“So what?” I said. “We don’t need it for this. I have many plastic cards.”
He smiled and seemed to relax. “How” many? he said. “We might need more than one.”
I woke up in the bathtub—who knows how much later—to the sound of the hookers shrieking next door. The New York Times had fallen in and blackened the water. For many hours I tossed and turned like a crack baby in a cold hallway. I heard thumping Rhythm & Blues—serious rock & roll, and I knew that something wild was going on in the Judge’s suites. The smell of amyl nitrate came from under the door. It was no use. It was impossible to sleep through this orgy of ugliness. I was getting worried. I was already a marginally legal person, and now I was stuck with some crazy Judge who had my credit card and owed me $23,000.
I had some whiskey in the car, so I went out into the rain to get some ice. I had to get out. As I walked past the other rooms, I looked in people’s windows and feverishly tried to figure out how to get my credit card back. Then from behind me I heard the sound of a tow-truck winch. The Judge’s white Cadillac was being dragged to the ground. The Judge was whooping it up with the tow-truck driver, slapping him on the back.
“What the hell? It was only property damage,” he laughed.
“Hey, Judge,” I called out. “I never got my card back.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s in my room—come on.”
I was right behind him when he opened the door to his room, and I caught a glimpse of a naked woman dancing. As soon as the door opened, the woman lunged for the Judge’s throat. She pushed him back outside and slammed the door in his face.
“Forget that credit card—we’ll get some cash,” the Judge said. “Let’s go down to the Commercial Hotel. My friends are there and they have plenty of money.”
We stopped for a six-pack on the way. The Judge went into a sleazy liquor store that turned out to be a front for kinky marital aids. I offered him money for the beer, but he grabbed my whole wallet.
Ten minutes later, the Judge came out with $400 worth of booze and a bagful of Triple-X-Rated movies. “My buddies will like this stuff,” he said. “And don’t worry about the money, I told you I’m good for it. These guys carry serious cash.”
The marquee above the front door of the Commercial Hotel said:
WELCOME: ADULT FILM PRESIDENTS
STUDEBAKER SOCIETY
FULL ACTION CASINO / KENO IN LOUNGE
“Park right here in front,” said the Judge. “Don’t worry. I’m well known in this place.”
Me too, but I said nothing. I have been well known at the Commercial for many years, from the time when I was doing a lot of driving back and forth between Denver and San Francisco—usually for Business reasons, or for Art, and on this particular weekend I was there to meet quietly with a few old friends and business associates from the Board of Directors of the Adult Film Association of America. I had been, after all, the Night Manager of the famous O’Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco—“Carnegie Hall of Sex in America.”
I was the Guest of Honor, in fact—but I saw no point in confiding these things to the Judge, a total stranger with no Personal Identification, no money, and a very aggressive lifestyle. We were on our way to the Commercial Hotel to borrow money from some of his friends in the Adult Film business.
What the hell? I thought. It’s only Rock & Roll. And he was, after all, a Judge of some kind. . . . Or maybe not. For all I knew, he was a criminal pimp with no fingerprints, or a wealthy black shepherd from Spain. But it hardly mattered. He was good company. (If you had a taste for the edge work—and I did, in those days. And so, I felt, did the Judge.) He had a bent sense of fun, a quick mind, and no Fear of anything.
The front door of the Commercial looked strangely busy at this hour of night in a bad rainstorm, so I veered off and drove slowly around the block in low gear.
“There’s a side entrance on Queer Street,” I said to the Judge, as we hammered into a flood of black water. He seemed agitated, which worried me a bit.
“Calm down,” I said. “We don’t want to make a scene in this place. All we want is money.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know these people. They are friends. Money is nothing. They will be happy to see me.”
We entered the hotel through the Casino entrance. The Judge seemed calm and focused until we rounded the corner and came face to face with an eleven-foot polar bear standing on its hind legs, ready to pounce. The Judge turned to jelly at the sight of it. “I’ve had enough of this goddamn beast!” he shouted. “It doesn’t belong here. We should blow its head off.”
I took him by the arm. “Calm down, Judge,” I told him. “That’s White King. He’s been dead for thirty-three years.”
The Judge had no use for animals. He composed himself and we swung into the lobby, approaching the desk from behind. I hung back—it was getting late, and the lobby was full of suspicious-looking stragglers from the Adult Film crowd. Private cowboy cops wearing six-shooters in open holsters were standing around. Our entrance did not go unnoticed.
The Judge looked competent, but there was something menacing in the way he swaggered up to the desk clerk and whacked the marble countertop with both hands. The lobby was suddenly filled with tension, and I quickly moved away as the Judge began yelling and pointing at the ceiling.
“Don’t give me that crap,” he barked. “These people are my friends. They’re expecting me. Just ring the goddamn room again.” The desk clerk muttered something about his explicit instructions not to. . . .
Suddenly the Judge reached across the desk for the house phone. “What’s the number?” he snapped. “I’ll ring it myself.” The clerk moved quickly. He shoved the phone out of the Judge’s grasp and simultaneously drew his index finger across his throat. The Judge took one look at the muscle converging on him and changed his stance.
“I want to cash a check,” he said calmly.
“A check?” the clerk said. “Sure thing, buster. I’ll cash your goddamned check.” He seized the Judge by his collar and laughed. “Let’s get this bozo out of here. And put him in jail.”
I was moving toward the door, and suddenly the Judge was right behind me. “Let’s go,” he said. We sprinted for the car, but then the Judge stopped in his tracks. He turned and raised his fist in the direction of the hotel. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “I’m the Judge. I’ll be back, and I’ll bust every one of you bastards. The next time you see me coming, you’d better run.”
We jumped into the car and zoomed away into the darkness. The Judge was acting manic. “Never mind those pimps,” he said. “I’ll have them all on a chain gang in forty-eight hours.” He laughed and slapped me on the back. “Don’t worry, Boss,” he said. “I know where we’re going.” He squinted into the rain and opened a bottle of Royal Salute. “Straight ahead,” he snapped. “Take a right at the next corner. We’ll go see Leach. He owes me twenty-four thousand dollars.”
I slowed down and reached for the whiskey. What the hell, I thought. Some days are weirder than others.
“Leach is my secret weapon,” the Judge said, “but I have to watch him. He could be violent. The cops are always after him. He lives in a balance of terror. But he has a genius for gambling. We win eight out of ten every week.” He nodded solemnly. “That is four out of five, Doc. That is Big. Very big. That is eighty percent of everything.” He shook his head sadly and reached for the whiskey. “It’s a horrible habit. But I can’t give it up. It’s like having a money machine.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “What are you bitching about?”
“I’m afraid, Doc. Leach is a monster, a criminal hermit who understands nothing in life except point spreads. He should be locked up and castrated.”
“So what?” I said. “Where does he live? We are desperate. We have no cash and no plastic. This freak is our only hope.”
The Judge slumped into himself, and neither one of us spoke for a minute. . . . “Well,” he said finally. “Why not? I can
handle almost anything for twenty-four big ones in a brown bag. What the fuck? Let’s do it. If the bastard gets ugly, we’ll kill him.”
“Come on, Judge,” I said. “Get a grip on yourself. This is only a gambling debt.”
“Sure,” he replied. “That’s what they all say.”
DEAD MEAT IN THE FAST LANE: THE JUDGE
RUNS AMOK . . . DEATH OF A POET, BLOOD
CLOTS IN THE REVENUE STREAM . . . THE
MAN WHO LOVED SEX DOLLS
We pulled into a seedy trailer court behind the stockyards. Leach met us at the door with red eyes and trembling hands, wearing a soiled bathrobe and carrying a half-gallon of Wild Turkey.
“Thank God you’re home,” the Judge said. “I can’t tell you what kind of horrible shit has happened to me tonight. . . . But now the worm has turned. Now that we have cash, we will crush them all.”
Leach just stared. Then he took a swig of Wild Turkey. “We are doomed,” he muttered. “I was about to slit my wrists.”
“Nonsense,” the Judge said. “We won Big. I bet the same way you did. You gave me the numbers. You even predicted the Raiders would stomp Denver. Hell, it was obvious. The Raiders are unbeatable on Monday night.”
Leach tensed, then he threw his head back and uttered a high-pitched quavering shriek. The Judge seized him. “Get a grip on yourself,” he snapped. “What’s wrong?”
“I went sideways on the bet,” Leach sobbed. “I went to that goddamn sports bar up in Jackpot with some of the guys from the shop. We were all drinking Mescal and screaming, and I lost my head.”
Leach was clearly a bad drinker and a junkie for mass hysteria. “I got drunk and bet on the Broncos,” he moaned, “then I doubled up. We lost everything.”
A terrible silence fell on the room. Leach was weeping helplessly. The Judge seized him by the sash of his greasy leather robe and started jerking him around by the stomach. They ignored me, and I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. . . . It was too ugly.
There was an ashtray on the table in front of the couch. As I reached out for it, I noticed a legal pad of what appeared to be Leach’s poems, scrawled with a red Magic Marker in some kind of primitive verse form. There was one that caught my eye. There was something particularly ugly about it. There was something repugnant in the harsh slant of the handwriting. It was about pigs.
I TOLD HIM IT WAS WRONG
—F. X. Leach
Omaha, 1968
A filthy young pig
got tired of his gig
and begged for a transfer
to Texas.
Police ran him down
on the Outskirts of town
and ripped off his Nuts
with a coat hanger.
Everything after that was like
coming home
in a cage on the
back of a train from
New Orleans on a Saturday night
with no money and cancer and
a dead girlfriend.
In the end it was no use
He died on his knees in a barnyard
with all the others watching.
Res Ipsa Loquitur.
“They’re going to kill me,” Leach said. “They’ll be here by midnight. I’m doomed.” He uttered another low cry and reached for the Wild Turkey bottle, which had fallen over and spilled.
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ll get more.”
(Paul Chesley)
On my way to the kitchen I was jolted by the sight of a naked woman slumped awkwardly in the corner with a desperate look on her face, as if she’d been shot. Her eyes bulged and her mouth was wide open and she appeared to be reaching out for me.
I leapt back and heard laughter behind me. My first thought was that Leach, unhinged by his gambling disaster, had finally gone over the line with his wife-beating habit and shot her in the mouth just before we knocked. She appeared to be crying out for help, but there was no voice.
I ran into the kitchen to look for a knife, thinking that if Leach had gone crazy enough to kill his wife, now he would have to kill me, too, since I was the only witness. Except for the Judge, who had locked himself in the bathroom.
Leach appeared in the doorway, holding the naked woman by the neck, and hurled her across the room at me. . . .
Time stood still for an instant. The woman seemed to hover in the air, coming at me in the darkness like a body in slow motion. I went into a stance with the bread knife and braced for a fight to the death.
Then the thing hit me and bounced softly down to the floor. It was a rubber blow-up doll: one of those things with five orifices that young stockbrokers buy in adult bookstores after the singles bars close.
“Meet Jennifer,” he said. “She’s my punching bag.” He picked it up by the hair and slammed it across the room.
“Ho, ho,” he chuckled, “no more wife beating. I’m cured, thanks to Jennifer.” He smiled sheepishly. “It’s almost like a miracle. These dolls saved my marriage. They’re a lot smarter than you think.” He nodded gravely. “Sometimes I have to beat two at once. But it always calms me down, you know what I mean?”
Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train. “Oh, hell yes,” I said quickly. “How do the neighbors handle it?”
“No problem,” he said. “They love me.”
Sure, I thought. I tried to imagine the horror of living in a muddy industrial slum full of tin-walled trailers and trying to protect your family against brain damage from knowing that every night when you look out your kitchen window there will be a man in a leather bathrobe flogging two naked women around the room with a quart bottle of Wild Turkey. Sometimes for two or three hours . . . It was horrible.
“Where is your wife?” I asked. “Is she still here?”
“Oh, yes,” he said quickly. “She just went out for some cigarettes She’ll be back any minute.” He nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes, she’s very proud of me. We’re almost reconciled. She really loves these dolls.”
I smiled, but something about his story made me nervous. “How many do you have?” I asked him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I have all we need.” He reached into a nearby broom closet and pulled out another one—a half-inflated Chinese-looking woman with rings in her nipples and two electric cords attached to her head. “This is Ling-Ling,” he said. “She screams when I hit her.” He whacked the doll’s head and it squawked stupidly.
Just then I heard car doors slamming outside the trailer, then loud knocking on the front door and a gruff voice shouting, “Open up! Police!”
Leach grabbed a .44 Magnum out of a shoulder holster inside his bathrobe and fired two shots through the front door. “You bitch,” he screamed. “I should have killed you a long time ago.”
He fired two more shots, laughing calmly. Then he turned to face me and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. He hesitated for a moment, staring directly into my eyes. Then he pulled the trigger and blew off the back of his head.
The dead man seemed to lunge at me, slumping headfirst against my legs as he fell to the floor—just as a volley of shotgun blasts came through the front door, followed by harsh shouts on a police bullhorn from outside. Then another volley of buckshot blasts that exploded the TV set and set the living room on fire, filling the trailer with dense brown smoke that I recognized instantly as the smell of Cyanide gas being released by the burning plastic couch.
Voices were screaming through the smoke, “Surrender! HANDS UP behind your goddamn head! DEAD MEAT!” Then more shooting. Another deafening fireball exploded out of the living room, I kicked the corpse off my feet and leapt for the back door, which I’d noticed earlier when I scanned the trailer for “alternative exits,” as they say in the business—in case one might become necessary. I was halfway out the door when I remembered the Judge. He was still locked in the bathroom, maybe helpless in some kind of accidental drug coma, unable to get to his feet as flames roared through the trailer. . . .
Ye Fucking Gods! I thought. I can’t
let him burn.
Kick the door off its hinges. Yes. Whack! The door splintered and I saw him sitting calmly on the filthy aluminum toilet stool, pretending to read a newspaper and squinting vacantly at me as I crashed in and grabbed him by one arm. “Fool!” I screamed. “Get up! Run! They’ll murder us!”
He followed me through the smoke and burning debris, holding his pants up with one hand. . . . The Chinese sex doll called Ling-Ling hovered crazily in front of the door, her body swollen from heat and her hair on fire. I slapped her aside and bashed the door open, dragging the Judge outside with me. Another volley of shotgun blasts and bullhorn yells erupted somewhere behind us. The Judge lost his footing and fell heavily into the mud behind the doomed Airstream.
“Oh, God!” he screamed. “Who is it?”
“The Pigs,” I said. “They’ve gone crazy. Leach is dead! They’re trying to kill us. We have to get to the car!”
He stood up quickly. “Pigs?” he said. “Pigs? Trying to kill me?”
He seemed to stiffen, and the dumbness went out of his eyes. He raised both fists and screamed in the direction of the shooting. “You bastards! You scum! You will die for this. You stupid white-trash pigs!
“Are they nuts?” he muttered. He jerked out of my grasp and reached angrily into his left armpit, then down to his belt and around behind his back like a gunfighter trying to slap leather. . . . But there was no leather there. Not even a sleeve holster.
“Goddammit!” he snarled. “Where’s my goddamn weapon? Oh, Jesus! I left it in the car!” He dropped into a running crouch and sprinted into the darkness, around the corner of the flaming Airstream. “Let’s go!” he hissed. “I’ll kill these bastards! I’ll blow their fucking heads off!”
Right, I thought, as we took off in a kind of low-speed desperate crawl through the mud and the noise and the gunfire, terrified neighbors screaming frantically to each other in the darkness. The red convertible was parked in the shadows, near the front of the trailer right next to the State Police car, with its chase lights blinking crazily and voices burping out of its radio.
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