“Sheila.” He closed his eyes, letting the wall support him.
“Ben. Ben, is that you? Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Fine. Cathy. Is she-”
“The same. The fever isn’t so bad but she sounds so croupy. Ben, I think there’s water in her lungs. What if she has pneumonia?”
“It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right.”
“I-” She paused, a long pause. “I hate to leave her, but I had to. Ben, I turned two tricks this morning. I’m sorry. But I got her some medicine at the drug. Some good medicine.” Her voice had taken on a zealous, evangelical lilt.
“That stuff is shit,” he said. “Listen: No more, Sheila. Please. I think I’m in hems.
Really. They can’t cut many more guys because there’s too many shows. There’s got to be enough cannon fodder to go around. And they give advances, I think. Mrs. Upshaw-”
“She looked awful in black,” Sheila broke in tonelessly.
“Never mind that. You stay with Cathy, Sheila. No more tricks.”
“All right. I won’t go out again.” But he didn’t believe her voice. Fingers crossed, Sheila? “I love you, Ben.”
“And I lo-”
“Three minutes are up,” the operator broke in. “If you wish to continue, please deposit one New Quarter or three old quarters.”
“Wait a second!” Richards yelled. “Get off the goddam line, bitch. You-‘
The empty hum of a broken connection.
He threw the receiver. It flew the length of its silver cord, then rebounded, striking the wall and then penduluming slowly back and forth like some strange snake that had bitten once and then died.
Somebody has to pay, Richards thought numbly as he walked back. Somebody has to.
330
Minus 089 and COUNTING
They were quartered on the fifth floor until ten o’clock the following day, and Richards was nearly out of his mind with anger, worry, and frustration when a young and slightly faggoty-looking pal in a skintight Games uniform asked them to please step into the elevator. They were perhaps three hundred in all: over sixty of their number had been removed soundlessly and painlessly the night before. One of them had been the kid with the inexhaustible fund of dirty jokes.
They were taken to a small auditorium on the sixth floor in groups of fifty. The auditorium was very luxurious, done in great quantities of red plush. There was an ashtray built into the realwood arm of every seat, and Richards hauled out his crumpled pack of Blams. He tapped his ashes on the floor.
There was a small stage at the front, and in the center of that, a lectern. A pitcher of water stood on it.
At about fifteen minutes past ten, the faggoty-looking fellow walked to the lectern and said: “I’d like you to meet Arthur M. Burns, Assistant Director of Games. ”
“Huzzah,” somebody behind Richards said in a sour voice.
A portly man with a tonsure surrounded by gray hair strode to the lectern, pausing and cocking his head as he arrived, as if to appreciate a round of applause which only he could hear. Then he smiled at them, a broad, twinkling smile that seemed to transform him into a pudgy, aging Cupid in a business suit.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve made it.”
There was a huge collective sigh, followed by some laughter and back-slapping. More cigarettes were lit up.
“Huzzah,” the sour voice repeated.
“Shortly, your program assignments and seventh floor room numbers will be passed out. The executive producers of your particular programs will explain further exactly what is expected of you. But before that happens, I just want to repeat my congratulations and tell you that I find you to be a courageous, resourceful group, refusing to live on the public dole when you have means at your disposal to acquit yourselves as men, and, may I add personally, as true heroes of our time.
“Bullshit,” the sour voice remarked.
“Furthermore, I speak for the entire Network when I wish you good luck and Godspeed.” Arthur M. Burns chuckled porkily and rubbed his hands together. “Well, I know you’re anxious to get those assignments, so I’ll spare you any more of my jabber.”
A side door popped open, and a dozen Games ushers wearing red tunics came into the auditorium. They began to call out names. White envelopes were passed out, and soon they littered the floor like confetti. Plastic assignment cards were read, exchanged with new acquaintances. There were muffled groans, cheers, catcalls. Arthur M. Burns presided over it all from his podium, smiling benevolently.
-That Christly How Hot Can You Take It, Jesus I hate the heat 331
-the show’s a goddam two-bitter, comes on right after the flictoons, for God’s sake
-Treadmill to Bucks, gosh, I didn’t know my heart was
-I was hoping I’d get it but I didn’t really think
-Hey Jake, you ever seen this Swim the Crocodiles? I thought
-nothing like I expected
-I don’t think you can
-Miserable goddam
-This Run For Your Guns-
“Benjamin Richards! Ben Richards?”
“Here!”
He was handed a plain white envelope and tore it open. His fingers were shaking slightly and it took him two tries to get the small plastic card out. He frowned down at it, not understanding. No program assignment was punched on it. The card read simply: ELEVATOR SIX.
He put the card in his breast pocket with his I. D. and left the auditorium. The first five elevators at the end of the hall were doing a brisk business as they ferried the following week’s contestants up to the seventh floor. There were four others standing by the closed doors of Elevator 6, and Richards recognized one of them as the owner of the sour voice.
“What’s this?” Richards asked. “Are we getting the gate?”
The man with the sour voice was about twenty-five, not bad looking. One arm was withered, probably by polio, which had come back strong in 2005. It had done especially well in Co-Op.
“No such luck,” he said, and laughed emptily. “I think we’re getting the bigmoney assignments. The ones where they do more than just land you in the hospital with a stroke or put out an eye or cut off an arm or two. The ones where they kill you. Prime time, baby.”
They were joined by a sixth pal, a good-looking kid who was blinking at everything in a surprised way.
“Hello, sucker,” the man with the sour voice said.
At eleven o’clock, after all the others had been taken away, the doors of Elevator 6
popped open. There was a cop riding in the Judas hole again.
“See?” The man with the sour voice said. “We’re dangerous characters. Public enemies. They’re gonna rub us out. ” He made a tough gangster face and sprayed the bulletproof compartment with an imaginary Sten gun. The cop stared at him woodenly.
Minus 088 and COUNTING
332
The waiting room on the eighth floor was very small, very plush, very intimate, very private. Richards had it all to himself.
At the end of the elevator ride, three of them had been promptly whisked away down a plushly carpeted corridor by three cops. Richards, the man with the sour voice, and the kid who blinked a lot had been taken here.
A receptionist who vaguely reminded Richards of one of the old tee-vee sex stars (Liz Kelly? Grace Taylor?) he had watched as a kid smiled at the three of them when they came in. She was sitting at a desk in an alcove, surrounded by so many potted plants that she might have been in an Ecuadorian foxhole. “Mr. Jansky,” she said with a blinding smile. “Go right in.”
The kid who blinked a lot went into the inner sanctum. Richards and the man with the sour voice, whose name was Jimmy Laughlin, made wary conversation. Richards discovered that Laughlin lived only three blocks away from him, on Dock Street. He had held a part-time job until the year before as an engine wiper for General Atomics, and had then been fired for taking part in a sit-down strike protesting leaky radiation shields.
“Well, I’m alive, anyway,” he said. “According to those maggots, that’s all that counts.
I’m sterile, of course. That don’t matter. That’s one of the little risks you run for the princely sum of seven New Bucks a day.”
When G-A had shown him the door, the withered arm had made it even tougher to get a job. His wife had come down with bad asthma two years before, was now bed-ridden.
“Finally I decided to go for the big brass ring,” Laughlin said with a bitter smile. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to push a few creeps out a high window before McCone’s boys get me.”
“Do you think it really is-”
” The Running Man? Bet your sweet ass. Give me one of those cruddy cigarettes, pal.”
Richards gave him one.
The door opened and the kid who blinked a lot came out on the arm of a beautiful dolly wearing two handkerchiefs and a prayer. The kid gave them a small, nervous smile as they went by.