Part Forty-Six, Chapter Four - Standoffs and Blackmail

So after shooting the hospital to hell, Chief Fawg orders everyone to come out with their hands up, 'cause he knows that a certain blond fugitive is in there.  See, they saw Dr. Price from behind through the window, assumed it was Heller, and shot to kill a guy wanted for beating up cops and stealing a car.  Trigger-happy yokel law enforcement, y'know.

While Stonewall Biggs tries to explain that the cops have instead killed Dr. Graves and ruined Dr. Price's coat, the actual blond fugitive sneaks up behind Harvey Lee, who is lurking behind the three policemen because it saves time for him to be around now so we don't have to spend a chapter or two later hunting him down to give him his comeuppance.  With a lunge, Heller puts Lee in a painful hold, one arm keeping his hostage under control, the other holding a gun pointed at the police.

The cops whirled.  They raised their guns.

Heller said, "Go ahead and shoot Lee.  He's a thief, aren't you, Lee?"

And car theft is apparently a shooting offense.

"I'm a thief! screamed Lee.  "Please let go my arm!"

Not sure if typo or just Hubbard's idea of a Virginia accent.

Our hero puts Lee through the wringer, getting him to confess to selling Heller a car without a bill of sale, then trying to get it back by reporting it stolen.  Then he explains the situation to the local law enforcement.

"Chief," said Heller, his automatic trained on Fawg from under Lee's armpit, "this is a Mexican standoff.  Now, do we flip a coin to see whether I shoot you or you shoot Lee?"

I always thought of a Mexican Standoff as a bunch of gun-toting varmints pointing their weapons at each other, each refusing to be the first to back down.  This is more like a hostage situation involving a human shield.  But Heller's an alien, so he's bound to get some things wrong.

Fawg is torn with indecision, rather than just taking the shot because Lee is after all an expendable car thief, but then Biggs yells to remind the "hospital shootah" how the FBI chaps declared the suspect from last year's crimes to be dead, and even compensated them for any losses.  Before Fawg remembers that Heller would still be wanted for assaulting police officers this year, Biggs pulls the connections card and tells everyone that Heller is Delbert John Rockecenter Jr.  Krak even comes out of the hospital, leads the cops into the land yacht, and with a "ghoulish grin" shows them the registration card with Rockecenter (Sr.)'s signature.

Fawg and his deputies drop to their knees in supplication to their liege,  Heller asks "What's customary heahabouts?" and is told by Biggs that the usual sentence for this kind of thing is lynching, and Biggs already has a tree in mind - I'm not sure if he's joking here.  But Heller is of course merciful, and sets the cops free if they promise to put their time and money towards rebuilding the courthouse.  Lee is terrified that he tried to con the son of the most powerful man on the planet, and begs for someone to shoot him.

And for all I know, they do shoot him in the head and dump his corpse by the river.  Because I've looked ahead and can't find any further mention of Harvey Lee.  As far as I can tell, he completely disappears from the story.  Think he'll turn up in a later book?  There's four more to go.

Biggs shoos the mollified cops out with an "ah got blackmail material on you fo' th' rest of yo' days.  Po' Doctah Graves."  Evidently on this planet, crimes are never actually reported per se, instead people threaten to blackmail others over them.  So even though the police chief just accidentally shot a sick old man, the murder will remain unsolved until Biggs gets tired of extorting favors from Fawg.  Po' Doctah Graves.

Gris ends the chapter wondering about Torpedo.  He missed a great opportunity to hit Krak when she was haranguing the cops, but Gris reasons that the killer might have been scared off by all the other shooting going on.  I'd say that would be a great time to assassinate someone, so that nobody even realizes there's a second shooter, but then again I'm not a corpse-raping hired killer.  Torpedo probably knows what's he's doing.  Gris takes comfort in the fact that Torpedo might still be around, so if Heller decides to leave his girlfriend completely unguarded, she'll be easy prey.  "This very night!"

Spoiler: Krak isn't going to get assassinated that very night.


Back to Chapter Three

Forward to Chapter Five

Part Forty-Six, Chapter Three - Wish Granted

Bang-Bang's gestures are to warn Krak of the approaching owner of this private hospital.  Krak does not react to his warnings that they should leave, and several footsteps later a blond physician, one Dr. Price, walks in, sees the unwanted visitors, and offers to reexamine Bang-Bang "for some other symptoms such as snooping."  But before the situation can go any further, Stonewall Biggs walks in, and Graves recognizes him and demands to have a pen and paper, because his arthritis is killing him.  Remember, Biggs is a county clerk, able to make scribbled confessions official scribbled confessions, so once he sees what Graves is writing, he ducks out and grabs two nurses to be additional witnesses.

While this is going on, the penny drops and Gris realizes that while Biggs and Heller left for the hospital together, only Biggs has shown up.

Suddenly I realized that Heller was unaccounted for.  His viewer was tipped a bit away from me and I had been too engrossed to watch it for his fate, which, after all, I considered sealed.  The view was of the silly French car, the Karin, seen in the distance in the gloom and I supposed they had intercepted him on the road and now had him standing somewhere securely cuffed.  I did not have time to play back the strips.  I could enjoy that later.

Never mind that even if Gris had been paying attention to what was happening around Heller, he'd be in no condition to do anything about it.  But we're supposed to go with his theory that Heller has been handcuffed and then abandoned by the cops, so when this turns out to be wrong we'll be shocked and excited.

Instead of paying attention to his nemesis, Gris is really interested in whether anyone will pick up on the "flagrant violation of all legal rules of evidence," Dr. Graves' unnatural enthusiasm for writing his confession.  Much like how he got sucked in by Graves' story last chapter instead of watching what happened to Heller.   Then he realizes wait a minute, I sent an assassin after Krak!  And she's standing there in plain sight of the window!  So he waits excitedly for Torpedo to do what Gris never considered attempting himself.

Graves finishes his confession, and his arthritis pain immediately ends.  Biggs makes him swear that it was all true, then attaches some paperwork and stamps the confession with a notary seal.  And Dr. Graves commits assisted suicide by declaring "I feel so comfortable, now I can die in peace!"

Immediately a rifle round shatters the window, followed by a "fusillade" of small-arms fire.  Bang-Bang tackles Krak to the floor and yells at everyone else to do the same, but Dr. Price takes a bullet to his coat.  Oh, and Graves is fatally shot, dying instantly.

Gris checks Heller's viewer, and what a surprise, he's not tied up but creeping along the bushes outside the hospital.  Biggs tells Krak that Heller decided to stay outside because he saw the French car and was checking to see if Harvey Lee the car salesman/car thief was about.  So: Harvey claimed that Heller stole the car he sold him, and tried to sic the cops on him.  This failed, Heller threatened him, and then went along his way to Biggs' house.  Harvey decided to follow him and steal the car back, and then deduced where Heller was going, and actually beat him and Biggs to the hospital.

This is pretty dumb, but the twist is that next chapter we're shown that there's cops outside the hospital too.  But Heller didn't spot the police cars either when they were approaching, or when they were parked in wait.  But if the cops weren't there already, how did Harvey know where to go, if he got there first?

We're not going to get any answers, are we?


Back to Chapter Two 

Forward to Chapter Four

Part Forty-Six, Chapter Two - Pro-Life in a Very Specific Sense

Last chapter ended with a reminder of some of the inconveniences of the book's narration style, with Gris having to assume that Heller concluded that Harvey Lee stole his car back while he was talking to Stonewall Biggs, and Gris guessing that when Heller looked back in the direction of the used car lot he was thinking about revenge.  This chapter's start is more muddled, with Gris turning on Krak's viewer and finding her staring down a hallway.  So we get an inconvenience when Gris runs a high-speed replay of Krak's activities before that point - arriving at the hospital, having Bang-Bang play sick and cause a distraction so she can slip in - but when he catches up to "now," he's just in time to watch her receive another infodump.

So there's the nod to reality when he initially tunes in and finds nothing of note, followed by a lucky coincidence where he's able to catch the next plot development live.  Rather than having to rewind to get everything, not just Krak's insertion.  And it again begs the question - why is this better than a conventional, third-person omniscient narrator?

I'm getting bogged down in the opening half-page because there's not much else to the chapter besides talking.  Krak slips past some nurses and into the room of one Dr. Tremor Graves.

"Do I know you?" said Dr. Graves.

"I am the new therapist," said the Countess Krak.

She reached into her shopping bag. She pulled out a helmet. She slid a recording strip into the slot and pushed a button that said Record. She plonked the helmet onto his head, threw the switch, plugged in the microphone and sat down.

I was gonna say something sarcastic like "and he just let her do this to him?"  But a line shortly after that says Graves was "thrashing about" until the helmet is turned on and he goes still.  So let's enjoy the mental image of one of the book's good guys slamming a mind-control helm onto a struggling, bedridden hospital patient and heroically bending his brain to her will.

Krak forces Graves to talk, promising that his arthritis pains will go away if he tells her what she wants to know.  Four pages of backstory follow.

Dr. Tremor Graves, M.D. owned a practice of his own before falling victim to "my own drink and drugs and folly."  Aaaand that's all we need to know about his past, apparently.   Dr. Graves has more to say about Delbert John Rockecenter's youth, and knows that at twenty-five he met a local farmgirl-turned-chorus girl named Mary Styles at a "pot party."  The two got a quickie marriage while tripping, and though Graves knows that Rockecenter considered the marriage a joke, he also knows that for Mary "it was her whole life."  Rockecenter kept it secret from his Aunt Timantha and the rest of his family because they'd be upset he'd married someone so poor, but then Mary got pregnant and refused to get an abortion, the selfish thing.

Rockecenter sent his wife back to her parents in Fair Oakes, and the next day Dr. Agnes P. Morelay, "a newly graduated acid thing," showed up with some thugs to grab Mary, then demanded that Dr. Graves kill her and call it a suicide.  Graves refused, not so much because he doesn't want to murder the girl, but "because I was afraid they would be able to blackmail me, then, for murder."  Except he refused to perform an abortion either, because that would be murder.  Graves did promise, for a bribe, to keep Mary in a padded cell (psychology!) and, for more money, he promised to kill her and the child after she delivered.  So he draws the line at murdering a fetus while it's still in the mother, but once the two are separate it's alright? 

Also, there is no indication as to why Graves would be following Agnes' orders.  He doesn't mention any sort of existing blackmail or other control over him, and Agnes didn't elaborate either when Krak grilled her several chapters ago.  I guess if a psychologist walks into your office and orders you to murder someone, you have to come up with a good reason to say no.

Well, as Mary was about to have the baby, word came that her parents had died in a car accident, and while it was a terrible shock the news didn't kill her, the breech birth did.  But Graves didn't kill the child, again because "I didn't want to be blackmailed by the psychiatrist."  He just told Agnes that he did it, and she never checked or anything.  And since Agnes was willing and able to get a car bomb to kill Mary's parents, we the hell didn't she take care of Mary and the unborn child the same way?  Why did she feel the need to outsource those murders but not the others? 

But there you have it: there is a Rockecenter baby boy.  Graves tattooed a dollar sign onto the sole of his left foot and stuck him in "the county poor farm" under the name Richard Roe, and didn't mention the fate of the child on Mary's death certificate.  Miss Agnes of course did not look to closely to see if her orders were followed, orders given to a man clearly reluctant to kill anyone just because she told him to.  Graves planned to threaten Agnes with the existence of Rockecenter Jr. if she tried to move against him, and admits that while he's done many (undescribed) evil things in his life, "I did not kill the two of them!"

All Krak has to say to this is "That has been heard."  Cool story bro.  She then modifies Graves' memory so that Mary actually gave birth to twins, and the firstborn got the dollar mark tattoo, was shipped to Georgia, and grew up under the name Jerome Terrance Wister, or in other words Heller's current alias.  She programs the man to write up a full confession to this effect, and once that's done he'll "feel no more pain."  His bones will still be grinding together, but he'll be comfortably numb the whole time.

We get a mild cliffhanger ending when Krak finishes up and removes the helmet, just as Bang-Bang enters the hospital room "making motions."  Since the author doesn't go into any detail, feel free to imagine what sort of goofy movements the mob bomber's making.  


Back to Chapter One 

Forward to Chapter Three

Part Forty-Six, Chapter One - Back Where It All Began

Although Gris' plan is to sit around in a motel room, watch viewscreens, and hope that things happen the way he wants them to, he's stymied by the carbon-based interference blocking out Krak's signal, while Heller's screen is still blank because Raht and the bloody 831 Relayer are on the move.  So all Gris can do at the chapter's start is try to decide why he's feeling squeamish, as if he'd just witnessed something unpleasant.

I sat there restively.  My nerves were in pretty poor shape after that cop murder and rape.  I wondered why these things were having such an effect on me.  By psychology theory, there was neither limit nor personal penalty to crime unless it happened to oneself.  Nothing had happened to me yet.

Someone needs to introduce Gris to the wonderful, lucrative world of "psychological damages."

Why was I reacting?  Psychology and psychiatry couldn't be wrong.  That was unthinkable.  Man was just an animal that had no conscience or soul, just a rotten beast, in fact.  So, of course it shouldn't affect me, no matter how many rotten things I did.

Nothing new here, the author's just repeating himself in case we missed the point the first time.  But don't worry, Hubbard's satire!psychology will reach new heights of stupidity once Gris checks on Crobe later on.

Clamping down on a crisis of faith in soulless science, Gris instead busies himself with finding a potential escape vehicle in case Torpedo doesn't pick him up after killing Krak, and makes "some other precautionary arrangements."  About this time Heller's viewer comes back on as Raht flips a switch on the relayer.  Our hero gets dropped off via a rope ladder dangling from a helicopter, landing in a used car sales lot.  Yes, he's back at Harvey "Smasher" Lee's Bargain Cars For True Virginians, Money Back Sometimes.

Remember?

It was only... using a calculator here... ah, approximately 1600 pages ago that Heller was first dumped off in Virginia, eventually picking up a Cadillac from Mr. Lee here.  Gris obligingly spends a paragraph reminding us how Heller was probably still wanted in this town (under a different alias) and left with a Miss Mary Schmeck, who tragically died off-screen with no further impact on the story.

Mr. Lee steps out of the sales office, and goes white at the sight of Heller, who asks if there's a cheap car available.  Harvey instead asks if Mary's around, and Heller says "There's nobody with me."  Because... no need to tell a shady car salesman that a woman who haggled with him died of a drug overdose?  Well, surely Heller has a good reason for doing the things he does.  Even if we never get to hear it.

I'll skip a page of haggling - Heller ends up buying a cheap ride he can "use and throw away," some awful French car called a Karin.  Apparently this was a real concept vehicle, and I've gotta say, I can see why it never went any further.  Heller asks about Stonewall Biggs, and Harvey gets all shifty-eyed and explains that he's still at the (burned-down) courthouse.

Heller drives off in his rolling pyramid and arrives at the pile of rubble marking the old building, next to a temporary structure.  It's past dusk now, and as Heller gets out some voices shout that he's under arrest in thick, mangled Southern accents.  Yes, Mr. Harvey tipped off the local cops about a car that got "stolen" off his lot.  The officers move in to cuff Heller, who is mostly annoyed and asks if they can "put this off until business hours?"

I'll skip a half-page Hubbard Action Sequence in which Heller ends up throwing one cop at the other.  He dumps the unconscious cops off at the temporary courthouse and drives back to Mr. Lee, grabs the man by the throat, ties him up, and threatens to torch the man's merchandise if he doesn't tell where Mr. Biggs is.  The man blabs, Heller drives off towards the new directions, arriving at a nondescript house in some generic neighborhood unworthy of description.

Heller knocks on a front door, an old black woman announces that there's "Some young whaht mans," and Mr. Biggs starts chatting with Heller in Hubbard's patented What The Hell Is That Accent?

"Well, Junior!" he cried. "Mah, this sho' is a su'-prise!" And he was pumping Heller's hand and beaming. "C'm in, c'm in and set a spell! Mah, am ah glad t'see you, boy!"

He led Heller into the kitchen and sat him in a chair at the table. "We've et. You et? Marcy, git some vittles on. Some of that friahd po'k 'n greens."

"Ah'm mighty glad t'see you well," said Heller, unstrapping his musette bag and laying it on a chair.

"Aw, they cain't kill off an ol' coon dog lahk me," said Stonewall Biggs. "They thought ah was done fo' aftah you pulled me aht of that fiah but ah was jus' singed, jus' singed. Marcy, he do look a bit ga'nt. Hurry up them vittles so's we c'n talk."

I am tired of Virginia already.

Gris chortles that sitting down for exposition only plays into his hands, since it keeps Heller away from Krak so Torpedo can... well, presumably he could snipe her regardless of whether anyone's around, but I guess Gris has latched on to the "defiling" part of the plan too.

Heller and Biggs make small talk, then Heller asks for more information about his birth.  So Biggs tells a short tale of how the town doctor got drunk one night, so Biggs asked some questions, and the doctor said something about how "Ah done a lotta rotten things in mah tahm, but at leas' ah nevah murdered th' two of them."  And Biggs admits there'd been some rumors about a local girl getting married to Mr. Rockecenter and coming home pregnant and how she disappeared and how her parents died in a car accident that looked suspiciously like a car bomb.  But nobody has any hard evidence and the local sheriff would sell his soul for some "waht mule," so nobody did anything and the rumor never went anywhere.

So a whole town has suspicions about how the world's most powerful man might have murdered his wife and unborn children, as well as his in-laws.  Way to cover your tracks, Rockecenter.

Biggs gives Heller directions to this doctor, a Tremor Graves, but when he tries to leave Heller finds that the rolling pyramid has been stolen.  Biggs ends up driving him off, so Gris calls an operator, announces a Federal emergency, and without any attempt to verify his identity is able to tip off the local police that the man who stole a car and beat up two officers is on his way to a hospital in a Buick.

I hung up.

I beamed.  Heller would be stopped.

Torpedo would have his chance!

Of course, if Heller did get stopped, and arrested, and jailed for his crimes, he wouldn't be able to write his reports back to Voltar, and since Gris doesn't know the cypher to forge him, the Voltarian government would get tipped off that Mission Earth is failing, and go ahead with the invasion plan, jeopardizing the Apparatus plot to seize control of the Confederacy.  On the other hand, given their past success rate there's absolutely no reason to believe the local law enforcement has any chance of apprehending Heller, so Gris is probably safe from his own short-sighted stupidity.


Back to Part Forty-Five, Chapter Seven

Forward to Part Forty-Six, Chapter Two

Part Forty-Five, Chapter Seven - Good Triumphs Because Evil Can't Keep It In Its Pants

Unabridged version here.

On day four, Gris happens to check Krak's viewscreen at some point and finds that the interference is off, allowing him to overhear Bang-Bang saying how he managed to find a mysterious "him" hiding out in a private hospital at Redneck (hur), Virginia.  Bang-Bang helpfully explains that it's only thirty-five miles west of their location, allowing Gris to check a map and trace backwards.  Somehow Krak managed to slip south of Gris, but since Redneck's only twenty miles away from where he is, surely he'll be able to beat Krak there and set up the perfect ambush.  Well I say "he," but Gris' plan is of course to sit in his motel room while Torpedo runs out to do the dirty work.  The only way things could go wrong would be if a distraction knocked on the motel room door.

Immediately, a distraction knocks on the motel room door, revealing itself to be a motorcycle cop here to complain about how their car was parked.  Torpedo's reaction is to grab the cop when the officer turns his back to point out the vehicle in question, and while muffling any screams with a hand over the man's mouth, stabs him in the back.  Gris speculates that Torpedo's knife cut the cop's heart in half, from behind.  I could argue over the mechanics of this, but I won't.

So Torpedo has just delayed his appointment with Krak's demise by murdering a nonhostile police officer, forcing him and Gris to deal with the fallout of that crime.  The only way things could get worse would be if Torpedo flipped the body over and took off its pants.

Torpedo flips the body over and takes off its pants.

Gris cries at his henchman to stop, complaining that his real target is just south of here on a set course, but Torpedo pulls a gun and insists on... finishing.  Gris doesn't mention diverting his eyes, nor does he attempt to run out, either to excuse himself from Torpedo's activities, or - and this is a stretch - try and take care of Krak himself.  Presumably Torpedo would shoot him for trying to leave?

Torpedo laughs about "(bleeping) a screw!" and runs off to make the kill, since he boasts that his previous diversion only whetted his appetite.  This leaves Gris in a room with a dead, defiled police officer.  He pulls up the corpse's pants and drags it to the bottom of some stairs - actually, got that backwards, he drags it outside and down the stairs, then fixes the pants.  Then Gris goes back to the crime scene and cleans up, "eradicating" any bloodstains with... I dunno, toilet paper?  A magical alien cleaning agent that dissolves all types of blood, even those from lifeforms on different planets?  Febreeze?  The author doesn't say.

Gris is basically stuck since Torpedo took the car and he's unwilling to leave his luggage behind, so he resolves the situation by calling in on the cop cycle's radio to report the murder, using his federal credentials ("This is Inkswitch.  I'm a Fed.").  When other police forces show up he blames the murder on a black man ("We knew it!" said their chief) and they tear off, returning an hour later to dispose of the body.  That distraction handled, Gris gets back to what he does best: watching on a viewscreen while the good guys make progress.

Now, something I'd like to point out.  L. Ron Hubbard wrote this book.  He also founded what he insisted was a religion.  To my knowledge, Jesus did not write stories about someone raping women until they liked men again as a side project while traveling around and preaching.  Neither am I aware of the Buddha writing an epic tale in which the protagonist unwittingly commits genocide on at least one race, only to be assured that his victims were all better off dead even after previous cases proved they were redeemable.  And for all the controversy surrounding Muhammad (peace be upon him), I don't think he told stories featuring a necrophiliac assassin.

Just something to think about.


Back to Part Forty-Five, Chapter Six 

Forward to Part Forty-Six, Chapter One

Part Forty-Five, Chapter Six - Orgy of One

Unabridged version here.

If Gris were the protagonist of Lord of the Rings, he'd be on an epic quest, carrying the Ring of Power to the slopes of Mount Doom, so that some budget hireling he picked up in Minas Tirith could chuck it in.  If he were in the original Star Wars the movie's climax would involve him escorting another pilot's X-Wing into the Death Star trench to take the torpedo shot, even though he had a full load of missiles in his own fighter.  Because Gris spends much of the chapter driving around with a hitman in his passenger seat, looking for the Countess Krak, so he can tell the hitman to shoot her.

At least Gris is as annoyed with the experience as I am, though for a different reason - he can't stand Torpedo Fiaccola.

Not only did the filthy beast stink, he kept whining that I wasn't being fast enough.  He wanted to get on his kill and he twisted and agonized about how frustrated he was and how he had to have it.  He kept stroking his rifle's barrel and unloading the gun and spitting on the cartridges and reloading it, crooning to the slugs to get him to his next orgy.  My disgust rose like vomit in my throat just to hear him.

Just in case anyone's unfamiliar with the term: an orgy is an event featuring indiscriminate group sex.  It's therefore difficult to pull off with two people, especially if one of them is dead. 

On the second day of the hunt Gris checks his viewers.  Heller is down in Florida, where workers are hailing his supernatural skill when it comes to laying out a building's foundations, while Heller is trying and failing to reach Krak's phone (since Gris got the land yacht's line disconnected).  After spotting a disguised Raht lurking around Heller's hotel, Gris checks the other viewer and finds Krak lounging about by a lake, extremely snipeable, but he can't tell where she is.

On day three he catches Bang-Bang returning from trying out local pay phones in his attempts to reach Heller, and spots a sign for Bogg Hollow's general store.  The three places Gris can find on a map with Bogg in their name are all north of Lynchburg, Virginia, so Gris takes a whining, drooling Torpedo to a hotel in that town, to... well, I'm not quite sure what the strategy is.

Gris picks a spot with a good view of the highway and a clear route to give chase, but then he sends Torpedo out to all the potential Bogg Whatever places Gris found on the map, presumably in the hope that Krak hasn't moved yet.  Gris stays behind at the hotel, allegedly able to watch both the highway and Heller's viewscreen, but he only pays attention to the latter.  And what's he expecting to do if he sees the target come along on the highway?  He doesn't have a sniper rifle, and his own weapons aren't mentioned.  I guess he'll yell at Torpedo whenever he comes back and try to chase Krak down.

After Gris watches Heller make plans to hitch a ride with a pilot to Fair Oakes, VA, Torpedo returns to report both his lack of success and the full extent of his frustration.  He's now certain he got gonorrhea from... um, his last sexual partner.  Although partner would imply that the other person was playing an active role and not laying limply because - anyway, Torpedo knows from his prison psychologist that the only cure for the clap is to pass it around.

Torpedo mentions how he wished he had a bloodhound to track down the Countess Krak, which sets off Gris' newfound animal phobia that he's developed from anecdotes shared in the uncensored version of this blog.  Our villainous protagonist is now convinced that he's doomed, but he'll try and bring down the terrible Countess Krak before he dies.

But somehow it didn't help.  Somewhere in my career, had I gone wrong?

That would imply that at some point Soltan Gris was actually good at his job.

Was there somebody else I had failed to maim or kill? I was being punished for something, I was sure. But it was not because I had not tried to do my Apparatus duty always, like now. I was sure of that. It was just that the Gods are treacherous. They had it in for me.

Close, but it's really the author that hates you, Gris.  You've been created to embody everything he despises about the Central Intelligence Agency (regardless of whether those beliefs have any basis in reality).  Your role in the story is to fail repeatedly and miserably, to allow the heroes, including the avatar of the author's self-image, to succeed and defeat you.  You were betrayed at the moment of your inception.


Back to Chapter Five

Forward to Chapter Seven

Part Forty-Five, Chapter Five - These People Tell the Most Interesting Stories

Unabridged version here. 

Bad news is that this chapter's more about Gris' sex life.  Good news is that we'll be taking a break from it for a bit after this.

Miss Pinch brings in the next pair of women to be rescued from Psychiatric Birth Control, an American-Indian going by the name "Chief Malcomb" and Bucket, a "plump high-yellow." I think we met our first "high-yellow" woman about a year ago, in Book Two, and I still don't know what the hell the author is talking about when he uses the term.

The encounter goes badly; Chief admits that she's scared half to death, and Gris freaks out, orders that Pinchy call for an electrocardiograph, and is only willing to perform his duty if he can watch the little needle charting his client's heartbeat.  Because that's the only way he can now convince himself that he's not interacting with a corpse.

The girls are unsatisfied - though they admit that an awkward night with Gris' magical dongle is still better than anything they'd experienced before - and Miss Pinch chews him out because Bucket is used to... um.  Let's just say "big things" without going into the specifics of what the lady actually slept with.  So Pinch is worried that Gris' failure might cause Bucket to fall back into bad habits.

Gris tries to make up for his shortcomings when he attends to Candy and Pinch, but when they thrash about they disconnect the heartbeat monitors, causing Gris to panic that he's sleeping with a flailing, screaming corpse.  So he gets kicked to the couch, just in time to receive a phone call from our friend Torpedo.  Gris gives the hitman the location and description of Krak's new land yacht, and demands to know why Torpedo's in Harlem instead of Hairytown.  The killer replies that he'd stolen a gun, a double-barreled magnum elephant rifle with a superpowered night scope, and he's such a professional that he needed to test it out before he made the hit.

And Hubbard double-downs and adds necrophilia to a chapter already containing bestiality.  Oh, and Torpedo has syphilis now.  We get to hear too many details before Gris finally yells at the man to top telling his terrible stories, and he goes to bed, but is now worried about STDs.

The next morning Torpedo phones in to report that the land yacht has moved on, so Krak isn't dead and defiled yet.  Even worse, not only has the note and envelope Gris gave him earlier disappeared, but the money in it has evaporated into a green powder!

Oh, (bleep)!  That timed disintigrator spray had gotten on the money in the envelope!

I was joking!  I was joking when I wondered why the spray didn't disintegrate anything else!  I just assumed the paper was specially-treated to interact with the spray... can I not think of something too stupid to be included in this story?

So Torpedo's broke and literally (bleeping) around instead of doing the job.  Gris takes two thousand bucks out of Pinchy's purse, leaves a note explaining that he's going to meditate on a mountaintop for a week, grabs his federal ID (in case anyone asks about the hitman) and his other gear, and hits the road.

No more lesbian deprogramming in Candy and Pinchy's apartment!  Gris has picked up his gun, he's going to track down the Countess Krak, and he is going to make damn sure that the hitman he hired kills her, because that's the only way to be rid of that woman.


Back to Chapter Four

Forward to Chapter Six