Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (89 page)

Just then my friend Earl Biss knocked on the thick bulletproof window of the jeep. He was out on work release and had plunged deeply back into gambling. I opened the door, thinking to ask him in, but he seemed confused, and he was motioning for me to get out.

“They’re ripping us to pieces,” he shouted. “We’re losing everything.”

I hurried back to the game with him and saw to my horror that White Birch had somehow taken the lead. The score was 4–3, and my homeboys were coming apart at the seams. Memo had fouled, Tiger had missed a tap in, and Matthews was being heckled by the crowd. Our morale had collapsed. I could sense drastic change in the air. The worm had turned with a vengeance. My dream of victory seemed doomed.

The game was getting wild, and the crowd was becoming undisciplined. I went down for more gin, and when I came back to the box, I found a stranger in Harriman’s seat. He looked like a foreigner, and he was so intent on the game that I had a hard time getting through to him. “Get out,” I said. “This seat is taken.”

He looked at me strangely, as if I were some kind of toad.

“Get out,” I said again. “You don’t belong here.”

He continued to stare at me but said nothing. He was a handsome boy with a look of wandering royalty about him, and I could see by the glint in his eyes that he wanted to have me killed. But then he stood up and slithered lazily over the rail like a rat gone down a pipe. I felt vaguely guilty for some reason, but just then a roar went up from the crowd as Bautista Heguy, a small, speedy man sporting dreadlocks and riding a tiny horse, burst out of the pack and scored a goal for White Birch, putting them ahead 7–6 with just 1:06 on the clock. I abandoned all hope at that point and slumped down in my seat as the crowd began chanting triumphantly: “
White Birch!!! White Birch!!!
”

As the clock ticked down, I thought of leaping off the grandstand and running into the woods to avoid the fate of a Loser—which is no longer death but certain degradation . . . And then it happened—one of those magic moments in sport that no human being who saw it can ever forget. My man Carlos captured the ball and raced upfield while Memo came from the other side. The Gracida brothers were off on a Fast Break, and it was an elegant sight to see. Separately, they were each world-famous ten goalers—together they should be rated about thirty, far more than the sum of their parts.

Carlos got ridden into a corner by Mariano Aguerre and appeared to be trapped, but with eighteen seconds remaining, Carlos whirled his pony and bashed a perfect long shot at the White Birch goal some
150 yards away—across a field of torn-up sod and through the legs of seven galloping horses—that almost scored, but it drifted wide right and seemed to be going out of bounds.

We all watched it roll, utterly hypnotized, as it wandered away from its destiny and the pursuing riders slowed down to avoid mangling the crowd in the end zone. The jig was up. My homeboys had lost by a whisker—and it was at that exact moment that Carlos caught up with the ball and hit an impossible right-angle cut shot between the legs of his own horse that Doug Matthews later described as “the most exciting goal ever scored in the 2,500 years polo has been played.” It curled through the goalposts like a snake going sideways. The crowd was stunned into silence, and the White Birch lads went instantly crazy with grief. They howled at each other and stabbed their mallets down into the mud.

They knew, as I did, that God was not on their side. They were doomed. Big Darkness, Soon Come; it was only a matter of time.

The sudden-death overtime period was quick and naked of drama. Memo was allegedly fouled, and Carlos lofted an easy penalty shot that won the game for my homeboys.

The crowd did not go wild—but I did, and I collected many dollars, which I quickly squandered on whips, raw silk, horse blankets, and other expensive gimcracks in the paraphernalia tents. One of the shysters conned me out of $900 for a set of gold-plated polo china that still has not been delivered. It remains a foul bone in my throat and a nasty stain in my memory. Caveat Emptor is the rule of the polo market. They are horse traders, tribal people by nature, and they wake up greedy every day of their lives. Beware.

The rest of the day was a nightmare. When I went back to the press tent to inquire about Harriman, they told me he’d been involved in a violent fracas with local police before halftime, then arrested for murder and taken away to jail. Nobody could explain it. He was apparently very well known in polo circles, and people called him a gentleman.

“I can’t believe it,” said a man wearing Burberry who introduced himself as the president of the Sands Point Polo Club. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly; it’s an outrage. He
owns
the Garden City Hotel. He was an eight goaler in his day, you know.”

Whoops, I thought, get out of here. My life was about to turn weird.
These heinous charges against Harriman confirmed my worst fears. I knew he was guilty; there was no doubt in my mind about that, but I knew I couldn’t just flee and turn my back on him. He was good people, and he almost seemed like a friend . . . He was a violent, murdering pervert who followed children at night on the beach, and everything he said raised disturbing questions—but I am, after all, the Founding Father of the Fourth Amendment Foundation, and I had access to the finest criminal lawyers in the world. It was the least I could do for Harriman, and I decided to do it at once. I was already late for our victory celebration in Amityville, but this was a professional emergency. I flogged the Lincoln back to the hotel with no regard for the speed limit and rushed upstairs to the suite, where I found Tobias working the telephones. “Yes,” he said quickly, “it’s true. They snagged him for Murder 1. I’m trying to find out where they took him.”

“Call Goldstein immediately and do whatever he says. I have to run out to some Mexican place in Amityville for dinner with Doug and my homeboys. This is a night for the ages, Tobias, and I refuse to let Harriman spoil it. We’ll have him out by dawn—even if he’s guilty.”

Then I got back on that goddamn filthy Long Island Expressway and sank into serious thinking. It was another wet night on the island. I tried to relax and act normal. What the hell? I thought. It’s only rock & roll.

VI

Late Sunday night after our victory party in Amityville, I got lost driving back to the hotel with the Gracida brothers and two booze-maddened girls. All four of them were jammed into the backseat of the Lincoln, which made me nervous. They paid no attention to me, as if I were some kind of commercial chauffeur. There were sounds of whispering and struggling coming from the backseat, but I tried to ignore it. I turned up the radio volume and ate my last ball of hashish.

We had been on the road for more than an hour when I realized I was hopelessly lost. I asked for help, but nobody answered. Finally I pulled into a 7-Eleven store and left the car with its lights on and the engine running. None of my backseat people seemed to notice as I got out of
the car and walked across the parking lot and got into a waiting taxicab. Fuck those people, I thought. Let them fend for themselves.

On my way back to the hotel, I spoke to the intensely silent driver about Gatsby, and I asked him if he knew where his house was.

“I know nothing,” he snapped. “I speak no English.”

I sagged and fell back on the seat. I had no money; in fact, I had given it all to Tobias when I sent him to look for Harriman. I reached into my dinner jacket and pulled out my .380 Walther PPK. Maybe I should just shoot this bastard in the back of the head, I thought. But I soon got a grip on myself. Yes, I thought, I could do that, but it would be wrong. I knocked sharply on the bulletproof window between us. “Go fast,” I yelled. “I am sick! Take me to the Garden City Hotel. Now!”

He seemed to understand, and we both relaxed, but it was still a long way to the hotel. Wonderful, I thought. I need some time to think. I had feelings of terrible foreboding, and I wanted to flee immediately. Long Island had broken my spirit. It is an island of poison gas surrounded by a sea of garbage, and I feared I was becoming a part of it. The time had come. The jig was up. Ten days in the flashy core of Long Island had been like ten weeks on a burning garbage scow.

Even the fabled Garden City Hotel had lost its magic for me, and I was deeply afraid of having to wake up there one morning all alone after the polo people were gone. Next week’s crowd would be different. The events board in the lobby said the Critical Care Associates were coming in, along with a regional convention of lingerie and rubber merchants. I was not even tempted. It was time to leave—before something terrible happened.

The hotel lobby was empty when I came in. There was nobody behind the reception desk. On my way to the elevators, I noticed that the lights were still on in the Polo Lounge, so I decided to stop for a nightcap and see what I could find out from Hugo. I knew he hated Harriman and would be eager to pass along any vile gossip about him, especially to me. But Hugo was nowhere in sight, and when I strummed the glass rack for service, an unfamiliar face emerged from the kitchen and said he was the new bartender.

“Where is Hugo?” I asked him. “I want to speak with him immediately.”

He stiffened and backed away. “Who wants to know?” he asked nervously.

“Me,” I said. “I’m his family doctor.”

He moaned, and a shudder went through his body.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“Hugo is dead,” he replied in a trembling voice. “They found him in the pool, floating facedown with a big rat perched on his back. He died a horrible death.”

This news shocked me, but I tried to act normal. It was a hideous image. “His back was clawed all to pieces,” said the bartender. “There was a cloud of blood all around him in the water. Half of his scalp was chewed off.

“It was no accident,” he continued. “Somebody had it in for him. He had a lot of enemies. He was weird.”

I nodded solemnly. “You bet,” I said. “I knew him well—but, Jesus, how weird do you have to be to get murdered in water by rats? What kind of monster would even think of doing a thing like that? Has anybody confessed?”

“Not yet,” he said, “but they arrested your friend Mr. Harriman, and I heard they were looking for you.”

“What?” I blurted. “
Who’s
looking for me?”

He was trembling badly. “The goddamn stinking police. They were here about an hour ago.”

I left quickly, saying nothing. My heart was pounding, and my brain was swamped by confusion. But not for long. By the time I got to the room, I knew what I had to do. I called United and booked a seat on the morning flight to Denver. It would leave LaGuardia in two hours.

There was no sign of Tobias and no time to do any packing. Fuck this mess, I thought. He can pack it all up in boxes and send it by Federal Express. I flogged a few things into my satchel and called the concierge for a fast cab to the airport. There was no other way.

I felt a certain amount of guilt about leaving Harriman alone in jail to face murder charges, but so what? I knew the Polo Attitude, and so did he. We were warriors, but he was in jail, and I wasn’t—and besides, I knew he was guilty. He had murdered poor Hugo just as surely as I was now on my way to the airport at top speed in a blind panic. I couldn’t
help Harriman now. He was doomed, and I didn’t want to be doomed with him. It would be boring, and who would take care of my ponies?

I never heard from Harriman again, but Tobias told me that his trial had been put off indefinitely for lack of evidence . . . In my heart I know that the world is a better place with Hugo dead, but I keep it to myself. You can’t be too careful.

Epitaph
Veni, Vidi, Vici

Life is different for me now. I go to all the tournaments. I do my shopping at Lodsworth, I am seen with Deborah Couples, and I fly to Argentina in the winter—me and the weird Dukakis sisters. Last month it was Palm Beach; now it’s the U.S. Open, and then down to Buenos Aires. We live in our own world, we live our lives like dolphins.

I am a polo person now, and I know the Polo Attitude. I smoke the finest opium, and I drive a Ducati 916. Birds sing where I walk, and my home is a magnet for children.

I have come a long way from Uncle Lawless’ barn. I have my own ponies now. I whack polo balls around my yard with a thirty-inch foot mallet from Gray’s, and I was named to the board of trustees at the recent Polo Ball. My neighbor De Lise is a two goaler, and we spend five hours a day in the practice cage, hitting balls against the backstop at one hundred miles per hour and trying to hook each other. It is wrong, but we do it anyway. That is the Polo Attitude—and if polo is wrong, so am I.

__ __ __ __

August 24, 1995

D
ATE
: July 6, 1995
T
O
: Dollar Bill Greider
F
ROM
: Hunter S. Thompson
CC: P. J. O’Rourke
S
UBJECT
: Dragging Me into Your Rude Political Debate with P.J. (
rs
712-713)

You screwhead pig! Look what you’ve done now. You have blasted to smithereens the once-proud
Hubristic
notion (look it up) that we of the highest rank & proudest voice of the Rock & Roll persuasion are
Smart
. You both made public fools of yourselves—and then you had the cheap, cowardly, skunklike sleaziness to blame yr. dumbness on some kind of pills that you claim I “
sent you in the mail
.”

Ah, you dilettante bastards are all the same, aren’t you?
First the gibberish, then the Treachery
. . . And then you blame it on
me
.

You remind me of Hubert Humphrey after he lost his nerve. In the end he was like a desperate old carrion bird. He hovered over the lives of decent people like a vulture over a barnyard—cackling & whining & drooling as vultures will—and then finally swooping and diving and then feeding crudely in public on the dreams of the Doomed down below.