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 sixteenths . . . 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 twenty 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 four-thirty 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 A
ll 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 one hundred 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’ve 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.
Within seconds he was shouting at me. “Help! You bastard! I need help!”
I rushed back inside, thinking he’d sliced off an ear by accident.
But no . . . he was reaching across the bathroom toward the white formica shelf where the radio sat. “I want that fuckin radio,” he snarled.
I grabbed it away from his hand. “You fool!” I said. “Get back in that tub! Get away from that goddamn radio!” I shoved it back from his hand. The volume was so far up that it was hard to know what was playing unless you knew Surrealistic Pillow almost note for note . . . which I did, at the time, so I knew that “White Rabbit” had finished; the peak had come and gone.
But my attorney, it seemed, had not made it. He wanted more. “Back the tape up!” he yelled. “I need it again!” His eyes were full of craziness now, unable to focus. He seemed on the verge of some awful psychic orgasm . . .
“Let it roll!” he screamed. “Just as high as the fucker can go! And when it comes to that fantastic note where the rabbit bites its own head off, I want you to throw that fuckin radio into the tub with me.”
I stared at him, keeping a firm grip on the radio. “Not me,” I said finally. “I’d be happy to ram a goddamn 440-volt cattle prod into that tub with you right now, but not this radio. It would blast you right through the wall—stone-dead in ten seconds.” I laughed. “Shit, they’d make me explain it—drag me down to some rotten coroner’s inquest and grill me about . . . yes . . . the exact details. I don’t need that.”
“Bullshit!” he screamed. “Just tell them I wanted to get Higher!”
I thought for a moment. “Okay,” I said finally. “You’re right. This is probably the only solution.” I picked up the tape/radio—which was still plugged in—and held it over the tub. “Just let me make sure I have it all lined up,” I said. “You want me to throw this thing into the tub when ‘White Rabbit’ peaks—is that it?”
He fell back in the water and smiled gratefully. “Fuck yes,” he said. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to go out and get one of the goddamn maids to do it.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Are you ready?” I hit the “play” button and “White Rabbit” started building again. Almost immediately he began to howl and moan . . . another fast run up that mountain, and thinking, this time, that he would finally get over the top. His eyes were gripped shut and only his head and both kneecaps poked up through the oily green water.
I let the song build while I sorted through the pile of fat ripe grapefruit next to the basin. The biggest one of the lot weighed almost two pounds. I got a good Vida Blue fastball grip on the fucker—and just as “White Rabbit” peaked I lashed it into the tub like a cannonball.
My attorney screamed crazily, thrashing around in the tub like a shark after meat, churning water all over the floor as he struggled to get hold of something.
I jerked the AC cord out of the tape/radio and moved out of the bathroom very quickly . . . the machine kept on playing, but now it was back on its own harmless battery power. I could hear the beat cooling down as I moved across the room to my kitbag and fetched up the Mace can . . . just as my attorney ripped the bathroom door open and started out. His eyes were still unfocused, but he was waving the blade out in front of him like a man who meant to cut something.
“Mace!” I shouted. “You want this?” I waved the Mace bomb in front of his watery eyes.
He stopped, “You bastard!” he hissed. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”
I laughed, still waving the bomb at him. “Why worry? You’ll like it. Shit, there’s nothing in the world like a Mace high—forty-five minutes on your knees with the dry heaves, gasping for breath. It’ll calm you right down.”
He stared in my general direction, trying to focus. “You cheap honky sonofabitch,” he muttered. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you?”
“Why not?” I said. “Hell, just a minute ago you were asking me to kill you! And now you want to kill me! What I should do, goddamnit, is call the police!”
He sagged. “The cops?”
I nodded. “Yeah, there’s no choice. I wouldn’t dare go to sleep with you wandering around in this condition—with a head full of acid and wanting to slice me up with that goddamn knife.”
He rolled his eyes for a moment, then tried to smile. “Who said anything about slicing you up?” he mumbled. “I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead—nothing serious.” He shrugged and reached for a cigarette on top of the TV set.
I menaced him again with the Mace can. “Get back in that tub,” I said. “Eat some reds and try to calm down. Smoke some grass, shoot some smack—shit, do whatever you have to do, but let me get some rest.”
He shrugged and smiled distractedly, as if everything I’d said made perfect sense. “Hell yes,” he said very earnestly. “You really need some sleep. You have to work tomorrow.” He shook his head sadly and turned back toward the bathroom. “God damn! What a bummer.” He waved me off. “Try to rest,” he said. “Don’t let me keep you up.”
I nodded, and watched him shuffle back into the bathroom—still holding the blade, but now he seemed unaware of it. The acid had shifted gears on him; the next phase woul
d probably be one of those hellishly intense introspection nightmares. Four hours or so of catatonic despair; but nothing physical, nothing dangerous. I watched the door close behind him, then I quietly slid a heavy, sharp-angled chair up in front of the bathroom knob and put the Mace can beside the alarm clock.
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.
8.
“Genius ‘Round the World Stands Hand in Hand, and One Shock 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 has never been able to accept the notion—often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation—that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them.
And neither have I, for that matter. But I once lived down the hill from Dr. —— on —— Road,* a former acid guru who later claimed to have made that long jump from chemical frenzy to preternatural consciousness. 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.