A shudder ran through me, but I gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead, ignoring this sudden horrible freak show in my car. I lit a cigarette, but I was not calm. Sounds of sobbing and the ripping of cloth came from the backseat. The man they called Judge had straightened himself out and was now resting easily in the front seat, letting out long breaths of air ... The silence was terrifying: I quickly turned up the music. It was Los Lobos again—something about “One Time One Night in America,” a profoundly morbid tune about Death and Disappointment:
A lady dressed in white
With the man she loved
Standing along the side of their pickup truck
A shot rang out in the night
Just when everything seemed right
Right. A shot. A shot rang out in the night. Just another headline written down in America ... Yes. There was a loaded .454 Magnum revolver in a clearly marked oak box on the front seat, about halfway between me and the Judge. He could grab it in a split second and blow my head off.
“Good work, Boss,” he said suddenly. “I owe you a big one for this. I was done for, if you hadn’t come along.” He chuckled. “Sure as hell, Boss, sure as hell. I was Dead Meat—killed a lot worse than what happened to those goddamn stupid sheep!”
Jesus! I thought. Get ready to hit the brake. This man is a Judge on the lam with two hookers. He has no choice but to kill me, and those floozies in the backseat, too. We were the only witnesses . . .
This eerie perspective made me uneasy ... Fuck this, I thought. These people are going to get me locked up. I’d be better off just pulling over right here and killing all three of them. Bang! Bang! Bang! Terminate the scum.
“How far is town?” the Judge asked.
I jumped, and the car veered again. “Town?” I said. “What town?” My arms were rigid and my voice was strange and reedy.
He whacked me on the knee and laughed. “Calm down, Boss,” he said. “I have everything under control. We’re almost home.” He pointed into the rain, where I was beginning to see the dim lights of what I knew to be Elko.
“Okay,” he snapped. “Take a left, straight ahead.” He pointed again, and I slipped the car into low. There was a red and blue neon sign glowing about a half mile ahead of us, barely visible in the storm. The only words I could make out were “No” and “Vacancy.”
“Slow down!” the Judge screamed. “This is it! Turn! Goddamn it, turn!” His voice had the sound of a whip cracking. I recognized the tone and did as he said, curling into the mouth of the curve with all four wheels locked and the big engine snarling wildly in Compound Low and blue flames coming out of the tailpipe ... It was one of those long perfect moments in the human driving experience that makes everybody quiet.
We were sliding sideways very fast and utterly out of control and coming up on a white steel guardrail at seventy miles an hour in a thunderstorm on a deserted highway in the middle of the night.
Why not? On some nights Fate will pick you up like a chicken and slam you around on the walls until your body feels like a beanbag . . . Boom! Blood! Death! So Long, Bubba—You knew it would End like this . . .
We stabilized and shot down the loop. The Judge seemed oddly calm as he pointed again. “This is it,” he said. “This is my place. I keep a few suites here.” He nodded eagerly. “We’re finally safe, Boss. We can do anything we want in this place.”
The sign at the gate said:
Endicott’s Motel
Deluxe Suites and Waterbeds
Adults Only/No Animals
Thank God, I thought. It was almost too good to be true. A place to dump these bastards. They were quiet now, but not for long. And I knew I couldn’t handle it when these women woke up.
The Endicott was a string of cheap-looking bungalows, laid out in a horseshoe pattern around a rutted gravel driveway. There were cars parked in front of most of the units, but the slots in front of the brightly lit places at the darker end of the horseshoe were empty.
“Okay,” said the Judge. “We’ll drop the ladies down there at our suite, then I’ll get you checked in.” He nodded. “We both need some sleep, Boss—or at least rest, if you know what I mean. Shit, it’s been a long night.”
I laughed, but it sounded like the bleating of a dead man. The adrenaline rush of the sheep crash was gone, and now I was sliding into pure Fatigue Hysteria.
The Endicott “Office” was a darkened hut in the middle of the horseshoe. We parked in front of it, and then the Judge began hammering on the wooden front door, but there was no immediate response ... “Wake up, goddamn it! It’s me—the Judge! Open up! This is Life and Death! I need help!”
He stepped back and delivered a powerful kick at the door, which rattled the glass panels and shook the whole building. “I know you’re in there,” he screamed. “You can’t hide! I’ll kick your ass till your nose bleeds!”
There was still no sign of life, and I quickly abandoned all hope. Get out of here, I thought. This is wrong. I was still in the car, half in and half out ... The Judge put another fine snap-kick at a point just over the doorknob and uttered a sharp scream in some language I didn’t recognize. Then I heard the sound of breaking glass.
I leapt back into the car and started the engine. Get away! I thought. Never mind sleep. It’s flee or die, now. People get killed for doing this kind of shit in Nevada. It was far over the line. Unacceptable behavior. This is why God made shotguns . . .
I saw lights come on in the Office. Then the door swung open, and I saw the Judge leap quickly through the entrance and grapple briefly with a small bearded man in a bathrobe, who collapsed to the floor after the Judge gave him a few blows to the head ... Then he called back to me. “Come on in, Boss,” he yelled. “Meet Mr. Henry.”
I shut off the engine and staggered up the gravel path. I felt sick and woozy, and my legs were like rubber bands.
The Judge reached out to help me. I shook hands with Mr. Henry, who gave me a key and a form to fill out. “Bullshit,” said the Judge. “This man is my guest. He can have anything he wants. Just put it on my bill.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Henry. “Your bill. Yes. I have it right here.” He reached under his desk and came up with a nasty-looking bundle of adding-machine tapes and scrawled Cash/Payment memos ... “You got here just in time,” he said. “We were about to notify the Police.”
“What?” said the Judge. “Are you nuts?” I have a goddamn platinum American Express card! My credit is impeccable.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Henry. “We know that. We have total respect for you. Your signature is better than gold bullion.”
The Judge smiled and whacked the flat of his hand on the counter. “You bet it is!” he snapped. “So get out of my goddamn face! You must be crazy to fuck with Me like this! You fool! Are you ready to go to court?”
Mr. Henry sagged. “Please, Judge,” he said. “Don’t do this to me. All I need is your card. Just let me run an imprint. That’s all.” He moaned and stared more or less at the Judge, but I could see that his eyes were not focused . . . “They’re going to fire me,” he whispered. “They want to put me in jail.”
“Nonsense!” the Judge snapped. “I would never let that happen. You can always plead.” He reached out and gently gripped Mr. Henry’s wrist. “Believe me, Bro,” he hissed. “You have nothing to worry about. You are cool. They will never lock you up! They will Never take you away! Not out of my courtroom!”
“Thank you,” Mr. Henry replied. “But all I need is your card and your signature. That’s the problem: I forgot to run it when you checked in.”
“So what?” the Judge barked. “I’m good for it. How much do you need?”
“About twenty-two thousand dollars,” said Mr. Henry. “Probably twenty-three thousand dollars by now. You’ve had those suites for nineteen days with total room service.”
“What?” the Judge yelled. “You thieving bastards! I’ll have you crucified by American Express. You are finished in this business. You will ne
ver work again! Not anywhere in the world !” Then he whipped Mr. Henry across the front of his face so fast that I barely saw it. “Stop crying!” he said. “Get a grip on yourself! This is embarrassing!”
Then he slapped the man again. “Is that all you want?” he said. “Only a card? A stupid little card? A piece of plastic shit?”
Mr. Henry nodded. “Yes, Judge,” he whispered. “That’s all. Just a stupid little card.”
The Judge laughed and reached into his raincoat, as if to jerk out a gun or at least a huge wallet. “You want a card, whoreface? Is that it? Is that all you want? You filthy little scumbag! Here it is!”
Mr. Henry cringed and whimpered. Then he reached out to accept the Card, the thing that would set him free ... The Judge was still grasping around in the lining of his raincoat. “What the fuck?” he muttered. “This thing has too many pockets! I can feel it, but I can’t find the slit!”
Mr. Henry seemed to believe him, and so did I, for a minute ... Why not? He was a Judge with a platinum credit card—a very high roller. You don’t find many Judges, these days, who can handle a full case-load in the morning and run wild like a goat in the afternoon. That is a very hard dollar, and very few can handle it ... but the Judge was a Special Case.
Suddenly he screamed and fell sideways, ripping and clawing at the lining of his raincoat. “Oh, Jesus!” he wailed. “I’ve lost my wallet! It’s gone. I left it out there in the Limo, when we hit the fucking sheep.”
“So what?” I said. “We don’t need it for this. I have many plastic cards.”
He smiled and seemed to relax. “How many?” he said. “We might need more than one.”
I woke up in the bathtub—who knows how much later—to the sound of the hookers shrieking next door. The New York Times had fallen in and blackened the water. For many hours I tossed and turned like a crack baby in a cold hallway. I heard thumping rhythm & blues—serious rock & roll, and I knew that something wild was going on in the Judge’s suites. The smell of amyl nitrite came from under the door. It was no use. It was impossible to sleep through this orgy of ugliness. I was getting worried. I was already a marginally legal person, and now I was stuck with some crazy Judge who had my credit card and owed me $23,000.
I had some whiskey in the car, so I went out into the rain to get some ice. I had to get out. As I walked past the other rooms, I looked in people’s windows and feverishly tried to figure out how to get my credit card back. Then from behind me I heard the sound of a tow-truck winch. The Judge’s white Cadillac was being dragged to the ground. The Judge was whooping it up with the tow-truck driver, slapping him on the back.
“What the hell? It was only property damage,” he laughed.
“Hey, Judge,” I called out. “I never got my card back.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s in my room—come on.”
I was right behind him when he opened the door to his room, and I caught a glimpse of a naked woman dancing. As soon as the door opened, the woman lunged for the Judge’s throat. She pushed him back outside and slammed the door in his face.
“Forget that credit card—we’ll get some cash,” the Judge said. “Let’s go down to the Commercial Hotel. My friends are there, and they have plenty of money.”
We stopped for a six-pack on the way. The Judge went into a sleazy liquor store that turned out to be a front for kinky marital aids. I offered him money for the beer, but he grabbed my whole wallet.
Ten minutes later, the Judge came out with $400 worth of booze and a bagful of triple-X-rated movies. “My buddies will like this stuff,” he said. “And don’t worry about the money, I told you I’m good for it. These guys carry serious cash.”
The marquee above the front door of the Commercial Hotel said:
Welcome: Adult Film Presidents
Studebaker Society
Full Action Casino/Keno in Lounge
“Park right here in front,” said the Judge. “Don’t worry. I’m well known in this place.”
Me too, but I said nothing. I have been well known at the Commercial for many years, from the time when I was doing a lot of driving back and forth between Denver and San Francisco—usually for Business reasons, or for Art, and on this particular weekend I was there to meet quietly with a few old friends and business associates from the Board of Directors of the Adult Film Association of America. I had been, after all, the Night Manager of the famous O’Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco—the “Carnegie Hall of Sex in America.”
I was the Guest of Honor, in fact—but I saw no point in confiding these things to the Judge, a total stranger with no Personal Identification, no money, and a very aggressive lifestyle. We were on our way to the Commercial Hotel to borrow money from some of his friends in the Adult Film business.
What the hell? I thought. It’s only rock & roll. And he was, after all, a Judge of some kind ... Or maybe not. For all I knew he was a criminal pimp with no fingerprints, or a wealthy black shepherd from Spain. But it hardly mattered. He was good company (if you had a taste for the edge work—and I did, in those days. And so, I felt, did the Judge). He had a bent sense of fun, a quick mind, and no Fear of anything.
The front door of the Commercial looked strangely busy at this hour of night in a bad rainstorm, so I veered off and drove slowly around the block in low gear.
“There’s a side entrance on Queer Street,” I said to the Judge, as we hammered into a flood of black water. He seemed agitated, which worried me a bit.
“Calm down,” I said. “We don’t want to make a scene in this place. All we want is money.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know these people. They are friends. Money is nothing. They will be happy to see me.”
We entered the hotel through the Casino entrance. The Judge seemed calm and focused until we rounded the corner and came face to face with an eleven-foot polar bear standing on its hind legs, ready to pounce. The Judge turned to jelly at the sight of it. “I’ve had enough of this goddamn beast,” he shouted. “It doesn’t belong here. We should blow its head off.”
I took him by the arm. “Calm down, Judge,” I told him. “That’s White King. He’s been dead for thirty-three years.”
The Judge had no use for animals. He composed himself and we swung into the lobby, approaching the desk from behind. I hung back—it was getting late and the lobby was full of suspicious-looking stragglers from the Adult Film crowd. Private cowboy cops wearing six-shooters in open holsters were standing around. Our entrance did not go unnoticed.
The Judge looked competent, but there was something menacing in the way he swaggered up to the desk clerk and whacked the marble countertop with both hands. The lobby was suddenly filled with tension, and I quickly moved away as the Judge began yelling and pointing at the ceiling.
“Don’t give me that crap,” he barked. “These people are my friends. They’re expecting me. Just ring the goddamn room again.” The desk clerk muttered something about his explicit instructions not to . . .
Suddenly the Judge reached across the desk for the house phone. “What’s the number?” he snapped. “I’ll ring it myself.” The clerk moved quickly. He shoved the phone out of the Judge’s grasp and simultaneously drew his index finger across his throat. The Judge took one look at the muscle converging on him and changed his stance.
“I want to cash a check,” he said calmly.
“A check?” the clerk said. “Sure thing, buster. I’ll cash your goddamned check.” He seized the Judge by his collar and laughed. “Let’s get this Bozo out of here. And put him in jail.”
I was moving toward the door, and suddenly the Judge was right behind me. “Let’s go,” he said. We sprinted for the car, but then the Judge stopped in his tracks. He turned and raised his fist in the direction of the hotel. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “I’m the Judge. I’ll be back, and I’ll bust every one of you bastards. The next time you see me coming, you’d better run.”
We jumped into the car and zoomed away into the dar
kness. The Judge was acting manic. “Never mind those pimps,” he said. “I’ll have them all on a chain gang in forty-eight hours.” He laughed and slapped me on the back. “Don’t worry, Boss,” he said. “I know where we’re going.” He squinted into the rain and opened a bottle of Royal Salute. “Straight ahead,” he snapped. “Take a right at the next corner. We’ll go see Leach. He owes me twenty-four thousand dollars.”
I slowed down and reached for the whiskey. What the hell, I thought. Some days are weirder than others.
“Leach is my secret weapon,” the Judge said, “but I have to watch him. He could be violent. The cops are always after him. He lives in a balance of terror. But he has a genius for gambling. We win eight out of ten every week.” He nodded solemnly. “That is four out of five, Doc. That is Big. Very big. That is eighty percent of everything.” He shook his head sadly and reached for the whiskey. “It’s a horrible habit. But I can’t give it up. It’s like having a money machine.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “What are you bitching about?”
“I’m afraid, Doc. Leach is a monster, a criminal hermit who understands nothing in life except point spreads. He should be locked up and castrated.”
“So what?” I said. “Where does he live? We are desperate. We have no cash and no plastic. This freak is our only hope.”
The Judge slumped into himself, and neither one of us spoke for a minute ... “Well,” he said finally. “Why not? I can handle almost anything for twenty-four big ones in a brown bag. What the fuck? Let’s do it. If the bastard gets ugly, we’ll kill him.”
“Come on, Judge,” I said. “Get a grip on yourself. This is only a gambling debt.”
“Sure,” he replied. “That’s what they all say.”
Dead Meat in the Fast Lane: The Judge Runs Amok . . .
Death of a Poet, Blood Clots in the Revenue Stream . . .
The Man Who Loved Sex Dolls
We pulled into a seedy trailer court behind the stockyards. Leach met us at the door with red eyes and trembling hands, wearing a soiled cowhide bathrobe and carrying a half gallon of Wild Turkey.