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6. A Night on the Town… Confrontation at the Desert I
Saturday midnight… Memories of this night are extremely hazy. All I have, for guide - pegs, is a pocketful of keno cards and cocktail napkins, all covered with scribbled notes. Here is one: “Get the Ford man, demand a Bronco for race - observation purposes… photos?… Lacerda/call… why not a helicopter?… Get on the phone, lean on the fuckers… heavy yelling.”
Another says: “Sign on Paradise Boulevard - ’Stopless and Topless’… bush - league sex compared to L.A.; pasties here - total naked public humping in L.A… Las Vegas is a society of armed masturbators/gambling is the kicker here/sex is extra/weird trip for high rollers… house - whores for wi
A long time ago when I lived in Big Sur down the road from Lionel Olay I had a friend who liked to go to Reno for the crap - shooting. He owned a sporting - goods store in Carmel. And one month he drove his Mercedes highway - cruiser to Reno on three consecutive weekends - wi
On Monday morning he got a phone call from Reno - from the general manager of the casino he’d been working out on. “We missed you this weekend,” said the GM. “The pit - men were bored.”
“Shucks,” said my friend.
So the next weekend he flew up to Reno in a private plane, with a friend and two girls - all “special guests” of the GM. Nothing too good for high rollers…
And on Monday morning the same plane - the casino’s plane - flew him back to the Monterey airport. The pilot lent him a dime to call a friend for a ride to Carmel. He was $30,000 in debt, and two months later he was looking down the barrel of one of the world’s heaviest collection agendes.
So he sold his store, but that didn’t make the nut. They could wait for the rest, he said - but then he got stomped, which convinced him that maybe he’d be better off borrowing enough money to pay the whole wad.
Mainline gambling is a very heavy business - and Las Vegas makes Reno seem like your friendly neighborhood grocery store. For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth. Until about a year ago, there was a giant billboard on the outskirts of Las Vegas, saying:
DON’T GAMBLE WITH MARIJUANA!
IN NEVADA: POSSESSION - 20 YEARS SALE - LIFE!
So I was not entirely at ease drifting around the casinos on this Saturday night with a car full of marijuana and head full of acid. We had several narrow escapes: at one point I tried to drive the Great Red Shark into the laundry room of the Landmark Hotel - but the door was too narrow, and the people inside seemed dangerously excited.
We drove over to the Desert I
“Mine too,” he said. “But as your attorney I advise you to drive over to the Tropicana and pick up on Guy Lombardo. He’s in the Blue Room with his Royal Canadians.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why should I pay out my hard - earned dollars to watch a fucking corpse?”
“Look,” he said. “Why are we out here? To entertain ourselves, or to do the job?”
“The job, of course,” I replied. We were driving around in circles, weaving through the parking lot of a place I thought was the Dunes, but it turned out to be the Thunderbird or maybe it was the Hacienda
My attorney was sca
Suddenly people were screaming at us. We were in trouble. Two thugs wearing red - gold military overcoats were looming over the hood: “What the hell are you doing?” one screamed. “You can’t park here! ’
“Why not?” I said. It seemed like a reasonable place to park, plenty of space. I’d been looking for a parking spot for what seemed like a very long time. Too long. I was about ready to abandon the car and call a taxi… but then, yes, we found this space.
Which turned out to be the sidewalk in front of the main entrance to the Desert I
“We want this car parked! I’m an old friend of Debbie’s. I used to romp with her.”
For a moment I thought he had blown it… then one of the doormen reached out for the bill, saying: “OK, OK. I’ll take care of it, sir.” And he tore off a parking stub.
“Holy shit!” I said, as we hurried through the lobby.
“They almost had us there. That was quick thinking.”
“What do you expect?” he said. “I’m your attorney… and you owe me five bucks. I want it now.”
I shrugged and gave him a bill. This garish, deep - orlon carpeted lobby of the Desert I
We approached the grand ballroom full of confidence, but they refused to let us in. We were too late, said a man in a wine - colored tuxedo; the house was already full - no seats left, at any price.
“Fuck seats,” said my attorney. “We’re old friends of Debbie’s. We drove all the way from L.A. for this show, and we’re goddamn well going in.”
The tux - man began jabbering about “fire regulations,” but my attorney refused to listen. Finally, after a lot of bad noise, he let us in for nothing - provided we would stand quietly in back and not smoke.
We promised, but the moment we got inside we lost control. The tension had been too great. Debbie Reynolds was yukking across the stage in a silver Afro wig… to the tune of “Sergeant Pepper,” from the golden trumpet of Harry James.
“Jesus creeping shit!” said my attorney. “We’ve wandered into a time capsule!”
Heavy hands grabbed our shoulders. I jammed the hash pipe back into my pocket just in time. We were dragged across the lobby and held against the front door by goons until our car was fetched up. “OK, get lost,” said the wine - tux - man. “We’re giving you a break. If Debbie has friendsIke you guys, she’s in worse trouble than I thought.”
“We’ll see about this!” my attorney shouted as we drove away. “You paranoid scum!”
I drove around to the Circus - Circus Casino and parked near the back door. “This is the place,” I said. “They’ll never fuck with us here.”
“Where’s the ether?” said my attorney. “This mescaline isn’t working.”
I gave him the key to the trunk while I lit up the hash pipe. He came back with the ether - bottle, un - capped it, then poured some into a kleenex and mashed it under his nose, breathing heavily. I soaked another kleenex and fouled my own nose. The smell was overwhelming, even with the top down. Soon we were staggering up the stairs towards the entrance, laughing stupidly and dragging each other along, like drunks.
This is the main advantage of ether: it makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel… total loss of all basic motor skills: blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue - severance of all co
You approach the turnstiles leading into the Circus - Circus and you know that when you get there, you have to give the man two dollars or he won’t let you inside… but when you get there, everything goes wrong: you misjudge the distance to the turnstile and slam against it, bounce off and grab hold of an old woman to keep from falling, some angry Rotarian shoves you and you think: What’s happening here? What’s going on? Then you hear yourself mumbling: “Dogs fucked the Pope, no fault of mine. Watch out!… Why money? My name is Brinks; I was born… born? Get sheep over side… women and children to armored car… orders from Captain Zeep.”
Ah, devil ether - a total body drug. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. The hands flap crazily, unable to get money out of the pocket… garbled laughter and hissing from the mouth… always smiling.
Ether is the perfect drug for Las Vegas. In this town they love a drunk. Fresh meat. So they put us through the turnstiles and turned us loose inside.
The Circus - Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the Sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos… but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all ma
This madness goes on and on, but nobody seems to notice. The gambling action runs twenty - four hours a day on the main floor, and the circus never ends. Meanwhile, on all the upstairs balconies, the customers are being hustled by every conceivable kind of bizarre shuck. All kinds of funhouse - typeShoot the pasties off the nipples of a ten - foot bulle and win a cotton - candy goat. Stand in front of this fantastic machine, my friend, and for just 99$ your likeness will appear, two hundred feet tall, on a screen above downtown Las Vegas. Ninety - nine cents more for a voice message. “Say whatever you want, fella. They’ll hear you, don’t worry about that. Remember you’ll be two hundred feet tall.”