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.
"You got to get it," Torpedo whined, "to really understand what I've got to do. All day now I've known I have the clap."
"What?" I said, aghast.
"Yeah, that (bleeped) black corpse in Harlem.
We're listening to a necrophiliac rant about how a corpse he had sex with gave him gonorrhea, and this stupid book is censoring the word "damned."
I wondered at the time why it was so juicy. Now I know. She had the clap. Now I've got it. But I know how to handle it. The prison psychologist always told us cons the only thing to do with it was spread it around fast.
And why would a psychologist be a better authority on this matter than, say, a dentist? Also, what exactly does psychology get out of this? Lulz?
So, God (bleep) it, where is the target? Where, where, where? I got to find her and do it, now that I've got the clap. I need a bloodhound!"
And it's at this point, the mention of a tracking dog, that Gris gets alarmed. He asks if a bloodhound is related to a Great Dane, is told that they're smaller, and immediately starts freaking out over whether Bucket the animal lover-turned-lesbian-turned-straight-again got the clap from a Great Dane which is basically a big bloodhound and then gave it to Gris, on top of the syphilis that Butter passed on to Gris from a goat which is basically a llama. He tries to come to terms with the fact that he's "not only going to go crazy because of goats but also would cave in and have my bones rot from dog-carried clap." He may be 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
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