Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, and other American stories Read Online Free Page B

bag and ate two pellets while I got the tape machine going. “Maybe
you
should only eat
one
of these,” he said. “That acid’s still working on you.”
    I agreed. “We have to go out to the track before dark,” I said. “But we have time to watch the TV news. Let’s carve up this grapefruit and make a fine rum punch, maybe toss in a blotter . . . where’s the car?”
    “We gave it to somebody in the parking lot,” he said. “I have the ticket in my briefcase.”
    “What’s the number? I’ll call down and have them wash the bastard, get rid of that dust and grime.”
    “Good idea,” he said. But he couldn’t find the ticket.
    “Well, we’re fucked,” I said. “We’ll never convince them to give us that car without proof.”
    He thought for a moment, then picked up the phone and asked for the garage. “This is Doctor Gonzo in eight-fifty,” he said. “I seem to have lost my parking stub for that red convertible I left with you, but I want the car washed and ready to go in thirty minutes. Can you send up a duplicate stub? . . . What . . . Oh? . . . Well, that’s fine.” He hung up and reached for the hash pipe. “No problem,” he said. “That man remembers my face.”
    “That’s good,” I said. “They’ll probably have a big net ready for us when we show up.”
    He shook his head. “As your attorney, I advise you not to worry about
me.
”
    The TV news was about the Laos Invasion—a series of horrifying disasters: explosions and twisted wreckage, men fleeing in terror, Pentagon generals babbling insane lies. “Turn that shit off!” screamed my attorney “Let’s get
out
of here!”
    A wise move. Moments after we picked up the car my attorney went into a drug coma and ran a red light on Main Street before I could bring us under control. I propped him up in the passenger seat and took the wheel myself . . . feeling fine, extremely sharp. All around me in traffic I could see people talking and I wanted to hear what they were saying. All of them. But the shotgun mike was in the trunk and I decided to leave it there. Las Vegas is not the kind of town where you want to drive down Main Street aiming a black bazooka-looking instrument at people.
    Turn up the radio. Turn up the tape machine. Look into the sunset up ahead. Roll the windows down for a better taste of the cool desert wind. Ah yes. This is what it’s all about. Total control now. Tooling along the main drag on a Saturday night in Las Vegas, two good old boys in a fireapple-red convertible . . . stoned, ripped, twisted . . . Good People.
    Great God! What is this terrible music?
    “The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant Calley”:
    “. . . as we go marching on . . .

When I reach my final campground, in that land
    beyond the sun,
    and the Great Commander asks me . . .”

                 (What did he ask you, Rusty?)
    “. . . Did you fight or did you run?”

            (and what did you tell him, Rusty?)

“. . . We responded to their rifle fire with everything
    we had . . .”

    No! I
can’t
be hearing this! It must be the drug. I glanced over at my attorney, but he was staring up at the sky, and I could see that his brain had gone off to that campground beyond the sun. Thank christ he can’t hear this music, I thought. It would drive him into a racist frenzy.
    Mercifully, the song ended. But my mood was already shattered . . . and now the fiendish cactus juice took over, plunging me into a sub-human funk as we suddenly came up on the turnoff to the Mint Gun Club. “One mile,” the sign said. But even a mile away I could hear the crackling scream of two-stroke bike engines winding out . . . and then, coming closer, I heard another sound.
    Shotguns! No mistaking that flat hollow boom.
    I stopped the car. What the hell is going on down there? I rolled up all the windows and eased down the gravel road, hunched low on the wheel . . . until I saw about a dozen figures pointing shotguns into the