The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  Mr. Gobbel: “That’s none of your business either. Anyway, that was Nasturtium’s bailiwick, and as you know, he’s dead.”

  Dr. Dye: “It just could have helped us get our ducks in order much earlier.”

  President Ruester: “Ducks? What about ducks? I used to hunt ducks with great pleasure when I was a boy.”

  Dr. Dye: “You know we’re starting trials on a first potential treatment? You gave us your permission to commence, overriding a thus far lack of approval from FADS.”

  Mr. Gobbel: “You led us to believe this treatment wouldn’t work and would make them die faster while making us look on the ball.”

  Dr. Dye: “Dr. Omicidio, who is in charge of these trials, is doing his best to get them up and running. We could accomplish this with more dispatch if we had some money from Congress. They’re pretty much starving us to death.”

  Mr. Moose: “Patti, send me a memo to speak to our friends in Congress.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “Everything’s taking too f’ing long!”

  Dr. Dye: “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  President Ruester: “Can I go now?”

  Mrs. Ruester: “Sweetums, you know I only bother you when it’s important.”

  Mr. Moose: “Okay, meeting adjourned. Keep us posted, Dr. Dye.”

  Mr. Gobbel: “Yes, keep us posted.”

  Dr. Dye: “Slyme had been doing that before he was fired. He came to our meetings to convey the president’s wishes. He got a bit overexcited and I questioned his usefulness.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “I said Manny Slyme was a drip. I’m glad I got rid of him.”

  President Ruester: “I liked Chevvy. He makes me laugh.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “Well, you’re wrong. Listen to Mommy.”

  Mr. Moose: “Once again, this meeting’s adjourned.”

  President Ruester: “If we give them free treatment they will fuck more.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “Half a tick. Your trials must not include any women.”

  Dr. Dye: “Trials rarely include women.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “I will not have the women of my country besmirched.”

  Dr. Dye: “Yes. I mean no.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “Confine it to the fairies. Shut that Dr. Dodo up. My friend Bill Buckley is going to announce that all the sick fairies should be tattooed.”

  President Ruester: “How are Bill and Pat Buckley? Give them my love.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “Have we made ourselves clear?”

  Dr. Dye: “Couldn’t be clearer.”

  Mrs. Ruester: “Now this meeting is adjourned.”

  President Ruester: “The way to stop crime is to just go out there and stop it.”

  December 17, 1985

  DO YOU REMEMBER REBEKKAH REGINA PLOTNICK?

  In her room at Doris Hardware’s, Jinx Seeley sits down on the middle of the rug she made when she was at Tripp Lake Camp for rich Jewish girls. Maine was deserted then. It was an extraordinary experience to go somewhere so beautiful and so far away and so empty of adults. The rug is long and oval, fully fifteen feet long and adeptly made, nothing to be ashamed of. It was bigger by far than any girl had ever made at Tripp Lake, and the other girls made fun of her and her big rug, taunting her that she’d never finish it by the end of the season. The mad Russian lady who was the arts-and-crafts counselor, Madame Vera, said it could be done but nobody listened to her except Jinx, or Becky as she was then. Rebekkah Regina Plotnick. Of the Washington Plotnicks. Her father had made an awful lot of money selling expensive fur coats. She found Madame Vera’s voice intoxicating, like the sounds of the trains in Union Station that said, I’m going far away. Yes, the rug is still with Jinx, but who knows where Madame Vera is, or any of those other Tripp Lake girls who were so haughty. Or the kids from her druggie period when she called herself Mary Jane. Once in a while she used to call Fifi Nordlinger, because Fifi was still a real person in the outside world to her, to ask what had happened to all the others, and Fifi would give her a rundown on Heidi and Marianne and Susu and the others, and wind up pointedly with “And where are you?” (She doesn’t know that Fifi is dead now.) They all sounded like girls still, with so little to be proud of. Once they were proud of their poppas’ money and their big homes with recreation rooms, rich Jewish girls ready to marry rich Jewish boys or Jewish boys who would become rich if you guessed right. On one end of the rug stands a king-sized bed without legs, its box spring just plopped down on the floor, and beside it a hard-backed wooden chair, and a few books, and a solitary floor lamp with a lovely white glass bowl of a shade and a base of solid pine that she’d cut and fashioned from the tree outside her cabin at Tripp Lake because she knew that in some way she’d been happy at Tripp Lake in Maine and when she left she’d never come back to the world of girls’ camps, or at least not that kind of girls’ camp, or been so more or less happy. Now this is her room, her cabin bunk, and she wonders when it will be time to leave here, too, knowing she’ll never come back. She wonders only for a second when that might be.

  There is a knock on the door and Claudia comes in. The two of them sit on the bed, on the Amish quilt. Claudia takes Jinx’s hand and both hold on tightly.

  “We can find a way to stay safe,” they both seem to say to each other.

  So far they’ve felt safe at Doris’s. Claudia said that would change when they’d been here long enough.

  Now Jinx confides in Claudia, her best and only friend.

  “Mordy Masturbov has asked me to marry him.”

  IN WHICH WE LEARN OF THE DEATH OF CLAUDIA, AMONG OTHER THINGS

  It’s Peter Ruester’s second term and Buster Punic is still not ambassador to Anywhere.

  A woman’s body is found under heaps of leaves, both leaves and body beginning to smell of moldering. In her faille navy purse, which her fingers clutch, is more than $500,000 in large bills, thousands and ten thousands, and she wears expensive pearls and diamond clips on her torn dress, a famous French designer’s, and beside her is a mink coat—this lady was rich. On this beautiful afternoon, the cool crisp air after days of gray brings out strollers and kids playing football, two of whom, locked in a tight embrace not dissimilar to physical passion, both cradling the football as if it’s something important, worth fighting for, roll over and over in the rotting leaves, and soon there are three, though one of them is dead.

  There is much commotion and policemen are quickly in evidence, many of them, because police are cheap in Washington, as plentiful as the daily murders and the unraked leaves in this park, which is called Rock Creek and usurps huge portions of expensive real estate that Buster Punic, on happier days, along with other rich men like Abe Masturbov, would prefer was not a part of the public sector. He, like these many others in this town, is already prospering even more mightily because of Peter Ruester. Gobbel has told The Wall Street Journal that the economy is worse than ever, opening the way to tax raises for the poor and reductions for the rich. Buster has always been rich beyond any imagination’s greed. Peter Ruester promised to make all his faithful friends even richer. He is keeping his promise, in spades. The Ruesters have made Washington the social place to be. It is impossible to find a suitable place to live. Rock Creek Park is a waste of good land. Any good Republican will tell you that.

  He is terrified, Buster is, that his semen is inside the dead woman. He knows that recent semen is not so difficult to detect inside a dead woman as once upon a time. Isn’t there a test available? Isn’t there now always a test available when you don’t want one? He stands in the woods adjoining this high and level spot, watching from his hiding place. How long has he been here? He knows he must be out of his mind to be anywhere near here now. But this murderer cannot leave the scene of his crime.

  Buster has many connections with policemen, with these policemen and their superiors and their superiors, right on up to God. There isn’t anyone Buster can’t get to. He hides and watches these cops playing policemen in Rock Creek Park, holding diamond clips up to the light to see if they sparkle, if
they’re real, discerning correctly that the answer to both is yes. Buster watches them as his dog, a huge Alpine savior who knows how to direct drool the way a human can spit, lies at his feet, his own heart heaving in labor because he loves his master and knows his master’s upset. Though this is a lovely park and usually filled with people enjoying it, something about what’s going on right now says, Go Away, Go Home. Now Dobermans and German shepherds are arriving, the cops have called for dogs, and also men in rubber suits with masks and tanks of chemicals to spray on everything to seal in the truth. To get out of here Buster must break cover, he must pretend he’s walking his dog, holding the leash firmly lest confrontations between rival breeds occur. So he walks away, down a path, though he will turn back up where it joins another walkway, one that will return him to a perimeter where he still can see her from another part of this forest.

  These policemen know that Buster Punic is close to High Places. While attending to the duties of uncovering and studying and photographing and removing the body of this beautiful dead woman they do not look at Buster; they just note that he’s there, knowing who he is and that he’s connected and that he’ll have all the alibis in the world, should he be “involved.” Most of all, they know that he’s dangerous. And that if Buster and his connections want it to be, it will be, and whatever it is they uncover and photograph will be irrelevant.

  “Dangerous,” in white Washington, has different connotations than in cities like New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, where guns and torture—the more visible expressions of danger—prevail. Danger in those other places is violent. Bodies are found in rivers and stuffed down chutes for laundry or garbage; they are hurled from roofs, dismembered, pumped full of drugs; they are found at the bottom of bodies of water, weighted down by cement, or lying in alleyways. Danger, in white Washington, among those in high places, is more banal. Rarely are people shot or killed or murdered, although in recent years there have been several “unsolved” very upmarket exceptions. Who remembers Anna Undershaft? Polly van Euhling? Mary Pinchot Meyer? It’s the women who remain unsolved. Where did they go? Sometimes a body is found, as in Meyer’s case. Or in Marilyn Monroe’s, if we dare to throw in her mysterious demise far from Washington, but not really so far at all. Men tend to be disappeared to another country, but they are usually dispatched alive. They may be exiled from the kingdom, but their mouths stay shut … at least for a while; and after a while revelations make no difference; no one is interested in last week’s heinous deeds, for they have been supplanted by more capital cavortings. Whittaker Chambers got away with it and Alger Hiss went to jail. If Hiss had been a woman he would have been executed like Ethel Rosenberg. Anyway, no one in Washington believes anything anymore. Or rather, they believe it all and find it unbelievable. The result is that so few believe in anything, really. In the end, though, it is just as dangerous to tell the truth here as anywhere else.

  So white people have to be extra-special careful in white Washington. If you are important but not that important you will only lose your job, which is invariably connected to pensions and health insurance, bonuses and stock options; or your promised promotion is denied and you find yourself selling your house in Virginia and moving farther out, West Virginia perhaps (the state, not the avenue). But they have to find you first!

  Most dangerous white people in high places who’ve done something wrong are rarely found out. And everyone knows that.

  Buster watches several of the cops pocket diamond brooches. Only one of six—they were a set of six from Bulgari and he’d bought them for her in Rome—remains on that part of her dress that both suppressed and raised her breasts—they were lovely breasts. The officer in charge, a captain (how did they know to send so high-ranking an investigator, and so quickly? Buster worries), even caresses them not so accidentally as he takes off her pearls, and holds them dramatically (the pearls, not the breasts, though he licks his lips unconsciously, like a dog wanting a treat) so that everyone can see him drop them into an official envelope. At this moment, Buster’s Alpine mini-bear breaks loose and runs for the mink coat and buries his face in it, rolling his head from side to side, caressing the mink coat with his huge head and snout as if it is the face of a lover, emitting little short whines of pain.

  Destroy evidence—or don’t leave any around to begin with. Important people in Washington know to do this. (Important people everywhere since time began know to do this.) Investigators of scandal spend more time trying to unravel false defenses than they spend calculating the damages or estimating the fallout from the crimes. There is always someone to grab at a soapbox opportunity to preach about Right and Wrong instead of just being practical. Actual accusations are rarely made in Washington, and then very carefully because it is a vindictive town. Even 100 percent certitude is not good enough. Do you really want to open yourself up to charges and threats from who knows where and when and forever? Not in this town, you don’t. The government of The American People is here.

  The police captain tries to put himself in the place of the murderer. Of course it was murder. She’s all in one piece. Must be poison. Could be suicide. In high heels in Rock Creek Park? He knows her face. Beautiful face. One of Doris’s girls, he wagers. Cold as ice, they say. There have got to be lots of big guys who want this one dead. Handle the evidence carefully. Handle the report of the evidence even more carefully. Don’t say anything too definite. Leave holes for alibis to crawl through. Every dumbah cop knows that. What’s around? Diamonds. Pearls. Mink. Can’t make it look like a robbery. His instincts tell him this is going to be a juicy one. In all the papers. Lots of TV. He straightens his tie. New mayor’s black and under pressure from his people not to let the white guys get away with everything. He may be forced to solve this one. Find the killer. Find the motive. Shit. Such a task once filled him with eagerness. Fucking shit. He already knows the outcome. This town will close its mouth in unison. Big-time Washington scandal, everyone gets lockjaw. He remembers Mary Meyer. James Jesus assigned him to that one too. Half the women in Georgetown knew about Mary Pinchot Meyer and how she was feeding Jack Kennedy LSD that she got personally from Timothy Leary himself up in Millbrook, New York. Mary was going to turn world leaders on and overthrow the whole warfare system. “Make love, not war, Jack,” she is said to have begged him in her own drug-induced state. That was her mission. She was found dead on a towpath in Georgetown. Her diary was located and burned on the spot by James Jesus Angleton, head of a new CIA division (or was it still the OSS? who remembers?), and a closet homosexual, which in this case meant … what, exactly? The captain knew Mother was gay because Angleton propositioned him. He was amazed how often men in government suits propositioned him. That Mary Meyer lady, he went over her garage with a fine-tooth comb. She wanted the whole world to be happy. Garage filled with every book on enlightenment and peace through chemicals you could find. And Angleton was her father-in-law, and he was in the garage together with him. They were on all fours pulling more books on getting high out from under old cars and shit, and Angleton, clumsy bastard, just grabbed him to him and tried to kiss him. It was all very sad because he himself was gay and knew what the man must be going through. He figured Angleton knew about him. Didn’t the CIA know everything? “Please, sir, I am happily married,” he said, which was true, sort of. The CIA knew more about LSD than anyone. They helped develop it, though he wasn’t sure why. They say JFK was about to dismantle the CIA. Hoover was facing retirement and knew he had to find a big issue to avoid this. So Edgar and James Jesus both wanted JFK dead. Some in the CIA always said Lyndon Johnson was behind Kennedy’s assassination. He wonders if this lady here with the diamonds fits in … where? You think things all fit together in D.C., in one gigantic puzzle of a million little pieces? They probably do, but we’ll never find out.

  Well, Mr. Big Cop Captain will see who calls in. How many telephone messages from unlikely callers will be waiting on his desk to tell him whether he has to solve this case or bury it?


  Buster watches them heave her body onto a stretcher and realizes, as the dress rises up in the wind, that her sweet pussy is staring at him for the last time, a fleeting glance at longing unfulfilled, like all of the other times he wanted her and she wouldn’t comply, and he wants her now so much his balls hurt, yes, he’d fuck her dead, like he finally fucked her last night, his greedy appetite at last fulfilled. When once she called him a pig he swatted her hard across those breasts and bruised them, and she punished him good for that, no pussy period, yes, he’d fucked her dead right on this heath, and he has tears in his eyes as they take her away, and Bismarck, his dog, whines loudly as his master grabs his choke collar and pulls hard to shut up the whine.

  After the police and their entourage leave, a few civilians mill around; a few kick the leaves for possible further diamond droppings.

  “Why are you crying? Did you know her? She was very beautiful,” a little girl holding a teddy bear says to Buster. “If you knew her, shouldn’t you go with her and tell the policemen what you know? That’s what always happens on TV.” Her father takes her hand to lead her away. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles to Buster. “But Daddy, he knows something and he’s going to get away free.”

  Buster lumbers down the hill. Buster is burly and bull-like and usually he walks tall. He’s proud that he’s so rich, that he’s Peter Ruester’s best friend, that his wife, Carlotta, is Purpura’s best friend. They are, the four of them, best friends, oldest chums. They have a lock on this town, this country, this world. He thinks of his cock. He has a huge cock. This town is full of huge cocks and huge fortunes, and behind thick walls of expensive homes with tiny windows curtained thick, how great to have both. His penis terrifies Carlotta. She only saw it once, on their wedding night. It’s one of those famous D.C. stories told over and over at D.C. men’s locker rooms. “You think you’re going to put that in me?” She laughed that first and only time she saw it. They had their two kids by artificial insemination. For a few years she was the only person in the world he wanted to put it in. He hadn’t been ashamed of being Jewish, or at least he hadn’t thought he’d been—his ancestors, after all, were among the first Jews to settle in New England—but when he married the Catholic Carlotta, he converted for her and his Jewish roots were never mentioned again. He was happy to ditch them, even if he couldn’t ditch the big nose, big ears, cut cock, all the fingerprints that gentiles use to nail Jews.