One of the crucial moments of the Sixties came on that day when the Beatles cast their lot with the Maharishi. It was like Dylan going to the Vatican to kiss the Pope’s ring.
First “gurus.” Then, when that didn’t work, back to Jesus. And now, following Manson’s primitive/instinct lead, a whole new wave of clan-type commune Gods like Mel Lyman, ruler Avatar, and What’s His Name who runs “Spirit and Flesh.”
Barger never quite got the hang of it, but he’ll never iw how close he was to a king-hell breakthrough. The An- blew it in 1965, at the Oakland-Berkeley line, when they acted on Barger’s hardhat, con-boss instincts and attacked the front ranks of an anti-war march. This proved to be an historic schism in the then Rising Tide of the Youth Movement of the Sixties. It was the first open break between the Greasers and the Longhairs, and the importance of that break can be read in the history of SDS, which eventually destroyed in the doomed effort to reconcile the interests of the working class biker/dropout types and the upper/mid Berkeley/student activists.
Nobody involved in that scene, at the time, could possibly have foreseen the Implications of the Ginsberg/Kesey failure to pursuade the Hell’s Angels to join forces with the radical Left from Berkeley. The final split came at Altamont, four years later, but by that time it had long been clear to everybody except a handful of rock industry dopers and the national press. The orgy of violence at Altamont merey dramatized the problem. The realities were already fixed; the illness was understood to be terminal, and the energies of The Movement were long since aggressively dissipated by the rush to self-preservation.
Ah; this terrible gibberish. Grim memories and bad flash backs, looming up through the time/fog of Stanyan Street… no solace for refugees, no point in looking back. The question, as always, is now…?
I was slumped on my bed in the Flamingo, feeling dangerously out of phase with my surroundings. Something ugly was about to happen. I was sure of it. The room looked like the site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey and gorillas. The ten-foot mirror was shattered, but still hanging together - bad evidence of that afternoon when my attorney ran amok with the coconut hammer, smashing mirror and all the lightbulbs.
We’d replaced the lights with a package of red and blue Christmas tree lights from Safeway, but there was no hope of saving the mirror. My attorney’s bed looked like a burned- rat’s nest. Fire had consumed the top half, and the rest a mass of wire and charred stuffing. Luckily, the maids had’nt come near the room since that awful confrontation on Tuesday.
I been asleep when the maid came in that morning. We’d forgotten to hang out the “Do Not Disturb” sign… so she wandered into the room and startled my attorney, who kneeling, stark naked, in the closet, vomiting into his shoes… thinking he was actually in the bathroom, and then suddenly looking up to see a woman with a face like Mickey Rooney staring down at him, unable to speak, trembling with fear and confusion.
She was holding that mop like an axe-handle,” he said “So I came out of the closet in a kind of running crouch, vomiting, and hit her right at the knees… it was pure instinct; I thought she was ready to kill me… and then, she screamed, that’s when I put the icebag on her mouth.”
I remembered that scream… one of the most terrifiying sounds I’d ever heard. I woke up and saw my attorney grappling desperately on the floor right next to my bed with what appeared to be an old woman. The room was full of electric noise. The TV set, hissing at top volume on a nonexistent channel. I could barely hear the woman’s cries as she struggled to get the icebag away from her face… but she was no match for my attorney’s naked bulk, and he finally managed to pin her in a corner behind the TV set, clamping his hands on her throat while she babbled I… “Please… please… I’m only the maid, I did’nt mean anything…”
I was out of bed in a flash, grabbing my wallet and waving the gold Policemen’s Benevolent Assn. press badge in front of her face. “You’re under arrest!” I shouted.
“No!” she groaned. “I just wanted to clean up!”
My attorney got to his feet, breathing heavily. “She must have used a pass key,” he said. “I was polishing my shoes in the closet when I noticed her sneaking in-so I took her.” He was trembling, drooling vomit off his chin, and I could see at a glance that he understood the gravity of this situation. Our behavior, this time, had gone far past the boundaries of private kinkiness. Here we were, both naked, staring down at a terrified old woman - a hotel employee - stretched out on the floor of our suite in a paroxysm of fear and hysteria. She would have to be dealt with.
“What made you do it?” I asked her. “Who paid you off?”
“Nobody!” she wailed. “I’m the maid!”
“You’re lying!” shouted my attorney. “You were after the evidence! Who put youup to this - the manager?”
“I work for the hotel,” she said. “All I do is clean up the rooms.”
I turned to my attorney. “This means they know what we have,” I said. “So they sent this poor old woman up here to steal it.”
“No!” she yelled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Bullshit!” said my attorney. “You’re just as much a part of it as they are.”
“Part of what?”
“The dope ring,” I said. “You must know what’s going on in this hotel. Why do you think we’re here?”
She stared at us, trying to speak but only blubbering. “I know you’re cops,” she said finally. “But I thought you were just here for that convention. I swear! All I wanted to do was clean up your room. I don’t know anything about dope!”
My attorsey laughed. “Come on, baby. Don’t try to tell us you never heard of the Grange Gorman.”
“No!” she yelled. “No! I swear to Jesus I never heard of that stuff!”
My attorney seemed to think for a moment, then he leaned to help the old lady to her feet. “Maybe she’s telling the he said to me. “Maybe she’s not part of it.”
“No! I swear I’m not!” she howled.
“Well…” I said. “In that case, maybe we won’t have to put her away… maybe she can
help.”
“Yes!” she said eagerly. “I’ll help you all you need! I hate dope!”
“So do we, lady,” I said.
“I think we should put her on the payroll,” said my attorney. “Have her checked out,
then line her up for a Big One each month, depending on what she comes up with.”
The old woman’s face had changed markedly. She no longer seemed disturbed to find
herself chatting with two naked men, one of whom had tried to strangle her just a few
moments earlier.
“Do you think you could handle it?” I asked her.
“What?”
“One phone call every day,” said my attorney. “Just tell us what you’ve seen.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry if it doesn’t add up. That’s our problem.”
She grinned. “You’d pay me for that?”
“You’re damn right,” I said. “But the first time you say anything about this, to anybody - you’ll go straight to prison for the rest of your life.”
She nodded. “I’ll help any way that I can,” she said. “But who should I call?”
“Don’t worry,” said my attorney. “What’s your name?”
“Alice.” she said. “Just ring Linen Service and ask for Alice.”
“You’ll be contacted,” I said. “It’ll take about a week. But keep your eyes open and try to act normal. Can you do that?”
“Oh, yes sir!” she said. “Will I see you gentlemen again?” She grinned sheepishly. “After this, I mean…
“No,” said my attorney. “They sent us down from Carson City. You’ll be contacted by Inspector Rock. Arthur Rock. He’ll be posing as a politician, but you won’t have any trouble recognizing him.”
She seemed to be shuffling nervously.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Is there something you haven’t told us?”
“Oh no!” she said quickly. “I was just wondering - who’s going to pay me?”
“Inspector Rock will take care of that,” I said. “It’ll all be in cash: a thousand dollars on the ninth of every month.”
“Oh Lord!” she exclaimed. “I’d do just about anything for that!”
