Heller checks out of his hotel, or more accurately checks himself out because the lobby is deserted. "Al Capone" signs out and leaves some money under the counter, then goes to the public phone. There's a lot of numbers scribbled on the wall around it, "some of them girls, some of them pimps and some of them gays," but he eventually finds one for a cab company and summons a "German-looking" driver.
First Heller asks for a place "with some class," and is taken to the Snob Palace Hotel, and I've gotta be honest, I almost put the book down and walked away right there. Though the place is fancy and has plenty of bellboys and clerks, nobody can spare the time to talk to them because they're busy on phones answering complaints about an improperly aired poodle... this is not me making stupid stuff up in an effort to wring amusement from the book, this is actually in the chapter: "Something about a poodle not being aired." One clerk tears himself away to eye this strange character in undersized and clashing clothing - someone finally reacts to how Heller is dressed! - and coldly informs him that rooms are four hundred bucks a night, so Heller moves on.
After hailing another cab, Heller asks for a place that's less expensive, and is taken to the Casa de Flop... hmm. No reaction. Guess I'm dead inside now.
[Heller] picked up his bags and walked in. A sodden group of winos sagged on sodden furniture. A sodden clerk slumped over a sodden desk. It was a very sodden lobby.
Heller sniffs and remarks that this place might as well be run by the Apparatus. Gris makes an excited note of it: "Code break! Code break! And unpatriotic!" Heller doesn't bother talking to anyone, but turns around and goes to find another cab. He figures a house will be cheaper and cleaner than a hotel, and asks the "Neanderthal type" cabbie to take him to one. The driver thinks he looks awfully young for that sort of thing, but complies.
So Heller is taken to a beautiful, multi-storied, modern building, The Gracious Palms. Everything is elegant and gilded and tastefully arranged and not shabby or sodden or anything, but the place is also strangely empty, and at the sight of the limo idling in the driveway the cabbie freaks out, dumps Heller and his stuff, and bolts.
There is one person around, well-dressed, tough, and standing next to the limo. He eyes the interloper and reports in on a miniature walkie-talkie while Heller enters the building. The main counter is empty, but there's a nearby door marked "Host" with a man peering out of it. He beckons to Heller, who puts down his luggage and steps into what turns out to be the office of "Vantagio Meretrici, Manager." One man is sitting behind the desk, while two others are standing to the side, their right hands out of sight, presumably tucked away in a rift in space-time. The third man who opened to door for Heller suddenly grabs him and forces him to take a seat.
One man asks if Heller's one of Vantagio's "fancy boys," which he denies. Another goes back to demanding that Vantagio push drugs on behalf of Faustino, which Vantagio also refuses, since he'd lose all his clientele - they'd think he was trying to "bleed them for information." A gangster makes some unkind and quite racist remarks about the officials of the United Nations, and threatens to bust up some furniture, or possibly some whores, before killing Vantagio. He decides on starting with the "fancy boy" they just captured.
Yaaaaay action sequence. Bear in mind that at the start of this, Heller is being pinned down in a chair by a man standing behind him, with a tight lock on his arms.
Abruptly Heller brought his feet off the floor!
He did a sitting back flip!
His toes struck the man behind him on the head!
Heller's hands caught the sides of the chair seat. He catapulted himself backwards, straight over the head of the man who had been holding him! He landed behind him!
He had the man's gun out of his shoulder holster!
Presumably, Gris pieced all this together by taking a blur of confusing footage and going through it frame-by-frame. Because remember, Gris' viewpoint for all of this is literally through Heller's eyes. Unless you forgot about that whole bio-bugging subplot and confused Gris for some sort of omniscient narrator. But that would be sloppy.
From there it's just a lot of shooting. Mook 1 shoots at Heller but hits Mook 2, who Heller was standing behind. Heller shoots Mook 1 in the heart. Mook 3 drops into a crouch and takes another shot, hitting Mook 1, who was wearing his Friendly Fire Magnet that day. Heller hits Mook 3 in the head. "Running feet outside approaching." Mook 4 attempts to make an entrance, but Heller shoots him high in the shoulder, knocking him down but not enough to kill him, and the hood wisely decides to cheese it. The sound of a revving engine is probably the limo speeding off.
Meh. Jonnie could kill Psychlos three at a time, and he was just an ordinary human. And on a good day he could cut down nearly thirty of his fellow man. Sorry Hubbard, I just can't get excited about this new guy whacking a handful of mobsters.
Vantagio invokes the name of our lord and savior and asks Heller to help him haul the bodies, pulling them out on rugs and rushing a cleaning lady in to mop up the bloodstains. Good thing too, since he can already hear police sirens, no doubt tipped off by the rival mobsters to rush in if they heard shooting. By the time Inspector Bulldog Grafferty bursts onto the scene, he finds three corpses in the hotel lobby, and Vantagio explains that they all killed each other in a shootout. And Heller? A delivery boy, who showed up after the shooting stopped.
The cop accepts this story a little crankily, tells them that the "stiff team" will be in shortly, and Vantagio and Heller had better show up at the coroner's inquest. He leaves, and Vantagio tells Heller to take his luggage into his office so they can have a talk.
So I think Heller's now in with the mob. The Good Mob, of course, which doesn't push drugs, unlike the Bad Mob.
Back to an Intermission
Further Back to Part Fifteen, Chapter Nine
Abruptly Heller brought his feet off the floor!
ReplyDeleteHe did a sitting back flip!
"His toes struck the man behind him on the head!
Heller's hands caught the sides of the chair seat. He catapulted himself backwards, straight over the head of the man who had been holding him! He landed behind him!
He had the man's gun out of his shoulder holster!
Presumably, Gris pieced all this together by taking a blur of confusing footage and going through it frame-by-frame. Because remember, Gris' viewpoint for all of this is literally through Heller's eyes. Unless you forgot about that whole bio-bugging subplot and confused Gris for some sort of omniscient narrator. But that would be sloppy."
I mean, the staccato description as Gris works out pieces of what's happening could work. It's kind of a neat idea, at least.