Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (15 page)

I
like
the bastard. So why not get on to more important things? (I’m not seriously opposed to any cutting or editing, but don’t expect me to get wired on the idea of adding big sections that I didn’t feel like including in the first place.)

OK for now. I’m in a massively rotten mood, trying to stay awake until plane time—seeing double, feeling bugs under my kneecaps, etc.

Under the circumstances I don’t feel entirely ethical about billing you for
all
my SF trip expenses—so maybe I’ll just seize your McIntosh amp & see if that balances—if not, I’ll send a bill, & check for the amp. But don’t cash it until we talk on the phone & I confirm a deposit of some kind. This last month has pretty well burned me out.

Anyway, I’m at the end of my wire—a bit on the wrong side of the edge, as it were. But I think all the Washington/book contract shit is settled—which is a pretty big step.

Fuck this—maybe I’ll send another chunk(s) of Vegas II when I get back home—but let’s not worry or count on it. We have enough, and 90% of it is absolutely right—on its own terms.

And that, after all, is the whole point.

Ciao,

H

November 25, 1971

About twenty miles east of Baker I stopped to check the drug bag. The sun was hot and I felt like killing something. Anything. Even a big lizard. Drill the fucker. I got my attorney’s .357 Magnum out of the trunk and spun the cylinder. It was loaded all the way around: long, nasty little slugs—150 grains with a fine flat trajectory and painted asiac gold on the tips. I blew the horn a few times, hoping to call an iguana. Get the buggers moving. They were out there, I knew, in that goddamn sea of cactus—hunkered down, barely breathing, and every one of the stinking little bastards was loaded with deadly poison.

Three fast explosions knocked me off balance. Three deafening, double-action blasts from the .357 in my right hand. Jesus! Firing at nothing, for no reason at all. Bad craziness. I tossed the gun into the front seat of the Shark and stared nervously at the highway. No cars either way; the road was empty for two or three miles in both directions.

Fine luck. It would not
do
to be found in the desert under these circumstances: firing wildly into the cactus from a car full of drugs. And especially not now, on the lam from the Highway Patrol.

Awkward questions would arise: “Well now, Mister . . .ah . . . Duke; you understand, of course, that it
is
illegal to discharge a firearm of any kind while standing on a federal highway?”

“What? Even in self-defense? This goddamn gun has a
hair trigger
, officer. The truth is I only meant to fire
once
—just to scare the little bastards.”

A heavy stare, then speaking very slowly: “Are you saying, Mister Duke . . . that you were
attacked
out here?”

“Well . . .no . . . not literally attacked, officer, but seriously
menaced
. I stopped to piss, and the minute I stepped out of the car these filthy little bags of poison were all around me. They moved like
greased lightning
!”

Would this story hold up?

No. They would place me under arrest, then routinely search the car—and when that happened all kinds of savage hell would break loose. They would never believe all these drugs were necessary to my work; that in truth I was a professional journalist on my way to Las Vegas to cover the National District Attorneys Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

“Just samples, officer. I got this stuff off a road man for the Neo-American Church back in Barstow. He started acting funny, so I worked him over.”

Would they buy this?

No. They would lock me in some hell-hole of a jail and beat me on the kidneys with big branches—causing me to piss blood for years to come . . .

Luckily, nobody bothered me while I ran a quick inventory on the kit-bag. The stash was a hopeless mess, all churned together and half crushed. Some of the mescaline pellets had disintegrated into a reddish-brown powder, but I counted about thirty-five or forty still intact. My attorney had eaten all the reds, but there was quite a bit of speed left . . . no more grass, the coke bottle was empty, one acid blotter, a nice brown lump of opium hash and six loose amyls . . . Not enough for anything serious, but a careful rationing of the mescaline would probably get us through the four-day National District Attorneys Drug Conference.

On the outskirts of Vegas I stopped at a neighborhood pharmacy and bought two quarts of tequila, two fifths of Chivas Regal and a pint of ether. I was tempted to ask for some amyls. My angina pectoris was starting to act up. But the druggist had the eyes of a mean Baptist hysteric. I told him I needed the ether to get the tape off my legs, but by that time he’d already rung the stuff up and bagged it. He didn’t give a fuck about ether.

I wondered what he would say if I asked him for $22 worth of Romilar and a tank of nitrous oxide. Probably he would have sold it to me. Why not? Free enterprise . . . Give the public what it needs—especially this bad-sweaty, nervous-talkin’ fella with tape all over his legs and this terrible cough, along with angina pectoris and these godawful Aneuristic flashes every time he gets in the sun.
I mean this fella was in bad shape, officer. How the hell was I to know he’d walk straight out to his car and start abusing those drugs?

How indeed? I lingered a moment at the magazine rack, then got a grip on myself and hurried outside to the car. The idea of going completely crazy on laughing gas in the middle of a DAs’ drug conference had a definite warped appeal. But not on the
first day
, I thought. Save that for later. No point getting busted and committed before the conference even starts.

Another day, another convertible . . . & another hotel full of cops

The first order of business was to get rid of the Red Shark. It was too obvious. Too many people might recognize it, especially the Vegas police; although as far as
they
knew, the thing was already back home in L.A. It was last seen running full bore across Death Valley on Interstate 15. Stopped and warned in Baker by the CHP . . . then suddenly disappeared . . .

The last place they would look for it, I felt, was in a rental-car lot at the airport. I had to go out there anyway, to meet my attorney. He would be arriving from L.A. in the late afternoon.

I drove very quietly on the freeway, gripping my normal instinct for great speed and sudden lane changes—trying to remain inconspicuous—and when I got there I parked the Shark between two old Air Force buses in a “utility lot” about half a mile from the terminal. Very tall buses. Make it hard as possible for the fuckers. A little walking never hurt anybody.

By the time I got to the terminal I was pouring sweat. But nothing abnormal. I tend to sweat heavily in warm climates. My clothes are soaking wet from dawn to dusk. This worried me at first, but when I went to
a doctor and described my normal daily intake of booze, drugs, and poison, he told me to come back when the sweating
stopped
. That would be the danger point, he said—a sign that my body’s desperately overworked flushing mechanism had broken down completely. “I have great faith in the natural processes,” he said. “But in
your
case . . . well . . . I find no precedent. We’ll just have to wait and see, then work with what’s left.”

I spent about two hours in the bar drinking Bloody Marys for the V-8 nutritional content and watching the flights from L.A. I’d eaten nothing but grapefruit for about twenty hours and my head was adrift from its moorings.

You better watch yourself, I thought. There
are
limits to what the human body can endure. You don’t want to break down and start bleeding from the ears right here in the terminal. Not in
this
town. In Las Vegas they
kill
the weak and deranged.

I realized this, and kept quiet even when I felt symptoms of a terminal blood sweat coming on. But this passed. I saw the cocktail waitress getting nervous, so I forced myself to get up and walk stiffly out of the bar. No sign of my attorney.

Down to the VIP car-rental booth, where I traded the Red Shark in for a White Cadillac Convertible. “This goddamn Chevy has caused me a lot of trouble,” I told them. “I get the feeling that people are putting me down—especially in gas stations, when I have to get out & open the hood
manually
.”

“Well . . .of
course
,” said the man behind the desk. “What you need, I think, is one of our Mercedes 600 Towne-Cruiser Specials, with air-conditioning. You can even carry your own fuel, if you want; we make that available . . .”

“Do I look like a goddamn Nazi?” I said. “I’ll have a natural
American
car, or nothing at all!”

They called up the white Coupe de Ville at once. Everything was automatic. I could sit in the red-leather driver’s seat and make every inch of the car
jump
, by touching the proper buttons. It was a wonderful machine: ten grand worth of gimmicks and high-priced Special Effects. The rear windows leaped up with a touch, like frogs in a dynamite pond. The white canvas top ran up and down like a roller coaster. The dashboard was full of esoteric lights & dials & meters that I would never
understand—but there was no doubt in my mind that I was into a
superior machine
.

The Caddy wouldn’t get off the line quite as fast as the Red Shark, but once it got rolling—around eighty—it was pure smooth hell . . . all that elegant, upholstered weight lashing across the desert was like rolling through midnight on the old California Zephyr.

I drove straight to the hotel after renting the car. There was still no sign of my attorney, so I decided to check in on my own—if only to get off the street and avoid a public breakdown. I left the Whale in a VIP parking slot and shambled self-consciously into the lobby with one small leather bag—a handcrafted, custom-built satchel that had just been made for me by a leathersmith friend in Boulder.

Our room was at the Flamingo, in the nerve-center of the Strip: right across the street from Caesar’s Palace and the Dunes—site of the Drug Conference. The bulk of the conferees were staying at the Dunes, but those of us who signed up fashionably late were assigned to the Flamingo.

The place was full of cops. I saw this at a glance. Most of them were just standing around trying to look casual, all dressed exactly alike in their cut-rate Vegas casuals: plaid Bermuda shorts, Arnie Palmer golf shirts, and hairless white legs tapering down to rubberized “beach sandals.” It was a terrifying scene to walk into—a super stakeout of some kind. If I hadn’t known about the conference my mind might have snapped. You get the impression that somebody was going to be gunned down in a blazing crossfire at any moment—maybe the entire Manson Family.

My arrival was badly timed. Most of the national DAs and other cop-types had already checked in. These were the people who now stood around the lobby & stared grimly at newcomers. What appeared to be the Final Stakeout was only about two hundred vacationing cops with nothing better to do. They didn’t even
notice
each other.

I waded up to the desk and got in line. The man in front of me was a police chief from some small town in Michigan. His Agnew-style wife was standing about three feet off to his right while he argued with the desk clerk: “Look, fella—I
told
you I have a postcard here that says I have
reservations
in this hotel. Hell, I’m with the District Attorneys conference! I’ve already
paid
for my room.”

“Sorry, sir. You’re on the ‘late list.’ Your reservations were transferred to the . . .ah . . . Moonlight Motel, which is out on Paradise Boulevard and actually a very fine place of lodging and only sixteen blocks from here, with its own pool and . . .”

“You dirty little faggot! Call the manager! I’m tired of listening to this dogshit!”

The manager appeared and offered to call a cab. This was obviously the second or maybe even the third act in a cruel drama that had begun long before I showed up. The police chief’s wife was crying; the gaggle of friends that he’d mustered for support were too embarrassed to back him up—even now, in this showdown at the desk, with this angry little cop firing his best and final shot. They
knew
he was beaten; he was going against the RULES, and the people hired to enforce those rules said “no vacancy.”