His face was twitching badly. We were in the elevator now, descending into the lobby. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “I knew you were sick, but I never expected to hear you actually say that kind of stuff.”
He seemed stunned.
I laughed. “It’s straight economics. This girl is a godsend!” I fixed him with a natural Bogart smile, all teeth .. . Shit, we’re almost broke! And suddenly you pick up some muscle – bound loony who can make us a grand a day.”
“No!” he shouted. “Stop talking like that!” The elevator door opened and we walked toward the parking lot.
“I figure she can do about four at a time,” I said.
“Christ, if we keep her full of acid that’s more like two grand a day; maybe three.”
“You filthy bastard!” he sputtered. “I should cave your fucking head in!” He was squinting at me, shielding his eyes from the sun. I spotted the Whale about fifty feet from the door. “There it is,” I said. “Not a bad looking car, for a pimp ..
He groaned. His face reflected the struggle that I knew he was having, in his brain, with sporadic acid rushes: Bad waves of painful intensity, followed by total confusion.
When I opened the trunk of the Whale to get the bags, he got angry. “What the hell are you doing?” he snapped.
“This isn’t Lucy’s car.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s mine. This is my luggage.”
“The fuck it is!” he shouted. “Just because I’m a goddamn ‘I lawyer doesn’t mean you can walk around stealing stuff right in front of me!” He backed away. “What the hell is wrong with you? We’ll never beat a rap like this.”
After much difficulty, we got back to the room and tried to have a serious talk with Lucy. I felt like a Nazi, but it had to be done. She was not right for us – not in this fragile situation. It was bad enough if she were only what she appeared to be – a strange young girl in the throes of a bad psychotic episode – but what worried me far more than that was the likelihood that she would probably be just sane enough, in a few hours, to work herself into a towering Jesus – based rage at the hazy recollection of being picked up and seduced in the Los Angeles International Airport by some kind of cruel Samoan who fed her liquor and LSD, then dragged her to a Vegas hotel room and savagely penetrated every orifice in her body with his throbbing, uncircumcised member.
I had a terrible vision of Lucy crashing into Barbra Strei – sand’s dressing room at the Americana and laying thisbrutal story on her. That would finish us. They would track us down and probably castrate us both, prior to booking
I explained this to my attorney, who was now in tears at the idea of sending Lucy away. She was still powerfully twisted, and I felt the only solution was to get her as far as possible from the Flamingo before she got straight enough to remember where she’d been and what happened to her.
Lucy, while we argued, was lying on the patio, doing a charcoal sketch of Barbra Streisand. From memory this time. It was a full – faced rendering, with teeth like baseballs and eyes like jellied fire.
The sheer intensity of the thing made me nervous. This girl was a walking bomb. God only knows what she might be doing with all that mis – wired energy right now if she didn’t have her sketch pad. And what was she going to do when she got straight enough to read The Vegas Vistitor, as I just had, and learn that Streisand wasn’t due at the Americana for another three weeks?
My attorney finally agreed that Lucy would have to go. The possibility of a Mann Act conviction, resulting in disbarment proceedings and total loss of his livelihood, was a key factor in his decision. A nasty federal rap. Especially for a monster Samoan facing a typical white middle – class jury in Southern California.
“They might even call it kidnapping,” I said. “Straight to the gas chamber, like Chessman. And even if you