scrub-covered slope of the hill into the valley below.

Gomez’s fields were all cropped stubble, and the
peones
were just sitting around in front of the line of hootches smoking cigarettes and looking nervous under the eyes and guns of the five guards. Seven trucks were parked in a semicircle at the margin of the cleared fields, guarded by four more organization soldiers. Five of the trucks were jammed with cut and partially dried pot. Another dozen soldiers were goofing around, snoozing, or playing cards. Sargent had been watching them for more than two hours now, and no one had done anything. Baum’s scouts had had them under observation for an additional eight hours, and they had finished loading the grass six hours ago.