American Sextet

by Warren Adler

  They were also making an interesting collection of odd gifts. Tate O'Haire wrote her erotic love poetry, scribbled in his own hand, mostly describing their genitalia and his feelings about them:

  "My sword of love stands firm

  Awaiting thy secrets to confirm

  Let me prove its power

  In that special bower

  And convert its hard steeling

  To the ultimate joy of feeling."

  Jason read the poem out loud, doubling up with laughter. Dorothy became oddly disturbed by his reaction.

  "He's sincere," she protested.

  "Sincere?"

  When she continued to pout, he let the matter drop.

  The Czech ambassador gave her exotic foods. Senator Hurley brought her leather souvenirs from his home state. And Arthur gave her matchbooks from Air Force One and the luncheon menu from the White House mess.

  "What's that?" she had asked, looking at the special of the day. "I hate fish."

  He made her bring all the gifts back to his Capitol Hill apartment, where he stashed them with the tapes in his safe deposit boxes.

  "What do you do with these?" she asked him one day after she had seen him snap out a used cassette and slip it into his pocket.

  "I keep it in a safe place. Just in case."

  "In case?" Her brow furrowed into a frown.

  "Wouldn't want it to get into the wrong hands."

  She thought for a moment, her frown deepening.

  "That would be awful." It seemed a half-satire, and he could tell by her hesitation that more was coming. "Are they helping you, Jason?"

  "Who?"

  "My boyfriends. I hope they're helping you ... like you said they would if I ... you know."

  "Oh yes," he said, remembering. "They are." It was, he knew, a vague assurance. Somehow he caught a warning in her words and it troubled him. He hadn't expected the reminder. "Just trust me," he said, knowing it was a weak response, but hoping she would understand his emphasis.

  "You know I do, Jason."

  Just the same, he was still troubled.

  The taped information continued to grow in volume and value and he found himself perpetually disgorging the information in his mind, putting it into palatable journalese.

  Another strange thing was developing between them. She seemed to be soaking up information subconsciously, like a transmission line, inert but alive. It was as if some built-in sensor was picking up signals and translating them back to him. She had become a medium and the bits of potentially damaging information strewn around in her mind were being quickly converted into a battery of lethal weapons.

  The general, aside from his outspoken views on his colleagues, the secretary of defense, and even the President, whom he also called an asshole, was particularly vociferous on the inability of the army to function. Bad weapons. Bad manpower. Bad planning. Bad leadership.

  Senator Hurley's verbal indiscretions revolved around the sexual peccadillos of his colleagues. He confessed to her that he was having affairs with other women. He also revealed that he was thinking of running for President.

  "He asked your advice?" Jason asked her, stunned. "What did you tell him?"

  "I said it would be good if he could still come to visit me."

  "You said that?" It staggered him. These are our leaders! The revelations were positively lip-smacking. Was it possible? Could she be inventing this?

  "He also said the minority whip was a fag. I didn't understand. I thought that whip stuff was something else."

  When Jason laughed, she enjoyed it all the more.

  "I really like these guys," she told him.

  "Just don't like them too much," he warned her. That look he'd seen on her face once before returned, disturbing him in a way he couldn't fully comprehend.

  What was incredible was that he, too, continued to make love to her, and she responded with equal passion. It was as though all of his past knowledge of female behavior had been trashed and remade.

  The Czech ambassador brought her exotic foods and bragged about his ability to circumvent the security apparatus of the United States, the Soviet Union and his own country.

  "They are all stupid," she reported the Czech to have said, "especially the Russians."

  He had her repeat it for the benefit of the recorder. It seemed to spill from her mind with uncommon clarity.

  "He said he likes the renewal of the cold war. He keeps telling his country that the U.S. is planning trouble, so they keep him here. He says he made nearly a half-million smuggling out certain Czech works of art from the U.S."

  "He told you that?"

  She shrugged, indicating a dubious comprehension, but it did not stop the flow.

  "And they got paid in diamonds. His wife smuggled them out in her cunt."

  "My God."

  "He said they couldn't get them out. He had to search all over town for long thin tongs."

  It was incredible. Again, he made her repeat it into the tape recorder. Would they believe this? he wondered.

  From Arthur Fellows, Dorothy relayed a picture of backbiting and intrigue that had spilled over into violence.

  "He said the secretary of state hauled off and hit the secretary of defense, breaking two teeth. He said he was the only witness and had to separate them. But not before the defense guy kicked the state guy in the balls."

  She had to repeat that as well.

  "Should be worth another fifty thou..."

  "What?"

  "Go on."

  "Also, he said the President's wife demanded the resignation of the secretary of energy because she overheard him call her iron pussy." He remembered the language of the Watergate tapes and the great gap they illustrated between the private and public person. Tearing away the facade of probity had become big business and he, by God, was going to be chairman of the board.

  "So that's why he resigned," Jason recalled. "I thought he said something about personal commitments."

  "He also said the President is taking drugs to control high blood pressure. He said he's the only one who knows that, besides his doctor. The prescriptions are made out to Arthur."

  What she had told him moved from the bizarre, to the fantastic, to the incredible. Was it her ingenuousness that was so disarming? It was not possible for her to be inquisitive. Yet he was beginning to acquire a nagging presumption that she knew more than he had imagined. The things they confided seemed appalling. Was their need for expiation so strong that they felt compelled to empty their substance, psychic and sexual, onto this absorbing human blotter? Indeed, perhaps she was becoming more than that...

  "What is it in you that makes them feel so safe?" he asked her.

  She smiled proudly. "They're good old boys. They trust me."

  Not once had she indicated a sense of being used or abused by any of them.

  "It's all going to make you rich someday, Dot," he said.

  "Rich? How?" Her concern was tangible. Had he seen panic in her eyes?

  "You'll see."

  As always, he quickly squelched any further explanation.

  The tapes, after two months, had filled up three safe deposit boxes. Still, he wasn't ready. If he were to discredit the entire checks and balances system, he would need a member of the Supreme Court. It was the final mountain to be climbed.

  Accessibility posed the biggest problem when it came to members of the court. They were outside the hurly-burly of politics and did not need to mix socially, except as a form of entertainment.

  Using the Washington Post library of clippings, he pored over everything he could find out about the personality of the men on the Court. A female member had narrowed his choices down to eight. Four were eliminated because of age. Not a breath of scandal emanated from the remaining four. They were all upright family men of sterling character, long tested in the crucible of peer investigations and public conduct.

  Another obstacle was their natural reclusiveness. They shied away from publicity and rarely granted i
nterviews. What he could glean from the clippings was mostly dated or peripheral knowledge. One was a weekend sailor. Another a part-time cabinet maker. Only one seemed to offer the remotest hint of accessibility, Associate Justice Orson Strauss. His hobby was walking. He walked every day from his home, an apartment in Shoreham West, two blocks from Dotty's place, to the Supreme Court building, a distance of five miles.

  Because it was a daily thing, it had a predictability that intrigued him and the man himself was, according to some accounts of observers, open and gregarious, a reasonable possibility.

  He and Dorothy stalked him for three days, sitting in Jason's car parked near his apartment house. He came out at precisely five forty-five every morning, wearing a gray jogging outfit, walking at a steady pace. His path was invariable. He would move east on Calvert Street, turn south on Connecticut Avenue, continue to Seventeenth Street past the old State Department Building, then along the great parade route toward the Capitol and his office in the Supreme Court Building.

  "Can you do that?" he asked her after they had confirmed the regularity of Justice Strauss's schedule.

  "Hell, yes," she said proudly. "I've always walked a lot."

  Looking at her, her eyes wide with a special pride, he could not resist hugging and kissing her. For the first time since they had begun, she seemed more eager, more dogged than himself.

  "A Supreme Court justice. Now that's something," she said.

  "You're getting quite a lesson in how America works," he said, somewhat facetiously.

  "Yes, I am," she responded with intensity.

  "Soon," he whispered, leaving the comment unfinished. It was a matter he was not yet ready to deal with.

  "Soon what?"

  "You'll see."

  She looked at him archly. It was an expression that he had never observed before. Soon, he told himself. The sooner the better.

  He had decided that whatever happened with Orson Strauss, this would be the end of it. He set a time goal in his mind--a week. If she couldn't get Strauss by then, he would go with the five. The lucky bastards, he thought. He was about to make them immortal.

  "Bet you can't snag him in a week."

  "Bet I can."

  "Just follow him and try to talk to him."

  That was the only instruction he gave her. Nature and her intrinsic talent would do the rest. He was sure of that.

  In three days, they were walking together.

  "He's very shy."

  "That's understandable."

  He had instructed Dorothy to tell Strauss that she worked on Capitol Hill, parting from him near the steps of the Capitol, then walking the few additional blocks to their Capitol Hill apartment, where she showered and had coffee with Jason before going off to Saks.

  "Remember, one week," he reminded her, pointing his finger as if playfully rebuking a child.

  He was not sleeping well. When she sensed his restlessness, she would comfort him in her special way, and he found that her lovemaking would often calm him. Now it just increased his agitation. Often, in the night, he would study her face as she slept. Before, it had been serene. Sleep was absolute. Now she, too, seemed restless, as if something foreign, disturbing, was thrashing around in her mind. Even her own questions were becoming more and more frequent.

  "Just accept," he assured her. "It's all for our future."

  "As long as it's what you want, Jason." There was a tentative ring to her response that hadn't been there before.

  "It is, baby. It is."

  He became increasingly short in his answers and wondered how long he could deflect her growing and still inarticulate curiosity. Although he tried to deny it to himself, she seemed to be changing in some way. He could not define it. Some intangible growth, perhaps, but he sensed an odd awareness in her, as if her exposure to these men and the subsequent debriefing was opening her mind. He had not anticipated that. Had the experience awakened a latent intelligence? How would she respond to notoriety?

  It was a path that he'd never tracked before. When it worried him he would take refuge in his original premise, that what he was doing was necessary. The public needed to confront its hypocrisy. Journalism needed the shock out of scandal mongering; the government needed it. Sometimes he felt like a director in a kind of theater of the absurd. In the end, he knew, it would make sense. He didn't care about the men whose present careers would be destroyed. What troubled him most was Dorothy and her reaction to the revelation. Surely, she would understand.

  At first, the justice had been understandably reticent, but after the fourth day, he was chatting amiably, enjoying the company.

  "He asks lots of questions," Dorothy told him.

  "About you?" Of course he would, Jason reasoned.

  "I always try to tell him the truth. About where I grew up. The mines. Things like that. Never about us," she added hastily.

  "He's probing. He wants to be sure. Testing the waters."

  "He tells jokes, too. I laugh. They're very funny."

  "And you flatter him. Tell him how wonderful he is. How smart. How handsome."

  "He likes that."

  "Has he made his move? Hinted at it?"

  "Oh no. He wouldn't do that."

  Jason felt foolish. That was her expertise, her talent. Suddenly, he wanted it all to be over.

  "Just a week," he said.

  "I know, Jason." She said, pausing. "He's such a nice man."

  "Do you think he will...?"

  "Oh yes, Jason. He will. You'll see."

  Vanity, Jason sighed. They were all vulnerable.

  It took exactly a week.

  "You're a miracle worker," Jason told her.

  "Not a miracle," she said matter-of-factly. "I just know men." The remark came as a surprise. Although true, he hadn't expected her to be able to articulate it. Perhaps she was growing too sophisticated. The idea frightened him.

  Soon the associate justice was eschewing his walk for a twice-weekly session at the apartment.

  "He's very scared," Dorothy told him, during their first debriefing.

  "I can understand that."

  "But I made him feel good," she said happily.

  "I knew you would do that."

  "There's nothing for him to be scared about, is there, Jason?"

  "Of course not."

  "He's such a gentle man. A good man. I think I like him the best of all the others."

  "Don't get carried away."

  "You're still my number one, Jason," she said.

  "Just remember that."

  He continued to debrief her and the tapes became increasingly repetitive. All that was needed now was to embellish on the relationship with Orson Strauss.

  "Does he ever talk about cases?" he asked.

  "Cases?"

  "He's a Supreme Court judge."

  "Yes. I know."

  It was the nuance, not the substance, that troubled him. Was she holding back?

  When she told him about the justice's dressing up in women's underwear, he had difficulty keeping a straight face.

  "I bought him stockings, panties, a bra, a garter belt, and high heels. He looks cute."

  "Cute?"

  "One day I put lipstick and rouge on him and lots of mascara. He loved himself and couldn't tear himself away from the mirror." She smiled broadly. "Sometimes he wants me to call him Sally."

  "Sally?"

  Surely this is satire, he told himself. Who would believe it? She seemed to enjoy making the man happy. Making all of them happy. Most of all, it was making her happy.

  As the time to end it grew near, he became increasingly edgy. With Dorothy's tapes as documentation and her physical presence as evidence, their denials would quickly break down in any confrontation. Some might choose to play hardball, continue denials, hide from the press, feign ill health. Others might opt for a full confession, throwing their reputations on the secret mercy generated by every man's sense of guilt. "It was wrong. I did wrong. I made a mistake in behavior and judgment."
Whatever path they chose, it was all grist for the mill.

  He had also developed his own fall-back moral position, a righteous posture. In that special role, he saw himself as an exploder of myths, particularly the great myth of probity and sexual purity in those who bubbled up as leaders in the democratic process. Sexuality, whatever its expression, in or out of wedlock, was no criteria to demean character. Indeed, it was a harmless expression of human character, a function of mind and matter, no less common than breathing or voiding one's wastes. The fact that it gave pleasure and joy did not make it any less human. Besides, the technology of birth control had put sex into the category of recreation. Romantic illusion, an anachronism, was finally being put to rest.

  He viewed his effort as the last great sex scandal of the century. He was convinced of that, imagining himself and Dorothy telling their story on the nation's talk shows, offering themselves as a sacrifice, a kind of delicious martyrdom to hypocrisy and cant. Perhaps, after this book, which would be manufactured as a paean to ludicrous prurience, he would offer these special views and at last put the great sexual revolution in the sixties in its true perspective.

  Listening to Dorothy's matter-of-fact debriefings, he sometimes felt he had not gone far enough. Where was sodomy, lesbianism, bestiality, necrophilia, the whole panoply of aberrations? That, he decided, was toying beyond the pale. And it would also be far outside the realm of the experience and interest of the mass audience he was shooting for.

  Once Dorothy's relationship with the justice was insured, all that remained was for him to explain to Dorothy what he intended to do with the material and how she was to play her future role.

  That was the moment he dreaded most.

  XI

  Fiona had substituted one magnetic field for another. Now she hurtled in Dorothy's as powerless as she had been in Clint's. Each step, she knew, had its own inexorable logic. And professional dangers.

  Tom Gribben watched her, his melancholy stare attesting to his continued interest in her as a woman. She knew the signs, of course, but until that moment, confronting him, his hurt had not mattered.

  He had led her through the maze of corridors in the FBI building to the cafeteria, where they sipped coffee in a quiet corner.