THE CAT ON MY BACK IS AT IT AGAIN. How did Gravy get news on my subterfuge when the pills had hardly been spilled? Is there really something to their jive about vibes? Or is someone onto Black Midnight in big way--one that will toy with me and leave me undone, exposed, with no way to come in from the cold like that ass from the Mellon clan just busted by a bumbling bag man?But who could have known? The Brotherhood? No way. I've been studying their idiom and cracking their tactics all summer--not with their own internal affairs in such a state. . . . But who? Some Yippie committee? No how. They were making bigger buffoons of themselves all day, to the stage where that half-ass Hoffman got clobbered by the anemic guitar player from some mod band. Who? The chilling possibility presents itself like dawn over the cold prairie, and all at once I get the sickening feeling from the first morning my father made me milk a cow. All the sicker for its absoluteness after long absence: a sick I know I'll never shake. It's the first time I've thought it and so the first time I admit the malignant suspicion that must haunt every ever-operative of an intelligence agency: maybe the sabotage is coming from within . . . my very contact, and another field agent I'll never know but who shadows my every move!
I need a little legitimacy. Not to mention I could use a friend. When in a bind, go like water: the path of least resistance, in this case the orphan organization: they'll be a scapegoat if I succeed and remain asylum if I fail.
