Wild Cards: Inside Straight Read online

  “You better hurry,” Mrs. O’Dell said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Raeder said.

  “I don’t want no gunplay in my apartment.”

  “I’m almost finished, ma’am.”

  One of the children asked, “Aren’t they going to kill him?”

  “Shut up,” said Mrs. O’Dell.

  “Yes, Jim,” chanted Mike Terry. “You’d better hurry. Your killers aren’t far behind. They aren’t stupid men, Jim. Vicious, warped, insane—yes! But not stupid. They’re following a trail of blood—blood from your torn hand, Jim!”

  Raeder hadn’t realized until now that he’d cut his hand on the windowsill.

  “Here, I’ll bandage that,” Mrs. O’Dell said. Raeder stood up and let her bandage his hand. Then she gave him a brown jacket and a gray slouch hat.

  “My husband’s stuff,” she said.

  “He has a disguise, folks!” Mike Terry cried delightedly. “This is something new! A disguise! With seven hours to go until he’s safe!”

  “Now get out of here,” Mrs. O’Dell said.

  “I’m going, ma’am,” Raeder said. “Thanks.”

  “I think you’re stupid,” she said. “I think you’re stupid to be involved in this.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It just isn’t worth it.”

  Raeder thanked her and left. He walked to Broadway, caught a subway to 59th Street, then an uptown local to 86th. There he bought a newspaper and changed for the Manhasset through-express.

  He glanced at his watch. He had six and a half hours to go.

  Dreamily he wondered if he had escaped death, or was he still a cleverly animated corpse, moving around because of death’s inefficiency? (My dear, death is so laggard these days! Jim Raeder walked about for hours after he died and actually answered people’s questions before he could be decently buried!)

  Raeder’s eyes snapped open. He had dreamed something . . . unpleasant. He couldn’t remember what.

  He closed his eyes again and remembered, with mild astonishment, a time when he had been in no trouble.

  That was two years ago. He had been a big, pleasant young man working as a truck driver’s helper. He had no talents. He was too modest to have dreams.

  The tight-faced little truck driver had the dreams for him. “Why not try for a television show, Jim? I would if I had your looks. They like nice, average guys with nothing much on the ball. As contestants. Everybody likes guys like that. Why not look into it?”

  So he had looked into it. The owner of the local television store had explained it further.

  “You see, Jim, the public is sick of highly trained athletes with their trick reflexes and their professional courage. Who can feel for guys like that? Who can identify? People want to watch exciting things, sure, but not when some joker is making it his business for fifty thousand a year. That’s why organized sports are in a slump. That’s why the thrill shows are booming.”

  “I see,” said Raeder.

  “Six years ago, Jim, Congress passed the Voluntary Suicide Act. Those old senators talked a lot about free will and self-determinism at the time. But that’s all crap. You know what the Act really means? It means the amateurs can risk their lives for the big loot, not just professionals. In the old days you had to be a professional boxer or footballer or hockey player if you wanted your brains beaten out legally for money. But now that opportunity is open to ordinary people like you, Jim.”

  “I see,” Raeder said again.

  “It’s a marvelous opportunity. Take you. You’re no better than anyone, Jim. Anything you can do, anyone can do. You’re average. I think the thrill shows would go for you.”

  Raeder permitted himself to dream. Television shows looked like a sure road to riches for a pleasant young fellow with no particular talent or training. He wrote a letter to a show called Hazard and enclosed a photograph of himself.

  Hazard was interested in him. The JBC network investigated, and found that he was average enough to satisfy the wariest viewer. His parentage and affiliations were checked. At last he was summoned to New York and interviewed by Mr. Moulain.

  Moulain was dark and intense, and chewed gum as he talked. “You’ll do,” he snapped. “But not for Hazard. You’ll appear on Spills. It’s a half-hour daytime show on Channel Three.”

  “Gee,” said Raeder.

  “Don’t thank me. There’s a thousand dollars if you win or place second, and a consolation prize of a hundred dollars if you lose. But that’s not important.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Spills is a little show. The JBC network uses it as a testing ground. First and second-place winners on Spills move on to Emergency. The prizes are much bigger on Emergency .”

  “I know they are, sir.”

  “And if you do well on Emergency, there are the first-class thrill shows, like Hazard and Underwater Perils, with their nationwide coverage and enormous prizes. And then comes the really big time. How far you go is up to you.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” Raeder said.

  Moulain stopped chewing gum for a moment and said, almost reverently, “You can do it, Jim. Just remember. You’re the people, and the people can do anything.”

  The way he said it made Raeder feel momentarily sorry for Mr. Moulain, who was dark and frizzy-haired and pop-eyed, and was obviously not the people.

  They shook hands. Then Raeder signed a paper absolving the JBC of all responsibility should he lose his life, limbs, or reason during the contest. And he signed another paper exercising his rights under the Voluntary Suicide Act. The law required this, and it was a mere formality.

  In three weeks, he appeared on Spills.

  The program followed the classic form of the automobile race. Untrained drivers climbed into powerful American and European competition cars and raced over a murderous twenty-mile course. Raeder was shaking with fear as he slid his big Maserati into the wrong gear and took off.

  The race was a screaming, tire-burning nightmare. Raeder stayed back, letting the early leaders smash themselves up on the counterbanked hairpin turns. He crept into third place when a Jaguar in front of him swerved against an Alfa-Romeo and the two cars roared into a plowed field. Raeder gunned for second place on the last three miles, but couldn’t find passing room. An S-curve almost took him, but he fought the car back on the road, still holding third. Then the lead driver broke a crankshaft in the final fifty yards, and Jim ended in second place.

  He was now a thousand dollars ahead. He received four fan letters, and a lady in Oshkosh sent him a pair of argyles. He was invited to appear on Emergency.

  Unlike the others, Emergency was not a competition-type program. It stressed individual initiative. For the show, Raeder was knocked out with a nonhabit-forming narcotic. He awoke in the cockpit of a small airplane, cruising on autopilot at ten thousand feet. His fuel gauge showed nearly empty. He had no parachute. He was supposed to land the plane.

  Of course, he had never flown before.

  He experimented gingerly with the controls, remembering that last week’s participant had recovered consciousness in a submarine, had opened the wrong valve, and had drowned.

  Thousands of viewers watched spellbound as this average man, a man just like themselves, struggled with the situation just as they would do. Jim Raeder was them. Anything he could do, they could do. He was representative of the people.

  Raeder managed to bring the ship down in some semblance of a landing. He flipped over a few times, but his seat belt held. And the engine, contrary to expectation, did not burst into flames.

  He staggered out with two broken ribs, three thousand dollars, and a chance, when he healed, to appear on Torero.

  At last, a first-class thrill show! Torero paid ten thousand dollars. All you had to do was kill a black Miura bull with a sword, just like a real, trained matador.

  The fight was held in Madrid, since bullfighting was still illegal in the United States. It was nationally televised.

  Ra
eder had a good cuadrilla. They liked the big, slow-moving American. The picadors really leaned into their lances, trying to slow the bull for him. The banderilleros tried to run the beast off his feet before driving in their banderillas. And the second matador, a mournful man from Algiceras, almost broke the bull’s neck with fancy cape-work.

  But when all was said and done, it was Jim Raeder on the sand, a red muleta clumsily gripped in his left hand, a sword in his right, facing a ton of black, blood-streaked, wide-horned bull.

  Someone was shouting, “Try for the lung, hombre. Don’t be a hero, stick him in the lung.” But Jim only knew what the technical advisor in New York had told him: Aim with the sword and go in over the horns.

  Over he went. The sword bounced off bone, and the bull tossed him over its back. He stood up, miraculously un-gouged, took another sword and went over the horns again with his eyes closed. The god who protects children and fools must have been watching, for the sword slid in like a needle through butter, and the bull looked startled, stared at him unbelievingly, and dropped like a deflated balloon.

  They paid him ten thousand dollars, and his broken collarbone healed in practically no time. He received twenty-three fan letters, including a passionate invitation from a girl in Atlantic City, which he ignored. And they asked him if he wanted to appear on another show.

  He had lost some of his innocence. He was now fully aware that he had been almost killed for pocket money. The big loot lay ahead. Now he wanted to be almost killed for something worthwhile.

  So he appeared on Underwater Perils, sponsored by Fairlady’s Soap. In face mask, respirator, weighted belt, flippers and knife, he slipped into the warm waters of the Caribbean with four other contestants, followed by a cage-protected camera crew. The idea was to locate and bring up a treasure which the sponsor had hidden there.

  Mask diving isn’t especially hazardous. But the sponsor had added some frills for public interest. The area was sown with giant clams, moray eels, sharks of several species, giant octopuses, poison coral, and other dangers of the deep.

  It was a stirring contest. A man from Florida found the treasure in a deep crevice, but a moray eel found him. Another diver took the treasure, and a shark took him. The brilliant blue-green water became cloudy with blood, which photographed well on color TV. The treasure slipped to the bottom, and Raeder plunged after it, popping an eardrum in the process. He plucked it from the coral, jettisoned his weighted belt and made for the surface. Thirty feet from the top he had to fight another diver for the treasure.

  They feinted back and forth with their knives. The man struck, slashing Raeder across the chest. But Raeder, with the self-possession of an old contestant, dropped his knife and tore the man’s respirator out of his mouth.

  That did it. Raeder surfaced and presented the treasure at the standby boat. It turned out to be a package of Fair-lady’s Soap—“The Greatest Treasure of All.”

  That netted him twenty-two thousand dollars in cash and prizes, and three hundred and eight fan letters, and an interesting proposition from a girl in Macon, which he seriously considered. He received free hospitalization for his knife slash and burst eardrum, and injections for coral infection.

  But best of all, he was invited to appear on the biggest of the thrill shows. The Prize of Peril.

  And that was when the real trouble began . . .

  The subway came to a stop, jolting him out of his reverie. Raeder pushed back his hat and observed, across the aisle, a man staring at him and whispering to a stout woman. Had they recognized him?

  He stood up as soon as the doors opened, and glanced at his watch. He had five hours to go.

  AT the Manhasset station, he stepped into a taxi and told the driver to take him to New Salem.

  “New Salem?” the driver asked, looking at him in the rear-vision mirror.

  “That’s right.”

  The driver snapped on his radio. “Fare to New Salem. Yep, that’s right. New Salem.” They drove off. Raeder frowned, wondering if it had been a signal. It was perfectly usual for taxi drivers to report to their dispatchers, of course. But something about the man’s voice . . .

  “Let me off here,” Raeder said.

  He paid the driver and began walking down a narrow country road that curved through sparse woods. The trees were too small and too widely separated for shelter. Raeder walked on, looking for a place to hide.

  There was a heavy truck approaching. He kept on walking, pulling his hat low on his forehead. But as the truck drew near, he heard a voice from the television set in his pocket. It cried, “Watch out!”

  He flung himself into the ditch. The truck careened past, narrowly missing him, and screeched to a stop. The driver was shouting, “There he goes! Shoot, Harry, shoot!”

  Bullets clipped leaves from the trees as Raeder sprinted into the woods.

  “It’s happened again!” Mike Terry was saying, his voice high-pitched with excitement. “I’m afraid Jim Raeder let himself be lulled into a false sense of security. You can’t do that, Jim! Not with your life at stake! Not with killers pursuing you! Be careful, Jim, you still have four and a half hours to go!”

  The driver was saying, “Claude, Harry, go around with the truck. We got him boxed.”

  “They’ve got you boxed, Jim Raeder!” Mike Terry cried. “But they haven’t got you yet! And you can thank Good Samaritan Susy Peters of twelve Elm Street, South Orange, New Jersey, for that warning shout just when the truck was bearing down on you. We’ll have little Susy on stage in just a moment . . . Look, folks, our studio helicopter has arrived on the scene. Now you can see Jim Raeder running, and the killers pursuing, surrounding him . . .”

  Raeder ran through a hundred yards of woods and found himself on a concrete highway, with open woods beyond. One of the killers was trotting through the woods behind him. The truck had driven to a connecting road and was now a mile away, coming toward him.

  A car was approaching from the other direction. Raeder ran into the highway, waving frantically. The car came to a stop.

  “Hurry!” cried the blond young woman driving it.

  Raeder dived in. The woman made a U-turn on the highway. A bullet smashed through the windshield. She stamped on the accelerator, almost running down the lone killer who stood in the way.

  The car surged away before the truck was within firing range.

  Raeder leaned back and shut his eyes tightly. The woman concentrated on her driving, watching for the truck in her rear-vision mirror.

  “It’s happened again!” cried Mike Terry, his voice ecstatic. “Jim Raeder has been plucked again from the jaws of death, thanks to Good Samaritan Janice Morrow of four three three Lexington Avenue, New York City. Did you ever see anything like it, folks? The way Miss Morrow drove through a fusillade of bullets and plucked Jim Raeder from the mouth of doom! Later we’ll interview Miss Morrow and get her reactions. Now, while Jim Raeder speeds away—perhaps to safety, perhaps to further peril—we’ll have a short announcement from our sponsor. Don’t go away! Jim’s got four hours and ten minutes until he’s safe: Anything can happen!”

  “Okay,” the girl said. “We’re off the air now. Raeder, what in the hell is the matter with you?”

  “Eh?” Raeder asked. The girl was in her early twenties. She looked efficient, attractive, untouchable. Raeder noticed that she had good features, a trim figure. And he noticed that she seemed angry.

  “Miss,” he said, “I don’t know how to thank you for—”

  “Talk straight,” Janice Morrow said. “I’m no Good Samaritan. I’m employed by the JBC network.”

  “So the program had me rescued!”

  “Cleverly reasoned,” she said.

  “But why?”

  “Look, this is an expensive show, Raeder. We have to turn in a good performance. If our rating slips, we’ll all be in the street selling candy apples. And you aren’t cooperating.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re terrible,” the girl sai
d bitterly. “You’re a flop, a fiasco. Are you trying to commit suicide? Haven’t you learned anything about survival?”

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “The Thompsons could have had you a dozen times by now. We told them to take it easy, stretch it out. But it’s like shooting a clay pigeon six feet tall. The Thompsons are cooperating, but they can only fake so far. If I hadn’t come along, they’d have had to kill you—air-time or not.”

  Raeder stared at her, wondering how such a pretty girl could talk that way. She glanced at him, then quickly looked back to the road.

  “Don’t give me that look!” she said. “You chose to risk your life for money, buster. And plenty of money! You knew the score. Don’t act like some innocent little grocer who finds the nasty hoods are after him. That’s a different plot.”

  “I know,” Raeder said.

  “If you can’t live well, at least try to die well.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Raeder said.

  “Don’t be too sure . . . You’ve got three hours and forty minutes until the end of the show. If you can stay alive, fine. The boodle’s yours. But if you can’t, at least try to give them a run for the money.”

  Raeder nodded, staring intently at her.

  “In a few moments we’re back on the air. I develop engine trouble, let you off. The Thompsons go all out now. They kill you when and if they can, as soon as they can. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Raeder said. “If I make it, can I see you some time?”

  She bit her lip angrily. “Are you trying to kid me?”

  “No. I’d like to see you again. May I?”

  She looked at him curiously. “I don’t know. Forget it. We’re almost on. I think your best bet is the woods to the right. Ready?”