Gonzo 1 - The Great Shark Hunt

PART II

Flashbacks & Time Warps. . . Scrambled Notes and Rude Comments from the High Country. . . Dean vs. Haldeman in the Hearing Room. . . A Question of Perjury. . . Ehrlichman Sandbags an Old Buddy. . . Are the Sharks Deserting the Suckfish?

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the following section was lashed together at the last moment from a six-pound bundle of documents, notebooks, memos, recordings and secretly taped phone conversations with Dr. Thompson during a month of erratic behavior in Washington, New York, Colorado and Miami. His “long-range-plan,” he says, is to “refine” these nerve-wracking methods, somehow, and eventually “create an entirely new form of journalism.” In the meantime, we have suspended his monthly retainer and canceled his credit card. During one four-day period in Washington he destroyed two cars, cracked a wall in the Washington Hilton, purchased two French Horns at $1100 each and ran through a plate-glass door in a Turkish restaurant.

Compounding the problem was the presence in Washington, for the first time, of our artist Ralph Steadman -- an extremely heavy drinker with little or no regard for either protocol or normal social amenities. On Steadman's first visit to the Watergate Hearing Room he was ejected by the Capitol Police after spilling beer on a TV monitor and knocking Sam Ervin off his feet while attempting to seize a microphone to make a statement about “the rottenness of American politics.” It was only the timely intervention of New York Post correspondent John Lang that kept Steadman from being permanently barred from the Hearing Room.

In any case, the bulk of what follows appears exactly as Dr. Thompson wrote it in his notebooks. Given the realities of our constant deadline pressure, there was no other way to get this section into print.

The Notebooks

“Jesus, this Watergate thing is unbelievable. It's terrible, like finding out your wife is running around but you don't want to hear about it.”

-- Remark of a fat man from Nashville sharing a taxi with Ralph Steadman.

Tuesday morning 6/26/73 8:13 AM in the Rockies. . .

Bright sun on the grass outside my windows behind this junk TV set and long white snowflelds, still unmelted, on the peaks across the valley. Every two or three minutes the doleful screech of a half-wild peacock rattles the windows. The bastard is strutting around on the roof, shattering the morning calm with his senseless cries.

His noise is a bad burden on Sandy's nerves. “God damn it!” she mutters. “We have to get him a hen!”

“Fuck him; we got him a hen -- and she ran off and got herself killed by coyotes. What the crazy bastard needs now is a bullet through the vocal cords. He's beginning to sound like Herman Talmadge.”

“Talmadge?”