Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Madness, madness… and meanwhile all alone with the Great Red Shark in the parking lot of the Las Vegas airport. To hell with this panic. Get a grip. Maintain. For the next twenty - four hours this matter of personal control will be critical. Here I am sitting out here alone on this fucking desert, this nest of armed loonies, with a very dangerous carload hazards, horrors and liabilities that I must get back to L.A.if they nail me out here, I’m doomed. Completely fucked. No question about that. No future for a doctor of journalism editing the state pen weekly. Better to get the hell of this atavistic state at high speed. Right. But, first - to the Mint Hotel and cash a $50 check, then up to the room and call down for two club sandwiches, two quarts of milk, a pot of coffee and a fifth of Bacardi Anejo. Rum will be absolutely necessary to get through this night - to polish these notes, this shameful diary… keep the tape machine screaming all night long at top volume: “Allow me to introduce myself… I’m a man of wealth and taste.”

Sympathy?

Not for me. No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas.

This place is like the Army: the shark ethic prevails - eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

It is a weird feeling to sit in a Las Vegas hotel at four in the morning - hunkered down with a notebook and a tape recorder in a $75 - a - day suite and a fantastic room service bill, run up in forty - eight hours of total madness - knowing that just as soon as dawn comes up you are going to flee without paying a fucking penny… go stomping out through the lobby and call your red convertible down from the garage and stand there waiting for it with a suitcase full of marijuana and illegal weapons… trying to look casual, scanning the first morning edition of the Las Vegas Sun.

This was the final step. I had taken all the grapefruit and other luggage out to the car a few hours earlier.

Now it was only a matter of slipping the noose: Yes, extremely casual behavior, wild eyes hidden behind these Saigon - mirror sun glasses… waiting for the Shark to roll up.

Where is it? I gave that evil pimp of a carboy $5, a prime investment right now.

Stay calm, keep reading the paper. The lead story was a screaming blue headline across the top of the page:

TRIO RE - ARRESTED

IN BEAUTY’S DEATH

An overdose of heroin was listed as the official cause of death for pretty Diane Hamby, 19, whose body was foundstuffed in a refrigerator last week, according to Clark County Coroner’s office. Investigators of the sheriff’s homicide team who went to arrest the suspects said that one, a 24 - year - old woman, attempted to fling herself through the glass doors of her trailer before being stopped by deputies. Officers said she was apparently hysterical and shouted, ‘You’ll never take me alive.” But officers handcuffed the woman and she apparently was not injured.

GI DRUG DEATHS CLAIMED

WASHINGTON (AP) - A House Subcommittee report says

illegal drugs killed 160 American GI’s last year - 40 of

them in Vietnam… Drugs were suspected, it said, in another

56 military deaths in Asia and the Pacific Command… It

said the heroin problem in Vietnam is increasing in

seriousness, primarily because of processing laboratories in

Laos, Thailand and Hong Kong. “Drug suppression in

Vietnam is almost completely ineffective,” the report said,

“partially because of an ineffective local police force and

partially because some presently unknown corrupt officials

in public office are involved in the drug traffic.”

To the left of that grim notice was a four - column center - page photo of Washington, D.C., cops fighting with “young anti - war demonstrators who staged a sit - in and blocked the entrance to Selective Service Headquarters.”And next to the photo was a large black headline:

TORTURE TALES TOLD IN WAR HEARINGS.

WASHINGTON - Volunteer witnesses told an informal

congressional panel yesterday that while serving as

miliy interrogators they routinely used electrical tele -

tione hookups and helicopter drops to torture and kill

ietnamese prisoners. One Army intelligence specialist

iid the pistol slaying of his Chinese interpreter was de -

by a superior who said, “She was just a slope,

Lyway,” meaning she was an Asiatic…

Right underneath that story was a headline saying: FIVE

WOUNDED NEAJi NYC TENEMENT… by an unidentified

gunman who fired from the roof of a building, for no apparent reason. This item appeared just above a headline that said:

PHARMACY OWNER ARRESTED IN PROBE… “a

result,” the article explained, “of a preliminary investigation (of a Las Vegas pharmacy) showing a

shortage of over 100,000 pills considered dangerous drugs…