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.
"We almost didn't make it, Inkswitch," she said reprovingly. "You don't understand the critical situation with that Bucket woman. That's twice we're having to change the mind of that poor thing. She used to do it every day with her Great Dane and sex is a big thing for her. You're a soldier in a hard campaign and now is not the time to go soft!"
"With a Great Dane?" I said. "You mean a Danish man."
"No, no. A Great Dane is a dog and dogs have peculiar (bleeps): they swell up huge with a bulb in them and locks in. It's one of the Psychiatric Birth Control methods
That we've never heard of before, and don't seem to have any effect on the story outside of this room.
and it's pretty big competition. You have no idea how that psychiatrist worked on her. He was so solicitous for her plight, he went to the greatest possible lengths. He even gave her the Great Dane out of a government grant from the National Institute for Mental Stealth--they help the needy, you know. And we had an awful time: the Great Dane bit everybody who came near her and we had to get him run over with a hit car. Then the psychiatrist caught her on the bounce and got her enamored with Malcomb, using a policeman's billy as a dildo.
Wonder why 54 Charlee Nine isn't censoring the names of sex toys?
And Malcomb had to do so many weight-lifting tongue exercises to build it up that she sprained her jaw. And your poor performance tonight, that was aimed to get her into natural sex, might have sent that poor woman to the dogs again. It's a hard campaign, Inkswitch, and you've got to stiffen up and fill the gap!"
The double-entendres just seem a bit out of place, tone-wise, in a passage about a woman having sex with a dog.
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.
"I come up to Harlem after it got dark. There's this alley, see, right next to a joint that's got the world's loudest band. So I waited until a black girl passed and drilled her. Almost blew her spine out. Then I dragged her off to the basement and had her.
Yes, thanks, hang up Gris.
She sure was juicy. Just laid there staring at me with those sightless eyes, staring at me.
Interrupt him, Gris.
I must have done it six times. She cooled down, though, and got too stiff, so I thought I'd better phone in."
"You are being paid to do a job!" I railed at him.
"Of course, of course! I was just practicing. Also, I didn't want to go out on a real job. Up to an hour ago, my hands were still shaking from the shots."
"They ought to shoot you," I said bitterly.
"Oh, hell, yes," he said. "They have to. You see, this prison psychologist had syphilis
Why do these characters decide to give detailed lectures about their sordid sexual histories? And why does our narrator not stop them?
and he gave it to me in the (bleep) and mouth and told me to spread it around. So I have to have arsenic shots to keep the sores from running.
Or you could take some penicillin.
But it was a waste of time on his part because a corpse don't care if you give it syphilis: it just lies there stiff and stares at you and don't say a word."
"SHUT UP!" I screamed at him. "Get on the job!"
Why did it take him a page to say that?
Arrrgh. This book. This author.
Soooo Gris tries to go to bed, and now he's thinking about syphilis, and how it might have been carried from the New World by Spaniards, and how the disease might be traced to llamas, which are basically a type of goat, right?, and the girl from the night before had decided to have sex with a goat, so what if Gris caught syphilis from her? So he freaks out about goat-borne STDs for the rest of the evening.
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
"High yellow" is an offensive expression for a light-skinned African-American person. It's in Wikipedia.
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