Running Dog by Don DeLillo Read Free Book Online Page A

but only slightly.”
    “To make it more phallic.”
    “Marginally so,” Percival said.
    “The sacred and profane.”
    “Special form of eroticism, isn’t it? Always been attracted to it myself. It pleases the Lord that only a few of us have the wherewithal to pursue such attractions.”
    They got off the subway and took an elevator to the third floor of the Dirksen Building.
    “Magazine wants to make me look human.”
    “Which?”
    “
Running Dog
.”
    “Stay away,” Selvy said. “It’s not my department of course.”
    “Why?”
    “They’ll burn you.”
    “How do you know?”
    “They’re after controversy. They’re dying and need a fix. Even if they do the piece they promise, you’ll be hemmed in by autopsy reports, photos of entry and exit wounds, who killed Brown, who killed Smith, who killed Jones. They deal in fantasy.”
    They walked down a corridor toward the Senator’s office.
    “It’s not your department of course.”
    “Absolutely not,” Selvy said.
    “Your duties are strictly administrative.”
    “Their editor’s unstable. Grace Delaney. A lush. Used to spend all her time raising bail for well-hung Panthers.”
    Lightborne leaned forward to grimace, inches from the mirror, checking his teeth for traces of the grilled cheese sandwich he’d had for dinner. He turned on the cold water, wet his index finger and then ran it several times across his clenched teeth.
    He cleared a space in the gallery and set out folding chairs and a bench, deciding finally not to bother hauling the armchair out here. He went around turning on lights. In his jacket pocket he found a slightly bent Tareyton King and he blew on it several times to remove microscopic lint and then began searching for a match, the cigarette held between thumb and middle finger, an idiosyncrasy he’d copied from a titled Englishman he’d once done business with. With no matches to be had, he finally turned on the hotplate and was waiting for it to warm when the first of the bidders arrived.
    Eventually eleven people sat in the gallery as Lightborne made final adjustments. Glen Selvy carried a chair out of the living area and sat against a wall, slightly apart from the others. Lightborne showed a carved wood fertility figure.Noted its characteristics and advised as to period, precise handiwork involved, where found and how. A well-tanned man named Wetzel was the sole bidder.
    A copper statuette with a lesbian theme also went without competitive bidding. Wetzel captured a bronze satyr—once owned by Fulgencio Batista, Lightborne said—after an encouraging flurry of bids against three other people.
    Lightborne pushed a trunk on rollers into the auction area. He undid the belts, used an enormous key to open the trunk and then, with the help of a couple of men sitting up front, removed a three-foot-high volcanic stone phallus that pointed upward from a base of a pair of testicles larger than bowling balls.
    The piece was variously chipped, pockmarked and discolored. It had character. Lightborne invited the bidders to take a closer look, and most did. Then he delivered a brief interpretation of the piece and opened the bidding.
    Wetzel said, “That thing is about as pre-Columbian as an Oldenburg clothespin.”
    “Who said pre-Columbian? I said it was dug out of a tomb in the jungle. Who specified a date?”
    “Your man chiseled the damn thing in his backyard.”
    “He knows tombs no one else knows,” Lightborne said. “They’re in the densest areas. You can’t get in there except on foot, hacking.”
    “Hacking,” Wetzel said.
    “Professor Shatsky was supposed to be here to authenticate. He’s late, evidently.”
    “Shatsky.”
    “The Jewish Museum.”
    “What the hell does the Jewish Museum know about Guatemalan pricks? This particular prick isn’t even circumcised.”
    Lightborne made a gesture of pacification.
    “Go easy on the Anglo-Saxonisms,” he said.
    An hour later the whole thing was over. A full-fledged