She moved towards the door. “Whatever you say gentlemen. I can;t tell you how sorry I am about what happened . . . but it was only because I didn’t realize.”
My attorney ushered her out. “We understand,” he said “But it’s all over now. Thank God for the decent people.”
She smiled as she closed the door behind her.
She nodded, repeating the code several times, while we lis tened to make sure she
had it right.
“OK,” said my attorney. “That’s it for Dow. We probably won’t be seeing you
again until the hammer comes down. You’ll be better off ignoring us until we
leave. Don’t bother to make up the room. Just leave a pile of towels and soap
outside the door, exactly at midnight.” lie smiled. “That way, we won’t
have to risk another one of theep little incidents, will we?”
12. Return to the Circus – Circus . . . Looking for the Ape . . . to Hell with the American Dream
>Almost seventy-two hours had passed since that strange encounter, and no maid had set foot in the room. I wondered what Alice had told them. We had seen her once, trundling a laundry cart across the parking area as we rolled up in the Whale but we offered no sign of recognition and she seemed understand.
But it couldn’t last much longer. The room was full of used towels; they were hanging everywhere. The bathroom floor was about six inches deep with soap bars, vomit, and grape fruit rinds, mixed with broken glass. I had to put my boots on every I went in there to piss. The nap of the mottled grey rug was so thick with marijuana seeds that it appeared to be turning green.
The general back-alley ambience of the suite was so rotten, so incredibly foul, that I figured I could probably get away with claiming it was some kind of “Life-slice exhibit” that we’d brought down from Haight Street, to show cops from other parts of the country how deep into filth and degeneracy the drug people will sink, if left to their own devices.
But what kind of addict would need all these coconut husks and crushed honeydew rinds? Would the presence of junkies account for all these uneaten french fries? These puddles of glazed catsup on the bureau?
Maybe so. But then why all this booze? and these crude pornographic photos, ripped out of pulp magazines like Whores of Sweden and Orgies in the Casbah, that were plastered on the broken mirror with smears of mustard that had dried to a hard yellow crust . . . and all these signs of violence, these strange red and blue bulbs and shards of broken glass embedded in the wall plaster . . .
No, these were not the hoofprints of your normal, godfearing junkie. It was far too aggressive. There was evidence, in this room, of excessive consumption of almost every type of drug known to civilized man since 1544 A.D. It could only be explained as a montage, a sort of exaggerated medical exhibit, put together very carefully to show what might happen if twenty-two serious drug felons – each with a different addiction – were penned up together in the same room for five days and nights, without relief.
Indeed. But of course that would never happen in Real Life, gentlemen. We just put this thing together for demonstration purposes . . .
Suddenly the phone was ringing, jerking me out of my fantasy stupor. I looked at it. Riiiinnnnnggggggg . . . Jesus, what now? Is this it? I could almost hear the shrill voice of the Manager, Mr. Heem, saying the police were on their way up to my room and would I please not shoot through the door when they began kicking it down.
Riinnnngggg . . . No, they wouldn’t call first. Once they decided to take me, they would probably set an ambush in the elevator: first Mace, then a gang-swarm. It would come with no warning.
So I picked up the phone. It was my friend Bruce Innes, calling from the Circus-Circus. He had located the man who wanted to sell the ape I’d been inquiring about. The price was $750.