Gris goes to his meeting with Razza Louseini and shells out his two thousand bucks, settling accounts with them. The mobster gives Gris a contact card for his hit man, a card with an image of a hand on it - a hand with an extended middle finger, "Italian symbolism for 'up the (bleep)' or 'you been (bleeped)!'" The Apparatus agent complains that the mob isn't keeping its side of the bargain, but Louseini explains that after the deaths of the snipers Gris ordered several books ago, he'll have to take what he can get. And what he can get in this case is a budget hitman, who's such "a dirty, rotten (bleepard), no one will hire him anymore unless they are so God (bleeped) mad at the victim they want something awful done. Lawyers won't hire him anymore. He's got a twist. Filthy."
So there's the Mystery of the 80% Off Hitman solved - Louseini saddled Gris with the worst one on the list.
Even the grizzled mobster doesn't want to talk about what's wrong with this guy, leaving Gris to track down the address and find out for himself. He ends up in a neighborhood apparently built in a state of "total decay" when it was new, and after ringing a broken doorbell is greeted by a huge, glaring woman with "a mustache like a cavalry sergeant." Angry mustache woman immediately realizes that Gris is here to see her "no-good, worthless son" who is lurking down in the basement "with the rest of the rats." She's not happy with her "rotten filth" of a child, who is no doubt polluted by the "blood of his rotten, putrid, no-good father!" because he's hiding not from the cops, but bill collectors out to collect the sum owed for a hospital visit. A hospital visit resulting from a car crash.
Sure enough, when Gris goes down in the basement he finds "TORPEDO FIACCOLA!"
Remember? He was hired by Bury to kill Heller back in Book Two? Heller was practicing driving with that cabbie and knocked Torpedo off an elevated highway? I think another guy got turned into hamburger meat.
Gris introduces himself and uses Torpedo's name without being told, freaking out the hit man, who is worried that Bury is sending someone after him. But Gris announces that he has a job for him. This leads to an absolutely riveting page of dialogue as Gris tries to haggle about how much he'll pay for the job, expenses, and Torpedo's bills. Oh, and Torpedo's mom won't let him leave the house without insurance. What a strange demand to make.
During a pause in the negotiations - "I don't like uncomfortable silences" - Gris makes the terrible, terrible mistake of asking Torpedo to talk about himself. The result is three of the most unpleasant pages in Mission Earth.
The short version: six years ago while serving time, the prison psychologist noticed that Torpedo wasn't participating in the scheduled shower gang rapes, and took an interest in Torpedo's condition. After trying and failing to interest the hit man in homosexual relations, they discovered that Torpedo's problem was erectile dysfunction, which was not something I anticipated discussing when I started this blog thanks Hubbard.
After being shocked to learn that Torpedo didn't even have an Oedipus Complex towards his mother, thanks to all the beatings she gave him as part of bringing him up right, that kindly psychologist was stumped.
"Well, he thought and thought and finally came up with a solution. Had I ever (bleeped) a dead woman? Well, I flat-out had to confess I'd never done that. So he told me I better get a dead one and make sure she was still warm. He said it was just basic psychology, a perfectly normal thing. And he told me how to do it in detail.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have our latest sex crime: necrophilia!
Thanks, Hubbard. Thanks a bunch.
Anyway, the problem was that Torpedo was being held in an all-male prison, so the psychologist simply arranged for him to be released based on his now modified behavior. He ended up going down to New Mexico on a drug run, and then the magical moment happened after some hijackers attacked his convoy.
[...] A lot of lead had been flying around and I heard this moaning and I crawled over, and (bleeped) if there wasn't a Mexican woman lying there with slugs in her."
I'm basically retyping this stuff out of spite. I got to read it, and now I'm sharing the pain.
"She gave a couple of kicks and died. And suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to test this basic psychology out. So I pulled up the skirts on this stiff and, Jesus Christ,
Wants nothing to do with this.
I'll be (bleeped) if I didn't get an erection. So I got it into the corpse and carried on full blast. I (bleeped) like crazy. It was something about her dead eyes staring at me. And she couldn't say a single word about how no good I was, her lips all pulled back like that from the death agony."
Once again, Orson Scott Card is quoted as describing Mission Earth as "ironic, exciting, romantic and hilarious." I'm trying to fit one of those adjectives to this situation and utterly failing.
"Man, I really poured it in! Six God (bleeped) times! But then she had cooled off and started to stiffen and it wasn't any good anymore. The corpse has got to be warm yet to really do it right. But while it lasts, you can call them anything you want and they don't say a word. They just lie and let you pour it in."
I was totally engrossed. The master psychologist in prison had created a real, honest-to-Gods necrophile!
"Hey, you should go do something." "'kay." "He did it! I AM A MASTER PSYCHOLOGIST!"
There was one teensie little problem - once Torpedo's comrades came back, saw him standing over a corpse with his (bleep) hanging out and figured out what he had done, he became an instant pariah for some reason, and not even the mob would hire him. Luckily Mr. Bury is an understanding sort and found work for poor Torpedo, but since his failed attempt on Heller's life the hit man has been in a rut.
So Gris offers him a bargain: $5,000, bills paid, expenses, and oh did he mention that the target is a beautiful woman who Torpedo can do whatever he wants with once she's dead? The only stipulation is that Torpedo can't move against Heller, who as Gris fails to remind us is still protected by the virtue of his coded mission reports. The hit man is happy to accept, Gris works through his mother to pay the hospital bills, and the agent leaves in a good mood, in marked contrast to how I feel after enduring this chapter.
The thought of not only killing but degrading the corpse of the Countess Krak pleased me immensely.
It was just exactly what she deserved. And I knew that it was the only way anyone but Heller could touch that pure and noble body. Touch her that way alive and you'd be dead!
There were some things to do and to arrange. I'd have to get her pattern of moving around so I could set up when she was alone. I had to get a rifle, preferably with explosive bullets.
He's going to get Krak's schedule down, get a murder weapon, note opportunities to make the hit... and then hire a guy to pull the trigger for him. That's like mixing a cake and hiring a chef to stick it in the oven.
I had my hit man. And what a hit man! A necrophiliac!
Not traditionally a quality associated with successful, professional killers.
COUNTESS KRAK, YOU'LL BE NOT ONLY DEAD BUT THOROUGHLY DEFILED!
I'm sure that would make Heller's next mission report an interesting read.
Back to Chapter One
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