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. . .
Reading the front page made me feel a lot better. Against that heinous background, my crimes were pale and meaningless. I was a relatively respectable citizen – a multiple felon, perhaps, but certainly not dangerous. And when the Great Scorer came to write against my name, that would surely make a difference.
Or would it? I turned to the sports page and saw a small item about Muhammad Ali; his case was before the Supreme Court, the final appeal. He’d been sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to kill “slopes.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Congs,” he said.
Five years.
10. Western Union Intervenes: A Warning from Mr. Heem . . . New Assignment from the Sports Desk and a Savage Invitation from the Police
>
Suddenly I felt guilty again. The Shark! Where was it? I tossed the paper aside and began to pace. Losing control. I felt my whole act slipping . . . and then I saw the car, swooping down a ramp in the next – door garage.
Deliverance! I grasped my leather satchel and moved forward to meet my wheels.
“MISTER DUKE!”
The voice came from over my shoulder.
“Mister Duke! We’ve been looking for you!”
I almost collapsed on the curb. Every cell in my brain and body sagged. No! I thought. I must be hallucinating. There’s nobody back there, nobody calling . . . it’s a paranoid delusion, amphetamine psychosis . . . just keep walking towards the car, always smiling . . . .
“MISTER DUKE! Wait!”
Well . . . why not? Many fine books have been written in on. And it’s not like I’ll be a total stranger up there in Carson City. The warden will recognize me; and the Con Boss – I once interviewed them for The New York Times. Along with a lot of other cons, guards, cops and assorted hustlers who got ugly, by mail, when the article never appeared.
Why not? They asked. They wanted their stories told. And it was hard to explain; in those circles, that everything they told me went into the wastebasket or at least the dead – end file because the lead paragraphs I wrote for that article didn’t satisfy some editor three thousand miles away – some nervous drone behind a grey formica desk in the bowels of a journalistic bureaucracy that no con in Nevada will ever understand – and that the article finally died on the vine, as it were, because I refused to rewrite the lead. For reasons of my own.