Henry - well, that did it; he freaked. I could see it in his eyes. He knows we’re onto him.”
“Does he understand we have magnums?” I said.
“No. But I told him we had a Vincent Black Shadow. That scared the piss out of him.”
“Good,” I said. “But what about our room? And the golf shoes? We’re right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And somebody’s giving booze to these goddamn things! It won’t be long before they tear us to shreds. Jesus, look at the floor! Have you ever seen so much blood? How many have theykilled already?” I pointed across the room to a group that seemed to be staring at us. “Holy shit, look at that bunch over there! They’ve spotted us!”
“That’s the press table,” he said. “That’s where you have to sign in for our credentials. Shit, let’s get it over with. You handle that, and I’ll get the room.”
4. Rude Music And The Sound Of Many Shotguns… Rude Vibes On A Saturday Evening In Vegas
We finally got into the suite around dusk, and my attorney was immediately on the phone to room service - ordering four club sandwiches, four shrimp cocktails, a quart of rum and nine fresh grapefruits. “Vitamin C,” he explained. “We’ll need all we can get.”
I agreed. By this time the drink was beginning to cut the acid and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The room service waiter had a vaguely reptilian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge pterodactyls lumbering around the corridors in pools of fresh blood.
The only problem now was a gigantic neon sign outside the window, blocking our view of the mountains - millions of colored balls running around a very complicated track, strange symbols filigree, giving off a loud hum.
“Look outside,” I said.
“Why?”
“There’s a big… machine in the sky,… some kind of electric snake… coming straight at us.”
“Shoot it,” said my attorney.
“Not yet,” I said. “I want to study its habits.” He
went over to the corner and began pulling on a chain todrapes. “Look,” he said, “you’ve got to stop this talk snakes and leeches and lizards and that stuff. It’s making me sick.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“ Worry? Jesus, I almost went crazy down there in the bar. They’ll never let us back in that place - not after your
scene at the press table.”
“What scene?”
“You bastard,” he said. “I left you alone for three minutes! You scared the shit out of those people! Waving that goddamn marlin spike around and yelling about reptiles. You’re lucky I came back in time. They were ready to call the cops. I said you were only drunk and that I was taking you up to your room for a cold shower. Hell,the only reason they gave us the press passes was to get you out of there.”
He was pacing around nervously. “Jesus, that scene straightened me right out! I must have some drugs. What have you done with the mescaline?”
“The kit - bag,” I said.
He opened the bag and ate two pellets while I got the tape machine going. “Maybe you should only eat one of these,” he said. “That acid’s still working on you.”
I agreed. “We have to go out to the track before dark,” I said. “But we have time to watch the TV news. Let’s carve up this grapefruit and make a fine rum punch, maybe toss in a blotter… where’s the car?”
“We gave it to somebody in the parking lot,” he said. “I have the ticket in my briefcase.”
“What’s the number? I’ll call down and have them wash the bastard, get rid of that dust and grime.”
“Good idea,” he said. But he couldn’t find the ticket.
“Well, we’re fucked,” I said. “We’ll never convince them to give us that car without proof.”
He thought for a moment, then picked up the phone and asked for the garage. “This is Doctor Gonzo in eight fifty,” he said. “I seem to have lost my parking stub for that red convertible I left with you, but I want the car washed and ready to go in thirty minutes. Can you send up a duplicate stub?… What… Oh?… Well, that’s fine.” He hung up and reached for the hash pipe. “No problem,” hesaid. “That man remembers my face.”
“That’s good,” I said. “They’ll probably have a big net for us when we show up.”shook his head. “As your attorney, I advise you not to about me.”
The TV news was about the Laos Invasion - a series of horrifying disasters: explosions and twisted wreckage, men fleeing in terror, Pentagon generals babbling insane lies.
“Turn that shit off!” screamed my attorney “Let’s get out of here!”
A wise move. Moments after we picked up the car my attorney went into a drug coma and ran a red light on Main Street before I could bring us under control. I propped him up in the passenger seat and took the wheel myself… feeling fine, extremely sharp. All around me in traffic I could see people talking and I wanted to hear what they were saying. All of them. But the shotgun mike was in the trunk and I decided to leave it there. Las Vegas is not the kind of town where you want to drive down Main Street aiming a black bazooka - looking instrument at people.Turn up the radio. Turn up the tape machine. Look into the sunset up ahead. Roll the windows down for a better taste of the cool desert wind. Ah yes. This is what it’s all about. Total control now. Tooling along the main drag on a Saturday night in Las Vegas, two good old boys in a fireapple - red convertible… stoned, ripped, twisted… Good People.
Great God! What is this terrible music?
“The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant Galley”:
“… as we go marching on
When I reach my final campground, in that land
beyond the sun,
and the Great Commander asks me… ”
»(What did he ask you, Rusty?)
“Did you fight or did you run?”
»(and what did you tell him, Rusty?)
“… We responded to their rifle fire with everything we had… ”
No! I can’t be hearing this! It must be the drug. I glanced over at my attorney, but he was staring up at the sky, and I could see that his brain had gone off to that campground
beyond the sun. Thank christ he can’t hear this music, I thought. It would drive him into a racist frenzy.
Mercifully, the song ended. But my mood was already shattered… and now the fiendish cactus juice took over, plunging me into a sub - human funk as we suddenly came up on the turnoff to the Mint Gun Club. “One mile,” the sign said. But even a mile away I could hear the crackling scream of two - stroke bike engines winding out… and then, coming closer, I heard another sound.
Shotguns! No mistaking that fiat hollow boom.
I stopped the car. What the hell is going on down there?
I rolled up all the windows and eased down the gravel road, hunched low on the wheel… until I saw about a dozen figures pointing shotguns into the air, firing at regular intervals.
Standing on a slab of concrete out here in the mesquite - desert, this scraggly little oasis in a wasteland north of Vegas.. They were clustered, with their shotguns, about fifty yards away from a one - story concrete/block - house, half - shaded by ten or twelve trees and surrounded by cop - cars, bike - trailers and motorcycles.
Of course. The Mint Gun Club! These lunatics weren’t letting anything interfere with their target practice. Here were about a hundred bikers, mechanics and assorted motorsport types milling around in the pit area, signing in for tomorrow’s race, idly sipping beers and appraising each other’s machinery - and right in the middle of all this, oblivious to everything but the clay pigeons flipping out of the traps every five seconds or so, the shotgun people never missed a beat.
