Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, and other American stories (21 page)

Indeed. But what is sane? Especially here in “our own country”—in this doomstruck era of Nixon. We are all wired into a
survival
trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him . . . but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him.

Not that they didn’t deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create . . . a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some
force
—is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit that has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries. It is also the military ethic . . . a blind faith in some higher and wiser “authority.” The Pope, The General, The Prime Minister . . . all the way up to “God.”

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 of Avatar, and What’s His Name who runs “Spirit and Flesh.”

Sonny Barger never quite got the hang of it, but he’ll never know how close he was to a king-hell breakthrough. The Angels 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 itself in the doomed effort to reconcile the interests of the lower/working class biker/dropout types and the upper/middle, Berkeley/student activists.

Nobody involved in that scene, at the time, could possibly have foreseen the Implications of the Ginsberg/Kesey failure to persuade 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 merely
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 flashbacks, 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 the 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 replacing the mirror. My attorney’s bed looked like a burned-out rat’s nest. Fire had consumed the top half, and the rest was a mass of wire and charred stuffing. Luckily, the maids hadn’t come near the room since that awful confrontation on Tuesday.

I had 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 was 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 later. “So I came out of the closet in a kind of running crouch, still vomiting, and hit her right at the knees . . . it was pure instinct; I thought she was ready to kill me . . . and then, when she screamed, that’s when I put the icebag on her mouth.”

Yes. I remembered that scream . . . one of the most terrifying 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 powerful electric noise. The TV set, hissing at top volume on a nonexistent channel. I could barely hear the woman’s muffled 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 pitifully: “Please . . . please . . . I’m only the maid, I didn’t
mean
nothin’ . . .”

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 you up 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 attorney 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 down to help the old lady to her feet. “Maybe she’s telling the truth,” 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 meanwhile, just 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!”

“You and a lot of other people,” said my attorney. “You’d be surprised who we have on the payroll—right here in this same hotel.”

She looked stricken. “Would I
know
them?”

“Probably,” I said. “But they’re all undercover. The only way you’ll ever know is if something really serious happens and one of them has to contact you in public, with the password.”

“What
is
it?” she asked.

“‘One Hand Washes the Other,’” I said. “The minute you hear that, you say: ‘I fear nothing.’ That way, they’ll
know
you.”

She nodded, repeating the code several times, while we listened to make sure she had it right.

“OK,” said my attorney. “That’s it for now. We probably won’t be seeing you again until the hammer comes down. You’ll be better off ignoring us until we leave. Don’t bother to make up the room. Just leave a pile of towels and soap outside the door, exactly at midnight.” He smiled. “That way, we won’t have to risk another one of these little incidents, will we?”

She moved toward the door. “Whatever you say, gentlemen. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened . . . but it was only because I didn’t
realize.”

My attorney ushered her out. “We understand,” he said gently. “But it’s all over now. Thank God for the
decent
people.”

She smiled as she closed the door behind her.

Almost seventy-two hours had passed since that strange encounter, and no maid had set foot in the room. I wondered what Alice had told them. We had seen her once, trundling a laundry cart across the parking area as we rolled up in the Whale, but we offered no sign of recognition and she seemed to understand.

But it couldn’t last much longer. The room was full of used towels; they were hanging everywhere. The bathroom floor was about six inches deep with soap bars, vomit, and grapefruit rinds, mixed with broken glass. I had to put my boots on every time I went in there to piss. The nap of the mottled grey rug was so thick with marijuana seeds that it appeared to be turning green.

The general back-alley ambience of the suite was so rotten, so incredibly foul, that I figured I could probably get away with claiming it was some kind of “Life-slice exhibit” that we’d brought down from Haight Street, to show cops from other parts of the country how deep into filth and degeneracy the drug people will sink, if left to their own devices.

But what kind of addict would need all these coconut husks and crushed honeydew rinds? Would the presence of junkies account for all these uneaten french fries? These puddles of glazed catsup on the bureau?

Maybe so. But then why all this
booze?
And these crude pornographic photos, ripped out of pulp magazines like
Whores of Sweden
and
Orgies in the Casbah
, that were plastered on the broken mirror with smears of mustard that had dried to a hard yellow crust . . . and all these signs of violence, these strange red and blue bulbs and shards of broken glass embedded in the wall plaster . . .