Well, why not? I thought. The shooting provided a certain rhythm - sort of a steady bass - line - to the high - pitched chaos of the bike scene. I parked the car and wandered into the crowd, leaving my attorney in his coma.
I bought a beer and watched the bikes checking in. Many
Husquavarnas, high - tuned Swedish fireballs… also Yamahas, Kawasakis, a few 500 Triumphs, Maicos, there a CZ, a Pursang… all very fast, super - light dfrt bikes. No Hogs in this league, not even a Sportster… that would be like entering our Great Red Shark in the dune buggy competition.
Maybe I should do that, I thought. Sign my attorney up as the driver, then send him out to the starting line with a head full of ether and acid. How would they handle it?Nobody would dare go out on the track with a person that crazy. He would roll on the first turn, and take out four or five dune buggies - a Kamikaze trip.
“What’s the entry fee?” I asked the desk - man.
“Two fifty,” he said.
“What if I told you I had a Vincent Black Shadow?”He stared up at me, saying nothing, not friendly. I noticed he was wearing a.38 revolver on his belt. “Forget it,” I said. “My driver’s sick, anyway.”
His eyes narrowed. “Your driver ain’t the only one sick around here, buddy.”
“He has a bone in his throat,” I said.
“What?”
The man was getting ugly, but suddenly his eyes switched away. He was staring at something else
My attorney no longer wearing his Danish sunglasses, no longer wearing his Acapulco shirt… a very crazy looking,half - naked and breathing heavily.
“What’s the trouble here?” he croaked. “This man is my client - Are you prepared to go to court?” grabbed his shoulder and gently spun him around.
“Never “ I said. “It’s the Black Shadow - they won’t accept it.”
“Wait a minute!” he shouted. “What do you mean, they won’t accept it? Have you made a deal with these pigs?”
“Certainly not,” I said, pushing him along toward the gate. “But you notice they’re all armed. We’re the only people here without guns. Can’t you hear that shooting over there?”
He paused, listened for an instant, then suddenly began,running toward the car. “You cocksuckers!” he screamed over his shoulder. “We’ll be back!”
By the time we got the shark back on the highway he was able to talk. “Jesus christ! How did we get mixed up with that gang of psychotic bigots? Let’s get the fuck out of this town. Those scumbags were trying to kill us!
5.Covering the Story… A Glimpse of the Press in Action… Ugliness Failure
The racers were ready at dawn. Fine sunrise over the desert. Very tense. But the race didn’t start until nine, so we had to kill about three long hours in the casino next to the pits, and that’s where the trouble started.
The bar opened at seven. There was also a “koffee donut canteen” in the bunker, but those of us who had been up all night in places like the Circus - Circus were in no mood for coffee donuts. We wanted strong drink. Our tempers were ugly and there were at least two hundred of us, so they opened the bar early. By eight - thirty there were big crowds around the crap - tables. The place was full of noise and drunken shouting.
A boney, middle - aged hoodlum wearing a Harley - Davidson T - shirt boomed up to the bar and yelled: “God damn! What day is this - Saturday?”
“More like Sunday,” somebody replied.
“Hah! That’s a bitch, ain’t it?” the H - D boomer shouted to nobody in particular. “Last night I was out home in Long and somebody said they were runnin’ the Mint 400 so I says to my old lady, ‘Man, I’m goin’.” He laughed.
“So she gives me a lot of crap about it, you know… so I started slappin’ her around and the next thing I knew two guys I never even seen before got me out on the sidewalk workin’ me over. Jesus! They beat me stupid.”
He laughed again, talking into the crowd and not seeming listened.
“Hell yes!” he continued. “Then one of em says, ‘Where you going?’ And I says, ‘Las Vegas, to the Mint 400.’ So they gave me ten bucks and drove me down to the bus station…“ He paused. “At least I think it was them… ”
“Well, anyway, here I am. And I tell you that was one hell of a long night, man! Seven hours on that goddamn bus! But when I woke up it was dawn and here I was in downtown Vegas and for a minute I didn’t know what the hell I was doin’ here. All I could think was, ‘0 Jesus, here we go again: Who’s divorced me this time?’ ”
He accepted a cigarette from somebody in the crowd, still grinning as he lit up. “But then I remembered, by God! I was here for the Mint 400… and, man, that’s all I needed to know. I tell you it’s wonderful to be here, man. I don’t give a damn who wins or loses. It’s just wonderful to be here with you people.
Nobody argued with him. We all understood. In some circles, the “Mint 400” is a far, far better thing than the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and the Lower Oakland Roller Derby Finals all rolled into one. This race attracts a very special breed, and our man in the Harley T - shirt was clearly one of them.
The correspondent from Life nodded sympathetically and screamed at the bartender: “Senzaman wazzyneeds!”
“Fast up with it,” I croaked. “Why not five?” I smacked the bar with my open, bleeding palm. “Hell yes! Bring us ten!”
“I’ll back it!” The Life man screamed. He was losing his grip on the bar, sinking slowly to his knees, but still speaking with definite authority: “This is a magic moment in sport! It may never come again!” Then his voice seemed to break. “I once did the Triple Crown,” he muttered. “But it was nothing like this.”
The frog - eyed woman clawed feverishly at his belt. “Stand up!” she pleaded. “ Please stand up! You’d be a very handsome man if you’d just stand up!”
He laughed distractedly. “Listen, madam,” he snapped. “I’m damn near intolerably handsome down here where I am. You’d go crazy if I stood up!”
The woman kept pulling at him. She’d been mooning at his elbows for two hours, and now she was making her move. The man from Life wanted no part of it; he slumped deeper into his crouch.
I turned away. It was too horrible. We were, after all, the absolute cream of the national sporting press. And we were gathered here in Las Vegas for a very special assignment: to cover the Fourth Annual “Mint 400”… and when it comes to things like this, you don’t fool around.
But now - even before the spectacle got under way - there were signs that we might be losing control of the situation. Here we were on this fine Nevada morning, this cool bright dawn on the desert, hunkered down at some greasy bar in a concrete blockhouse gambling casino called the “Mint Gun Club” about ten miles out of Vegas… and with the race about to start, we were dangerously disorganized.
Outside, the lunatics were playing with their motorcycles, taping the headlights, topping off oil in the forks, last minute bolt - tightening (carburetor screws, manifold nuts, etc.) and the first ten bikes blasted off on the stroke of nine. It was extremely exciting and we all went outside to watch. The flag went down and these ten poor buggers popped their clutches and zoomed into the first turn, all together, then somebody grabbed the lead (a 405 Husquavarna, as I recall), and a cheer went up as the rider screwed it on and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
“Well, that’s that,” somebody said. “They’ll be back around in an hour or so. Let’s go back to the bar.”
But not yet. No. There were something like a hundred and ninety more bikes waiting to start. They went off ten at a time, every two minutes. At first it was possible to watch them out to a distance of some two hundred yards from the starting line. But this visibility didn’t last long. The third brace of ten disappeared into the dust about a hundred yards from where we stood… and by the time they’d sent off the first hundred (with still another hundred to go), our visibility was down to something like fifty feet. We could see as far as the hay - bales at the end of the pits…
Beyond that point the incredible dustcloud that would hang over this part of the desert for the next two days
