The Oval Office. A remarkable meeting between President Dinah Parris and Samuel Spade, a private detective from San Francisco hired by Moe Lieden to get dirt on Parris and her husband, First Gentleman and special advisor to the President, Douglas "Doug" Gard. Arranged by President Parris's former Chief of Staff Shirley Brightbutton, Spade's new lady, while he's in Washington, at least. She's gaga over the handsome out of touch debonair gentleman with the pointy chin, used to marvelous effect on her clit.
President Parris: Mr. Spade, although I had my differences, leaked and not yet leaked, with my former Chief of Staff, longtime friend, sorority sister, and teammate in the mismanagement of this great country, Shirley Brightbutton, Lord have mercy, what wouldn't I have done for that woman!? She finally unloads on me, telling me I'm impossible to work with, well so what?
Spade: You're a beautiful Negress. Evidently with much financial support behind you, otherwise (waves cigarette-holding hand around the Oval Office; she didn't notice he'd taken out his cigarette case, lit up while she ranted) how could you have possibly risen to such a position, one held by Jefferson, by Lincoln. Even a mediocrity like Millard Fillmore had a few good moments. You weren't elected President, so the American people had nothing to do with it.
Parris: I've never been called a Negress before, I'm not sure that word can be said.
Spade: Why not? Do you have a resistance to sibilance?
Parris: Pardon?
Spade: Like with your lovely name, so evocative of a foreign land, where I, in fact, served as an ambulance driver--dangerous job, bad roads or no road at all--I must be talking about France, ancienne terre dégustation de vin, parfumé aves des aliments abondants, et dames de la nuit.
Parris: That's French! How charming! Where are you from, Mr. Spade?
Spade: Please, Samuel.
Parris: Mm-yum. Samuel. Very...debonair.
Spade: He was a prophet.
Parris: Do you ever go by Sam?
Spade: I do.
Parris: There's Sam Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings.
Spade: Sorry, I'm not familiar.
Parris: Oh, you must see those movies, there's three of them. Doug has the extended versions on Blu-ray.
Spade: Blu-ray, the entertainment system where you put a movie projector in your living room?
Parris: That's a novel way to describe it, but yes. Oh, would you like a refreshment?
Spade: Could anything be as refreshing as your presence? Come here, angel, let me look at you. Okay, turn around, but slowly. Yeah, that's all right. How about a drink? Surely this pile has a well-stocked bar?
Parris: (nods rapidly, eyes wide, grinning) And you should see our kitchen! Would you like a tour? I can arrange it!
Spade: Right now I'm thinking about that drink, and getting to know you better, Dinah. May I call you Dinah?
Parris: (smiles) It's my name, sugar. What drink would you like?
Spade: Make it a Gin Rickey with Bacardi, and no fruit hanging off the rim. If there's no Bacardi, forget about it.
Parris: Well if there isn't, I can send a Marine out to buy a bottle.
Spade: A woman with troops at her command! A modern day Marguerite d'Anjou.
Parris: Somehow, when I don't know what you're talking about, I'm thinking "Where the hell have you been all my life?" (laughs).
Spade: (puts out his cigarette on a glass paperweight on the desk, sits back down). Sweetheart, I seduce women often, it's a hobby. It can be dangerous. Sometimes the woman's husband has a gun, and worse, he's made a decision in his overheated mind to kill me. They always fail. I either punch em out, or plug em and dump their bodies in San Francisco Bay. I know a discreet Chinaman with a boat.
Parris: You're from San Francisco?
Spade: Yes.
Parris: I was D.A. of San Francisco!
Spade: After my time.
Parris: I sure was! Hey, before we continue with our discussion, and by the way, I'm having a great time--
Spade lights another cigarette. The Oval Office hasn't smelled like this since President Bongo worked here. Bongo, unbeknownst to almost everyone, including his wife, Gaby, during his presidency belonged to Secret Smokers Anonymous (SSA). After he received his five year badge and a free pack of the cigarette brand of his choice, Kools, he stopped attending the meetings and fell off the wagon, meaning he stopped smoking, mainly because he was tired of waking up at night and hacking up phlegm globs.
Parris: --excuse me while I order your drink. (Sitting down--she was sitting on the edge of her desk for a while--the President of the United States touches a stud on her sleek intercom built into the steel-framed desk, reinforced with titanium bands and the latest thermic insulation baffles from Westinghouse. The desk, equipped with steel wheels surrounded by hyper-refined Goodyear rubber, can, with a voice command or some other top secret means, convert into a mini-tank. As segmented steel shields close around the operator, lighted green, yellow, and red panels appear. A 21 million dollar per copy battle helmet from WarSolutions, Inc., descends smoothly Darth Vader-wise onto the Operator's head. Now she can operate her tactical vehicle. The famous windows behind the President's desk, the green lawn, and trees, even squirrels and birds, must go down in shattering glass, crunching vegetation, wings fluttering, but President Parris--she got to try it out at the Michael Bay Proving Grounds on the Moon where he shoots Transformers shit. She has fifteen weapon systems at her disposal. She can throw flames. She can shoot bullets rapidly, she can fire mortar rounds. Her HL-1-600 TankDesk has a tight turn radius. She can do a full 180, flip about like she's in a bumper car, without bodily discomfort. Throughout her test of the TankDesk, she barked laughter so many times her control team shifted headphones away from direct earhole impact).
Secretary: (on intercom)Yes, Madame President?
Parris: Let Charles know he's to make a Gin Rickey for a guest of the President.
Secretary: Rickey?
Parris: Gin Rickey!
Spade: With Bacardi.
Parris: With Bacardi...GIN! (Switches off her secretary. Smiles warmly at Spade). Hard to get good help these days.
Spade: That was a cliché in my time.
Parris: Your time? Tell me, how was I never aware of you in San Francisco?
Spade: That's on your powers of observation, dear, not on me.
Parris: Hm. That was almost like an insult, but it felt good.
Spade: Maybe you're a masochist? Sixty percent of women are masochists.
Parris: (head recoils, one chuckle). Surely that's not the case!
Spade: In my day sixty percent of women are married.
Parris: So?
Spade: Marriage is part of the formula for masochism. It also, naturally, invites adultery, especially when one of the parties is as lovely as you, Dinah...mm...do you love your husband?
Parris: I love...Doug. He's a good, strong man.
Spade: I heard he's losing his marbles.
Parris: Who told you that?!
Spade: No one. I can read news articles.
Parris: Don't believe everything you read.
Spade: I do not. However--
Soft knock on door. After the President calls out, a teetering ninety-four year old man in a white jacket, red shirt, and blue pants, wobbles to the TankDesk.
Parris: No, Charles. For my guest.
Charles hands over the drink, shuffles out. Once the door is closed, Spade toasts the President.
Spade: To a lovely lady. And I was joking about that marriage is masochism line.
Parris: Have you ever been married, Sam? And how's your drink?
Spade: Pretty good. No, I've never been married.
Parris: Hm. You'd think Charles--he's been a bartender here for fifty-seven years--Lady Bird hired him--would be able to make a much better than "pretty good" Gin Rickey!
Spade: Force retirement on him, or have him killed. New blood will come, stronger, better than Charles. He's finished, and I lied. This drink is watery, there's very little Bacardi in it, it should be embarrassing for the White House to employ such a decrepit mug as sloth-speed Charles. (Turning in his chair, he throws the glass and its contents into the fireplace).
Parris: (jumping at the sound of shattering glass, composes herself quickly, thinking, What an extraordinary man!) Traditions are hard to let go.
Spade: Which tradition? Involving Charles?
Parris: Each New Year's Eve Party Charles tells an amusing story about a past administration. He and Billy Boy Blade used to get rip-roaring together. Charles keeps a still back behind the White House tool shed--
Spade: Is that where I'm going to spank you later?
(Dinah waves her hand in front of her face).
Parris: Whooo! You're a rascal!
Spade: Tell me more about Doug?
Parris: What's your interest in my husband?
Spade: He's in the stock market. I'd like some advice. Will you set up a meeting?
Parris: Sure.
Spade: Dinah, this has been the best experience of my life. Meeting the President. I used to loathe politicians, all authority figures. Now, for some reason, I like them. They're just trying to make a buck like anyone else.
(He smiles just slightly at his own bullshit).
Parris: Well, there are altruistic reasons for getting into politics.
Spade: Such as?
Parris: Helping people, the poor, the immigrant, the downtrodden, the hopeless. We fight injustice.
Spade: Help the poor, yes, like Herbert Hoover did in this same office.
Parris: A Republican but a good man at heart.
Spade: I hear violins.
Parris: I'll have to get Jorge in here to clean up the glass shards.
Spade: Have your husband do it. Tell him to get on his knees and pick up the glass pieces with bare fingers while you straddle his back, riding crop in hand, wearing only a negligee.
Parris: Oh my goodness!
Spade: Really, from what I've read of him, your husband seems like the type who'd relish being sexually humiliated. I've read Krafft-Ebing. Douglas Gard is probably in Psychopathia Sexualis.
Parris: Is that a movie?
Spade: Book. Are you bored when you have sexual intercourse or are you engaged with it emotionally or mentally or both?
Parris: Mostly bored, often amused. The expressions on men's faces when they're at that special moment of passion.
Spade: Yes. The orgasm. What can you tell me about General William Bomb?
Parris: (peering curiously at him as she recalls her romp with the Chairman two yards from where Spade sits). He's the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he's doing a bang-up job.
Spade: Doing what?
Parris: Having meetings. Ordering destruction. Managing propaganda and optics. Participating in arms negotiations.
Spade: An important man, sounds like.
Parris: You should see his ribbons. I counted them. Twenty-three. He's been a busy boy in war! (laughs).
Spade: When you laugh your bosom jiggles. I like that. What's more, men of America like it, no doubt. Use your bosom to win elections. That's where your heart is, Dinah, the warmest part of you that America benefits from.
Parris: I--
Spade: Furthermore, will you have dinner with me? I'm infatuated, Dinah. I haven't smoked a cigarette for five minutes. I'm distracted by raw emotion, like when one reads powerful poetry. "Adonaïs" by Shelley, for example. "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass stains the white radiance of eternity."
Parris: OMG, that's so beautiful!
Spade: I await your answer. We haven't reminisced about San Francisco, it would make good dinner conversation.
Parris: Mr. Sam Spade, you have won me over. What time is it? 4:30? How about this? Seven levels below us there's a nifty apartment, currently unoccupied, for the Secretary of the Interior and his wife in the event of a nuclear boo boo.
Spade: Pardon?
Parris: Nuclear war, pumpkin. Anyway, we can go down there and have dinner, listen to music, whatever. You're my last appointment today.
Spade: You've made a very bad mistake letting me into your life.
Parris: (laughs, slaps the TankDesk) You're...what's the word? Sardonic.
Spade: Not when I contemplate your beauty.
Parris: Well, Sam, let's go. Elevator's over here.
Spade: I never knew the White House has a dungeon.
Parris laughs, she can't help it, she's a psychopath. All politicians are psychopaths. No one normal wants to do what they do. Dinah didn't see Spade attach a tiny bug given to him by Moe Lieden to the underside of his chair arm while she got pissed at her secretary for not knowing about Gin Rickies. By this ingenious but simple method, Sam Spade, and thus Moe Lieden, can know what's said in the Oval Office run by the senile former President's adversary, Dinah Parris.
A beautiful day for a commencement ceremony, Syracuse University College of Law, Moe Lieden's alma mater, class of '68, he's there in cap and gown to deliver the commencement speech. Moe's estranged wife, Dr. Amanda Lieden, watches on the TV in her bedroom in Wilmington where she still lives with her husband, only rarely seeing him in their capacious dwelling.
The former President mounts the stage, doesn't trip. Places his binder carefully on the podium, looks up, smiles crookedly, eyes squinting in sunlight.
Lieden: Pardon me, I'm putting on my Aviators. The sky laser is burning my eyes. Gotta be able to see my well-thought-out words for you youngsters. Oh I wish I was you! Young and firm, muscular, filled with the juice of life! My juice is old. Some would say expired. Stale flat juice, hardly worth keeping in the fridge. Okay, I better get on with my speech. I wrote it on the Amtrak coming here. I'm the Amtrak Guy. Anybody here excited about trains? Do lawyers ride the train? Well I do. In the dining car on an Amtrak ride while I was served by a Black waiter I wrote the outline of the 1994 Crime Bill on three napkins. Mmmmmmahhhhh!. Sorry. Gas pain. You'll find out about these things. If you make it to my seventy-nine years you'll be grateful if you can accomplish your morning pee without some of it dribbling on the floor before you get to the toilet. You laugh. Just you wait. Your life is going to get horrible. Anybody here got student debt? Yeah well, I promised in 2020 I'd forgive up to fifty-thousand in student debt, then it got knocked back to ten-thousand, and really, if you believe I'll forgive student debt once I'm President again you are one sad sack of gullible shit. Politicians are lying assholes, but still, you should vote for me. Let me tell you something...what's that? (an assistant with long blonde hair has trotted out to him to tell him something. He takes a whiff while she's there). Thanks, Aggie. Okay, I understand, but I'm not doing the speech, I can't read today, my eyes feel like taking a nap but I'm alert in other parts of my body, hubba hubba! (Smiles widely. With his fake teeth, he resembles Mr. Sardonicus in the William Castle film where the contemporary theatrical audience got to choose whether the eponymous character lives or dies. Movies still could achieve a special playful charm as late as the early sixties). I get injected with a lot of drugs, people. How many are you, about ninety? Or four-hundred? I can't tell, it's so bright. Okay. Law. What is it? Who made it? Why does it have authority? Who decided it's fine and dandy to lock up a queer because he prefers men? Can law be wrong? Why is it that a law, like you can't do the sodomy, is illegal for two-hundred years in some backwards state (grins, fires a gun finger at the audience), not New York!--but somewhere down south, I don't wanna pick on em or name names. I want their votes. I want them to elevate me to the office I lost because Bill Bomb clipped me like a cowardly back-shooting so-and-so in an episode of The Rifleman. Great show from the old days when I was a lifeguard and the Claw Hammer Homicide Demon of Wilmington, Delaware. A young man I was, filled with juice. Nice fresh juice! Moe Juice. Drink it, ladies, you won't be sorry! But sodomy. How come it was legal in a state after a certain date but illegal before? Oscar Wilde got himself locked up for it. There have been real life legal and life-type consequences to this, and then suddenly, it's okay to sodomize, no legal penalties. Culture changes, people. Did you find the excess air car traffic on Coruscant to be unrealistic? A city covering a planet! Talk about culture change. How many here think we should cover the Earth with a city?...I heard mostly the young fellows yelling out their approval. I think they were joking. Still, it would be nice to have five million times as many Burger Kings. Halflings or Hobbits? What do we call them? If we change their name to Halfling does that mean we can cut them in half? You know, like how in law you change some language and what do you know, POW becomes (low voice) enemy combatant. (Normal voice) The difference between the two terms is one group has rights, the other doesn't. The feeling of power a President can get from disappearing people is (low voice) indescribable. (Normal voice) It's better than the pleasure of manly orgasm. You in the front row. Handsome cock of the walk, you know what I'm talking about! I bet you get all the girls. True, girls? Care to verify with a shout out? What's your name, buckshot? Vince? Talk to me after the performance. I have a business proposal for you. On a day like this I'd like an ice cream cone with my son, Happy. You're all familiar with Happy. FOR THE WRONG REASONS!!! (Audience members jump, the overpowered microphone's feedback sounds like it's saying "Helllllp meeeeee." The darkening atmosphere, helped by a passing cloud, resembles the scene in Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions, when Daniel von Bargen as the antagonist reveals his demonic nature). Happy's a good boy. A bright boy. Loyal boy my Happy, don't talk about my son, ever! Granted, his crack cocaine use--got him discharged from the Navy--didn't do him any good, though he argues it was the best fucking high of his life. That's why I did it, Dad! You'd do it too, he says to me just last week, or was it 2014 when the Navy Reserve discharged him. Happy's a slender boy, a handsome boy. He has his original teeth! Not in good shape those teeth, but he's an Altoid Man like his father. Ladies? Interested? Happy's taken, currently, but that can be changed with a short call to my hit man. No takers? Boy, are you a dead crowd. I thought having the former President of the United States would bubble your juice but there you sit like zombies. Unless you are zombies? Did you die and get resurrected by a witch doctor? Raise your hands, how many practitioners of Vodou? Nobody? Huh? How many are familiar with the Popol Vuh? None of you? Well, you're a bunch of dummies, a bunch of half-wit zombies cluttering my view. Begone, gnats in human form! I rebuke you! Can a layperson do an exorcism? I think I can try. Out! Out, beasts within this audience of vacuous flesh-puddles! Release thy grips on their minds, make them a responsive audience (which by now laughs uproariously). I feel a crack forming under my hands. I'm crawling back into my mother. It's warm. No election in here. I'm curled up like a cat. Oh motherfucker! I have to get born again. Bright light. Is that the sun? No, ignorant Moe baby, that's an electric light from General Electric, they bring good things to life, look at me. I'm good. My mother told me so. Aunt Myrtle said to my mother, "He's such a good little boy." My Aunt Myrtle, may she Rest In Peace, heart attack, body wasn't found for fourteen days, widow, killed her husband, only did five years, best waitress in Scranton, after prison always had a bit of a notorious reputation, where was I? Myrtle wouldn't lie to me. She lied to the cops about poisoning Uncle Ferdy but that was a matter of (low voice) self-preservation. (Normal voice) I'm really interested in knowing about you bright youngsters, so smart and filled with words. What about you? The long blonde hair, so nice and shiny like a molten gold waterfall. Will you stand, dear, and tell me your name? Victoria? Queen Victoria, I bow to your majesty, just a little bow because otherwise I'll be stuck in an L shape. Want to go through life stuck in an L shape? Or in a jail cell? Well I don't? I and others in government make the rules that say the U.S. doesn't need to belong to human rights courts or be held accountable internationally for war crimes. Fuck those do-gooders, those Nancy Nothings at The Hague. War advances civilization. The fist of conquest, the smashing attack, the taking down of the statue of the hated leader. I get fueled by visions of Napoleonic glory when I contemplate the abundance of war-making and -profiteering I've been involved in throughout my political career. You like a good war movie, doncha? Doncha? War makes great entertainment! I like Sands of Iwo Jima, Duke Wayne and that dumb recruit holding a live grenade in his hand during practice and Duke has to throw it for him, great scene. Oh yeah, Lloyd Nolan and Robert Taylor in Bataan, that came out the year I was born. Nolan gets killed, then Taylor fires the Browning 1917A1 machine gun, 600 rounds per at the advancing Japs. (Low voice) Excuse me, Japanese troops. (Normal voice) Robert Taylor fires the Browning straight at the camera, yelling, "America's coming to get you!" The Japs, he means. Shout out a favorite war movie! Apocalypse Now? Yeah, pretty good. I like Charlie Sheen, he's a good actor, banged pornstars and acted with Marlon Brando, how many can claim that? Jarhead. You liked Jarhead? I didn't like that one. Too realistic a depiction of military culture. What's that? Hey, you're a girl! You like war movies, girl? You're a neat girl! What's your name, girl? Amanda? Get outta here! That's my wife's name! You're better-looking than she is, but she's seventy-something. You should've seen her when she was (low voice) fifty-five. (Normal voice). What's your favorite war movie, Mandy girl? Where Eagles Dare? Yeah, the Clint Eastwood, the Richard Burton, the Anton Diffring, the Ingrid Pitt. (Low voice) Ohhhhh, Ingrid Pitt. (Normal voice) The Mary Ure, the Michael Hordern, the Schloss Adler, great setting, the helicopter, the explosives, the machine-gunning of dozens of the German soldiers by the Clint Eastwood, the shoving of a parachute-less man from a plane. Yeah, I don't remember much about that film. It's good? I should watch it again? I'll keep that in mind some night when my hemorrhoids aren't affecting my concentration. I like to be focused, see, when I'm watching film. The kinematograph. The magic lantern. The silver screen. The framed image. Cinema. Kinema. I should've been a director, like Cecil B. DeMille. You know, he did Titanic. What's that? Oh, that was Jimmy Boy Cameron, right, we golfed once while he was making T2, my favorite film of his, by the way. I said "Jimmy Boy! Have the woman kill the cyborg by lowering him into the molten metal, don't have the cyborg suicide by jumping in, it's more poignant that way." But Avatar perpendicularized my retinas. Shaping reality, that's what a director does. Does it does it do. Diz diz does it, does it do. Duzzy muzzy mizz mazzum. I seem to be abreacting.
TV Station WFIF, Channel 45, Syracuse, New York, 6 O'Clock News, with Cheryl Perkins and Mason McCoy, Laura Curves with weather, Hank Piston with Sports.
McCoy: Good evening. I'm Mason McCoy--
Perkins: And I'm Cheryl Perkins. At Syracuse University, President Moe Lieden, in the middle of a rambling commencement speech filled with wild statements, began sputtering nonsense, then walked off the stage, mysterious behind his trademark Aviator sunglasses.
McCoy: Our reporter on the ground, Avery Hunk, has more. Avery?
Hunk: (Is what's called a hunk, like a super-handsome TV star of the eighties. His teeth gleam. Whether reporting on a fracking-caused earthquake, or a retirement party for a great-grandma elementary schoolteacher who still uses chalk, Avery Hunk's broadcasting charm and mistake-free delivery translates to his getting the most fan mail at WFIF). Cheryl, Mason, I'm at the site of what one graduating law student, a witness to President Lieden's behavior, has called, "Evidence of a psychotic break with our reality."
Cut to "young" graduate with male pattern baldness, looks thirty-five. Chyron below image reads: "Saw President Act Weird"
Hunk's voice: What do you mean by "psychotic break with our reality?"
Student: The guy's in a different head space. He's reacting to things that aren't there. I've seen it. I worked in a psychiatric ward for two years.
Hunk: So this is your opinion?
Student: Based on experience, yes.
Hunk: (back to his first shot): The graduate went on to say that though he plans to enter the field of mental health law, he is not a psychiatrist. As for President Lieden, he did just walk off, stage right, as if he'd finished performing a Scarlatti violin sonata (smile). He then got in his limo, it drove away, presumably to campaign headquarters in Scranton, or perhaps to his home in Wilmington. I spoke with the limo driver, Hector. The limo, once owned by a concert pianist, is well-equipped with beverages and food, there are pillows, a small library, a junior model harpsichord, and plenty of blankets, a tin can with a candle and matches, in case they break down in cold weather. Cheryl? Mason?
Cheryl: A new study out of Helsinki finds that fifty percent of people described by their coworkers as boring really are boring.
Mason: Massive Attack will play on the very stage where Moe Lieden made his hard to follow speech.
Cheryl: REO Speedwagon has not yet disbanded.
Mason: Neil Diamond will open for Ratt, and Smashing Pumpkins has re-formed.
Cheryl: In Geneva, world leaders and Bono meet for the third day to discuss what to do about Africa. Kill everyone and extract minerals and oil, or, extract minerals and oil with the people's help, then kill them?
Mason: A Democratic Congressman stood before a camera in the Capitol Rotunda, asked questions by Press the Meat host Fuck Todd, who hosted his show from a Starbuck's, for some reason.
Cheryl: An Ivy League college-backed study has found that money influences politicians negatively for the good of the American people, but positively for the politicians' careers.
Mason: Punditry outlawed on Mars.
Cheryl: On Mars's only news-entertainment channel, ElonDeluxe1, a pundit, Gareth Falseman, lost his temper over a comment made by another guest on the popular morning show, Another Beautiful Day! In the light gravity, out of shape, Gareth Falseman propelled himself across the studio in an elegant arc, landing slowly but inevitably on the startled fellow pundit who'd so offended him for criticizing Mr. Muskrat devoting more of his time lately to Triton than to Mars.
Mason: Mangoes expensive in Alabama.
Cheryl: Trout not caught yet in fifteen lakes in Rose County. Forest and Game officials concerned.
Mason: Philological study at Oxford University finds the most commonly uttered phrase has been, for the past three centuries, "I need a drink."
Jennifer Psyop on the MSNBC Dodo Hash It Out set, three chairs at a triangular table, with, at least for the past week since the show debuted, a yellow and blue background color scheme. This is her second hosting gig after the show's regular host, Beaverbrook Van Gelders, went missing in Ukraine. On assignment, he and his sound man, a father of five, were last seen approaching a Ukrainian Army checkpoint. State Department officials express bafflement, knowing our Ukrainian allies using our guns would never fire on journalists. Every employee at Dodo feels freaked about the irreplaceable losses of a journalist coworker with thirty years' experinence (the sound man, Orlo Pentil) and the handsome-face news guy, thirty year old Van Gelders, yeah, that Van Gelders, Big Pear Money going back to the 1850s, huge family mansion built in 1880 hulking above a small central California town where Big Pear owned everything and everyone. Beaverbrook's grandfather Mesmer Van Gelders killed his chief rival with the gift of a bottle of poisoned pear schnapps. Police suspected Van Gelders but could do nothing against such a powerful man. Growing a pair of balls gets in the way sometimes of a sought-for uncomplicated life.
Psyop's staff of three interns in their twenties get paid, can you believe it? Two-twenty-eight per hour. Imagine running your fingers through 228 pennies! In two hours you've got 456 pennies to play with due to your interning for a millionaire who used to be the mouthpiece of an old fart elected because half the country decided to play make believe and ignore the man's mental, physical, and, if possible, moral decline. The coins' clinking and tinkling make enchanting music. But back to the story.
Psyop: (to camera) Good evening, welcome to Hash It Out, I'm Jennifer Psyop, sitting in for the missing and probably dead Beaverbrook Van Gelders. My guests are a politician, Dirk Blandstein, a Never Richman Republican from California, and a journalist, Buck Favors, editor of New York Rhymes, the fun rhyming news gazette, one of my favorite Saturday evening reads, Buck. Gentlemen, welcome.
Buck Favors: It's an honor to rap on this new app.
Congressman Blandstein: (huge grimacing grin) Team Red all the way!
Jennifer: Okay. Congressman, you're in for a tough fight in your district. A Republican State Senator, Urban La Cruz, campaigns slightly to the right of you on domestic issues, but attacks you vociferously for your, quote, support of the Nazi regime in Ukraine.
Congressman Blandstein: The man's been smoking something that will wreck his teeth if he's not careful (smiles blindingly). As to Nazis, that's a Putinesque conspiracy theory. I want no truck with those peddling conspiracy theories to get ahead politically.
Buck Favors: Russiagate made Americans hate, conspiracy theories work, even for a Dirk.
Blandstein: Do you dispute the fact that the Richman Campaign colluded with Russians to steal the sixteen election?
Buck: I dispute what doesn't compute.
Blandstein: (brows bunch as he peers menacingly at Favors) Is Don Richman an existential threat to this democracy? And did or did not Russia put him into office in sixteen?
Buck: Russia's a country with a diverse pop, many more viewpoints than your average GOP.
Psyop: (smiling) I love hearing you riff, Buck.
Buck: Marry me, Red, union's bliss ain't what I dread.
Blandstein: What do you dread, troubadour?
Buck: Another Lieden administration, not needed for the nation.
Psyop: That's beyond my comprehension, Buck, care to explain that? Moe Lieden isn't needed by his country?
Buck: Does a bird need buckshot in his gizzard? America, rather, needs a wizard.
Blandstein: Do you have anyone in mind?
Buck: Pick a random Joe, he'll do better than any of your type, Schmo.
Blandstein: Miss Psyop, I didn't come here to be insulted.
Buck: The people hate Congress you know, your popularity can only grow.
Pysop: You're saying Congress is at the bottom of its popularity rating, but actually, it's been holding steady at 8 percent.
Blandstein: (grinning proudly) More than zero, Rhymer!
Sam Spade gets let into Mr. Lieden's home office in Wilmington, let in by the same Titian-haired Secret Service Agent. This time, the former and eager-to-be-hopeful next President is fully dressed, casual-wise, no tie, six-thousand dollar loafers covering his shiny line-less soles, peeling heels, yellow in-growing nails, a hammertoe. Spade obtained copies of Morris Lieden's medical records, including those of his podiatrist. Vice President Lieden's constipation in February 2011 was so hyper-acute, discomfort level 9 out of ten, he said to the nurse, that he had to be treated at Walter Reed. Senator Lieden in 1993 had all of his teeth replaced with steel caps painted white. His left eye was removed, socket filled comfortably with a miniature telescope and bionic tear ducts. From Warfare Systems Galore, a mechanical hand took the place of his bone and flesh right. Steel keratin-coated fingernails, capable of flying fast at the flick of Lieden's wrist, if he only knew the technique, they changed their minds about teaching it to him. They changed their minds about the telescopic eye, too, and the teeth came off, and white caps went on, he thinks he looks good when he smiles, the man's self-confidence is endless.
Spade, though he's distracted by the wondrous (and evil) technologies these twenty-first century industrial wizards, nay, sorcerers, conjure and use on people for profit, focuses on his client, Morris Lieden.
A demented man, obviously, though capable of extended lucidity. He acts from revenge against Dinah. Too, against this General Bomb. Through Dinah, I've secured a meeting later today with the General, who's graciously agreed to meet me halfway at the B. Traven Grille in Baltimore.
Lieden: (grins as Spade enters but doesn't stand) Pardon me for not standing. I'm sitting in my own shit, don't want to move it around. Do you smell it? Do yuh?
Spade takes out the silver case, extracts a hand-rolled, taps it three times on the closed case, lights up, pockets the case, hooded eyes on a man he considers a cretin, but the money's been steady.
Lieden: I smell it! I'm trying out a diaper. Amanda, that's my problem wife, wants me to use adult undergarments, like I'm old or something. Well, it's not the first time I've sat in shit. When a baby, one's clothes become human waste bags. Dispose of em and forget em! Now I remember, I'm all the way back to babyhood. I remember sitting in my diaper filled with poo, holding a wooden rattle. I would've preferred a metal rattle. I couldn't cry out loudly and piercingly because I had laryngitis after screaming for eight days. A metal rattle would've made more noise.
Spade: Why did you scream for so long?
Lieden: Because I was nearly molested by a werewolf on Halloween.
Spade doesn't react, gets out his notepad and pencil stub, shorter even than the right-now length of his Bull Durham tobacco hand-rolled cigarette. In France in eighteen he hand-rolled cigarettes while driving an ambulance over even worse roads than those of the neglected cities of President Parris's America.
Spade: Parris's weak spot is men.
Lieden: Any man? A plumber? A Bilderberger? A bellhop? An eager going-on-eighty?
Spade: Men she finds attractive, whatever they are.
Lieden: So we put her in a compromising position with a man. We need to find a man. Do I know a man? I'm a man, but I'm not a young stud like George Hamilton in Zorro the Gay Blade. I'm American but I'm not a gigolo, like Richard Gere in that movie, what was that called? Damn, I almost had it. I hate it when that happens! I'll be preoccupied. I want to be post-occupied or not at all!
Spade: Mr. Lieden. Would you like to hear about what I've found?
Lieden: Why do you think you came here, ignoraymoe!? I'm sitting in shit! Mandy's in her bedroom reading her Jackie Collins or is she onto Danielle Steel now? You read, Randolph?
Spade: I read, and the name is Sam.
Lieden: Right, like Sam Gamgee.
Spade: Lord of the Rings. (Opens to a page) By a fellow named...Tolkien.
Lieden: No. Jackson. A fat Kiwi. He made The Lord of the Rings. You a fan?
Spade: No, it's just that Tolkien wrote the novel.
Lieden: Who's Tolkien?
Spade: Author of The Lord of the Rings.
Lieden: It's merry go round time with you today. Look Randy, Peter Jackson made those movies, not this Tolkien, forget about him, he has nothing to do with The Lord of the Rings.
Spade: Onward. President Parris, as I mentioned, is quite the sex addict. She no doubt has a page or two in Krafft-Ebing's Psycopathia Sexualis describing exactly her sexual predilections and practices. Blackmailing such a nymphomaniac shouldn't be difficult.
Lieden: She'll withdraw?
Spade: Will she want to be exposed as an adulteress?
Lieden: You need to learn more about this culture in this time period, Randall.
Spade: Look, I put up with your wandering mind but fix this in your brain, my name is Sam.
Lieden: Samuel, right.
Spade: You're the first retarded dog I ever met.
Lieden: If I were a dog I'd be a Schnauzer. Everybody loves a Schnauzer. What kind of dog would you be, Sam?
Spade: The cliché would be for me to say Bloodhound, but I'll say, for whimsy, Lhasa Apso.
Lieden: (grins) What do you like about the little dust mops?
Spade: They look like what they are. A useless animal walking around, taking up space.
Lieden: Don't run for political office, Sam. Your downerism won't go over well with the voting crowd and non-voters'll turn their backs on such malarkey.
Spade: Do you have anyone specific in mind to sic on President Parris?
Lieden: Yeah, I'm in a two birds one stone mood. Bill Bomb.
Spade: Indeed?
Lieden: I heard it through the vine the man has a bone for the lady in the Big Chair. A big, meaty Warlord's thrusting bone. I'd love to see that karate-chopping bastard's bone go down! Spade, if you end Bomb's career I'll give you a half million dollar bonus.
Spade: You're joking.
Lieden: I'm a millionaire, Freak Zone! My name is on my book covers. I've made solid bank off the Moe Lieden story. I didn't even pay one of my ghost writers, I just had him arrested for stalking me. You'll get your five-hundred Klondikes, your half a million Skins, your fifty million pennies. I'm a man of my coin. Word.
Spade: I'm meeting with General Bomb for lunch.
Lieden: The man has impeccable table manners. Have you noticed the manfully textured smoothness of his face? How I would like to observe his shaving technique!
Spade: Would you like to add that investigation to my fee?
Lieden: No, I'm satisfied he probably uses a straight razor.
Spade: Makes sense.
Lieden: A high-ranking military man always wants the ultimate option close at hand.
Spade: You want him to be fired for violating decorum? If that works, what then? Is General Bomb's life in danger from you or someone you might hire for the purpose of harming him?
Lieden: Not interested in the rough stuff, are you? That's fine. Being afraid of committing violence doesn't mean you're a pussy. But you are a pussy.
Spade: Is that an insult?
Lieden: You're a piece of work. You come to my bathroom, my employee, turning down offered work! I'm giving you the opportunity to arrange a fatal accident-on-purpose for Bill Bomb. Half a mil for getting Bomb fired, a full mil for making him slip on a banana peel, so to speak.
Spade: You have me mistaken for a hitman.
Lieden: A mil! Think what you could do with a whole mil! How can you turn down a mil!?
Spade: In my research I came across the name of your regular hit man, Hector Farrbarrhuber. What about him?
Lieden: I'm not sure I entirely trust the guy. Fine guy. Helluva guy. Scary guy. Sometimes I think he's normal, sometimes he seems abnormal. I guess some might think that of me.
Spade: No one thinks you're normal, Mr. Lieden.
Lieden: Normal, hmmhf. Who wants to be normal? Normal is can't pay the bills. Normal is my baby died because she can't afford the surgery, too expensive. These suffering ordinary American pains in my ass don't understand my indebtedness to Big Pharma. They saved my butt many a time with a much-needed donation. Terrific folks. My son Happy golfs with the nephew of Moderna's CEO.
Spade: Okay, Mr. President. I'll see what I can do about General Bomb. Maybe at lunch he'll choke on a chicken bone?
Lieden: Bomb's a fish and chips man, I think you're in for some seafood, chum.
Early afternoon, Baltimore's famed Krimson Monarch, not a seafood joint, but an out of the way expensive restaurant too pretentious for Sam Spade's taste. The host leads him to a corner table with one dim-bulbed lamp. After Bomb refuses a handshake, explaining, "Covid, Mr. Spade," they try to read the menus.
Spade: Where are the prices?
Bomb: It's considered gauche by strict decorum-practitioners to wonder about prices in an eight star restaurant.
Spade: If you're paying I'll take a stab at guessing which is the priciest food item.
Bomb: You're a prickly man, Mr. Spade.
Spade: Why waste taxpayers' money on this war in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic?
Bomb: So that Russkies don't take the country, and it's just called Ukraine! The Soviet Union hasn't existed since 1991!
Spade: One learns something new every day.
They order, eat, some small talk. Spade just orders a pork chop and mashed potatoes, no salad, bread, and a wedge of apple pie. General Bomb orders steak, oversized baked potato with sour cream, butter, and blackened with pepper. Reluctantly, "For Mrs. Bomb," he eats a side of broccoli, a wedge of huckleberry pie and a cup of black coffee.
Bomb: Are you seeking to investigate the President of the United States?
Spade: I am.
Bomb: For Moe Lieden's intelligence-gathering?
Spade: I won't give reasons. I've met with President Parris, we had a good discussion.
Bomb: About?
Spade: Movies. Books. The lady's a reader.
Bomb: I didn't know that. What does she read?
Spade: Erotic Victorian literature.
Bomb: She told you that?
Spade: She showed me one of her desk drawers. Filled with Victorian pornographic paperback books. Reprints, she said. (He smiles just slightly at his fabrications).
Bomb: I had no idea. The President looks so refined.
Spade: She's an animal, just like us, Bomb.
Bomb: Her hair, so luxurious--
Spade: Is that why you assaulted President Lieden?
Bomb: What you mean?
Spade: Moe Lieden's into hair, you know it, I know it, I've seen the photographs and what do you call them...video clips. Perhaps you felt a jealous twinge knowing President Lieden would someday bury his face indefinitely in Dinah Parris's quote, luxurious hair, end quote?
Bomb: What are you implying, Man?
Spade: (takes out silver case, extracts cigarette, lights it). My source tells me you've--
Bomb: You can't smoke in here.
Spade: Why not?
Bomb: What century are you from?
Spade: Same one as you.
Waiter approaches, tells Spade he can't smoke in the restaurant. Spade gives him ten of Moe Lieden's dollars. The man leaves.
Bomb: What were you going to say, Mr. Smokestack?
Spade: You've got loving eyes for President Parris. It's obvious to me even now. Your eagerness to know more about anything concerning the woman. I'll tell you something. There's a tiger trapped inside her body.
Bomb: What do you mean?
Spade: She's a wild cat.
Bomb: (Stands, towers over Spade, blue chest festooned with ribbons, badges, and nameplate carrying his name, and his favorite thing to do. Spade blows smoke rings). TAKE THAT BACK!!! BESMIRCH NOT DINAH'S NAME!!!
Spade: You prove my point.
Oval Office. FBI Director Herman Slats, eyeing Dinah Parris hungrily, still hard, yearning for a continuation of the coitus interrupted by Cassandra Hartliss Blade some weeks ago.
Parris: Ants in your pants, Herm?
Slats: Is that it for the meeting? No more business?
Parris: I think we've covered everything I can put into my head for one afternoon.
Slats: It's so good to see you.
Parris: (Laughs). Get a TV, baby, I'm on all the time! I'm the first African American woman President! (laughs).
Slats: Oh Dinah!
Parris: Dinah? Not Madame President? Well, Mr. FBI Director, I suppose you feel familiar, having poked my business on that there couch.
Slats: I'll poke it again, and again. I'll do!
Parris: (Laughs) Meet me on the couch.
Lieden's home office, Wilmington. Sam Spade sits before the former President, a 1959 Wollensak reel to reel tape recorder/player doing its thing on an ottoman. Turning wheels, moving brown tape, kind of like a digestive system, thinks Moe Lieden, watery eyes fixated on the reels. Spade presses STOP. Lieden shakes his head as if emerging from hypnosis, but he heard every sound on the tape. As he starts to piss in his diaper, he nods at the Wollensak. He plays for today's so far unsoiled and less cranky Moe Lieden the recording he made of the Oval Office encounter between FBI Director Slats and President Parris.
Lieden: Yeah, that's Herman Slats all right. Used to go golfing together when I wanted him to step up persecutions of Muslims. Slats. I like the guy. He's a good guy. A real American. Not one of these phony baloneys. He's got a good head on his shoulders. His gaze is true, his salute crisp. I've seen his salute. He's a retired Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force. (Laughs) No, Woodchuck, not the Army Air Force! That is so 1941! Look forward, man! Be in the now! Exist for today, think ahead! Forget about the past, because maybe you've done some bad things? I bet I can top you, though. Ever drone strike a family?
Spade: No. I'm not a homicidal maniac.
Lieden: Listen, Nunchucks! I've got a report on you from Hector Farrbarrhuber, my hit man, factotum, movie recommendation man, one of my cineaste associates, actually, the other is a crippled man in Dover, Delaware. He's been writing me fan letters since I gave Anita Hill the business and wouldn't allow more testimony from more women about Clarence Thomas's (low voice) sexual harassing tendencies. (Normal voice) Anyhow, that fan of mine knows film! He's seen M thirteen times! He's seen A. twice. Unflattering depiction of the Arbusto administration by that crazy conspiracy nut filmmaker, Ollie Rock. Haven't seen A., can't bear to watch a movie critical of a great American and a talented painter. My son Happy paints, too. Do you have half a million to fork over for one of my son's paintings? It'll give you access to me.
Spade: I have access to you.
Lieden: This fan uh mine writes fan letters to Clarence Thomas, too. He can identify every actor in The Longest Day the moment they appear on screen. He's seen every film Quentin Tarantino ever ripped off. World film? Loves it. He turned me on to a Ukrainian director, Dovzhenko. Have you seen his Earth?
Spade: No.
Lieden: It's from 1930, your era. Cuckoo clocks, clothespins, Mom smelling good as she hangs wash on the line Tall Uncle Jordy lost his larynx on, running from a rare Scranton badger. (Low voice) Lower hemlines in the thirties than in the twenties. (Normal voice) How did you feel about that, Hot Pants?
Spade: Fashions come and go and come again. Hemlines don't matter to me. Naked is how I always make them be.
Lieden: You're a scientist of love.
Spade: Not love.
Lieden: I yearn for the touch of a woman, Randy. Soon I'm attending a White House function. (Low voice) I was invited. I've been advised there will be hair.
Spade: What's with your obsession with women's hair?
Lieden: Obsession? Think of it this way, Fellow Damned Soul--Do you practice a private religion?
Spade: Explain that.
Lieden: A religion you create, only you practice it, little rituals is what I'm talking about. Are you ever dense!
Spade: I understand you now, thanks for explaining. Every man has an inner self he shows to no one, I suppose.
Lieden: Mine erupts onto my surface. I'm a gurgling volcano, Sammy Boy. My nose vents will inhale hair scents, rich, stimulating aromas, a stew of contrasting and blending fumes; flowery scents, soapy odors, creams, perfumes and deodorants! Skin!
Spade: You don't conceal the perverted side of your nature from the public. Why not?
Lieden: Listen, Oar Slave, I've been called many things, and "pree-vert" is one of them, but it hurts to be called that. My Great Uncle Hugh, Hugh Pugh. Great guy. Knew how to whistle. His "Home on the Range" whistled tears out of many an eye. He was a pervert. Three shoeboxes full of French postcards--(low voice) naked ladies--(normal voice) and Hugh was the neighborhood peeper. He saved a man from choking to death in a kitchen because he was peeping at the man's wife undressing in their bedroom and heard the husband's agonizing desperation. That's a real Samaritan. A blot on society, too.
Spade: What happened to him?
Lieden: He went to a Pirates game and got his skull cracked open by a foul ball, tumbled over the railing, dropped twenty feet, landed on a stadium security man, broke his neck, two dead for the price of one, how do you like that?
Spade: Pity. Did your Uncle ever marry?
Lieden: No woman wanted him.
Spade: I'm not surprised.
Lieden: My family's Pugh side has a problematic aura. Think of it this way. No Pugh has ever achieved anything of great worth. No mayors, or even local politicians, no authors, no streetcar conductors, no train mechanics, no shampoo manufacturers, no arms dealers, no energy sector board members, no crack cocaine addicts making a hit with their half million dollar paintings. The Pughs are the black sheep of the Lieden Clan. You see, La Dee Da Pugh married Fornis McCoy in 1749, or was it 1949? By the way, in 1949 my teacher came over for lunch. My mother invited her. She prepared hot dogs, baked puhtaytuhs, cooked carrots--yuck!--and vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup for dessert--yummy! My mother would cut off the ends of hot dogs for me. She told my teacher this. My teacher asked me why I didn't like hot dog ends. I couldn't tell her because I believed a hot dog has two anuses, one on each end. I didn't want to eat a hot dog's anus. Two hot dog anuses, are you kidding me? What was my point in revisiting that lunch with Mrs. McClellan in 1949?
Spade: If your story of hot dog parts has relevance to whatever the thrust of this conversation might be, I'll be surprised.
Lieden: You're a sarcastic man, Spade.
Spade: You'll get no argument from me on that point. Tell me, what's your goal? After you become President, assuming you make it that far?
Lieden: I'm a shoo-in, Randolph.
Spade: Care to explain your forecast?
Lieden: Parris won't be President once that tape gets released to CNN, the Post, Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity. Hell, I'll make a special video and have it uploaded to YouTube.
Spade: This is computer lingo?
Lieden: You anachronistic cynic, you! Now that you have the evidence I sought on Dinah, how's your Doug investigation going? Have you met him?
Spade: Tomorrow at ten, in his office. Another visit to the White House (...and, Spade thinks, a stop at the Oval Office, prearranged, and private). You haven't been elected yet, Mr. President, make no easy assumptions on that score.
Lieden: Don't get a big head, that's what you're telling me. You're right, Frankfurter. Report back here after you meet with Doug. Watch out. He's a nutcase.
Spade: Like everyone I've met since I took this case.
To Be Continued...
Will Moe Lieden disgrace himself once he's allowed to wander aimlessly, chasing hair scents at the White House function?
Will Doug Gard ever realize he's a cuckold?
Will Sam Spade accept Moe Lieden's million dollar offer?
Will Jennifer Psyop on Hash It Out interview her former boss, Moe Lieden?
Will President Parris ever assist the American people as much as she's assisting Nazis in Eastern Europe?
Will General Bomb discover Dinah Parris's dalliances with Herman Slats and a fictional private detective?
Find out by giving me some time to write Part Sixteen.
Vic Neptune
