My attorney idled over and put his arm around her shoulders. “Mister Duke is my friend,” he said gently. “He lovesartists. Let’s show him your paintings.”

For the first time, I noticed that the room was full of artwork—maybe forty or fifty portraits, some in oil, some charcoal, all more or less the same size and all the same face.

They were propped up on every flat surface. The face was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. It was a girl with a mouth, a big nose and extremely glittering eyes—a demonically sensual face; the kind of overstated, embarrassingly dramatic renderings that you find in the bedrooms of young female art students who get hung up on horses.

‘Lucy paints portraits of Barbra Streisand,” my attorney explained. “She’s an artist up in Montana.. .“ He turned to the girl.

“What’s that town where you live?”

She stared at him, then at me, then back at my attorney again. Then

finally she said, “Kalispel. Way up north. I drew these from TV.”

My attorney nodded eagerly. “Fantastic,” he said. “She came all the way down here just to give all these

portraits to Barbra. We’re going over to the Americana Hotel tonight, and meet her backstage.”

Lucy smiled bashfully. There was no more hostility in her. I dropped the Mace can and stood up. We obviously had a serious case on our hands. I hadn’t counted on this:

Finding my attorney whacked on acid and locked into some kind of preternatural courtship.

“Well,” I said, “I guess they’ve brought the car around by now. Let’s get the stuff out of the trunk.”

He nodded eagerly. “Absolutely, let’s get the stuff.” Hesmiled at Lucy. “We’ll be right back. Don’t answer the phone if it rings.”

She grinned and made the one-finger Jesus freak sign. “God bless,” she said.

My attorney pulled on a pair of elephant-leg pants and a glaze-black shirt, then we hurried out of the room. I could see he was having trouble getting oriented, but I refused to humor him.

“Well . . .“ I said. “What are your plans?”

“Plans?”

We were waiting for the elevator.

“Lucy,” I said.

He shook his head, struggling to focus on the question.

“Shit,” he said finally. “I met her on the plane and I had all that acid.” He shrugged. “You know, those little blue barrels. Jesus, she’s a religious freak. She’s running away from home for something like the fifth time in six months. It’s terrible. I gave her that cap before I realized ...shit, she’s never even had adrinkf’

“Well,” I said, “it’ll probably work out. We can keep her loaded and peddle her ass at the drug convention.”

He stared at me.

“She’s perfect for this gig,” I said. “These cops will go fifty bucks a head to beat her into submission and then gang-fuck her. We can set her up in one of these back-street motels, hang pictures of Jesus all over the room, then turn these pigsloose on her ...Hell, she’s strong; she’ll hold her own.”

His face was twitching badly. We were in the elevator now, descending into the lobby. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “I knew you were sick, but I never expected to hear you actually say that kind of stuff.”

He seemed stunned.

I laughed. “It’s straight economics. This girl is a godsend!” I fixed him with a natural Bogart smile, all teeth .. . Shit, we’re almost broke! And suddenly you pick up some muscle-bound loony who can make us a grand a day.”

“No!” he shouted. “Stop talking like that!” The elevator door opened and we walked toward the parking lot.

“I figure she can do about four at a time,” I said.

“Christ, if we keep her full of acid that’s more like two grand a day; maybe three.”

“You filthy bastard!” he sputtered. “I should cave your fucking head in!” He was squinting at me, shielding his eyes from the sun. I spotted the Whale about fifty feet from the door. “There it is,” I said. “Not a bad looking car, for a pimp ..

He groaned. His face reflected the struggle that I knew he was having, in his brain, with sporadic acid rushes: Bad waves of painful intensity, followed by total confusion.

When I opened the trunk of the Whale to get the bags, he got angry. “What the hell are you doing?” he snapped.

“This isn’t Lucy’s car.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s mine. This is my luggage.”

“The fuck it is!” he shouted. “Just because I’m a goddamn ‘I lawyer doesn’t mean you can walk around stealing stuff right in front of me!” He backed away. “What the hell is wrong with you? We’ll never beat a rap like this.”

After much difficulty, we got back to the room and tried to have a serious talk with Lucy. I felt like a Nazi, but it had to be done. She was not right for us—not in this fragile situation. It was bad enough if she were only what she appeared to be—a strange young girl in the throes of a bad psychotic episode—but what worried me far more than that was the likelihood that she would probably be just sane enough, in a few hours, to work herself into a towering Jesus-based rage at the hazy recollection of being picked up and seduced in the Los Angeles International Airport by some kind of cruel Samoan who fed her liquor and LSD, then dragged her to a Vegas hotel room and savagely penetrated every orifice in her body with his throbbing, uncircumcised member.

I had a terrible vision of Lucy crashing into Barbra Streisand’s dressing room at the Americana and laying thisbrutal story on her. That would finish us. They would track us down and probably castrate us both, prior to booking

I explained this to my attorney, who was now in tears at the idea of sending Lucy away. She was still powerfully twisted, and I felt the only solution was to get her as far as possible from the Flamingo before she got straight enough to remember where she’d been and what happened to her.

Lucy, while we argued, was lying on the patio, doing a charcoal sketch of Barbra Streisand. From memory this time. It was a full-faced rendering, with teeth like baseballs and eyes like jellied fire.

The sheer intensity of the thing made me nervous. This girl was a walking bomb. God only knows what she might be doing with all that mis-wired energy right now if she didn’t have her sketch pad. And what was she going to do when she got straight enough to read The Vegas Vistitor, as I just had, and learn that Streisand wasn’t due at the Americana for another three weeks?

My attorney finally agreed that Lucy would have to go. The possibility of a Mann Act conviction, resulting in disbarment proceedings and total loss of his livelihood, was a key factor in his decision. A nasty federal rap. Especially for a monster Samoan facing a typical white middle-class jury in Southern California.

“They might even call it kidnapping,” I said. “Straight to the gas chamber, like Chessman. And even if you

manage to beatthat, they’ll send you back to Nevada for Rape and Congensual Sodomy.”

“No!” he shouted. “I felt sorry for the girl, I wanted to help her!”

I smiled. “That’s what Fatty Arbuckle said, and you know what they did to him.”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Just picture yourself telling a jury that you tried to help this poor girl by giving her LSD and then taking her out to Vegas for one of your special stark-naked back rubs.”

He shook his head sadly. “You’re right. They’d probably burn me at the goddamn stake ... set me on fire right there in the dock. Shit, it doesn’t pay to try to help somebody these days ..

We coaxed Lucy down to the car, telling her that we thought it was about time to “go meet Barbra.” We had no trouble convincing her that she should take all her artwork, but she couldn’t understand why my attorney wanted to bring her suitcase along. “I don’t want to embarrass her,” she protested. “She’ll think I’m trying to move in with her, or something.”

“No she won’t,” I said quickly ...but that was all I could think of to say. I felt like Martin Bormann. What would happen to this poor wretch when we cut her loose? Jail? White slavery? What would Dr. Darwin do under these circumstances? (Survival of the ... fittest? Was that the proper word? Had Darwin ever considered the idea of temporary unfitness? Like “temporary insanity.” Could the Doctor have made room in his theory for a thing like LSD?)