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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas :: Thompson Hunter S.
Страница: 101 из 255'
"I didn't move a goddamn muscle. He'd have shot me. I'm sure of that. I went straight to the plane and I didn't say a word to anybody until I knew we were out of Nevada. Man, it's one place I'll never go back to."
11. Fraud? Larcent? Rape?… A Brutal Connection with the Alice from Room Service
I was brooding on this tale as I eased the White Whale into Flamingo parking lot. Fifty bucks and a week in jail for standing on a corner and acting curious… Jesus, what kind of incredible penalties would they spew out on me? I eked off the various charges-but in skeleton, legal-lan re form they didn't seem so bad: Rape? We could surely beat that one. I'd never even coveted the goddamn girl, much less put my hands on her flesh. Fraud? Larceny? I could always offer to "settle." Pay it off. Say I was sent out here by Sports Illustrated and then drag the Time. Inc. lawyers into a nightmare lawsuit. Tie them up for years with a blizzard of writs and appeals. Attach all their assets in places like Juneau and Houston, then constantly file for change of venue to Quito, Nome and Aruba… keep the thing moving, run them in circles, force them into conflict with the accounting department:
TIME SHEET FOR ABNER H. DODGE,
CHIEF COUNSEL
Item $44,066.12… Special outlay, to wit: We pursued the defendant, R. Duke, throughtout the Western Hemosphere and finally brought him to bay in a village on the north shore of an island known as Culebra in the Caribbean, where his attorney obtained a ruliong that all further proceedings should be conducted in the language of the Carib tribe. We sent three men to Berlitz for this purpose, but nineteen hours before the date scheduled for opening arguments, the defendant fled to Colombia, where he established residence in a fishing village called Guajira near the Venezuelan border, where the official language of jurisprudence is an obscure dialect known as “Guajiro.” After many monthe we were able to establish 3urls- diction in this place, but by that time the defendant had moved his residence to a virtually inaccessible port at the headwaters of the Amazon River, where he cultivated powerful connec tions with a tribe of headhunters called '”Jibaros." Our stringer in Manaus was dispatched upriver, to locate and hire a native attorney conversant in Jibaro, but the search has been hampered by serious communications problems. There is in fact grave concern, in our Rio office, that the widow of the aforementioned Manaus stringer might obtain a ruinous judgment-due to bias in local courts-far larger than any thing a jury in our own country would consider reasonable or even sane.
Indeed.
"I didn't move a goddamn muscle. He'd have shot me. I'm sure of that. I went straight to the plane and I didn't say a word to anybody until I knew we were out of Nevada. Man, it's one place I'll never go back to."
11. Fraud? Larcent? Rape?… A Brutal Connection with the Alice from Room Service
I was brooding on this tale as I eased the White Whale into Flamingo parking lot. Fifty bucks and a week in jail for standing on a corner and acting curious… Jesus, what kind of incredible penalties would they spew out on me? I eked off the various charges-but in skeleton, legal-lan re form they didn't seem so bad: Rape? We could surely beat that one. I'd never even coveted the goddamn girl, much less put my hands on her flesh. Fraud? Larceny? I could always offer to "settle." Pay it off. Say I was sent out here by Sports Illustrated and then drag the Time. Inc. lawyers into a nightmare lawsuit. Tie them up for years with a blizzard of writs and appeals. Attach all their assets in places like Juneau and Houston, then constantly file for change of venue to Quito, Nome and Aruba… keep the thing moving, run them in circles, force them into conflict with the accounting department:
TIME SHEET FOR ABNER H. DODGE,
CHIEF COUNSEL
Item $44,066.12… Special outlay, to wit: We pursued the defendant, R. Duke, throughtout the Western Hemosphere and finally brought him to bay in a village on the north shore of an island known as Culebra in the Caribbean, where his attorney obtained a ruliong that all further proceedings should be conducted in the language of the Carib tribe. We sent three men to Berlitz for this purpose, but nineteen hours before the date scheduled for opening arguments, the defendant fled to Colombia, where he established residence in a fishing village called Guajira near the Venezuelan border, where the official language of jurisprudence is an obscure dialect known as “Guajiro.” After many monthe we were able to establish 3urls- diction in this place, but by that time the defendant had moved his residence to a virtually inaccessible port at the headwaters of the Amazon River, where he cultivated powerful connec tions with a tribe of headhunters called '”Jibaros." Our stringer in Manaus was dispatched upriver, to locate and hire a native attorney conversant in Jibaro, but the search has been hampered by serious communications problems. There is in fact grave concern, in our Rio office, that the widow of the aforementioned Manaus stringer might obtain a ruinous judgment-due to bias in local courts-far larger than any thing a jury in our own country would consider reasonable or even sane.
Indeed.