“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 ormovement 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 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
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 awax 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,
“ ‘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 I help—lying there in the tub with a head full of acidand 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
