Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories Read online

  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 and 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 handled the whole transaction with a credit card that I later learned was “canceled”—completely bogus. But the Big Computer hadn’t mixed me yet, so I was still a fat gold credit risk.

  Later, looking back on this transaction, I knew the conversation that had almost certainly ensued:

  “Hello. This is VIP car-rentals in Las Vegas. We’re calling to check on Number 875-045-616-B. Just a routine credit check, nothing urgent. . . .”

  (Long pause at the other end. Then:) “Holy shit!”

  “What?”

  “Pardon me. . . . Yes, we have that number. It’s been placed on emergency redline status. Call the police at once and don’t let him out of your sight!”

  (Another long pause) “Well . . . ah . . . you see, that number is not on our current Red List, and . . . ah . . . Number 875-045-616-B just left our lot in a new Cadillac convertible.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. He’s long gone; totally insured.”

  “Where?”

  “I think he said St. Louis. Yes, that’s what the card says. Raoul Duke, leftfielder & batting champion of the St. Louis Browns. Five days at $25 per, plus twenty-five cents a mile. His card was valid, so of course we had no choice. . . .”

  This is true. The car rental agency had no legal reason to hassle me, since my card was technically valid. During the next four days I drove that car all over Las Vegas—even passing the VIP agency’s main office on Paradise Boulevard several times—and at no time was I bothered by any show of rudeness.

  This is one of the hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don’t Burn the Locals. Beyond that, nobody cares. They would rather not know. If Charlie Manson checked into the Sahara tomorrow morning, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big.

  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 hand-crafted, 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 got 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 and 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.”

  After ten minutes of standing in line behind this noisy little asshole and his friends, I felt the bile rising. Where did this cop—of all people—get the nerve to argue with anybody in terms of Right & Reason? I had been there with these fuzzy little shitheads—and so, I sensed, had the desk clerk. He had the air of a man who’d been fucked around, in his time, by a fairly good cross-section of mean-tempered rule-crazy cops. . . .

  So now he was just giving their argument back to them: It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong, man . . . or who’s paid his bill & who hasn’t . . . what matters right now is that for the first time in my life I can work out on a pig: “Fuck you, officer, I’m in charge here, and I’m telling you we don’t have room for you.”

  I was enjoying this whipsong, but after a while I felt dizzy, bad nervous, and my impatience got the better of my amusement. So I stepped around the Pig and spoke directly to the desk clerk. “Say,” I said, “I hate to interrupt, but I have a reservation and I wonder if maybe I could just sort of slide through and get out of your way.” I smiled, letting him know I’d been digging his snake-bully act on the cop party that was now standing there, psychologically off-balance and staring at me like I was some kind of water-rat crawling up to the desk.

  I looked pretty bad: wearing old Levis and white Chuck Taylor All-Star basketball sneakers . . . and my ten-peso Acapulco shirt had long since come apart at the shoulder seams from all that road-wind. My beard was about three days old, bordering on standard wino trim, and my eyes were totally hidden by Sandy Bull’s Saigon-mirror shades.

  But my voice had the tone of a man who knows he has a reservation. I was gambling o
n my attorney’s foresight . . . but I couldn’t pass a chance to put the horn into a cop:

  . . . and I was right. The reservation was in my attorney’s name. The desk-clerk hit his bell to summon the bag-boy. “This is all I have with me, right now,” I said. “The rest is out there in that white Cadillac convertible.” I pointed to the car that we could all see parked just outside the front door. “Can you have somebody drive it around to the room?”

  The desk-clerk was friendly. “Don’t worry about a thing, sir. Just enjoy your stay here—and if there’s anything you need, just call the desk.”

  I nodded and smiled, half-watching the stunned reaction of the cop-crowd right next to me. They were stupid with shock. Here they were arguing with every piece of leverage they could command, for a room they’d already paid for—and suddenly their whole act gets side-swiped by some crusty drifter who looks like something out of an upper-Michigan hobo jungle. And he checks in with a handful of credit cards! Jesus! What’s happening in this world?

  3.

  Savage Lucy . . . ‘Teeth Like Baseballs, Eyes Like Jellied Fire’

  I gave my bag to the boy who scurried up, and told him to bring a quart of Wild Turkey and two fifths of Bacardi Anejo with a night’s worth of ice.

  Our room was in one of the farthest wings of the Flamingo. The place is far more than a hotel: It is a sort of huge underfinanced Playboy Club in the middle of the desert. Something like nine separate wings, with interconnecting causeways and pools—a vast complex, sliced up by a maze of car-ramps and driveways. It took me about twenty minutes to wander from the desk to the distant wing we’d been assigned to.

  My idea was to get into the room, accept the booze and baggage delivery, then smoke my last big chunk of Singapore Grey while watching Walter Cronkite and waiting for my attorney to arrive. I needed this break, this moment of peace and refuge, before we did the Drug Conference. It was going to be quite a different thing from the Mint 400. That had been an observer gig, but this one would need participation—and a very special stance: At the Mint 400 we were dealing with an essentially simpatico crowd, and if our behavior was gross and outrageous . . . well, it was only a matter of degree.

  But this time our very presence would be an outrage. We would be attending the conference under false pretenses and dealing, from the start, with a crowd that was convened for the stated purpose of putting people like us in jail. We were the Menace—not in disguise, but stone-obvious drug abusers, with a flagrantly cranked-up act that we intended to push all the way to the limit . . . not to prove any final, sociological point, and not even as a conscious mockery: It was mainly a matter of life-style, a sense of obligation and even duty. If the Pigs were gathering in Vegas for a top-level Drug Conference, we felt the drug culture should be represented.

  Beyond that, I’d been out of my head for so long now, that a gig like this seemed perfectly logical. Considering the circumstances, I felt totally meshed with my karma.

  Or at least I was feeling this way until I got to the big grey door that opened into Mini-Suite 1150 in the Far Wing. I rammed my key into the knob-lock and swung the door open, thinking, “Ah, home at last!” . . . but the door hit something, which I recognized at once as a human form: a girl of indeterminate age with the face and form of a Pit Bull. She was wearing a shapeless blue smock and her eyes were angry . . .

  Somehow I knew that I had the right room. I wanted to think otherwise, but the vibes were hopelessly right . . . and she seemed to know, too, because she made no move to stop me when I moved past her and into the suite. I tossed my leather satchel on one of the beds and looked around for what I knew I would see . . . my attorney . . . stark naked, standing in the bathroom door with a drug-addled grin on his face.

  “You degenerate pig,” I muttered.

  “It can’t be helped,” he said, nodding at the bulldog girl. “This is Lucy.” He laughed distractedly. “You know—like Lucy in the sky with diamonds . . .”

  I nodded to Lucy, who was eyeing me with definite venom. I was clearly some kind of enemy, some ugly intrusion on her scene . . . and it was clear from the way she moved around the room, very quick and tense on her feet, that she was sizing me up. She was ready for violence, there was not much doubt about that. Even my attorney picked up on it.

  “Lucy!” he snapped. “Lucy! Be cool, goddamnit! Remember what happened at the airport . . . no more of that, OK?” He smiled nervously at her. She had the look of a beast that had just been tossed into a sawdust pit to fight for its life . . .

  “Lucy . . . this is my client; this is Mister Duke, the famous journalist. He’s paying for this suite, Lucy. He’s on our side.”

  She said nothing. I could see that she was not entirely in control of herself. Huge shoulders on the woman, and a chin like Oscar Bonavena. I sat down on the bed and casually reached into my satchel for the Mace can . . . and when I felt my thumb on the Shoot button I was tempted to jerk the thing out and soak her down on general principles, I desperately needed peace, rest, sanctuary. The last thing I wanted was a fight to the finish, in my own hotel room, with some kind of drug-crazed hormone monster.

  My attorney seemed to understand this; he knew why my hand was in the satchel.

  “No!” he shouted. “Not here! We’ll have to move out!”

  I shrugged. He was twisted. I could see that. And so was Lucy. Her eyes were feverish and crazy. She was staring at me like I was something that would have to be rendered helpless before life could get back to whatever she considered normal.

  My attorney idled over and put his arm around her shoulders. “Mister Duke is my friend” he said gently. “He loves artists. Let’s show him your paintings.”

  For the first time, I noticed that the room was full of artwork—maybe forty or fifty portraits, some in oil, some charcoal, all more or less the same size and all the same face. They were propped up on every flat surface. The face was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. It was a girl with a broad mouth, a big nose and extremely glittering eyes—a demoniacally sensual face; the kind of over-stated, embarrassingly dramatic renderings that you find in the bedrooms of young female art students who get hung up on horses.

  “Lucy paints portraits of Barbra Streisand,” my attorney explained. “She’s an artist up in Montana . . .” He turned to the girl. “What’s that town where you live?”

  She stared at him, then at me, then back at my attorney again. Then finally she said, “Kalispel. Way up north. I drew these from TV.”

  My attorney nodded eagerly. “Fantastic,” he said. “She came all the way down here just to give all these portraits to Barbra. We’re going over to the Americana Hotel tonight, and meet her backstage.”

  Lucy smiled bashfully. There was no more hostility in her. I dropped the Mace can and stood up. We obviously had a serious case on our hands. I hadn’t counted on this: Finding my attorney whacked on acid and locked into some kind of preternatural courtship.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess they’ve brought the car around by now. Let’s get the stuff out of the trunk.”

  He nodded eagerly. “Absolutely, let’s get the stuff.” He smiled at Lucy. “We’ll be right back. Don’t answer the phone if it rings.”

  She grinned and made the one-finger Jesus freak sign. “God bless,” she said.

  My attorney pulled on a pair of elephant-leg pants and a glaze-black shirt, then we hurried out of the room. I could see he was having trouble getting oriented, but I refused to humor him.

  “Well . . .” I said. “What are your plans?”

  “Plans?”

  We were waiting for the elevator.

  “Lucy,” I said.

  He shook his head, struggling to focus on the question. “Shit,” he said finally. “I met her on the plane and I had all that acid.” He shrugged. “You know, those little blue barrels. Jesus, she’s a religious freak. She’s running away from home for something like the fifth time in six months. It’s terrible. I gave her that cap before I reali
zed . . . shit, she’s never even had a drink!”

  “Well,” I said, “it’ll probably work out. We can keep her loaded and peddle her ass at the drug convention.”

  He stared at me.

  “She’s perfect for this gig,” I said. “These cops will go fifty bucks a head to beat her into submission and then gang-fuck her. We can set her up in one of these back-street motels, hang pictures of Jesus all over the room, then turn these pigs loose on her . . . Hell, she’s strong; she’ll hold her own.”

  His face was twitching badly. We were in the elevator now, descending into the lobby. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “I knew you were sick, but I never expected to hear you actually say that kind of stuff.”

  He seemed stunned.

  I laughed. “It’s straight economics. This girl is a god-send!” I fixed him with a natural Bogart smile, all teeth . . . “Shit, we’re almost broke! And suddenly you pick up some muscle-bound loony who can make us a grand a day.”

  “No!” he shouted. “Stop talking like that!” The elevator door opened and we walked toward the parking lot.

  “I figure she can do about four at a time,” I said. “Christ, if we keep her full of acid that’s more like two grand a day; maybe three.”

  “You filthy bastard!” he sputtered. “I should cave your fucking head in!” He was squinting at me, shielding his eyes from the sun. I spotted the Whale about fifty feet from the door. “There it is,” I said. “Not a bad looking car, for a pimp . . .”

  He groaned. His face reflected the struggle that I knew he was having, in his brain, with sporadic acid rushes: Bad waves of painful intensity, followed by total confusion. When I opened the trunk of the Whale to get the bags, he got angry. “What the hell are you doing?” he snapped. “This isn’t Lucy’s car.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s mine. This is my luggage.”