No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind.
HALLOWEEN IN LITTLE ROCK
Election night in the armpit of the Ozarks…
Strange rumble with Carville, white slavery
on the Gold Coast…Dead Cadillacs and dumb
cocksuckers—it’s all downhill from here…
In an age that is utterly corrupt,
the best policy is to do as others do.
— Marquis de Sade, 1788
THE 1976 FLEETWOOD Eldorado Cadillac convertible is a monument to some of the ugliest moments in American history—the cruel and terrible journeys by mule trains and wagons and drag-sleds and wooden-wheeled “stage coaches” that hauled the great Westward Movement for 2,000 miles from the Mississippi River to the Rockies and on to California, where money grew on trees and the streets of San Francisco were paved with gold bricks.
Some people made it the easy way—taking six- or eight-month journeys on wooden steam-sailboats around the bottom of Argentina between icebergs and sea-monsters and shipwrecks in the frozen Strait of Magellan—where they had to stay well clear of any ice floe or island where they might be lured ashore by false land lights and then boarded at night by gangs of desperate, malaria-crazed survivors of some previous disaster who had been stranded there for nine months with no matches or water and only dead seal blubber to feed on while they waited with sharp sticks and bludgeons for the next ship to come through and maybe pick them up—and then up the other side, another 8,000 miles, past Chile and Lima and Mexico in a boat full of crazy people until they finally found the channel into San Francisco Bay and then swarmed frantically ashore, only to be set upon by cruel thugs and robbers who worked the waterfront in gangs that murdered the strong ones and sold the women and children into slavery on Chinese merchant junks, which carried them off another 6,000 miles to spend the rest of their lives in bamboo cages on the other side of the world.
The hard way to “go West” in America was to do it by land and creep across the continent at one or two miles a day and know that at any moment you might be scalped for no reason, or burned at the stake by Comanches, or maybe chopped up and eaten by your own traveling companions if you got trapped in the snow on a lonely pass above Reno, or forced to embrace cannibalism yourself.
THE 1976 CADILLAC is a monument to all these agonies, because it can take two people from St. Louis to San Francisco, in total climate-controlled comfort, in less than 48 hours with no problem worse than a few traffic tickets or getting raped in some motel parking lot. It is a land yacht, a luxury cabin on wheels, with a 500-cubic-inch V-8 engine and a vastly overrated “front-wheel drive.” It weighs about three tons “fully loaded,” and will take you anywhere you want to go in fine style at 100 miles an hour. The Fleetwood Eldorado is the final word in cruising.
That is why I decided to drive mine from Woody Creek, Colorado, to Little Rock, Arkansas, to be a part of Bill Clinton’s victory celebration on the eve of the recent general election. What the hell! It was only about 1,200 miles—downhill, more or less—and the car was a subtle green-gold color that was not likely to attract much attention on the cop-infested highways of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. We could make the journey in relative peace and comfort, without the ever-cheapening rigors of airbus and airport travel.
Nicole was not optimistic about loading up the Cadillac and driving 1,200 miles through hostile territory, just to get to Little Rock. “Why not just fly to Memphis and rent a car?” she said. “We could get there in four hours, instead of four days.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “It’s an overnight trip. Once we get to Texas, it’s a straight shot all the way to Little Rock. And remember, this is a very fast and extremely comfortable car.”
“What if it breaks down?” she muttered. “Or you get us arrested in the middle of Oklahoma?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have criminal defense lawyers alerted in every town between here and Little Rock. They are the best in the business.”
“What?” she said. “You’ve hired lawyers?”
“Of course not,” I said. “These people are my friends. They are the midnight warriors of the Fourth Amendment Foundation, and they are everywhere. We are guaranteed safe passage.”
Nicole pleaded. “This car is cursed…”
“I know,” I said. “But I swore I would drive it to Little Rock and give it to Clinton. It’s a present to him from the Indian.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “What Indians? Who owns the car?”
“Earl,” I said. “But don’t worry. It’s in perfect shape.”
“Are you crazy?” she said. “Earl is wanted in fourteen states!” She pointed at the Cadillac. “Look at the plates. We can’t drive this car anywhere!”
The New Mexico license plate said DIE U PIG. It was one of those “personalized” things that cost a hundred dollars for seven digits, no questions asked. At least not at the courthouse.
But what happens when you run a red light in Amarillo and get pulled over by a Texas Ranger? Would he be offended by your DIE U PIG plate? It was possible.
But not if you handled it suavely: “Hi, officer. I see you’re staring at my license plate, but it’s not what you think. I’m a foreigner in my heart…born in Germany a long time ago….You bet, but I still remember the language, and I still respect it.You know what that license plate says in German? It says ‘colorblind.’ Yes, I’m colorblind. But only at night.” Yeah. Ho, ho.
“Let’s get those plates off the Chevy,” I told Nicole. “It won’t make any difference. Hell, they’re both convertibles.”
Which was true, so we switched the plates and left for Little Rock at midnight on Monday.
Unfortunately, the huge Cadillac’s brake cylinder blew out on the way to Denver, and our plans were changed dramatically. We abandoned the car on a side street and hailed a cab for the airport, where I chartered a Lear jet to Little Rock for five or six thousand dollars and charged it to my attorney, Michael Stepanian, who was in Bali at the time.
We touched down in Little Rock around 7:00 or 7:15, right on schedule, and went straight to the Capital Hotel. Our pilot had driven us into town in a borrowed van with a faulty tailgate that collapsed as he was unloading our mass of luggage and heavy equipment, hurling him headfirst down the street with an eerie scream that brought people running out of the lobby to help us—or maybe kill us. Who knows? I have never been at the Capital Hotel when it wasn’t crawling with U.S. Secret Service agents. They have been there for most of the year: When it wasn’t Bill Clinton or Hillary to protect, it was Big Al Gore, or Tipper, or Lynn Martin, or General Schwarzkopf for the sumo wrestling championship.
The Capital Lounge was crowded, but there was not enough tension, none of the cranked-up energy that you normally find in bars and elevators and hotel lobbies along the campaign trail…. It was hard to know that you were in the hot center of a winning presidential campaign—the hometown headquarters of a local boy who was about to become the next president of the United States.
That is big, Bubba—very big if you live in Washington—but it wasn’t real big in Little Rock. It took me a few days to understand this: In Little Rock, the governor of Arkansas is bigger than the president of the United States. Washington is too far away to take seriously, but the governor’s mansion is right across the goddamn street. It is where the boss lives—where the Clintons had lived for 10 years—and if the boss wanted to go off to Washington, the feeling in Little Rock was that he was probably taking a demotion.
The action picked up on the weekend, as busloads of gawkers and thrill-seekers began to drift in from Memphis and Hot Springs; occasionally there would be a crowd from St. Louis. There were also lawyers and lobbyists and a growing number of people who looked like they were from the Hamptons, or maybe Georgetown…. They were fixers and Bubbas and job-seekers with slick-looking political wives who seemed vaguely amused at being crowded into the same rural cocktail lounge with half-naked Clinton staffers and Swedish journalists wearing I FUCKED GENNIFER FLOWERS T-shirts. It was an odd mix of people, but very calm and focused. There were no crazies—except maybe for me, and I wasn’t having much fun. But I tried to make the best of it.
I am well known at the Capital Hotel and I have many friends on the staff. They were nervous at first, remembering the bad scene I made two months before in the lobby when they couldn’t get a wheelchair and some morphine fast enough for my crippled friend Dollar Bill Greider, who was suffering visibly as we wheeled him into the lobby on a brass-railed baggage cart and blundered into a cordon of Secret Service bodyguards around Marilyn Quayle as she marched in her queenly fashion across the tiles of the hushed lobby on her way from the elevator to Ashley’s black-tie restaurant, where she would dine alone, that night, far from the maddening crowd of (Arkansas) GOP county chairmen (and chairwomen) who had gathered to pay homage.
Ah, but that was last time, when the Quayles still had some clout and some half-bright teenage dream of a political future…. Dan is, after all, the vice president of the United States, and his wife is a friend of Engelbert Humperdinck’s. That should count for something, these days—even in Little Rock.
But it doesn’t. On any day in the week before Election Day, Marilyn Quayle could have floated stark naked on a pink inner-tube under both bridges in downtown Little Rock without attracting more attention than a pervert in the bushes near Riverfront Park.THE LOBBY WAS FULL of pimps, journalists and Secret Service agents when we finally arrived. I paid Leon $200 in cash to haul our 900 pounds of loose-wrapped, high-tech luggage up to the room. He was a waterhead, so I sent him up the back way on a freight elevator and told Nicole to watch him carefully whenever he touched our bags.... “I think Leon is a cop,” I told her. “He probably doesn’t even work here, but we still have to humor him. That’s why I gave him those hundred-dollar bills.”
“You fool!” she said. “We’re an hour late for dinner with Carville and you’re already stupid drunk. I can’t stand it. Get away from me. Go to the bar. Read a newspaper and don’t talk to anybody. I’ll get us checked in, then I’ll—” She suddenly stiffened.
“Oh my God,” she hissed. “There’s James! Don’t let him see you. Get out of sight, quick!”
I saw Carville hunched over a telephone at the front desk, laughing and muttering distractedly. “James!” I shouted. “What’s happening?”
He grinned and waved me over. “Hot damn!” he said. “Crazy George just called the Larry King show and got straight through to Bush. He said he was Caspar Weinberger and threatened to commit suicide if Bush didn’t stop lying.”
“What?” I said. “Stephanopoulos did that? Tonight?”
He looked up from the phone and sneered at me. “No,” he said. “He did it tomorrow.” Then he laughed bitterly and waved me off.
“The Doc says you’re crazy,” he said into the telephone. “The Doc says you should be fired.” He laughed and rolled his eyes at me, making a throat-slitting gesture. “You stupid little bastard!” he snarled at the phone. “You just blew the election!” He hung up and walked away. “I feel sick,” he muttered. “I should have fed that Greek to the alligators a long time ago. I’m going up to my room. See you for dinner in a few minutes.”
I shrugged and went into the bar. It was crowded, but I found a seat next to the huge marble centerpost, trying to stay out of sight.... Nicole had disappeared with the waterhead cop. The bitch has turned on me, I thought; I’m about to be busted and locked up.
Just then I noticed a slick-looking blond woman making a lewd signal at me from far across the bar. Then she smiled and blew me a kiss.
Ye gods, I thought. What now? She looked like Jennifer Flowers, and she was sitting next to a man who looked like a rich and mean drunk. I ignored her and tried to read the sports section, but I couldn’t relate to it. There were too many politicians in the room.
The woman was smiling at me again, hoisting her snifter and fixing me with a stare that told me instantly that my life was about to turn weird. This one was clearly active.
I more or less instinctively returned her lewd salutation with a professional smile and a quick nod, then I turned to speak with the bartender.
“Welcome back, Dr. Thompson,” he said. “Good to have you back with us.” He slid a tall margarita across the bar and grinned at me. “It’s amazing. Really amazing.”
I became quickly alert, remembering the warning I’d received from Mark Mason. “Amazing?” I said. “Why? Did you think I was dead?”
“What?” he blurted. “Dead? Of course not, sir.” He backed slightly away from me. “I just mean I never thought we’d see you back here in Little Rock again. Not after what happened last time.”
His face remained solemn and respectful, but somebody to the left of me snickered, and I thought I heard laughter behind me. It was hard to tell. Then I heard a woman laughing, and I glanced down the bar to where the slick-looking blond woman was sitting—but she was gone.
I looked around me and everything seemed to be wrong—the laughter, the woman, the guilty-acting bartender and probably all the people behind me.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder and then a person muscling their way into the cramped space between me and the marble pillar....
It was a rude move in any bar; but it was also very suave and quick. “Hi,” she said. “Do you mind if I shake your hand? You’re my hero.”
I knew who it was, and so did her mean, drunk, boyfriend, who was watching us intently from his seat across the bar....
The bartender was bringing me another margarita as the woman was saying, “This is really incredible! I can’t believe it’s happening! I’m finally meeting my hero! I feel like swooning in your arms....”
Whoops, I thought. Watch out! Something weird is happening here, and everybody’s in on the joke except me.
“I’m Maureen,” she whispered. “I adore you.” She pulled me against her and buried her head on my chest. I rolled back against the bar, and people moved quickly aside to give us more room to nuzzle and coo and neck like the long-lost passion-crazed dream lovers that we seemed to be.
“You remind me of Emerson,” she said. “I’ve always compared you to Emerson....” She looked softly up into my eyes and suddenly I felt a hand sliding playfully across the front of my pants.
“I know why you’re here,” she said, “and I think you’re going to need help. You can’t do it alone in this town. It’s too damn mean.”
I nodded solemnly and called the bartender for another margarita. “One or two, Doc?” he asked, nodding at Maureen.
“Three,” I said. The place was filling up and getting very busy. The noise level was so high that I had to lean very close to her head to hear what she was saying. She put her arm around my waist and pulled me closer. I could feel the heat of her belly against mine, and she smiled as my arm brushed her nipples when I reached between us to get my Dunhills off the bar.
“I love crowds,” she whispered. “I love to be crushed.”
Ye gods, I thought. Nicole could arrive any minute, and she would not be amused at the sight of this elegant blond bimbo pressing herself against me in the darkest corner of the lounge. Maureen had the look of a woman who had once posed naked for Cybersex and would love to do it again. Maybe tonight, or even now, right here, just for laughs.
You bet. Arkansas girls will do anything for a laugh, they say. Just ask Bill Clinton. He loves Arkansas girls, and why shouldn’t he? They are his people: They vote, and he wants to keep them close. All governors love pretty girls. It’s the American way—unless you’re the President, and then it gets tricky. But some people never learn.
And not so many care, for that matter. A recent Newsweek poll shows that 59 percent of the American people don’t give a hoot in hell about the President’s alleged sex life, and only 44 percent care if he lives or dies.
Right, so much for numbers. I have wandered away from my story about sweet Maureen, the cybersex girl who approached me in the bar of the Capital Hotel and offered to put me in touch with people who claimed to have sexually explicit videotapes of Bill Clinton “abusing three naked young women in the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock.” She called him, “Bill” and hinted that she herself might be one of the women shown on the tapes.
“They were all really drunk,” she said. “They went there looking for jobs, but he took them up to the attic and made them perform sex acts in front of a camera, with state troopers watching.”
I was shocked. “Why did he let state troopers watch?” I asked. “That’s horrible.”
She giggled again and leaned closer to me. “It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “You should see the videotapes. Is that what you want?”
Just then I felt a tapping on my shoulder and heard James saying, “Watch out, Doc. You look like you could use a drink. Let’s get a table.”
“You bet,” I said. I turned to introduce Maureen, but she was gone. James was in a philosophical mood and I decided not to mention the Clinton sex tapes until later. Nicole had joined us, along with Stacy Hadash, Carville’s pretty young assistant, and they were both giddy. Maureen was nowhere in sight, but she had given me her business card and I knew I would have to meet her and see the tapes as soon as possible. I had no choice. It might be a major story.
Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of the bomb I would soon lay on him, Carville rumbled on about theology.
“Remember this,” said Carville. “The Bible says that everybody will eat a pound of dirt before we die.”
“What?” I said. “The Bible? Come on, James, I know the Bible.... Shit, I’m a doctor of divinity, I’m a goddamn biblical scholar—all four Bibles—and nowhere in any of the Scriptures does it say that every human being born of Christ must eat a pound of dirt to get to heaven.”
He snickered. “Heaven?” he said. “Who mentioned heaven?”
Whoops, I thought. Be careful with this Bible stuff. James can’t handle it now, and neither can I. We are both in the grip of immense stress.... and he was, after all, a swamp Catholic.
“Well, shucks,” I said. “A little dirt never hurt anybody, I guess. We can probably get some at Doe’s. Hell, eating dirt is what makes us immune to filth, right? Remember David the Bubble Boy?”
“You bet,” he said. “I remember everything, Doc—that’s why I’m good at my business. I keep score!” He laughed and drank off both martinis, seeming dangerously distracted....
“You think God is mean, Bubba? Shit, you ought to see my scorecard! Richard Nixon never even thought about keeping an enemies list like the one I keep.”
I believed him. He was the purest “political professional” I’d ever met—and that covers a lot of extremely mean people: masters of vengeance and duplicity, who knew what had to be done, and did it. They were pros—the hardest of the hard hitters in our time: Lee Atwater, Frank Mankiewicz, Pat Buchanan—they are all sure nominations for the Hardball Hall of Fame, and James Carville is at least as good as any of them, or at least he was in ’92.
“Okay, James,” I said. “Let’s go over to Doe’s and order up some of that fine mud pie.”
“Why not?” he said. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry, James,” I said. “Just like I’m always thirsty.”
He nodded quickly and stood up. “Let’s go. We have a car. I’ll drive.” He chuckled. “I’m probably the only one here with a license. Hell, I guess they took yours away a long time ago—right, Doc?”
I stared at him but said nothing. Stacy accepted the check from the nervous waitress and handed it to me.... I shrugged and signed it. The total was $2.99.
“James never drinks too much,” the waitress assured me. “We make sure of that.” She smiled and kissed him lightly on the top of his head. “Our James is too important,” she said, “we can’t have him running around drunk, can we?”
“Never in hell,” said Carville. “Two drinks a day—that’s my limit. Right, Faye?”
Faye nodded solemnly and smiled as I added a $22 tip to the bill and handed it back to her.
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said. “Number 436, isn’t it?” She giggled. “Yes—of course it is.”
She knew it well.
WE TOOK the backstreets over to Doe’s, at the corner of Markham and Ringo. James drove and I sat in the backseat with my snow-cone margarita. It was only about ten blocks, but it seemed to take a long time. Carville was not in a hurry that night. He had all the time in the world. The war was almost over. Just a few more days—and then, the White House. Total victory. Fuck those people. Veni vidi vici.... James Carville, at the politically advanced age of 48, was about to win the heavyweight championship of the world, in his very specialized business—which is hiring out his talents and his labor and even his love, on some days, to ambitious politicians who want to get elected to the most powerful jobs in the history of the known world, or since the fall of Rome and Caligula and the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah.
~ Hunter S. Thompson
Better Than Sex