Part Thirty-Three, Chapter One - Mandatory Brainstorming

A new day begins, as does a new Part of the story.  There's a reassuring familiarity about this chapter, with Gris checking the day's paper and panicking at the job Madison is doing.  No sadist lesbians to be found or anything.

Soltan Gris on newspapers:

You would not think that a wad of wood pulp, crushed flat, messily smeared with some carbon, could constitute a deadly weapon.  But a newspaper is all of that and more.   Any direction it is pointed, it can kill.  Especially when motivated by an idiot.  One who does not seem to know who he is pointing at.

The headline is about the Whiz Kid's out-of-court settlement with Octopus Oil and the fallout of such a landmark case.  The New York Stock Exchange is reopening, which is surprising since I never noticed it closing.  A stock broker is quoted as giving his condolences for all those ripped off after he and his firm bought a bunch of Octopus Stock after causing a sell-off.  And now I realize why this chapter seems reassuringly familiar - we got the same headline in Chapter Seven of the last Part.  You know, between Torture Sessions #1 and #2. 

Gris realizes that despite his meeting with Madison, the story mentions Swindle and Crouch in the same sentence as Boggle, Gouge and Hound.  Mr. Bury's gonna be maaaaad.  So Gris is in a pickle.  He's decided that New York City is "just too small for me and Pinch," but he can't flee to Turkey because there's that Apparatus assassin waiting to kill him if he continues to botch the mission, and Heller is "still winning."

How?

Heller's got his driving privileges suspended or something thanks to the fake Whiz Kid's antics, while he's unlikely to gain anything from the fake's recent victory because he wasn't the one actually in the courthouse.  Well, I say his driving privileges are gone, but we haven't seen anyone confiscate his keys or anything, probably because he looks nothing like the Whiz Kid getting spat on in the papers.  In fact, all this newspaper drama isn't having any discernible affect on him beyond making Babe Corleone cranky.  It's not so much that Heller has been stopped as it is that he's just not doing much.  Aside from keeping Izzy from killing himself again and taking out a laughably killable super-assassin and recovering tons of money and stuff.

It's like the newspaper drama is totally divorced from reality and the rest of the story.  Like the whole Psychiatric Birth Control garbage.  We're told it's there, but that's about it.

Well, the best Gris can come up with to get himself out of this mess is to hit Madison with a baseball bat, so he sits down and waits for inspiration.  "An idea greater than any idea I had ever had was absolutely mandatory!"

So of course he turns on the HellerVision.


Back to Part Thirty-Two, Chapter Seven

Forward to Part Thirty-Three, Chapter Two