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, —— was trying to humm me off. 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.
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 feet 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 toiling here in its 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 the doctor’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.”
The manager 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 one of the musicians 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. . . .
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
* Names deleted at insistence of publisher’s lawyer.
9.
No Sympathy for the Devil . . . Newsmen Tortured? . . . Flight into Madness
The decision to flee came suddenly. Or maybe not. Maybe I’d planned it all along—subconsciously waiting for the right moment. The bill was a factor, I think. Because I had no money to pay it. And no more of these devilish credit-card/reimbursement deals. Not after dealing with Sidney Zion. They seized my American Express card after that one, and now the bastards are suing me—along with the Diner’s Club and the IRS. . . .
And besides, the magazine is legally responsible. My attorney saw to that. We signed nothing. Except those room service tabs. We never knew the total, but—just before we left—my attorney figured we were running somewhere between $29 and $36 per hour, for forty-eight consecutive hours.
“Incredible,” I said. “How could it happen?”
But by the time I asked this question, there was nobody around to answer. My attorney was gone.
He must have sensed trouble. On Monday evening he ordered up a set of fine cowhide luggage from room service, then told me he had reservations on the next plane for L.A. We would have to hurry, he said, and on the way to the airport he borrowed $25 for the plane ticket.
I saw him off, then I went back to the airport souvenir counter and spent all the rest of my cash on garbage—complete shit, souvenirs of Las Vegas, plastic fake-Zippo-lighters with a built-in roulette wheel for $6.95, JFK half-dollar money clips for $5 each, tin apes that shook dice for $7.50 . . . I loaded up on this crap, then carried it out to the Great Red Shark and dumped it all in the back seat . . . and then I stepped into the driver’s seat in a very dignified way (the white top was rolled back, as always) and I sat there and turned the radio on and began thinking.
How would Horatio Alger handle this situation?
One toke over the line, sweet Jesus . . . one toke over the line.
Panic. It crept up my spine like the first rising vibes of an acid frenzy. All these horrible realities began to dawn on me: Here I was all alone in Las Vegas with this goddamn incredibly expensive car, completely twisted on drugs, no attorney, n
o cash, no story for the magazine—and on top of everything else I had a gigantic goddamn hotel bill to deal with. We had ordered everything into that room that human hands could carry—including about six hundred bars of translucent Neutrogena soap.
The whole car was full of it—all over the floors, the seats, the glove compartment. My attorney had worked out some kind of arrangement with the mestizo maids on our floor to have this soap delivered to us—six hundred bars of this weird, transparent shit—and now it was all mine.
Along with this plastic briefcase that I suddenly noticed right beside me on the front seat. I lifted the fucker and knew immediately what was inside. No Samoan attorney in his right mind is going to stomp through the metal-detector gates of a commercial airline with a fat black .357 Magnum on his person. . . .
So he had left it with me, for delivery—if I made it back to L.A. Otherwise . . . well, I could almost hear myself talking to the California Highway Patrol:
What? This weapon? This loaded, unregistered, concealed and maybe hot .357 Magnum? What am I doing with it? Well, you see, officer, I pulled off the road near Mescal Springs—on the advice of my attorney, who subsequently disappeared—and all of a sudden while I was just sort of walking around that deserted waterhole by myself for no reason at all when this little fella with a beard came up to me, out of nowhere, and he had this horrible linoleum knife in one hand and this huge black pistol in the other hand . . . and he offered to carve a big X on my forehead, in memory of Lieutenant Calley . . . but when I told him I was a doctor of journalism his whole attitude changed. Yes, you probably won’t believe this, officer, but he suddenly hurled that knife into the brackish mescal waters near our feet, and then he gave me this revolver. Right, he just shoved it into my hands, butt-first, and then he ran off into the darkness.
So that’s why I have this weapon, officer. Can you believe that?
No.
But I wasn’t about to throw the bastard away, either. A good .357 is a hard thing to get, these days.
So I figured, well, just get this bugger back to Malibu, and it’s mine. My risk—my gun: it made perfect sense. And if that Samoan pig wanted to argue, if he wanted to come yelling around the house, give him a taste of the bugger about midway up the femur. Indeed. 158 grains of half-jacketed lead/alloy, traveling 1500 feet per second, equals about forty pounds of Samoan hamburger, mixed up with bone splinters. Why not?
Madness, madness . . . and meanwhile all alone with the Great Red Shark in the parking lot of the Las Vegas airport. To hell with this panic. Get a grip. Maintain. For the next twenty-four hours this matter of personal control will be critical. Here I am sitting out here alone on this fucking desert, in this nest of armed loonies, with a very dangerous carload of hazards, horrors and liabilities that I must get back to L.A. Because if they nail me out here, I’m doomed. Completely fucked. No question about that. No future for a doctor of journalism editing the state pen weekly. Better to get the hell out of this atavistic state at high speed. Right. But, first—back to the Mint Hotel and cash a $50 check, then up to the room and call down for two club sandwiches, two quarts of milk, a pot of coffee and a fifth of Bacardi Anejo.
Rum will be absolutely necessary to get through this night—to polish these notes, this shameful diary . . . keep the tape machine screaming all night long at top volume: “Allow me to introduce myself . . . I’m a man of wealth and taste.”
Sympathy?
Not for me. No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas. This place is like the Army: the shark ethic prevails—eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
It is a weird feeling to sit in a Las Vegas hotel at four in the morning—hunkered down with a notebook and a tape recorder in a $75-a-day suite and a fantastic room service bill, run up in forty-eight hours of total madness—knowing that just as soon as dawn comes up you are going to flee without paying a fucking penny . . . go stomping out through the lobby and call your red convertible down from the garage and stand there waiting for it with a suitcase full of marijuana and illegal weapons . . . trying to look casual, scanning the first morning edition of the Las Vegas Sun.
This was the final step. I had taken all the grapefruit and other luggage out to the car a few hours earlier.
Now it was only a matter of slipping the noose: Yes, extremely casual behavior, wild eyes hidden behind these Saigon-mirror sun glasses . . . waiting for the Shark to roll up. Where is it? I gave that evil pimp of a carboy $5, a prime investment right now.
Stay calm, keep reading the paper. The lead story was a screaming blue headline across the top of the page:
TRIO RE-ARRESTED
IN BEAUTY’S DEATH
An overdose of heroin was listed as the official cause of death for pretty Diane Hamby, 19, whose body was found stuffed in a refrigerator last week, according to the Clark County Coroner’s office. Investigators of the sheriff’s homicide team who went to arrest the suspects said that one, a 24-year-old woman, attempted to fling herself through the glass doors of her trailer before being stopped by deputies. Officers said she was apparently hysterical and shouted, ‘You’ll never take me alive.’ But officers handcuffed the woman and she apparently was not injured. . . .
GI DRUG DEATHS CLAIMED
WASHINGTON (AP)—A House Subcommittee report says illegal drugs killed 160 American GI’s last year—40 of them in Vietnam . . . Drugs were suspected, it said, in another 56 military deaths in Asia and the Pacific Command . . . It said the heroin problem in Vietnam is increasing in seriousness, primarily because of processing laboratories in Laos, Thailand and Hong Kong. “Drug suppression in Vietnam is almost completely ineffective,” the report said, “partially because of an ineffective local police force and partially because some presently unknown corrupt officials in public office are involved in the drug traffic.”
To the left of that grim notice was a four-column center-page photo of Washington, D.C., cops fighting with “young anti-war demonstrators who staged a sit-in and blocked the entrance to Selective Service Headquarters.”
And next to the photo was a large black headline: TORTURE TALES TOLD IN WAR HEARINGS.
WASHINGTON—Volunteer witnesses told an informal congressional panel yesterday that while serving as military interrogators they routinely used electrical telephone hookups and helicopter drops to torture and kill Vietnamese prisoners. One Army intelligence specialist said the pistol slaying of his Chinese interpreter was defended by a superior who said, “She was just a slope, anyway,” meaning she was an Asiatic. . . .
Right underneath that story was a headline saying: FIVE WOUNDED NEAR NYC TENEMENT . . . by an unidentified gunman who fired from the roof of a building, for no apparent reason. This item appeared just above a headline that said: PHARMACY OWNER ARRESTED IN PROBE . . . “a result,” the article explained, “of a preliminary investigation (of a Las Vegas pharmacy) showing a shortage of over 100,000 pills considered dangerous drugs. . . .”
Reading the front page made me feel a lot better. Against that heinous background, my crimes were pale and meaningless. I was a relatively respectable citizen—a multiple felon, perhaps, but certainly not dangerous. And when the Great Scorer came to write against my name, that would surely make a difference.
Or would it? I turned to the sports page and saw a small item about Muhammad Ali; his case was before the Supreme Court, the final appeal. He’d been sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to kill “slopes.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Congs,” he said.
Five years.
10.
Western Union Intervenes: A Warning from Mr. Heem . . . New Assignment from the Sports Desk and a Savage Invitation from the Police
Suddenly I felt guilty again. The Shark! Where was it? I tossed the paper aside and began to pace. Losing control. I felt my whole act slipping . . . and then I saw the car, swooping down a ramp in the next-d
oor garage.
Deliverance! I grasped my leather satchel and moved forward to meet my wheels.
“MISTER DUKE!”
The voice came from over my shoulder.
“Mister Duke! We’ve been looking for you!”
I almost collapsed on the curb. Every cell in my brain and body sagged. No! I thought. I must be hallucinating. There’s nobody back there, nobody calling . . . it’s a paranoid delusion, amphetamine psychosis . . . just keep walking towards the car, always smiling. . . .
“MISTER DUKE! Wait!”
Well . . . why not? Many fine books have been written in prison. And it’s not like I’ll be a total stranger up there in Carson City. The warden will recognize me; and the Con Boss—I once interviewed them for The New York Times. Along with a lot of other cons, guards, cops and assorted hustlers who got ugly, by mail, when the article never appeared.
Why not? They asked. They wanted their stories told. And it was hard to explain; in those circles, that everything they told me went into the wastebasket or at least the dead-end file because the lead paragraphs I wrote for that article didn’t satisfy some editor three thousand miles away—some nervous drone behind a grey formica desk in the bowels of a journalistic bureaucracy that no con in Nevada will ever understand—and that the article finally died on the vine, as it were, because I refused to rewrite the lead. For reasons of my own . . .
None of which would make much sense in The Yard. But what the hell? Why worry about details? I turned to face my accuser, a small young clerk with a big smile on his face and a yellow envelope in his hand. “I’ve been calling your room,” he said. “Then I saw you standing outside.”