Editor’s note:The following is a story sent to us by the evasive Special Agent Zebra from somewhere deep in moneyed bowels of Las Vegas. He has not been seen or heard from for three weeks since his last communiqué. This outlandish tale is further supported by faxes and telegrams and an $18,994.85 hotel bill (generated in three days) at the Golden Nugget Hotel.–Bandit
Come in “Hot Bike”. Do you copy? This is Special Agent Zebra reporting live. Do you copy? This is not a test.
This is a true story. All facts and figures contained in this story are absolutely true, verified thrice, approved by the National Dairy Council and carved in marble in the dank basement of the Golden Nugget Hotel.
I’m holding on the perimeter. Send guns, lawyers and money. Lots more money. The one thing you can never run short on in Vegas is money. You can get away with anything, so long as you have money. Everything has a dollar sign on it. Here you pay for sunshine, tip extra for darkness.
Real men have been hanged. Real Italian women have been defrocked. Real archfiends are giving away real choppers with gas tanks filled with blood. This is it man, the story of the year. This is the Vegas Spring Run, or, as it’s being dubbed in the City of Vice, among the naked savages and polyester covered psychopaths, the “Screw Laughlin” run.
Play back the tape again and again and I still can’t make sense of the words. Is that my voice? Am I that person crying out for help in the middle of what sounds like an air strike, but could be the crazed revving of a Thunder Mountain 240 Blackhawk? Or is it some madman cranked up on call bourbon, jet setter tablets, breath mints, $100-craps and complimentary penthouse suite cigars? Did I really order that zebra standing in the corner of my room? Or is it a part of my vacation package, standard stuff that every tourist gets when they buy out the largest pad in the tower and lock it down? Is that zebra to be trusted? Can I speak freely in front of it? I know this much, when that maid busts out of the bathroom, she’s going to have some explaining to do.
I rewind the tape. Each time I play it, it makes less sense. Fatigue is setting in now. Must police every decision, check each plan of action for flaws, legal liability, make sure all escape routes stay open. I peek out of the drapes. The lights of Vegas are just beginning to hum to the night, an innocent, beguiling hum, a hum that attracts men. The girls will be out soon, the strippers, the bare-buff babies…and the vampires.
“Will they ever pin Mondo’s murder on me?” I hear my voice asking. Who the hell is Mondo? Why did I say that? Is it code?
I try Bandit’s phone again. He’s ducking me. He was 90 miles south, hiding within the thronging masses of Laughlin. I couldn’t blame him. If I’d gotten a phone call like the one he’d gotten the night before from me, I’d duck me, too.
I snatched up the hotel phone.
“Get me a bag of dog food up to the penthouse right away! I’ve got a hungry zebra up here! I want real lamb and rice. Goddammit, nothing but the best for my horses. What? Yes, that zebra. What did you think I meant, you asshole? You think I’m speaking in metaphors up here? This is Vegas! When I say zebra, I mean zebra! And send more bandages. The trigger finger stump is bleeding again. I don’t want those bloodsucking bastards at Counts’ Kustoms to get a whiff of the real thing. They’ll be on me like sharks.”
“Take the Thunder Mountain 240 Blackhawk,” he said in a jolly tone. “It’ll be a nice run. You’ll have the exclusive coverage.”
But anything that goes down in Las Vegas is bound to carry with it a certain level of danger, romance and flat-out wide-open criminal risk. And that’s what this was. A trick. A slight of hand. An ace up Bandit’s unwashed sleeve. That dirty mother lover had assigned me to cover the first ever Vegas Spring Run, because he knew about the vampires in advance.
“You’ll have a good time,” Bandit told me. That was the last I heard from him. Now I was down to nine fingers, low on ammo, had a hotel bill I’d never get out of town with an Italian maid captive in my bathroom, and a Thunder Mountain Custom chopper covered in my own blood. I was also potentially responsible for the untimely loss of a tile-laying artisan– Mexican Mondo.
HOURS EARLIER…
“Where did you ride in from?” Mexican Mondo asked. A calm, cruel, telling red glow bathed the strip from the mixture of lights and full moon radiance. The full moon didn’t appear to be of significance, at least not then.
“New York City,” I lied. Trust no one. Three can keep a secret if two are dead. I smiled warmly. “So what’s next, Mexican Mondo? Shit, we’re two artists in a lovely city and the poker game doesn’t start until morning. What say we ride down the Strip and find a nice gentleman’s club?”“Si,” Mexican Mondo said, finishing off his fifth bubbling bread in a bottle. We walked out of the Harley-Davidson Café and saddled up. As I fired up the Special Agent Zebra Express, a classy custom 240 chop out of Thunder Mountain Custom Cycles in Loveland, I heard a distant howling sound.
I handed Mexican Mondo four jet setter tablets. They were from a fresh batch I’d brewed up prior to riding out of the Republic of Literature in Hollywood.
“Here,” I said. “These will help with that cough.”
“What cough?” Mexican Mondo asked as he downed the pink pills.
As we rolled down the spangling Strip through the heavy traffic I realized that Mexican Mondo was experiencing jet setters for the first time. It was obvious from his reactions that he hadn’t built up a tolerance for the exciting elixir contained in the colorful gel caps, and that I had, perhaps, over served him. I myself had also taken a few of the little confidence builders, to relax after the ride in from L.A.
“No matter what, don’t let your back tire stop turning,” Mexican Mondo told me as he did a standing burnout at a red light.
I looked deep into his bloodshot eyes. There was no use in discussing the possible law enforcement attention such an act could attract. The only thing to do then, was encourage him.
“Faster!” I yelled, leaning into an imaginary wind. “They’re gaining on us!”
Mexican Mondo’s expression twisted up tight as a ball of dried rawhide and he leaned forward and cranked the throttle.
“They’re right behind us! Vampires!” I shouted over the roar of Mondo’s screaming dresser. Car People all around us were rolling up windows, locking doors. This wasn’t the family Vegas they’d been promised in the brochure.
The light turned green. Pow! Mexican Mondo was off.
I watched as he sailed down the strip, swerving around honking cars and city buses, chest glued to the tanks, chin shoved forward with purpose, one eye squinted shut. I saw a large sphere of fire erupt and vault skyward atop a red column of heat, followed by a thundering explosion.
I pulled my tape recorder out and mumbled into it.
At the first strip club, Baby Cheeks, I blew them a line, “I write for The New Yorker, dammit! I never pay cover charges!” They comped me in and gave me a free bottle of champagne.
“Hear about the explosion on the strip?” a bouncer asked me when he saw the Thunder Mountain chop.
“No,” I said casually. “What happened? I should know, I write for the New York Times for Pete’s sake, I need the facts, man, the grisly facts.”
“Nobody knows. Some Mexican ran his bike through a bus packed with senior citizens. Killed like eight-hundred people. Cops are all over the place. Turns out the guy was high on some new designer chemical.”
“Wrenching news,” I said, hurrying in.
I lost myself in the crowd of unclothed beauties, trying to brush up against as many as possible.
“Hello, ladies,” I said, flinging a handful of ‘Hot Bike’ expense money across the stage. A general alarm went up and in minutes every tootsie in the entire palace of love was prancing.
“Dance my pretties!” I shouted, swigging from the bottle of Dom, slinging another handful of $100’s across the gyrating backsides and bouncing buttocks. “Poppa likes what he sees! Garcon, more French beer!” A waiter hustled over and I tucked a $100 into his bowtie. He placed another bottle of champagne at my disposal.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” I said pouring into the open mouths of the women as they took turns lying on their backs in front of me.
After that the tape-recorded notes become much harder to decipher. Apparently there was an incident of some sort and I do distinctly remember calling Bandit for emergency legal advice.
“Don’t call me, you silly sonofabitch! I want no part of a dragging!” Bandit screeched.
“Dragging? What on earth are you talking about?” I asked, the cool wind in my face.
“How ridiculous. I said, I’m marrying a drag queen. Jesus, man, you’re supposed to be a professional motorcycle journalist. Get your facts straight. Our very credibility with Gentle Reader relies on factual accounts of exciting motorcycle-related events. I want you to ride up from Laughlin at once and be my best man. Do you have a tux?”
“How’s the rally?”
“What rally?” I asked.
“The poker run? The Vegas Spring Run.”
“There’s a poker run in town?” I asked quizzically. Where was that chapel, I wondered? I knew it was right on this street somewhere, I’d seen it as I went by earlier. Barry Manilow music that played incessantly in the Golden Nugget swirled in my head. “You got any Barry Manilow CD’s?” I asked.
“Of course. I have the box set,” Bandit remarked. “I’d burn you a copy, but that would be a violation of copyright law and I respect the law.
Drinking, transcribing electronic messages to myself… Only a few more hours to go and they draw for the Count’s Kustom (owned and operated by a documented vampire). But I would be long gone before that trap door snapped shut. I’d already met with the Count. He was out for blood and wasn’t to be trusted by man or beast.
Plus, I’d nearly hacked my left trigger finger off while sawing through a zip tie. The blood had driven Count over the edge. I’d need to steer clear of him and his minions.
Rewind. Why am I here? Why do I let Bandit talk me into these runs? Get it together. Only a few more hours til daylight. Then I’m representing a respectable Motorcycle Magazine. The biggest in the world. Exclusive coverage of a virgin run, the Vegas Spring Run.
There is, or was, some structure to it all. Before the Vampire went nuts and started gumming the works, and the women. Before the Catholic Church was affronted, the Pope wheezed and walnuts went to four dollars a barrel in Thailand.
I stir the canned Bengal tiger powdered milk into the water and curse Big Fish at Thunder Mountain Custom Cycles.
Day one. Leg one. A ride through the mountains outside of Vegas. No official start time. Just be at the draw point between the hours selected, to draw your first card. Card one of the five-card hand. But this wasn’t a normal ride. Some cruel madman had plotted a line through the snow and ice, the landslides, the winter floods, temperatures below thirty degrees, dead bikers frozen halfway up Mount Freeze-your-butt-off, lying in the ditch, eyeballs glazed with frost. Good men lost in the quest for the Count’s Kustom give-away chop and the quarter-million top prize. They were even giving away $500 bones to folks with the worst hands. Visions of the Italian woman who pulled the dead-man’s lever float through my mind. Is that her sleeping in the bed? Is that her praying in the bathroom?
I inched up Mount Freeze-your-butt-off at 60 miles an hour. Twice I had to stop and clear snow slides with my bare hands. But I was going to get the story, the facts, the real meat of this crazed sprint for the gold money for Gentle Reader. Frostbite or bear bite, Italian soccer player or Donner Party Pie, I’d get the story. As I spun and slipped past a pile of smoking chrome and burning leather a downed biker held out his blue hand, beckoning for help. He’d already eaten his gloves and leather pants. I stopped to check the complimentary map, using a $100 poker chip to scrape off the ice to read it. Five more miles, straight down.
Card one was drawn at Hotel Something or Other. The threat of polar bear attack diminished at this altitude.
“I’m sorry, Zebra, you can’t participate. You’re with the press,” a woman informed me when I stepped up to draw my first card.
“Zebra?” I asked. “You mean Special Agent Zebra? That rat bastard! Have you seen him? I heard what he did to Eddie Trotta. I want his ass!”
“Sir,” the woman said in a controlled tone, “your jacket…”
“What? Oh, this? This could be anybody.”
“Sir, I saw the jacket in ‘Hot Bike’ in July. You’re Special Agent Zebra. Members of the press can’t play. How would it look if you won? People would cry foul.”
“Bandit’s behind this, isn’t he?” I wailed, eating a jet-setter pill. “That fink commie bagger rider! I’m gonna get him. What if I did win? I’ll tell you what, I’d write something REAL NICE about the run. We could work something out. Something mutually beneficial,” I said, adding a salacious wink.
“What? Are you kidding me? I don’t have time for integrity! Give me the card, dammit man! I NEED this win!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Zebra, the press can’t play.”
“Okay,” I said calmly. “We’ll see. We’ll see who makes it off this mountaintop. My precious.” The woman slid back a few inches in her chair as I made an obscene gesture to her. “Can I get your phone number? I think I’m in love.”
Idle chit-chat around the lunch tables. Chattering teeth calmed by complimentary coffee and lunch. But we’re all here for the same reason—the dough, the ultimate hand, the ace in the hole, the luck of the draw, the scoot and the bread.
Card 2. Ride Red Rock Canyon all the way to Red Rock, 50 miles away from Mount Freezeyourbuttoff. An old cowpoke town. An Italian beauty walks across the dusty main street. Who is this? Not a whore, I deduced from the stinging on my face and the $100 bills floating down around my feet.
As I said, nothing in Vegas is what it seems and this meatball hottie was all about danger and dislocation of neck bones. A hanging was underway. One of the bikers, Buffalo Bill Kelly, had insulted the sheriff’s wife of the small town of Red Rock and after a brief shootout, a brawl and a call for a lynching, the biker was now standing atop the gallows, preparing to die.
“What’s your name?” I asked the Italian wench.
“I’m’a Emma,” she said, adding a syllable and a smile.
“Well, how’d you like to be in The New Yorker magazine, Emma?” I asked.
“You can do this?” she asked. On the galley they readied the noose, while Kelly pleaded for reconsideration.
“Sure. I’m the Editor in Chief for that rag,” I told her.
“Really? I would be very nice about this,” she said.
“I bet you would…”
The sheriff shouted her name.
“Please excuse me,” she said warmly and strode to the gallows.
Then he nodded to Emma. Emma faced the bikers and smiled, then wrenched the long metal handle forward, snapping Kelly’s outlaw neck with a thick crack. The mob flinched.
“So, want to go for a ride?” I asked Emma.
“Do you have motorcycle?” the Italian princess asked coyly.
“Oh, I got a motorcycle…”
“Royal Flush wins the $250,000,” my voice spewed methodically out of the soiled tape recorder as I hid beneath the bed and made notes by flashlight. “Four of a Kind wins $10,000. Highest hand wins the Count’s Kustom.” Was this accurate? Or the jabbering of a madman?
I called Big Fish at Thunder Mountain Custom Cycles.
“Zebra?” Big Fish asked into the phone. “What? You what?! Not on OUR motorcycle I hope! You did! On the 240 Blackhawk?! Are you crazy? Did anybody see you? On the Strip in Las Vegas? You maniac!”
Was this part of the story, I wondered? Is this a documentary on vampires like I vaguely recalled telling the Vegas cops last night? If so, where is the proof of the vampires? A missing trigger finger isn’t proof. It’s painful, but not proof. The blood was all mine. My finger had been severed earlier in the day during a misunderstanding over the price of beer. I’d gotten into an argument with the bartender at the Golden Nugget. He got lippy. I pulled a blade. Took a swipe. Unfortunately I was holding him by his necktie, so I neatly trimmed off my left trigger finger, missing his throat.
What’s the story? Where’s Gentle Reader when you need him? I lay under the bed in Vegas trembling.
Saturday. The finals. How many times would I be denied? I’d even brought my own deck this time. I’d seen the Count’s Kustom and I knew what kind of damage I could do with a quarter million. Either way, I was going home with loot. An Italian maid if nothing else.
Saturday night. Count’s Kustoms, established in 1669. A party. Count builds radical custom chops, lives on the red meat of man. And women. The Thunder Mountain 240 Blackhawk versus all that is wrong and corralled and stagnant about society. A flat-out blow down the cold Strip, a holeshot of epic length and speed, an electrically charged run past twenty billion volts of excess power, sweating nuclear factories moaning on the horizon, screaming rubber, blown gaskets, shrieking pedestrians, cop sirens cheering me on. What have I got to lose at this point? Wrap the Screamin’ Eagle up tight and let her fly, split the lanes, a custom streak of hellfire, right wrist bent double at the joint, counting lifetime in split seconds, bus-car-truck-RV-bus-pedestrian-car-car-car…darkness, the outskirts.
“Special Agent Zebra,” the Count said in a deep voice as he walked up. “Did you hear?” he asked as he put his arm around me and took me aside behind his bull Lamborghini. “I’m taking a few new clients tonight. Stick around, it’ll be fun.” His hand chilled around my shoulders.
“Special Agent Zebra, Count, can I get a picture with the two of you and the Count’s Kustom chopper?” an innocent asked, waving a camera.
“Sure!” Count said, dragging me toward the glistening give-away chopper. “The choppers are bait, you see,” Count said quietly to me, smiling for the camera.
“How do you get those reds in your paint?” another asked from the crowd.
“I use a special mix,” the Count said. Again I felt my neck cool under his arm. “Just hang around,” Count whispered. “And I wanted to ask, can I have that Italian chick and that stripper you got handcuffed to your scoot? I’ll make you a good deal,” he remarked, glancing at my bloodied, left trigger-finger stump.
The flapping, empty, left forefinger of my glove haunts me as I ride. But better to lose a digit than become one of Count’s victims, a victim of the bloody, high-stakes poker run, the Vegas Spring Run.
Who won the game, I wonder as I streak through Arizona, headed back to the Republic of Literature in Hollywood. Would the Italian behind me get along with the other girls at the Republic of Literature? Was this the end to a glorious career as a professional motorcycle journalist? No. None of it would ever get out of Vegas. The version of this story that Gentle Reader would get would be polished, copy proofed, clipped by legal, chromed and waxed. The real photos would never appear in any periodical.
The Vegas Spring Run would always be another nice springtime poker run, except to those clever enough to have been there.
Special Agent Zebra
Undercover
