I stepped on the merry-go-round and hurried around the bar, approaching my attorney on his blind side – and when we came to the right spot I pushed him off. He staggered into the aisle and uttered a hellish scream as he lost his balance and went down, thrashing into the crowd ... rolling like a log, then up again in a flash, fists clenched, looking for somebody to hit.
I approached him with my hands in the air, trying to smile. "You fell," I said. "Let's go."
By this time people were watching us. But the fool wouldn't move, and I knew what would happen if I grabbed him. "Ok," I said. "You stay here and go to jail. I'm leaving." I started walking fast towards the stairs, ignoring him.
This moved him.
"Did you see that?" he said as he caught up with me. "Some sonofabitch kicked me in the back!"
"Probably the bartender," I said. "He wanted to stomp you for what you said to the waitress."
"Good god! Let's get out of here. Where's the elevator?"
"Don't go near that elevator," I said. "That's just what they want us to do ... trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement." I looked over my shoulder, but nobody was following.
"Don't run," I said. "They'd like an excuse to shoot us." He nodded, seeming to understand. We walked fast along the big indoor midway – shooting galleries, tattoo parlors, money-changers and cotton-candy booths – then out through a bank of glass doors and across the grass downhill to a parking lot where the Red Shark waited.
"You drive," he said. "I think there's something wrong with me."
VII
Paranoid terror ... and the awful specter of sodomy ... a flashing of knives and green water
When we got to the Mint I parked on the street in front of the casino, around a corner from the parking lot. No point risking a scene in the lobby, I thought. Neither one of us could pass for drunk. We were both hyper-tense. Extremely menacing vibrations all around us. We hurried through the casino and up the rear escalator.
We made it to the room without meeting anybody – but the key wouldn't open the door. My attorney was struggling desperately with it. "Those bastards have changed the lock on us," he groaned. "They probably searched the room. Jesus, we're finished."
Suddenly the door swung open. We hesitated, then hurried inside. No sign of trouble. "Bolt everything," said my attorney. "Use all chains." He was staring at two Mint Hotel Room keys in his hand. "Where did this one come from?" he said, holding up a key with number 1221 on it.
"That's Lacerda's room," I said.
He smiled. "Yeah, that's right. I thought we might need it."
"What for?"
"Let's go up there and blast him out of bed with the fire hose," he said.
"No," I said. "We should leave the poor bastard alone, I get the feeling he's avoiding us for some reason."
"Don't kid yourself," he said. "That Portuguese son of bitch is dangerous. He's watching us like a hawk." He squinted at me. "Have you made a deal with him?"
"I talked with him on the phone," I said, "while you were out getting the car washed. He said he was turning in early, so he can get out there to the starting line at dawn."
My attorney was not listening. He uttered an anguished cry and smacked the wall with both hands. "That dirty bastard!" he shouted. "I knew it! He got hold of my woman!"
I laughed. "That little blonde groupie with the film crew? You think he sodomized her?"
"That's right – laugh about it!" he yelled. "You goddamn honkies are all the same." By this time he'd opened a new bottle of tequila and was quaffing it down. Then he grabbed a grapefruit and sliced it in half with a Gerber Mini-Magnum – a stainless-steel hunting knife with a blade like a fresh-honed straight razor.
"Where'd you get that knife?" I asked.
"Room service sent it up," he said. "I wanted something to cut the limes."
"What limes?"
"They didn't have any," he said. "They don't grow out here in the desert." He sliced the grapefruit into quarters ... then into eighths ... then 16ths ... then he began slashing aimlessly at the residue. "That dirty toad bastard," he groaned. "I knew I should have taken him out when I had the chance. Now he has her."
I remembered the girl. We'd had a problem with her on the elevator a few hours earlier: my attorney had made a fool of himself.
"You must be a rider," she'd said. "What class are you in?"
"Class?" he snapped. "What the fuck do you mean?"
"What do you ride?" she asked with a quick smile. "We're filming the race for a TV series – maybe we can use you."
"Use me?"
Mother of God, I thought. Here it comes. The elevator was crowded with race people: it was taking a long time to get from floor to floor. By the time we'd stopped at Three, he was trembling badly. Five more to go. ...
"I ride the big ones!" he shouted suddenly. "The really big fuckers!"
I laughed, trying to de-fuse the scene. "The Vincent Black Shadow," I said. "We're with the factory team."
This brought a murmur of rude dissent from the crowd. "Bullshit," somebody behind me muttered.
"Wait a minute!" my attorney shouted ... and then to the girl: "Pardon me, lady, but I think there's some kind of ignorant chicken-sucker in this car who needs his face cut open." He plunged his hand into the pocket of his black plastic jacket and turned to face the people crowded into the rear of the elevator. "You cheap honky faggots," he snarled. "Which one of you wants to get cut?"
I was watching the overhead floor-indicator. The door opened at Seven, but nobody moved. Dead silence. The door closed. Up to eight ... then open again. Still no sound or movement in the crowded car. Just as the door began to close I stepped off and grabbed his arm, jerking him out just in time. The doors slid shut and the elevator light dinged Nine.
"Quick! Into the room," I said. "Those bastards will have the pigs on us!" We ran around the corner to the room. My attorney was laughing wildly. "Spooked!" he shouted. "Did you see that? They were spooked. Like rats in a death-cage!" Then, as we bolted the door behind us, he stopped laughing. "God damn," he said. "It's serious now. That girl understood. She fell in love with me."
Now many hours later, he was convinced that Lacerda – the so-called photographer had somehow got his hands on the girl. "Let's go up there and castrate that fucker," he said, waving his new knife around in quick circles in front of his teeth. "Did you put him onto her?"
"Look," I said, "you'd better put that goddamn blade away and get your head straight. I have to put the car in the lot." I was backing slowly towards the door. One of the things you learn, after years of dealing with drug people, is that everything is serious. You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug – especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eyes.
"Take a shower," I said. "I'll be back in 20 minutes." I left quickly, locking the door behind me and taking the key to Lacerda's room – the one my attorney had stolen earlier. That poor geek, I thought, as I hurried down the escalator. They sent him out here on this perfectly reasonable assignment – just a few photos of motorcycles and dune buggies racing around the desert – and now he was plunged, without realizing it, into the maw of some world beyond his ken. There was no way he could possibly understand what was happening.
What were we doing out here? What was the meaning of this trip? Did I actually have a big red convertible out there on the street? Was I just roaming around these Mint Hotel escalators in a drug frenzy of some kind or had I really come out here to Las Vegas to work on a story?
I reached in my pocket for the room key; "1850," it said. At least that much was real. So my immediate task was to deal with the car and get back to that room ... and then hopefully get straight enough to cope with whatever might happen at dawn.
Now off the escalator and into the casino, big crowds still tight around the crap tables. Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they're real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them – still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at 4:30 on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.
Big strike in Silver City. Beat the dealer and go home rich. Why not? I stopped at the Money Wheel and dropped a dollar on Thomas Jefferson – a $2 bill, the straight Freak ticket, thinking as always that some idle instinct bet might carry the whole thing off.
But no. Just another two bucks down the tube. You bastards!
No. Calm down. Learn to enjoy losing. The important thing is to cover this story on its own terms; leave the other stuff to Life and Look – at least for now. On the way down the escalator I saw the Life man twisted feverishly into the telegraph booth, chanting his wisdom into the ear of some horny robot in a cubicle on that other coast. Indeed: "Las Vegas at Dawn – The racers are still asleep, the dust is still on the desert, $50,000 in prize money slumbers darkly in the office safe at Del Webb's fabulous Mint Hotel in the bright heart of Casino Center. Extreme tension. And our Life team is here (as always, with a sturdy police escort. ...)." Pause. "Yes, operator, that word was police. What else? This is, after all, a Life Special. ..."
The Red Shark was out on Fremont where I'd left it. I drove around to the garage and checked it in – Dr. Gonzo's car, no problem, and if any of your men fall idle we can use a total wax job before morning. Yes, of course – just bill the room.
My attorney was in the bathtub when I returned. Submerged in green water – the oily product of some Japanese bath salts he'd picked up in the hotel gift shop, along with a new AM/FM radio plugged into the electric razor socket. Top volume. Some gibberish by a thing called "Three Dog Night," about a frog named Jeremiah who wanted "Joy to the World."
First Lennon, now this, I thought. Next we'll have Glenn Campbell screaming "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
Where indeed? No flowers in this town. Only carnivorous plants. I turned the volume down and noticed a hunk of chewed-up white paper beside the radio. My attorney seemed not to notice the sound-change. He was lost in a fog of green steam; only half his head was visible above the water line.
"You ate this?" I asked, holding up the white pad.
He ignored me. But I knew. He would be very difficult to reach for the next six hours. The whole blotter was chewed up.
"You evil son of a bitch," I said. "You better hope there's some thorazine in that bag, because if there's not you're in bad trouble tomorrow."
"Music!" he snarled. "Turn it up. Put that tape on."
"What tape?"
"The new one. It's right there."
I picked up the radio and noticed that it was also a tape recorder – one of those things with a cassette-unit built in. And the tape, Surrealistic Pillow, needed only to be flipped over. He had already gone through side one – at a volume that must have been audible in every room within a radius of 100 yards, walls and all.
"'White Rabbit,'" he said. "I want a rising sound."
"You're doomed," I said. "I'm leaving here in two hours – and then they're going to come up here and beat the mortal shit out of you with big saps. Right there in the tub."
"I dig my own graves," he said. "Green water and the White Rabbit ... put it on; don't make me use this." His arm lashed out of the water, the hunting knife gripped in his fist.
"Jesus," I muttered. And at that point I figured he was beyond help – lying there in the tub with a head full of acid and the sharpest knife I'd ever seen, totally incapable of reason, demanding the White Rabbit. This is it, I thought. I've gone as far as I can with this waterhead. This time it's a suicide trip. This time he wants it. He's ready. ...
"Ok," I said, turning the tape over and pushing the "play" button. "But do me one last favor, will you? Can you give me two hours? That's all I ask – just two hours to sleep before tomorrow. I suspect it's going to be a very difficult day."
"Of course," he said. "I'm your attorney. I'll give you all the time you need, at my normal rates: $45 an hour – but you'll be wanting a cushion, so why don't you just lay one of those $100 bills down there beside the radio, and fuck off?"
"How about a check?" I said. "On the Sawtooth National Bank. You won't need any ID to cash it there. They know me."
"Whatever's right," he said, beginning to jerk with the music. The bathroom was like the inside of a huge defective woofer. Heinous vibrations, overwhelming sound. The floor was full of water. I moved the radio as far from the tub as it would go, then I left and closed the door behind me.
The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel – white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.
VIII
"Genius 'round the world stands hand in hand, and one stock of recognition runs the whole circle round" – Art Linkletter
I live in a quiet place, where any sound at night means something is about to happen: You come awake fast – thinking, what does that mean?
Usually nothing. But sometimes ... it's hard to adjust to a city gig where the night is full of sounds, all of them comfortably routine. Cars, horns, footsteps ... no way to relax; so drown it all out with the fine white drone of a cross-eyed TV set. Jam the bugger between channels and doze off nicely. ...
Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn't handle the pressure. My attorney is not a candidate for the Master Game.
And neither am I, for that matter. I once lived down the hill from Dr. Robert DeRopp on Sonoma Mountain Road, and one fine afternoon in the first rising curl of what would soon become the Great San Francisco Acid Wave I stopped by the Good Doctor's house with the idea of asking him (since he was even then a known drug authority) what sort of advice he might have for a neighbor with a healthy curiosity about LSD.
I parked on the road and lumbered up his gravel driveway, pausing enroute to wave pleasantly at his wife, who was working in the garden under the brim of a huge seeding hat ... a good scene, I thought: The old man is inside brewing up one of his fantastic drug-stews, and here we see his woman out in the garden, pruning carrots, or whatever ... humming while she works, some tune I failed to recognize.
Humming. Yes ... but it would be nearly ten years before I would recognize that sound for what it was: Like Ginsberg far gone in the Om, DeRopp was trying to humm me off. He was playing the Master Game. That was no old lady out there in that garden; it was the good doctor himself – and his humming was a frantic attempt to block me out of his higher consciousness. But he hadn't written The Master Game yet, so I had no way of knowing. ...
I made several attempts to make myself clear – just a neighbor come to call and ask the doctor's advice about gobbling some LSD in my shack just down the hill from his house. I did, after all, have weapons. And I liked to shoot them – especially at night, when the great blue flame would leap out, along with all that noise ... and, yes, the bullets, too. We couldn't ignore that. Big balls of lead/alloy flying around the valley at speeds up to 3700 ft. per second. ...
But I always fired into the nearest hill or, failing that, into blackness. I meant no harm; I just liked the explosions. And I was careful never to kill more than I could eat.
"Kill?" I realized I could never properly explain that word to this creature in DeRopp's garden. Had it ever eaten meat? Could it conjugate the verb "hunt?" Did it understand hunger? Or grasp the awful fact that my income averaged around $32 a week that year?
No ... no hope of communication in this place. I recognized that – but not soon enough to keep the drug doctor from humming me all the way down his driveway and into my car and down the mountain road. Forget LSD, I thought. Look what it's done to that poor bastard.
So I stuck with hash and rum for another six months or so, until I moved into San Francisco and found myself one night in a place called "The Fillmore Auditorium." And that was that. One grey lump of sugar and Boom. In my mind I was right back there in DeRopp's garden. Not on the surface, but underneath – poking up through that finely cultivated earth like some kind of mutant mushroom. A victim of the Drug Explosion. A natural street freak, just eating whatever came by. I recall one night in the Matrix, when a road-person came in with a big pack on his back, shouting: "Anybody want some L ... S ... D ...? I got all the makin's right here. All I need is a place to cook."
Ray Anderson was on him at once, mumbling, "Cool it, cool it, come on back to the office." I never saw him after that night, but before he was taken away, the road-person distributed his samples. Huge white spansules. I went into the men's room to eat mine. But only half at first, I thought. Good thinking, but a hard thing to accomplish under the circumstances. I ate the first half, but spilled the rest on the sleeve of my red Pendleton shirt ... And then, wondering what to do with it, I saw the bartender come in. "What's the trouble," he said.
"Well," I said. "All this white stuff on my sleeve is LSD."
He said nothing: Merely grabbed my arm and began sucking on it. A very gross tableau. I wondered what would happen if some Kingston Trio/young stockbroker type might wander in and catch us in the act. Fuck him, I thought. With a bit of luck, it'll ruin his life – forever thinking that just behind some narrow door in all his favorite bars, men in red Pendleton shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know. Would he dare to suck a sleeve? Probably not. Play it safe. Pretend you never saw it. ...