The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party - NYTimes.com

The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party - NYTimes.com: "Trent Lott, the former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game in July. “We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” he said, referring to the South Carolina senator who is the Tea Party’s Capitol Hill patron saint. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.” It’s the players who wrote the checks for the G.O.P. surge, not those earnest folk in tri-corner hats, who plan to run the table in the next corporate takeover of Washington. Though Tom DeLay may now be on trial for corruption in Texas, the spirit of his K Street lives on in a Lott client list that includes Northrop Grumman and Goldman Sachs."

Listen Up

An already dysfunctional, obstructive GOP will only become more so with the addition of newly elected Tea Party candidates in the Republican caucus.


TEA FOR TWO: TURN THE HEAT AROUND: POLITICO's Mike Allen sat down with the head of the Tea Party Express, Amy Kremer, to talk about the election and how the Tea Party will hold its newly elected candidates' feet to the fire. 'These people we're sending to Washington are on probation," Kremer said in an interview for the POLITICO video series, 'Countdown to 2010'' Mike writes. ''We will fire them just as we fired - or are about to fire - some of the worst offenders that are already here. We are not sending them there ... with just a blanket of trust. ... [W]e're going to be watching them. We're going to hold them accountable. And we're going to work with them, because we want to know that they're doing what they're sent there to do,'' Kremer said. '[A] 39-year-old Atlantan, [she] is chairman of Tea Party Express, a project of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. She says she had never been involved in politics before the fall of 2008, and helped spearhead the tea parties in 2009 through Facebook and Twitter.' Story http://politi.co/aSyu4N  Video http://politi.co/9FT4Ek

Richard O. Schwab

830 Congress Ave.

Glendale, Ohio 45246

H.513-771-4397

M.513-470-4599

There’s good reason the masses are revolting - The Globe and Mail

There’s good reason the masses are revolting - The Globe and Mail: "Americans believe their country is in crisis, and they’re right. By next year, the United States will reach Third World debt territory. Yet both major parties seem oblivious. Neither of them has a plan, or even publicly acknowledges the severity of the crisis. If the Tea Party does nothing else, it may at least force the Republicans to face this highly unpleasant fact. If Mr. Obama wants a second term, he’ll have to face it too."

Andy Warhol Pepper and Driehaus

Pepper Tree With Pumpkin in Orange

All-Season Peppertree

Pepper in a Tree

Pepper Update

http://www.davidpepper.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.page&id=1099

U.S. headed for fiscal train wreck: Roubini - The Globe and Mail

U.S. headed for fiscal train wreck: Roubini - The Globe and Mail: "The Obama administration did the right thing early, and avoided another depression. He is still doing the right thing now in pointing out the risks of early austerity. And he is limited by an unco-operative Republican party trapped in a belief in voodoo economics, the economic equivalent of creationism. Even so, he and his party have been unwilling to tackle long-term entitlement spending. Two years in, and this means the U.S. remains on an unsustainable fiscal course."

Divided We Fail - NYTimes.com

Divided We Fail - NYTimes.com: "So if the elections go as expected next week, here’s my advice: Be afraid. Be very afraid."

Divided We Fail - NYTimes.com

Divided We Fail - NYTimes.com: "Today’s situation is completely different. The economy, weighed down by the debt that households ran up during the Bush-era bubble, is in dire straits; deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present danger. And it’s not at all clear that the Fed has the tools to head off this danger. Right now we very much need active policies on the part of the federal government to get us out of our economic trap."

Divided We Fail - Work (Canvass) This Weekend!!!!

Divided We Fail - NYTimes.com: "No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness."

Remember to click on links to voting early.

Pepper Scarecrow -- Get One Today!!!!

If only this would scare his opponent into oblivion:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/photo.php?fbid=447299853226&set=a.378846008226.158801.650208226

James T. Kloppenberg Discusses His ‘Reading Obama’ - NYTimes.com

James T. Kloppenberg Discusses His ‘Reading Obama’ - NYTimes.com: "He finds both assessments flawed. Conservatives who argue that Mr. Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D’Souza does in his book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”) are far off the mark, he said."

Step-Up Saturday...or Sunday...or Monday...or Election Day!!!!!

email what times you can work to Dina at dmolyaie@gmail.com or call her on her cell phone 513 658 7529; or call the general number at Springfield Pike Headquarters, 10036 Springfield Pike, 772-0300

Read!

Why Mid-Terms Matter

Thought!

A thought for today:


History has taught us time and time again, in cycles of economic depression
and recession, you have to rebuild the economy THEN solve the deficit.
Today, the shrinking Middle Class is the real issue and requires new long
term strategic solutions. The political play books from the past do not
solve this critical and fundamental issue of a shrinking middle class.
Actually, those play books from the past are responsible for shrinking the
middle class.
The Obama administration gets it as do those political leaders who have
supported our President.

That is why this November 2, 2010 election is so important!

Richard O. Schwab

Can’t Keep a Bad Idea Down - NYTimes.com

Can’t Keep a Bad Idea Down - NYTimes.com: "“Here is a little dose of reality about where we actually rank today,” says Vest: sixth in global innovation-based competitiveness, but 40th in rate of change over the last decade; 11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school; 16th in college completion rate; 22nd in broadband Internet access; 24th in life expectancy at birth; 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; 48th in quality of K-12 math and science education; and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people."

Can’t Keep a Bad Idea Down - NYTimes.com

Can’t Keep a Bad Idea Down - NYTimes.com: "I confess, I find it dispiriting to read the polls and see candidates, mostly Republicans, leading in various midterm races while promoting many of the very same ideas that got us into this mess. Am I hearing right?"

Read This by The Baseline Scenerio

Shape-Shifting Deficit Hawks

Posted: 26 Oct 2010 02:46 PM PDT

By James Kwak

We appear to be a week way from an election that, while really about persistent high unemployment, on the talking-point level is largely about deficits, with the Republicans continuing their usual posturing about cutting deficits without raising taxes or explaining what spending programs they are going to cut. Robert Pollin has contributed an analysis of the deficit hawks’ argument that is valuable for pointing out that there actually four deficit hawk arguments. In his words:

“1. The traditional view. Large fiscal deficits will cause high interest rates, large government debts, and inflation.

“2. Declining business confidence is the real danger. Even if the current deficits have not caused high interest rates and inflation, they are eroding business confidence. When business confidence is low, the economy is highly vulnerable to small changes in conditions, what some economists call ‘non-linearities.’

“3. Fiscal stimulus policies never work. New Classical economists, Robert Barro most notably, have long argued that the multiplier for fiscal stimulus policies is zero or thereabouts.

“4. A long-term fiscal train-wreck is coming. Regardless of short-term considerations, we are courting disaster in the long-run with structural deficits that the recession has only worsened.

Pollin also has the grace to point out that, for the deficit hawks to be correct, only one of these arguments has to be correct.

Of course, they’re not, at least not the first three. To the first argument, Pollin largely follows the Krugman line, pointing out that interest rates and inflation remain stubbornly low, with the risk of deflation outweighing the risk of inflation. With excess capacity and high unemployment, it’s hard to see what private sector investment there is for the government to crowd out.

The second argument is the one popularized by Carmen and Vincent Reinhart and Ken Rogoff. Its appeal is that it bypasses the Krugman argument (interest rates are low, not high) by hypothesizing that at some point, investor sentiment tips and interest rates suddenly skyrocket. Now, this is certainly true at some point, and given the limited data (there just aren’t that many countries in the history of the world with our economic influence and control over the world’s reserve currency), there is no trustworthy empirical answer to the question of when confidence crumbles away. But I’m with Pollin on this one. Why panic over an unquantifiable risk of an unquantifiable tipping point when (a) there are no data saying we’re close to one and, more importantly, (b) we know there is a very real risk of economic stagnation? Not only is there a risk of stagnation, we have stagnation right now–just ask all the people without jobs. In the long term, confidence in the ability of the Treasury to pay off its debts is based on expectations about the future performance of the U.S. economy (since the economy is the tax base), and the bigger worry right now should be economic growth.

The third argument is the old one about multipliers, and the short answer is that the vast majority of the empirical work says that multipliers are positive, even for tax cuts, and multipliers for spending are often over one (see Blinder, Zandi, Chinn, et al.).

The fourth argument is the one where I think the deficit hawks might have a point, although their usual solutions (austerity now!) are wrongheaded. Pollin’s rebuttal is that the average fiscal deficit over the next decade is projected by the CBO at 5.2% of GDP (using the administration’s proposed budget, which includes extending most of the Bush tax cuts), and we can easily get that down to 2-3% of GDP through some combination of lower health care costs, lower military spending (e.g., just getting somewhere close to 2000 levels), and a financial transaction tax. I think he’s basically right as far as the next decade goes, but after 2020 the problems with Medicare start to take off, and those problems are largely outside the government’s control: Medicare is just an insurance plan to pay for privately delivered services, and those services are what is skyrocketing in price. So this gets into the debate about how much the recent health care reform bill actually reduced long-term health care costs, which is a messy and as yet unresolved debate.

But as I’ve said before, if you take argument #4 seriously, the answer has to be curbing the long-term growth of healthcare costs, not cutting government spending now, which is basically irrelevant to the “structural” deficit and, worse yet, will only worsen and prolong the recession.* And the answer has to be curbing healthcare costs in general, not just the government’s share of those costs, because otherwise you’re just shifting the risk onto people who cannot afford to bear it.

* From now on, I’m not going to bother pointing out that, according to the NBER, the recession ended a year ago. You know what I mean.

Infrastructure!

From Chip Coburn, our Banner Maker:

"While this link below may be to an article from a Portland, OR paper, it applies here in Ohio to Candidates Kasich and Wilson, that would kill expanding passenger rail service if elected. Infrastructure spending is essential to maintain our competitive edge as a region and a country. What if "Ike" didn't have a visoin for the Interstate Highway System, or if the hoover Dam had never been built? Our country needs to dream big and reach for the stars... To steal from "Field of Dreams", "if you build it, they will come..."

If you don't, they won't be able to get here and they'll take their business elsewhere...."

http://www.pressherald.com/news/nationworld/a-short-sighted-view-of-long-term-projects__2010-10-22.html

Courtesy of Paul Breidenbach

"Hey, I've got an idea! Let's put Republicans back in office; they can solve this whole mess by cutting taxes, deregulating and demonizing gays!"

Clarence Thomas -- A Monster on the Supreme Court or Just a Man Who Liked Porn?

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2010/10/25/lkl.thomas.mcewen.asexual.cnn 

Administrative Law Judge Lillian McEwen to Retire From SEC


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2006-221

Washington, D.C., Dec. 28, 2006 - Administrative Law Judge Lillian A. McEwen has announced that she is retiring from her position with the SEC, effective Jan. 3, 2007. Since her appointment in September 1995, Judge McEwen has presided over, and issued initial decisions in, scores of administrative proceedings brought by the SEC's Division of Enforcement. She also served on multiple occasions as the SEC delegate to the Federal Administrative Law Judges Conference and was a founding member of Judicial Council, which is affiliated with the Washington Bar Association.



Prior to her appointment to the SEC, Judge McEwen served as an administrative law judge with the Social Security Administration in Fresno, Calif., from July 1994 to March 1995, at which time she was promoted to Hearing Office Chief Administrative Law Judge in New Haven, Conn. Judge McEwen began her legal career in 1975 as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C. From 1979 to 1982, she was counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, where she worked extensively with Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., on criminal forfeiture and racketeering legislation. Judge McEwen then practiced criminal law privately from 1983 to 1989 and 1993 to 1994. During 1989 through 1992, she was an Assistant Professor of Law at the District of Columbia School of Law.

Judge McEwen received her J.D. from Howard University School of Law, serving on the staff of the Howard University Law Journal, and her B.S. at D.C. Teachers' College.


http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2006/2006-221.htm

No Second Thoughts - NYTimes.com

No Second Thoughts - NYTimes.com: "On the other hand, Democrats and their enablers have paid no attention to Republicans like Rob Portman, Dan Coats, John Boozman and Roy Blunt, who are likely to actually get elected. It doesn’t feel good when your opponents are experienced people who simply have different points of view. The existence of these impressive opponents introduces tension into the chi of your self-esteem."

Take Your Signs In Until Tomorrow

Avoid the wind this morning.

The Corrosion of America - NYTimes.com

The Corrosion of America - NYTimes.com: "Improving water systems — and infrastructure generally, if properly done — would go a long way toward improving the nation’s dismal economic outlook. According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, every dollar invested in water and sewer improvements has the potential to increase the long-term gross domestic product by more than six dollars. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created if the nation were serious about repairing and upgrading water mains, crumbling pipes, water treatment plants, dams, levees and so on."

Here's link to an article showing how the "giant sucking sound" of manufacturing jobs leaving the US occured "en masse" during the Bush II years - and we can't be expected to fix his selling out the middle class overnight!


http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/disturbing-statistics-on-the-decline-of-americas-middle-class/19676292/?icid=main%7Cmain%7Cdl1%7Csec4_lnk2%7C178480

Trouble on the Factory Floor

So how did the middle class become second class citizens -- or, as Smith puts it, "Debt Serfs"? Not surprisingly, the answer is complicated, involving factors like the rising cost of education, the loss of pension funds and affordable health care, falling middle class wages, and the skyrocketing price of housing. Yet one clear answer lies in manufacturing. When looking at the declining American middle class, a good number to start with is 42,400. That's the total number of factories that the U.S. lost between 2001 and the end of 2009. Put another way, this translates into the outsourcing of 32% of all manufacturing jobs in America.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/disturbing-statistics-on-the-decline-of-americas-middle-class/19676292/?icid=main%7Cmain%7Cdl1%7Csec4_lnk2%7C178480&icid=sphere_copyright

And Then He Said

The Great Bailout Backlash - NYTimes.com: "So it’s a healthy and necessary thing that our first post-crisis election has been defined by a groundswell of anti-bailout outrage. This no doubt seems unfair to the politicians who may lose their jobs (or have already lost them) for doing what they felt they had to do. But it would be an infinitely worse sign for America if the present backlash hadn’t materialized at all."

The Great Bailout Backlash - NYTimes.com

The Great Bailout Backlash - NYTimes.com: "The bailout became law because the legislative branch was stampeded with the threats of certain doom. It vested unprecedented economic authority in a single unelected official, the secretary of the Treasury. And it used public funds to insulate well-connected private actors from the consequences of their recklessness. Its creation short-circuited republican self-government, and its execution created moral hazard on an epic scale. It may have been an economic necessity, but it felt like a travesty nonetheless."

And What Will Then Happen

Falling Into the Economic Chasm - NYTimes.com: "And if they take one or both houses of Congress, complete policy paralysis — which will mean, among other things, a cutoff of desperately needed aid to the unemployed and a freeze on further help for state and local governments — is a given. The only question is whether we’ll have political chaos as well, with Republicans’ shutting down the government at some point over the next two years. And the odds are that we will."

Falling Into the Economic Chasm - NYTimes.com

Falling Into the Economic Chasm - NYTimes.com: "What we do know is that the inadequacy of the stimulus has been a political catastrophe. Yes, things are better than they would have been without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: the unemployment rate would probably be close to 12 percent right now if the administration hadn’t passed its plan. But voters respond to facts, not counterfactuals, and the perception is that the administration’s policies have failed."

Supremely Bad Judgment - NYTimes.com

(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel

This article about the emerging scandal involving Clarence Thomas, opens up a lot in this incredible piece today from the NYT. This Op-Ed piece by Dowd, plus the new book by Lillian McEwen, explains to me why Hunter S. Thompson in 1992 safely wrote an outrageous, hilarious, seemingly-slanderous -- by even the New York Times case standards -- pornographic, rainy night tale about Justice Thomas, some whores and a lot of sheep.

Now I say, "probably not slanderous." [Type "Rolling Stone #622" on Google.]
http://www.gonzo.org/elko.txt

Supremely Bad Judgment - NYTimes.com: "Looking to shop a memoir, the 65-year-old McEwen used the occasion of Ginni’s weird phone message to Anita — asking her to “consider an apology” and “pray about this” and “O.K., have a good day!” — to open up to reporters."

[Part II] Fear and Loathing in Elko: Bad Craziness in Sheep


Country....Side Entrance on Queer Street....O Black, O Wild, O

Darkness, Roll Over Me Tonight





It was just after midnight when I first saw the sheep. I was running
about eighty-eight or ninety miles an hour in a drenching, blinding
rain on U.S. 40 between Winnemucca and Elko with one light out. I was
soaking wet from the water that was pouring in through a hole in the
front roof of the car, and my fingers were like rotten icicles on the
steering wheel.
It was a moonless night and I knew I was hydroplaning, which is
dangerous.... My front tires were no longer in touch with the asphalt
or anything else. My center of gravity was too high. There was no
visibility on the road, none at all. I could have tossed a flat rock a
lot farther than I could see in front of me that night though the rain
and the ground fog.
So what? I though. I know this road -- a straight lonely run across
nowhere, with not many dots on the map except ghost towns and truck
stops with names like Beowawe and Lovelock and Deeth and
Winnemucca....
Jesus! Who made this map? Only a lunatic could have come up with a
list of places like this: Imlay, Valmy, Golconda, Nixon, Midas,
Metropolis, Jiggs, Judasville -- all of them empty, with no gas
stations, withering away in the desert like a string of old Pony
Express stations. The Federal Government owns ninety percent of this
land, and most of it is useless for anything except weapons testing
and poison-gas experiments.
My plan was to keep moving. Never slow down. Keep the car aimed
straight ahead through the rain like a cruise missile....I felt
comfortable. There is a sense of calm and security that comes with
driving a very fast car on an empty road at night....Fuck this
thunderstorm, I thought. There is safety in speed. Nothing can touch
me as long as I keep moving fast, and never mind the cops: They're all
hunkered down in a truck stop or jacking off by themselves in a
culvert behind some dynamite shack in the wilderness beyond the
highway....Either way, they wanted no part of me, and I wanted no part
of them. Only trouble could come of it. They were probably nice
people, and so was I -- but we were not meant for each other. History
had long since determined that. There is a huge body of evidence to
support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do
extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with
each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and
drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys
that we know in our hearts that we are..These occasions are rare, but
they happen -- despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us
forever on different paths....But what the hell? I can handle a wild
birthday party with cops, now and then. Or some unexpected orgy at a
gun show in Texas. Why not? Hell, I ran for Sheriff one time, and
almost got elected. They understand this, and I get along fine with
the smart ones.
But not tonight, I thought, I sped along in the darkness. Not at 100
miles an hour at midnight on a rain-slicked road in Nevada. Nobody
needs to get involved in a high-speed chase on a filthy night like
this. It would be dumb and extremely dangerous. Nobody driving a red
454 V-8 Chevrolet convertible was likely to pull over and surrender
peacefully at the first sight of a cop car behind him. All kinds of
weird shit might happen, from a gunfight with dope fiends to permanent
injury or death....It was a good night to stay indoors and be warm,
make a fresh pot of coffee and catch up on important paperwork. Lay
low and ignore these loonies. Anybody behind the wheel of a ca tonight
was far too crazy to fuck with, anyway.
Which was probably true. There was nobody on the road except me and
a few big-rig Peterbilts running west to Reno and Sacramento by dawn.
I could hear them on my nine-band Super-Scan shortwave/CB/Police
radio, which erupted now and then with outbursts of brainless speed
gibberish about Big Money and Hot Crank and teenage cunts with huge
tits.
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 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 each other 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 headlight, 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 strange 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 -- 1000 miles from home with car full of obviously
criminal hitchhikers who were spattered with blood and cursing angrily
at each other as we zoomed through the blinding monsoon.
Jesus, I though Who are these people?


Who indeed? They seemed not to notice me. The two women fighting in
the back seat 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 back seat. "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 back 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 god damned 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 back seat. 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
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
two floozies in the back seat 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
adrenalin 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 rubber bands.
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?"
"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 $22,000," said Mr. Henry. "Probably $23,000 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!"






Then he slapped the man again. "Is that all you want?" he said.


"Only a card? A stupid little card? A piece of plastic shit?"






Mr. Henry nodded. "Yes, Judge," he whispered. "That's all. Just a


stupid little card."






The Judge laughed and reached into his raincoat, as if to jerk out a


gun or at least a huge wallet. "You want a card, whoreface? Is that


it? Is that all you want? You filthy little scumbag! Here it is!"






Mr. Henry cringed and whimpered. Then he reached out to accept the


Card, the thing that would set him free...The Judge was still grasping


around in the lining of his raincoat. "What the fuck?" he muttered.


"This thing has too many pockets! I can feel it, but I can't find the


slit!"






Mr. Henry seemed to believe him, and so did I, for a minute....Why


not? He was a judge with a platinum credit card -- a very high roller.


You don't find many Judges, these days, who can handle a full caseload


in the morning and run wild like a goat in the afternoon. That is a


very hard dollar, and very few can handle it....but the Judge was a


Special Case.






Suddenly he screamed and fell sideways, ripping and clawing at the


lining of his raincoat. "Oh, Jesus!" he wailed. "I've lost my wallet!


It's gone. I left it out there in the Limo, when we hit the fucking


sheep."






"So what?" I said. "We don't need it for this. I have many plastic


cards."






He smiled and seemed to relax. "How many?" he said. "We might need


more than one."






I woke up in the bathtub -- who knows how much later -- to the sound


of the hookers shrieking next door. The New York Times had fallen in


and blackened the water. For many hours I tossed and turned like a


crack baby in a cold hallway. I heard thumping Rhythm & Blues --


serious rock & roll, and I knew that something wild was going on in


the Judge's suites. The smell of amyl nitrate came from under the


door. It was no use. It was impossible to sleep through this orgy of


ugliness. I was getting worried. I was already a marginally legal


person, and now I was stuck with some crazy Judge who had my credit


card and owed me $23,000.






I had some whiskey in the car, so I went out into the rain to get


some ice. I had to get out. As I walked past the other rooms, I looked


in people's windows and feverishly tried to figure out how to get my


credit card back. Then from behind me I heard the sound of a tow-truck


winch. The Judge's white Cadillac was being dragged to the ground. The


Judge was whooping it up with the tow-truck driver, slapping him on


the back.






"What the hell? It was only property damage," he laughed.






"Hey, Judge," I called out. "I never got my card back."






"Don't worry," he said. "It's in my room -- come on."






I was right behind him when he opened the door to his room, and I


caught a glimpse of a naked woman dancing. As soon as the door opened,


the woman lunged for the Judge's throat. She pushed him back outside


and slammed the door in his face.






"Forget that credit card -- we'll get some cash," the Judge said.


"Let's go down to the Commercial Hotel. My friends are there and they


have plenty of money.






We stopped for a six-pack on the way. The Judge went into a sleazy


liquor store that turned out to be a front for kinky marital aids. I


offered him money for the beer, but he grabbed my whole wallet.






Ten minutes later, the Judge came out with $400 worth of booze and a


bagful of Triple-X-Rated movies. "My buddies will like this stuff," he


said. "And don't worry about the money, I told you I'm good for it.


These guys carry serious cash."






The marquee above the front door of the Commercial Hotel said:






WELCOME: ADULT FILM PRESIDENTS


STUDEBAKER SOCIETY


FULL ACTION CASINO/KENO IN LOUNGE






"Park right her in front, said the Judge. "Don't worry. I'm well


known in this place."






Me too, but I said nothing. I have been well known at the Commercial


for many years, from the time when I was doing a lot of driving back


and forth between Denver and San Francisco -- usually for Business


reasons, or for Art, and on this particular weekend I was there to


meet quietly with a few old friends and business associates from the


Board of Directors of the Adult Film Association of America. I had


been, after all, the Night Manager of the famous O'Farrell Theatre, in


San Francisco -- "the Carnegie Hall of Sex in America."






I was the Guest of Honor, in fact -- but I saw no point in confiding


these things to the Judge, a total stranger with no Personal


Identification, no money and a very aggressive lifestyle. We were on


our way to the Commercial Hotel to borrow money from some of his


friends in the Adult Film business.






What the hell? I though. It's only Rock & Roll. And he was, after


all, a judge of some kind....Or maybe not. For all I knew he was a


criminal pimp with no fingerprints, or a wealthy black shepherd from


Spain. But it hardly mattered. He was good company (if you had a taste


for the edge work -- and I did, in those days. And so, I felt, did the


Judge). He had a bent sense of fun, a quick mind and no Fear of


anything.






The front door of the Commercial looked strangely busy at this hour


of night in a bad rainstorm, so I veered off and drove slowly around


the block in low gear.






"There's a side entrance on Queer Street," I said to the Judge, as


we hammered into a flood of black water. He seemed agitated, which


worried me a bit.






"Calm down," I said. "We don't want to make a scene in this place.


All we want is money."






"Don't worry," he said. "I know these people. They are friends.


Money is nothing. They will be happy to see me."






We entered the hotel through the Casino entrance. The Judge seemed


calm and focused until we rounded the corner and came face to face


with an eleven-foot polar bear standing on its hind legs, ready to


pounce. The Judge turned to jelly at the sight of it. "I've had enough


of this goddamn beast," he shouted." It doesn't belong here. We should


blow its head off."






I took him by the arm "Calm down, Judge," I told him. "That's White


King. He's been dead for about thirty-three years."






The Judge had no use for animals. He composed himself and we swung


into the lobby, approaching the desk from behind. I hung back--it was


getting late and the lobby was full of suspicious-looking stragglers


from the Adult Film crowd. Private cowboy cops wearing six-shooters in


open holsters were standing around. Our entrance did not go unnoticed.






The Judge looked competent, but there was something menacing in the


way he swaggered up to the desk clerk and whacked the marble


countertop with both hands. The lobby was suddenly filled with


tension, and I quickly moved away as the Judge began yelling and


pointing at the ceiling.






"Don't give me that crap," he barked. "These people are my friends.


They're expecting me. Just ring the goddamn room again." The desk


clerk muttered something about his explicit instructions not to....






Suddenly the Judge reached across the desk for the house phone.


"What's the number? I'll ring it myself" The clerk moved quickly. He


shoved the phone out of the Judge's grasp and simultaneously drew his


index finger across his throat. The Judge took one look at the muscle


converging on him and changed his stance.






"I want to cash a check," he said calmly.






"A check?" the clerk said. "Sure thing, buster. I'll cash your


goddamned check." He seized the Judge by his collar and laughed.


"Let's get this Bozo out of her. And put him in jail."






I was moving toward the door, and suddenly the Judge was right


behind me. "Let's go," he said. We sprinted for the car, but then the


Judge stopped in his tracks. He turned and raised his fist in the


direction of the hotel. "Fuck you!" he shouted. "I'm the Judge. I'll


be back, and I'll bust every one of you bastards. The next time you


see me coming, you'd better run."






We jumped into the car and zoomed away into the darkness. The Judge


was acting manic. "Never mind those pimps," he said. "I'll have them


all on a chain gang in forty-eight hours." He laughed and slapped me


on the back. "Don't worry, Boss," he said. "I know where we're going."


He squinted into the rain and opened a bottle of Royal Salute.


"Straight ahead," he snapped. "Take a right at the next corner. We'll


go see Leach. He owes me $24,000."






I slowed down and reached for the whiskey. What the hell, I thought.


Some days are weirder than others.






"Leach is my secret weapon," the Judge said, "but I have to watch


him. He could be violent. The cops are always after him. He lives in a


balance of terror. But he has a genius for gambling. We win eight out


of ten every week." He nodded solemnly. "That is four of five, Doc.


That is Big. Very big. That is eighty percent of everything." He shook


his head sadly and reached for the whiskey. "It's a horrible habit.


But I can't give it up. It's like having a money machine."






"That's wonderful," I said. "What are you bitching about?"






"I'm afraid, Doc. Leach is a monster, a criminal hermit who


understands nothing in life except point spreads. He should be locked


up and castrated."






"So what?" I said. "Where does he live? We are desperate. We have no


cash and no plastic. This freak is our only hope."






The Judge slumped into himself, and neither one of us spoke for a


minute.... "Well," he said finally. "Why not? I can handle almost


anything for twenty-four big ones in a brown bag. What the fuck? Let's


do it. If the bastard gets ugly, we'll kill him."






"Come on, Judge," I said. "Get a grip on yourself. This is only a


gambling debt."






"Sure," he replied. "That's what they all say."










[Part III] Dead Meat in the Fast Lane: The Judge Runs Amok...Death of


a Poet, Blood Clots in the Revenue Stream...The Man Who Loved Sex


Dolls










We pulled into a seedy trailer court behind the stockyards. Leach


met us at the door with red eyes and trembling hands, wearing a soiled


bathrobe and carrying a half-gallon of Wild Turkey.






"Thank God you're home," The Judge said. "I can't tell you what kind


of horrible shit has happened to me tonight....But now the worm has


turned. Now that we have cash, we will crush them all."






Leach just stared. Then he took a swig of Wild Turkey. "We are


doomed," he muttered. "I was about to slit my wrists."






"Nonsense," the Judge said. "We won Big. I bet the same way you did.


You gave me the numbers. You even predicted the Raiders would stomp


Denver. Hell, it was obvious. The Raiders are unbeatable on Monday


night."






Leach tensed, then he threw his head back and uttered a high-pitched


quavering shriek. The Judge seized him. "Get a grip on yourself," he


snapped. "What's wrong?"


"I went sideways on the bet," Leach sobbed. "I went to that goddamn


sports bar up in Jackpot with some of the guys from the shop. We were


all drinking Mescal and screaming, and I lost my head."






Leach was clearly a bad drinker and a junkie for mass hysteria. "I


got drunk and bet on the Broncos," he moaned, "then I doubled up. We


lost everything."






A terrible silence fell on the room. Leach was weeping helplessly.


The Judge seized him by the sash of his greasy leather robe and


started jerking him around by the stomach.






They ignored me and I tried to pretend it wasn't happening....It was


too ugly. There was and ashtray on the table in front of the couch. As


I reached for it, I noticed a legal pad of what appeared to be Leach's


poems, scrawled with a red Magic Marker in some kind of primitive


verse form. There was one that caught my eye. There was something


particularly ugly about it. There was something repugnant in the harsh


slant of the handwriting. It was about pigs.






I TOLD HIM


IT WAS WRONG


By F.X. Leach


Omaha 1968






A filthy young pig


got tired of his gig


and begged for a transfer


to Texas.


Police ran him down


on the Outskirts of town


and ripped off his Nuts


with a coathanger.


Everything after that was like


coming home in a cage on the


back of at train from


New Orleans on a Saturday


night


with no money and cancer and


a dead girlfriend.


In the end it was no use


He died on his knees in a barn


yard


with all the others watching.


Res Ipsa Loquitur






"They're going to kill me," Leach said. "They'll be here by


midnight. I'm doomed." He uttered another low cry and reached for the


Wild Turkey bottle, which had fallen over and spilled.






"Hang on," I said. "I'll get more."






On my way to the kitchen I was jolted by the sight of a naked woman


slumped awkwardly in the corner with a desperate look on her face, as


if she'd been shot. Her eyes bulged and her mouth was wide open and


she appeared to be reaching out for me.






I leapt back and heard laughter behind me. My first thought was that


Leach, unhinged by his gambling disaster, had finally gone over the


line with his wife-beating habit and shot her in the mouth just before


we knocked. She appeared to be crying out for help, but there was no


voice.






I ran into the kitchen to look for a knife thinking, that if Leach


had gone crazy enough to kill his wife, now he would have to kill me,


too, since I was the only witness. Except the Judge, who locked


himself in the bathroom.






Leach appeared in the doorway holding the naked woman by the neck


and hurled her across the room at me....






Time stood still for an instant. The woman seemed to hover in the


air, coming at me in the darkness like a body in slow motion. I went


into a stance with the bread knife and braced for a fight to the


death.






The thing hit me and bounced softly down to the floor. It was a


rubber blow-up doll: one of those things with five orifices that young


stockbrokers buy in adult bookstores after the singles bars close.






"Meet Jennifer," he said. "She's my punching bag." He picked it up


by the hair and slammed it across the room.






"Ho, ho," he chuckled, "no more wife beating. I'm cured, thanks to


Jennifer." He smiled sheepishly . "It's almost like a miracle. These


dolls saved my marriage. They're a lot smarter than you think." He


nodded gravely. "Sometimes I have to beat two at once. But it always


calms me down, you know what I mean?"






Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train. "Oh, hell yes, I said


quickly. "How do the neighbors handle it?"






"No problem," he said. "They love me."






Sure, I thought. I tried to imagine the horror of living in a muddy


industrial slum full of tin-walled trailers and trying to protect your


family against brain damage from knowing that every night when you


look out your kitchen window there will be a man in a leather bathrobe


flogging two naked women around the room with a quart bottle of Wild


Turkey. Sometimes for two or three hours...It was horrible.






"Where is your wife?" I asked. "Is she still here?"






"Oh, yes." he said quickly. "She just went out for some cigarettes


She'll be back any minute." He nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes, she's very


proud of me. We're almost reconciled. She really loves these dolls."






I smiled, but something about this story mad me nervous. "How many


do you have?" I asked him.






"Don't worry," he said. "I have all we need." He reached into a


nearby broom closet and pulled out another one -- a half-inflated


Chinese-looking woman with rings in her nipples and two electric cords


attached to her head." This is Ling-Ling," he said. "She screams when


I hit her." He whacked the doll's head and it squawked stupidly.






Just then I heard car doors slamming outside the trailer, then loud


knocking on the front door and a gruff voice shouting, "Open up!


Police!"






Leach grabbed a .44 Magnum out of a shoulder holster inside his


bathrobe and fired two shots through the front door. "You bitch," he


screamed. "I should have killed you a long time ago."






He fired two more shots, laughing calmly. Then he turned to face me


and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. He hesitated for a moment,


staring directly into my eyes. Then he pulled the trigger and blew off


the back of his head.






The dead man seemed to lunge at me, slumping headfirst against my


legs as he fell to the floor -- just as a volley of shotgun blasts


came through the front door, followed by harsh shouts on a police


bullhorn from outside. Then another volley of buckshot blasts that


exploded the TV set and set the living room on fire, filling the


trailer with dense brown smoke that I recognized instantly as the


smell of Cyanide gas being released by the burning plastic couch.






Voices were screaming through the smoke, "Surrender! HANDS UP behind


your goddamn head! DEAD MEAT!" Then more shooting. Another deafening


fireball exploded out of the living room, I kicked the corpse off my


feet and leapt for the back door, which I'd noticed earlier when I


scanned the trailer for "alternative exits," as they say in the


business -- in case one might become necessary. I was halfway out the


door when I remembered the Judge. He was still locked in the bathroom,


maybe helpless in some kind of accidental drug coma, unable to get to


his feet as flames roared through the trailer....






Ye Fucking Gods! I thought. I can't let him burn.






Kick the door off its hinges. Yes. Whack! The door splintered and I


saw him sitting calmly on the filthy aluminum toilet stool, pretending


to read a newspaper and squinting vacantly at me as I crashed in and


grabbed him by one arm.






"Fool!" I screamed. "Get up! Run! They'll murder us!"






He followed me through the smoke and burning debris holding his


pants up with one hand....The Chinese sex doll called Ling-Ling


hovered crazily in front of the door, her body swollen from heat and


her hair on fire. I slapped her aside and bashed the door open,


dragging the Judge outside with me. Another volley of shotgun blasts


and bullhorn yells erupted somewhere behind us. The Judge lost his


footing and fell heavily into the mud behind the doomed Airstream.






"Oh, God!" he screamed. "who is it?"






"The Pigs," I said. "They've gone crazy. Leach is dead! They're


trying to kill us. We have to get to the car!"






He stood up quickly. "Pigs?" he said. "Pigs? Trying to kill me?"






He seemed to stiffen, and the dumbness went out of his eyes. He


raised both fists and screamed in the direction of the shooting. "You


bastards! You scum! You will die for this. You stupid white-trash


pigs!"






"Are they nuts?" he muttered. He jerked out of my grasp and reached


angrily into his left armpit, then down to his belt and around behind


his back like a gunfighter trying to slap leather....But there was no


leather there. Not even a sleeve holster.






"Goddamnit!" he snarled. "Where's my goddamn weapon? Oh, Jesus! I


left it in the car!" He dropped into a running crouch and sprinted


into the darkness, around the corner of the flaming Airstream. "Let's


go!" he hissed. "I'll kill these bastards! I'll blow their fucking


heads off!"






Right, I thought, as we took off in a kind of low-speed desperate


crawl through the mud and the noise and the gunfire, terrified


neighbors screaming frantically to each other in the darkness. The red


convertible was parked in the shadows, near the front of the trailer


right next to the State Police car, with its chase lights blinking


crazily and voices burping out of its radio.






The Pigs were nowhere to be seen. They had apparently rushed the


place, guns blazing -- hoping to kill Leach before he got away. I


jumped into the car and started the engine. The Judge came through the


passenger door and reached for the loaded .454 Magnum....I watched in


horror as he jerked it out of its holster and ran around to the front


of the cop car and fired two shots into the grille.






"Fuck you!" he screamed. "Take this, you Scum! Eat shit and die!" He


jumped back as the radiator exploded in a blast of steam and scalding


water. Then he fired three more times through the windshield and into


the squawking radio, which also exploded.






"Hot damn!" he said as he slid back into the front seat. "Now we


have them trapped!" I jammed the car into reverse and lost control in


the mud, hitting a structure of some kind and careening sideways at


top speed until I got a grip on the thing and aimed it up the ramp to


the highway....The Judge was trying desperately to reload the .454,


yelling at me to slow down, so he could finish the bastards off! His


eyes were wild and his voice was unnaturally savage.






I swerved hard left to Elko and hurled him sideways, but he quickly


recovered his balance and somehow got off five more thundering shots


in the general direction of the burning trailer behind us.






"Good work, Judge," I said. "They'll never catch us now." He smiled


and drank deeply from our Whiskey Jug, which he had somehow picked up


as we fled.... Then he passed it over to me, and I too drank deeply as


I whipped the big V-8 into passing gear, and we went from forty-five


to ninety in four seconds and left the ugliness far behind us in the


rain.






I glanced over at the Judge as he loaded five huge bullets into the


Magnum. He was very calm and focused, showing no signs of the drug


coma that had crippled him just moments before....I was impressed. The


man was clearly a Warrior. I slapped him on the back and grinned.


"Calm down, Judge," I said. "We're almost home."






I knew better, of course. I was 1000 miles from home, and we were


almost certainly doomed. There was no hope of escaping the dragnet


that would be out for us, once those poor fools discovered Leach in a


puddle of burning blood with the top of his head blown off. The squad


car was destroyed -- thanks to the shrewd instincts of the Judge --


but I knew it would not take them long to send out an all-points


alarm. Soon there would be angry police road-blocks at every exit


between Reno and Salt Lake City....






So what? I thought. There were many side roads, and we had a very


fast car. All I had to do was get the Judge out of his killing frenzy


and find a truck stop where we could buy a few cans of Flat Black


spray paint. Then we could slither out of the state before dawn and


find a place to hide.






But it would not be an easy run. In the quick space of four hours we


had destroyed two automobiles and somehow participated in at least one


killing -- in addition to all the other random, standard-brand crimes


like speeding and arson and fraud and attempted murder of State Police


officers while fleeing the scene of a homicide....






No. We had a Serious problem on our hands. We were trapped in the


middle of Nevada like crazy rats, and the cops would shoot to Kill


when they saw us. No doubt about that. We were Criminally Insane....I


laughed and shifted up into Drive. The car stabilized at 115 or so....






The Judge was eager to get back to his women. He was still fiddling


with the Magnum, spinning the cylinder nervously and looking at his


watch. "Can't you go any faster?" he muttered. "How far is Elko?"






Too far, I thought, which was true. Elko was fifty miles away and


there would be roadblocks. Impossible. They would trap us and probably


butcher us.






Elko was out, but I was loath to break this news to the Judge. He


had no stomach for bad news. He had a tendency to flip out and flog


anything in sight when things weren't going his way.






It was wiser, I thought, to humor him. Soon he would go to sleep.






I slowed down and considered. Our options were limited. There would


be roadblocks on every paved road out of Wells. It was a main


crossroads, a gigantic full-on truck stop where you could get anything


you wanted twenty-four hours a day, within reason of course. And what


we needed was not in that category. We needed to disappear. That was


one option.






We could go south on 93 to Ely, but that was about it. That would be


like driving into a steel net. A flock of pigs would be waiting for


us, and after that it would be Nevada State Prison. To the north on 93


was Jackpot, but we would never make that either. Running east into


Utah was hopeless. We were trapped. They would run us down like dogs.


There were other options, but not all of them were mutual. The Judge


had his priorities, but they were not mine. I understood that me and


the Judge were coming up on a parting of the ways. This made me


nervous. There were other options, of course, but they were all High


Risk. I pulled over and studied the map again. the Judge appeared to


be sleeping, but I couldn't be sure. He still had the Magnum in his


lap.






The Judge was getting to be a problem. There was no way to get him


out of the car without violence. He would not go willingly into the


dark and stormy night. The only other way was to kill him, but that


was out of the question as long as he had the gun. He was very quick


in emergencies. I couldn't get the gun away from him, and I was not


about to get into an argument with him about who should have the


weapon. If I lost, he would shoot me in the spine and leave me in the


road.






I was getting too nervous to continue without chemical assistance. I


reached under the seat for my kit bag, which contained five or six


Spansules of Black Acid. Wonderful, I thought. This is just what I


need. I ate one and went back to pondering the map. There was a place


called Deeth, just ahead, where a faintly marked side road appeared to


wander uphill through the mountains and down along a jagged ridge into


Jackpot from behind. Good, I thought, this is it. We could sneak into


Jackpot by dawn.






Just then I felt a blow on the side of my head as the Judge came


awake with a screech, flailing his arms around him like he was coming


out of nightmare. "What's happening, goddamnit?" he said. "Where are


we? They're after us." He was jabbering in a foreign language that


quickly lapsed into English as he tried to aim the gun. "Oh, God," he


screamed, "They're right on top of us. Get moving, goddamnit. I'll


kill every bastard I see."






He was coming out of a nightmare. I grabbed him by the neck and put


him in a headlock until he went limp. I pulled him back up in the seat


and handed him a Spansule of acid. "Here, Judge, take this," I said.


"It'll calm you down."






He swallowed the pill and said nothing as I turned onto the highway


and stood heavily on the accelerator. We were up to 115 when a green


exit sign that said DEETH NO SERVICES loomed suddenly out of the rain


just in front of us. I swerved hard to the right and tried to hang on.


But it was no use. I remember the sound of the Judge screaming as we


lost control and went into a full 360-degree curl and then backwards


at seventy-five or eighty through a fence and into a pasture.






For some reason the near-fatal accident had a calming effect on the


Judge. Or maybe it was the acid. I didn't care one way or the other


after I took the gun from his hand. He gave it up without a fight. He


seemed to be more interested in reading the road signs and listening


to the radio. I knew that if we could slip into jackpot the back way,


I could get the car painted any color I wanted in thirty-three minutes


and put the Judge on a plane. I knew a small private airstrip there,


where nobody asks too many questions and they'll take a personal


check.






At dawn we drove across the tarmac and pulled up to a seedy-looking


office marked AIR JACKPOT EXPRESS CHARTER COMPANY. "This is it Judge,"


I said and slapped him on the back. "This is where you get off." He


seemed resigned to his fate until the woman behind the front desk told


him there wouldn't be a flight to Elko until lunch time.






"Where is the pilot?" he demanded.






"I am the pilot," the woman said, "but I can't leave until Debby


gets her to relieve me."






"Fuck this!" the Judge shouted. "Fuck lunch time. I have to leave


now, you bitch."






The woman seemed truly frightened by his mood swing, and when the


Judge leaned in and gave her a taste of the long knuckle, she


collapsed and began weeping uncontrollably. "There's more where that


came from," he told her. "Get up! I have to get out of here now."






He jerked her out from behind the desk and was dragging her toward


the plane when I slipped out the back door. It was daylight now. The


car was nearly out of gas, but that wasn't my primary concern. The


police would be here in minutes, I thought. I'm doomed. But then, as I


pulled onto the highway, I saw a sign that said, WE PAINT ALL NIGHT.






As I pulled into the parking lot, the Jackpot Express plane passed


overhead. So long, Judge, I thought to myself. You're a brutal hustler


and a Warrior and a great copilot, but you know how to get your way.


You will go far in the world.










[Part IV] Epilogue: Christmas Dreams and Cruel Memories...Nation of


Jailers...Stand Back! The Judge Will See You Now










That's about it for now, Jann. This story is too depressing to have


to confront professionally in these morbid weeks before Christmas....I


have only vague memories of what it's like there in New York, but


sometimes I have flashbacks about how it was to glide in perfect


speedy silence around the ice rink in front of NBC while junkies and


federal informants in white beards and sleazy red jumpsuits worked the


crowd mercilessly for nickels and dollars and dimes covered with Crack


residue.






I remember one Christmas morning in Manhattan when we got into the


Empire State Building and went up to the Executive Suite of some


famous underwear company and shoved a 600-pound red, tufted-leather


Imperial English couch out of a corner window on something like the


eighty-fifth floor....The wind caught it, as I recall, and it sort of


drifted around the corner onto Thirty-fourth Street, picking up speed


on its way down, and hit the striped awning of a Korean market, you


know, the kind that sells everything from kimchi to Christmas trees.


The impact blasted watermelons and oranges and tomatoes all over the


sidewalk. We could barely see the impact from where we were, but I


remember a lot of activity on the street when we came out of the


elevator.... It looked like a war zone. A few gawkers were standing


around in a blizzard, muttering to each other and looking dazed. They


thought it was an underground explosion -- maybe a subway or a gas


main.






Just as we arrived on the scene, a speeding cab skidded on some


watermelons and slammed into a Fifth Avenue bus and burst into flames.


There was a lot of screaming and wailing of police sirens Two cops


began fighting with a gang of looters who had emerged like ghosts out


of the snow and were running off with hams and turkeys and big jars of


caviar....Nobody seemed to think it was strange. What the hell? Shit


happens. Welcome to the Big Apple. Keep alert. Never ride in open cars


or walk to too close to a tall building when it snows ....There were


Christmas trees scattered all over the street and cars were stopping


to grab them and speeding away. We stole one and took it to Missy's


place on the Bowery, because we knew she didn't have one. But she


wasn't home, so we put the tree out on the fire escape and set it on


fire with kerosene.






That's how I remember New York, Jann. It was always a time of angst


and failure and turmoil. Nobody ever seemed to have any money on


Christmas. Even rich people were broke and jabbering frantically on


their telephones about Santa Claus and suicide or joining a church


with no rules....The snow was clean and pretty for the first twenty or


thirty minutes around dawn, but after that it was churned into filthy


mush by drunken cabbies and garbage compactors and shitting dogs.






Anybody who acted happy on Christmas was lying -- even the ones were


getting paid $500 an hour....The Jews were especially sulky, and who


could blame them? The birthday of Baby Jesus is always a nervous time


for people who know that ninety days later they will be accused of


murdering him.






So what? We have our own problems, eh? Jesus! I don't know how you


can ride all those motorcycles around in the snow, Jann. Shit, we can


all handle the back wheel coming loose in a skid. But the front wheel


is something else -- and that's what happens when it snows. WHACKO.


One minute you feel as light and safe as a snowflake, and the next


minute you're sliding sideways under the wheels of a Bekins


van....Nasty traffic jams, horns honking, white limos full of naked


Jesus freaks going up on the sidewalk in low gear to get around you


and the mess you made on the street...Goddamn this scum. They are more


and more in the way. And why aren't they home with their families on


Xmas? Why do they need to come out here and die on the street like


iron hamburgers?






I hate these bastards, Jann. And I suspect you feel the same....They


might call us bigots, but at least we are Universal bigots. Right?


Shit on those people. Everybody you see these days might have the


power to get you locked up....Who knows why? They will have reasons


straight out of some horrible Kafka story, but in the end it won't


matter any more than a full moon behind clouds. Fuck them.






Christmas hasn't changed much in twenty-two years, Jann -- not even


2000 miles west and 8000 feet up in the Rockies. It is still a day


that only amateurs can love. It is all well and good for children and


acid freaks to still believe in Santa Claus -- but it is still a


profoundly morbid day for us working professionals. It is unsettling


to know that one out of every twenty people you meet on Xmas will be


dead this time next year....Some people can accept this, and some


can't. That is why God made whiskey, and also why Wild Turkey comes in


$300 shaped canisters during most of the Christmas season, and also


why criminal shitheads all over New York City will hit you up for $100


tips or they'll twist your windshield wipers into spaghetti and


urinate on your door handles.






People all around me are going to pieces, Jann. My whole support


system has crumbled like wet sugar cubes. That is why I try never to


employ anyone over the age of twenty. Every Xmas after that is like


another notch down on the ratchet, or maybe a few more teeth off the


flywheel....I remember on Xmas in New York when I was trying to sell a


Mark VII Jaguar with so many teeth off the flywheel that the whole


drivetrain would lock up and whine every time I tried to start the


engine for a buyer....I had to hire gangs of street children to muscle


the car back and forth until the throw-out gear on the starter was


lined up very precisely to engage the few remaining teeth on the


flywheel. On some days I would leave the car idling in a fireplug zone


for three or four hours at a time and pay the greedy little bastards a


dollar an hour to keep it running and wet-shined with fireplug water


until a buyer came along.






We got to know each other pretty well after nine or ten weeks, and


they were finally able to unload it on a rich artist who drove as far


as the toll plaza at the far end of the George Washington Bridge,


where the engine seized up and exploded like a steam bomb. "They had


to tow it away with a firetruck," he said. "Even the leather seats


were on fire. They laughed at me."






There is more and more Predatory bullshit in the air these days.


Yesterday I got a call from somebody who said I owed money to Harris


Wofford, my old friend from the Peace Corps. We were in Sierra Leone


together.






He came out of nowhere like a heat-seeking missile and destroyed the


U.S. Attorney General in Pennsylvania. It was Wonderful. Harris is a


Senator now, and the White House creature is not. Thornburgh blew a


forty-four point lead in three weeks, like Humpty Dumpty....WHOOPS!


Off the wall like a big Lizard egg. The White House had seen no need


for a safety net.






It was a major disaster for the Bush brain trust and every GOP


political pro in America, from the White House all the way down to


City Hall in places like Denver and Tupelo. The whole Republican party


was left stunned and shuddering like a hound dog passing a peach


pit....At least that's what they said in Tupelo, where one of the


local GOP chairmen flipped out and ran off to Biloxi with a fat young


boy from one of the rich local families....then he tried to blame it


on Harris Wofford when they arrested him in Mobile for aggravated


Sodomy and kidnapping. He was ruined, and his Bail was only $5000, but


none of his friends would sign for it. They were mainly professional


Republicans and bankers who had once been in the Savings and Loan


business, along with Neil Bush the manqu‚ son of the President.






Neil had just walked on a serious Fraud bust in Colorado. But only


by the skin of his teeth, after his father said he would have to


abandon him to a terrible fate in the Federal Prison System if his son


was really a crook. The evidence was overwhelming, but Neil had a


giddy kind of talent negotiating -- like Colonel North and the


Admiral, who also walked....It was shameless and many people bitched.


But what the fuck do they expect from a Party of high-riding Darwinian


rich boys who've been running around in the White House for twelve


straight years? They can do whatever they want, and why not. "These


are Good Boys," John Sununu once said of this staff. "They only shit


in the pressroom."






Well...Sununu is gone now, and so is Dick Thornburgh, who is


currently seeking night work in the bank business somewhere on the


outskirts of Pittsburgh. It is an ugly story. He decided to go out on


his own -- like Lucifer, who plunged into Hell -- and he got beaten


like a redheaded stepchild by my old Peace Corps buddy Harris Wofford,


who caught him from behind like a bull wolverine so fast that


Thornburgh couldn't even get out of the way....He was mangled and


humiliated. It was the worst public disaster since Watergate.






The GOP was plunged into national fear. How could it happen? Dick


Thornburgh had sat on the right hand of God. As AG, he had stepped out


like some arrogant Knight form the Round Table and declared that his


boys -- 4000 or so Justice Department prosecutors -- were no longer


subject to the rules of the Federal Court System.






But he was wrong, And now Wofford is using Thornburghs's corpse as a


landing pad for a run on the White House and hiring experts to collect


bogus debts from old buddies like me. Hell, I like the idea of Harris


being President. He always seemed honest and I knew he was smart, but


I am leery of giving him money.






That is politics in the 1990s. Democratic presidential candidates


have not been a satisfying investment recently. Camelot was thirty


years ago, and we still don't know who killed Jack Kennedy. That lone


bullet on the stretcher in Dallas sure as hell didn't pass through two


human bodies, but it was the one that pierced the heart of the


American Dream in our century, maybe forever.






Camelot is on Court TV now, limping into Rehab clinics and forced to


deny low-rent Rape accusations in the same sweaty West Palm Beach


courthouse where Roxanne Pulitzer went on trial for fucking a trumpet


and lost.






It has been a long way down -- not just for the Kennedys and the


Democrats, but for all the rest of us. Even the rich and the powerful,


who are coming to understand that change can be quick in the Nineties


and one of these days it will be them in the dock on TV, fighting


desperately to stay out of prison.






Take my word for it. I have been there, and it gave me an eerie


feeling.... Indeed. There are many cells in the mansion, and more are


being added every day. We are becoming a nation of jailers.






And that's about it for now, Jann. Christmas is on us and it's all


downhill from here on....At least until Groundhog Day, which is


soon....So, until then, at least, take my advice as your family


doctor, and don't do anything that might cause either one of us to


have to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States. If you


know what I'm saying....






Yes. He is Up There, Jann. The Judge. And he will be there for a


long time, waiting to gnaw on our skulls....Right. put that in your


leather pocket the next time you feel like jumping on your new


motorcycle and screwing it all the way over thru traffic and passing


cop cars at 140.






Remember F.X. Leach. He crossed the Judge, and he paid a terrible


price....And so will you, if you don't slow down and quit harassing


those girls in your office. The Judge is in charge now, and He won't


tolerate it. Beware.