Kingdom of Fear (38 page)

They were dangerous Speed Freaks, driving twenty-ton trucks that might cut loose and jackknife at any moment, utterly out of control. There is nothing more terrifying than suddenly meeting a jackknifed
Peterbilt with no brakes coming at you sideways at sixty or seventy miles per hour on a steep mountain road at three o’clock in the morning. There is a total understanding, all at once, of how the captain of the
Titanic
must have felt when he first saw the Iceberg.

And not much different from the hideous feeling that gripped me when the beam of my Long-Reach Super-Halogen headlights picked up what appeared to be a massive rock slide across the highway—right in front of me, blocking the road completely. Big white rocks and round boulders, looming up with no warning in a fog of rising steam or swamp gas . . .

The brakes were useless, the car was wandering. The rear end was coming around. I jammed it down into Low, but it made no difference, so I straightened it out and braced for a serious impact, a crash that would probably kill me. This is It, I thought. This is how it happens—slamming into a pile of rocks at 100 miles an hour, a sudden brutal death in a fast red car on a moonless night in a rainstorm somewhere on the sleazy outskirts of Elko. I felt vaguely embarrassed, in that long pure instant before I went into the rocks. I remembered Los Lobos and that I wanted to call Maria when I got to Elko. . . .

My heart was full of joy as I took the first hit, which was oddly soft and painless. No real shock at all. Just a sickening
thud,
like running over a body, a corpse—or, ye fucking gods, a crippled 200-pound
sheep
thrashing around in the road.

Yes. These huge white lumps were not boulders. They were
sheep.
Dead and dying sheep. More and more of them, impossible to miss at this speed, piled up on one another like bodies at the battle of Shiloh. It was like running over wet logs. Horrible, horrible. . . .

And then I saw the
man
—a leaping Human Figure in the glare of my bouncing headlights, waving his arms and yelling, trying to flag me down. I swerved to avoid hitting him, but he seemed not to see me, rushing straight into my headlights like a blind man . . . or a monster from Mars with no pulse, covered with blood and hysterical.

It looked like a small black gentleman in a London Fog raincoat, frantic to get my attention. It was so ugly that my brain refused to accept it. . . . Don’t worry, I thought. This is only an Acid flashback. Be calm. This is not really happening.

I was down to about thirty-five or thirty when I zoomed past the
man in the raincoat and bashed the brains out of a struggling sheep, which helped to reduce my speed, as the car went airborne again, then bounced to a shuddering stop just before I hit the smoking, overturned hulk of what looked like a white Cadillac limousine, with people still inside. It was a nightmare. Some fool had crashed into a herd of sheep at high speed and rolled into the desert like an eggbeater.

. . .

We were able to laugh about it later, but it took a while to calm down. What the hell? It was only an accident. The Judge had murdered some range animals.

So what? Only a racist
maniac
would run sheep on the highway in a thunderstorm at this hour of the night. “Fuck those people!” he snapped, as I took off toward Elko with him and his two female companions tucked safely into my car, which had suffered major cosmetic damage but nothing serious. “They’ll never get away with this Negligence!” he said. “We’ll eat them alive in court. Take my word for it. We are about to become
joint owners
of a huge Nevada sheep ranch.”

Wonderful, I thought. But meanwhile we were leaving the scene of a very conspicuous wreck that was sure to be noticed by morning, and the whole front of my car was gummed up with wool and sheep’s blood. There was no way I could leave it parked on the street in Elko, where I’d planned to stop for the night (maybe two or three nights, for that matter) to visit with some old friends who were attending a kind of Appalachian Conference for sex-film distributors at the legendary Commercial Hotel. . . .

Never mind that, I thought. Things have changed. I was suddenly a Victim of Tragedy—injured and on the run, far out in the middle of sheep country—1,000 miles from home with a car full of obviously criminal hitchhikers who were spattered with blood and cursing angrily at one another as we zoomed through the blinding monsoon.

Jesus, I thought: Who
are
these people?

Who indeed? They seemed not to notice me. The two women fighting in the backseat were hookers. No doubt about that. I had seen them in my headlights as they struggled in the wreckage of the Cadillac, which had killed about sixty sheep. They were desperate with Fear and Confusion, crawling wildly across the sheep. . . . One was a tall
black girl in a white minidress . . . and now she was screaming at the other one, a young blond white woman. They were both drunk. Sounds of struggle came from the backseat. “Get your hands off me,
Bitch!”
Then a voice cried out, “Help me, Judge! Help! She’s
killing
me!”

What? I thought.
Judge?
Then she said it again, and a horrible chill went through me. . . .
Judge?
No. That would be over the line. Unacceptable.

He lunged over the seat and whacked their heads together. “Shut up!” he screamed. “Where are your fucking
manners?”

He went over the seat again. He grabbed one of them by the hair. “God
damn
you,” he screamed. “Don’t embarrass this man. He saved our lives. We owe him respect—not this goddamned squalling around like whores.”

A shudder ran through me, but I gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead, ignoring this sudden horrible freak show in my car. I lit a cigarette, but I was not calm. Sounds of sobbing and the ripping of cloth came from the backseat. The man they called Judge had straightened himself out and was now resting easily in the front seat, letting out long breaths of air. . . . The silence was terrifying: I quickly turned up the music. It was Los Lobos again—something about “One Time One Night in America,” a profoundly morbid tune about Death and Disappointment:

A lady dressed in white
With the man she loved
Standing along the side of their pickup truck
A shot rang out in the night
Just when everything seemed right. . .

Right. A shot. A shot rang out in the night. Just another headline written down in America. . . . Yes. There was a loaded .454 Magnum revolver in a clearly marked oak box on the front seat, about halfway between me and the Judge. He could grab it in a split second and blow my head off.

“Good work, Boss,” he said suddenly. “I owe you a big one, for this. I was
done for,
if you hadn’t come along.” He chuckled. “Sure as hell,
Boss, sure as hell. I was Dead Meat—killed a lot worse than what happened to those goddamn stupid sheep!”

Jesus! I thought. Get ready to hit the brake. This man is a Judge on the lam with two hookers. He has
no choice
but to kill me, and those floozies in the backseat too. We were the only witnesses. . . .

This eerie perspective made me uneasy. . . . Fuck this, I thought. These people are going to get me locked up. I’d be better off just pulling over right here and killing all three of them.
Bang, Bang, Bang!
Terminate the scum.

“How far is town?” the Judge asked.

I jumped, and the car veered again. “Town?” I said.
“What
town?” My arms were rigid and my voice was strange and reedy.

He whacked me on the knee and laughed. “Calm down, Boss,” he said. “I have everything under control. We’re almost home.” He pointed into the rain, where I was beginning to see the dim lights of what I knew to be Elko.

“Okay,” he snapped. “Take a left, straight ahead.” He pointed again and I slipped the car into low. There was a red and blue neon sign glowing about a half-mile ahead of us, barely visible in the storm. The only words I could make out were
NO
and
VACANCY.

“Slow down!” the Judge screamed. “This is
it!
Turn! Goddamnit, turn!” His voice had the sound of a whip cracking. I recognized the tone and did as he said, curling into the mouth of the curve with all four wheels locked and the big engine snarling wildly in Compound Low and the blue flames coming out of the tailpipe. . . . It was one of those long perfect moments in the human driving experience that makes
everybody
quiet. Where is P.J.? I thought. This would bring him to his knees.

We were sliding sideways very fast and utterly out of control and coming up on a white steel guardrail at seventy miles an hour in a thunderstorm on a deserted highway in the middle of the night. Why not? On some nights Fate will pick you up like a chicken and slam you around on the walls until your body feels like a beanbag. . . . BOOM! BLOOD! DEATH! So long, Bubba—You knew it would End like this. . . .

We stabilized and shot down the loop. The Judge seemed oddly calm as he pointed again. “This is it,” he said. “This is my place. I Keep
a few suites here.” He nodded eagerly. “We’re finally safe, Boss. We can do anything we want in this place.” The sign at the gate said:

ENDICOTT’S MOTEL
DELUXE SUITES AND WATERBEDS
ADULTS ONLY / NO ANIMALS

Thank God, I thought. It was almost too good to be true. A place to
dump
these bastards. They were quiet now, but not for long. And I knew I couldn’t handle it when these women woke up.

The Endicott was a string of cheap-looking bungalows, laid out in a horseshoe pattern around a rutted gravel driveway. There were cars parked in front of most of the units, but the slots in front of the brightly lit places at the darker end of the horseshoe were empty.

“Okay,” said the Judge. “We’ll drop the ladies down there at our suite, then I’ll get you checked in.” He nodded. “We both need some
sleep,
Boss—or at least
rest,
if you know what I mean. Shit, it’s been a long night.”

I laughed, but it sounded like the bleating of a dead man. The adrenaline rush of the sheep crash was gone, and now I was sliding into pure Fatigue Hysteria.

The Endicott “Office” was a darkened hut in the middle of the horseshoe. We parked in front of it and then the Judge began hammering on the wooden front door, but there was no immediate response. . . . “Wake up, goddamnit! It’s me—the
Judge!
Open up! This is Life and Death! I need
help!”

He stepped back and delivered a powerful kick at the door, which rattled the glass panels and shook the whole building. “I know you’re in there!” he screamed. “You can’t hide! I’ll kick your ass till your nose bleeds!”

There was still no sign of life, and I quickly abandoned all hope. Get out of here, I thought. This is wrong. I was still in the car, half in and half out. . . . The Judge put another fine snap kick at a point just over the doorknob and uttered a sharp scream in some language I didn’t recognize. Then I heard the sound of breaking glass.

I leapt back into the car and started the engine. Get away! I
thought. Never mind sleep. It’s flee or die, now. People get killed for doing this kind of shit in Nevada. It was far over the line. Unacceptable behavior. This is why God made shotguns. . . .

I saw lights come on in the Office. Then the door swung open and I saw the Judge leap quickly through the entrance and grapple briefly with a small bearded man in a bathrobe, who collapsed to the floor after the Judge gave him a few blows to the head. . . . Then he called back to me. “Come on in, Boss,” he yelled. “Meet Mister Henry.”

I shut off the engine and staggered up the gravel path. I felt sick and woozy, and my legs were like rubberbands.

The Judge reached out to help me. I shook hands with Mr. Henry, who gave me a key and a form to fill out. “Bullshit,” said the Judge. “This man is my
guest.
He can have anything he wants. Just put it on my bill.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Henry. “Your
bill.
Yes. I have it right here.” He reached under his desk and came up with a nasty-looking bundle of adding-machine tapes and scrawled Cash/Payment memos. . . . “You got here just in time,” he said. “We were about to notify the Police.”

“What?”
said the Judge. “Are you
nuts?
I have a goddamn
platinum
American Express card! My credit is
impeccable.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Henry. “We
know
that. We have total respect for you. Your signature is better than gold bullion.”

The Judge smiled and whacked the flat of his hand on the counter. “You bet it is!” he snapped. “So get out of my goddamn
face!
You must be crazy to fuck with Me like this! You
fool!
Are you ready to go to
court?”

Mr. Henry sagged.
“Please,
Judge,” he said. “Don’t do this to me. All I need is your card. Just let me run an
imprint.
That’s all.” He moaned and stared more or less at the Judge, but I could see that his eyes were not focused. . . . “They’re going to
fire
me,” he whispered. “They want to put me in
jail.”

“Nonsense!” the Judge snapped. “I would
never
let that happen. You can always
plead.”
He reached out and gently gripped Mr. Henry’s wrist. “Believe me, Bro,” he hissed. “You have
nothing to worry about.
You are
cool.
They will
never
lock you up! They will
Never
take you away! Not out of
my
courtroom!”

“Thank you,” Mr. Henry replied. “But all I need is your card and your signature. That’s the problem: I forgot to run it when you checked in.”

“So what?” the Judge barked. “I’m good for it. How much do you need?”

“About twenty-two thousand,” said Mr. Henry. “Probably twenty-three thousand by now. You’ve had those suites for nineteen days with total room service.”

“What?” the Judge yelled. “You thieving bastards! I’ll have you crucified by American Express. You are
finished
in this business. You will
never work again! Not anywhere in the world!”
Then he whipped Mr. Henry across the front of his face so fast that I barely saw it. “Stop crying!” he said. “Get a grip on yourself! This is embarrassing!”