Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

by Hunter Stockton Thompson

  “I didn’t move a goddamn muscle. He’d have shot me. I’m sure of that. I went straight to the plane and I didn’t say a word to anybody until I knew we were out of Nevada. Man, it’s one place I’ll never go back to.”

  11. Fraud? Larcent? Rape? ...A Brutal Connection with the Alice from Room Service

  I was brooding on this tale as I eased the White Whale into Flamingo parking lot. Fifty

  bucks and a week in jail for standing on a corner and acting curious ... Jesus, what kind of incredible penalties would they spew out on me? I eked off the various charges-but in skeleton, legal-lan re form they didn’t seem so bad:

  Rape? We could surely beat that one. I’d never even coveted the goddamn girl, much

  less put my hands on her flesh. Fraud? Larceny? I could always offer to “settle.” Pay

  it off. Say I was sent out here by Sports Illustrated and then drag the Time. Inc. lawyers

  into a nightmare lawsuit. Tie them up for years with a blizzard of writs and appeals.

  Attach all their assets in places like Juneau and Houston, then constantly file for change

  of venue to Quito, Nome and Aruba ... keep the thing moving, run them in circles,

  force them into conflict with the accounting department:

  TIME SHEET FOR ABNER H. DODGE,

  CHIEF COUNSEL

  Item $44,066.12...Special outlay, to wit: We pursued the defendant, R. Duke, throughtout the Western Hemosphere and finally brought him to bay in a village on the north shore of an island known as Culebra in the Caribbean, where his attorney obtained a ruliong that all further proceedings should be conducted in the language of the Carib tribe. We sent three men to Berlitz for this purpose, but nineteen hours before the date scheduled for opening arguments, the defendant fled to Colombia, where he established residence in a fishing village called Guajira near the Venezuelan border, where the official language of jurisprudence is an obscure dialect known as “Guajiro.” After many monthe we were able to establish jurisdiction in this place, but by that time the defendant had moved his residence to a virtually inaccessible port at the headwaters of the Amazon River, where he cultivated powerful connec tions with a tribe of headhunters called ’ ”Jibaros.” Our stringer in Manaus was dispatched upriver, to locate and hire a native attorney conversant in Jibaro, but the search has been hampered by serious communications problems. There is in fact grave concern, in our Rio office, that the widow of the aforementioned Manaus stringer might obtain a ruinous judgment-due to bias in local courts-far larger than any thing a jury in our own country would consider reasonable or even sane.

  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 “con sciousness 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 badiy for himself, because he took too many oth ers 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 fot three bucks a hit. But their 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 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 Avatar, and What’s His Name who runs “Spirit and Flesh.”

  Barger never quite got the hang of it, but he’ll never iw 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 in the doomed effort to reconcile the interests of the 'working class biker/dropout types and the upper/mid Berkeley/student activists.

  Nobody involved in that scene, at the time, could possibly have foreseen the Implications of the Ginsberg/Kesey failure to pursuade 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 merey 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 flash backs, 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 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 saving the mirror. My attorney’s bed looked like a burned-rat’s nest. Fire had consumed the top half, and the rest a mass of wire and charred stuffing. Luckily, the maids had’nt come near the room since that awful confrontation on Tuesday.

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

  I remembered that scream ...one of the most terrifiying 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 electric noise. The TV set, hissing at top volume on a nonexistent channel. I could barely hear the woman’s 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 I ... “Please ...please ...I’m only the maid, I did’nt mean anything...”

  I was out of bed in a flash, grabbing my wallet and waving the gold Policemen’s Bene
volent 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 youup 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 attorsey 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 to help the old lady to her feet. “Maybe she’s telling the 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 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 pass word.”

  “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 tomake 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 elave a pile of towels and soap outside the door, exactly at modnight.” He smiled. “That way, we won;t have to risk another one of these little incidents, will we?”

  She moved towards 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 “But it’s all over now. Thank God for the decent people.”

  She smiled as she closed the door behind her.

  She nodded, repeating the code several times, while we lis tened to make sure she

  had it right.

  “OK,” said my attorney. “That’s it for Dow. 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.” lie smiled. “That way, we won’t

  have to risk another one of theep little incidents, will we?”

  12. Return to the Circus—Circus ...Looking for the Ape ...to Hell with the American Dream

  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 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 grape fruit rinds, mixed with broken glass. I had to put my boots on every 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 plast
er . . .

  No, these were not the hoofprints of your normal, godfearing junkie. It was far too aggressive. There was evidence, in this room, of excessive consumption of almost every type of drug known to civilized man since 1544 A.D. It could only be explained as a montage, a sort of exaggerated medical exhibit, put together very carefully to show what might happen if twenty-two serious drug felons—each with a different addiction—were penned up together in the same room for five days and nights, without relief.

  Indeed. But of course that would never happen in Real Life, gentlemen. We just put this thing together for demonstration purposes ...

  Suddenly the phone was ringing, jerking me out of my fantasy stupor. I looked at it. Riiiinnnnnggggggg ... Jesus, what now? Is this it? I could almost hear the shrill voice of the Manager, Mr. Heem, saying the police were on their way up to my room and would I please not shoot through the door when they began kicking it down.

  Riinnnngggg ... No, they wouldn’t call first. Once they decided to take me, they would probably set an ambush in the elevator: first Mace, then a gang-swarm. It would come with no warning.

  So I picked up the phone. It was my friend Bruce Innes, calling from the Circus-Circus. He had located the man who wanted to sell the ape I’d been inquiring about. The price was $750.

  “What kind of a greedhead are we dealing with here?” I said. “Last night it was four hundred.”

  “He claims he just found out it was housebroken,” said Bruce. “He let it sleep in the trailer last noght, and the thing actually shiot in the shower stall.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Apes are attracted to water. Next time it’ll shit in the sink.”

  “Maybe you should come down and argue with the guy,” said Bruce. “He’s here in the bar with me. I told him you really wanted the ape and that you could give it a fine home. I think he’ll negotiate. He’s really attached to the stinking thing. It’s here in the bar with us, sitting up on a goddamn stool, slobbering into a beer schooner.”