20th Session

Calling a Lawyer

We picked up on the night of September 5, 1937. Lillian decided to phone Domenick Bowers, a lawyer who had previously written to her asking for her to get in touch on a matter related to his client. While he did not say so in the letter, Lillian knew that the client to whom he was referring was Samson Trammel.

Their conversation was somewhat circuitous, as Lillian didn't want to identify herself over the phone, and he didn't want to reveal details that he didn't want anyone who might be able to tap or overhear the conversation to hear. But, Lillian and he were able to understand each other.

He wanted to know whether she would recommend Dr. Cecil Walker as a psychiatrist for Samson Trammel. Trammel didn't know that his lawyer was talking to Lillian, but did know that the lawyer was considering the doctor for Trammel's psychiatrist. Lillian found that very interesting.

She wasn't sure whether she wanted Cecil treating Sanmson, so she told Domenick that the situation was compicated. He mentioned Cecil's colleague, Dr. Jonathan Keaton. Lillian, who does not care for Dr. Keaton, having been under his care, gleefully recommended him to Domenick, whose suspicions were piqued.

Lillian's Player: Is there anything I can use to get him to let slip something?

GM: Hm. You have Assess Honesty -- you can spend a point to get a read of him.

The player did so. Samson Trammel's lawyer was, sadly, an honest man who, if he were a PC, would have as a Pillar something along the lines of Everyone Is Entitled to the Full Protection of the Law. Yes, he knew what his client had done -- and what his client had not done. He knew what sort of scum Samson Trammel was.

He also knew that many people wanted Samson Trammel dead, and that was not acceptable to him. He had to do his best for his client, by which he meant his best as he saw it, not as his client saw it, especially given that Samson Trammel was probably insane.

Lillian, who had left Joyce a note about how Joyce had won the contest to be Darkest of Them All and how Lillian wanted them both to pull up their pants and stop measuring and get on with it, now knocked on Joyce's door, waking Joyce up and, I think, snatching the note she'd written before Joyce could read it.

She told Joyce about her conversation with Domenick Bowers and asked what Joyce thought about having Samson Trammel sent to Johns Hopkins in Maryland. She now had Joyce's full attention.

Lillian: Yeah, I thought that would make you wake up.

Joyce: It's dangerous -- good, but dangerous. But good, but dangerous.

Life and Death

Meanwhile, Martin spoke to Montgomery Donovan in Donovan's library. Donovan sketched out the tunnels under the warehouse and showed where his office was, which meant that I handed the player the map of the tunnels from the book, noting that the entrance to the catacombs was not on Martin's copy, and that, while the book described where Donovan's office was, and Donovan would have told Martin, the map in the book doesn't actually show it. Donovan also described the warehouse. Martin sketched away, although he did know that Montgomery Donovan might not be telling him everything and had a habit of, ah, revising his past. Still, I figured this gave Martin a 1 point pool of whatever wound up being needed when dealing with the warehouse.

Martin asked if there were somewhere in Donovan's house where he could get more sleep. Donovan said that he had three guest rooms. Husain Soliman was in one, and Daniel Lowman was in another, but the third was currently empty. Martin inobtrusively palmed a letter opener and said he'd prefer the empty guest room. Montgomery took him there and locked him in.

This did not particularly bother Martin. He used magic to create a hyperspce gate to the airport (or wherever it was that Joyce parked the plane). From there, he either walked or took a cab to the city Mdina, which is also known as the Silent City. If one does a Google image search on it, one can see that it looks like it might be Carcosa. Martin wanted to find the Stranger and accept the deal offered by the King in Yellow, and his odds of doing that were better if he, oh, got himself lost in a city that looked like Carcosa.

Martin saw the Stranger and, after a time, was able to catch up with him. Or, perhaps the Stranger merely allowed this. Martin said that he wanted to take the King's deal.

The Stranger told him that one reason the Yucatan was important was that there was, let us call it, a gentlemen's agreement among creatures who were by no means gentlemen. No one liked the Liar, but only those whose name the Liar had actively hid behind could reveal who the Liar was.

There were two such beings. One of them chose, for its own reasons, not to reveal this information. The Stranger told Martin that Martin would no doubt learn those reasons one day. The other would be willing to name the Liar, provided Martin and whoever accompanied him survived in the Yucatan long enough to meet it.

Martin asked when Jeremiah would get his body. The Stranger waved dismissively, saying that had already been done. Martin thanked him, and he warned Martin that Martin needed to leave quickly, to avoid being trapped in Carcosa.

Martin had hoped to re-use the gate he'd made -- but that gate was in the guestroom of Montgomery Donovan's townhouse. So, he made another gate, this one leading to Montgomery Donovan's bedroom.

Martin stood there a while, working up the nerve to try to kill the sleeping Montgomery Donovan. Eventually he succeeded, driving the letter opener through the man's throat.

Martin pulled up the covers over the corpses, took off his shirt, and cleaned himself up in the bathroom. He took some Nectar from Montgomery's secret room and went looking for Husain, who was next on his list of people to kill. He found Husain in the library.

Martin asked if Husain knew why Montgomery's son was sick. I think this was at least partly a stalling technique. Husain, having no particular reason to think Martin was considering killing him, at least, not at this point, told Martin that Montgomery had originally planned to sacrifice his son, Monte, Jr., not his wife, Portia, to the Mouth of Malta. But, when the time came, Montgomery couldn't go through with sacrificing his son, so he gave his wife to the Mouth instead. Neither wife nor son were cultists, nor did they know anything about the mythos, Nectar, or their husband's cultist activities.

You'll note that Montgomery gave his wife to the Mouth. This means that she isn't buried in her grave, which means that Montgomery is visiting a lie of a grave. This is quite thematically appropriate.

Husain added that the cultists working under Montgomery did not realize that he'd originally intended to sacrifice his son. They'd been in awe of him for what he'd been willing to do to triple the Nectar output. But, given that Montgomery had started crumbling, their respect had been fading fast.

Montgomery had not, of course, confided in Husain. But, well... Husain allowed as how he might have, oh, gone through Montgomery's papers on the sly. Martin asked what papers Hussain found to go through, finding himself liking Husain again. Husain tossed him Montgomery Donovan's diary, which had not existed up until this moment, but became useful to both me and to the players. Right now, I was using it for two purposes. First, it let me leak interesting, but not critical, information in session. Second, it made Martin feel conflicted about trying to kill Husain.

Martin: What would it take to get you to just walk away?

Husain: ... Give me the books you've got with you.

Basically, Husain's priorities were, in order:

• Survive
• Stay well supplied with Nectar
• Get the books from Savitree Sirikhan's and Samson Trammel's libraries

At least one of those books would have the information about how to open up a new Mouth of the Liar, which Husain needed because it was obvious that Martin and his companions planned to destroy the Mouth of Malta. Martin suggested Husain kick the habit. Husain asked if Martin had had any success in doing that. Martin admitted that he had not. At this point, Husain was aware that something was up. Martin was giving a warning; that much was clear.

Martin had been able to work up to killing Montgomery Donovan earlier that evening, and this was partly due to a muddled combination of guilt and desire to prove Joyce wrong in what she had said about him. But, as the player explained to me after the session, Martin's third Pillar of Sanity, Above All, Love, was also in play.

Martin's Player (via email): he finds the idea of killing one's loved ones incredibly repulsive on a near-visceral level. Of all the enemies the party's faced, Donovan may be the one who's most like Martin, while still being the one Martin can least sympathize with.

But, Husain was another matter, being Martin's counterpart in Luc Fauche's group of Anti-Investigators. This was the books person, the one who was sensible and wanted to avoid fighting. He couldn't kill Husain, so he decided to do what he'd done to protect a non-cultist Nectar addict in Los Angeles: He convinced Husain (via a point of Flattery and a point of Reassurance) that it would be a great idea to mix Nectar with laudanum for a change.

Martin was used to laudanum, so when Husain fell asleep after they'd had sex, Martin was still awake. He climbed out the library window and returned to the hotel. At this point, he was down 6 Health and at 1 Stability.

Hook Hook Hook

Meanwhile, Vito had returned. He had been very impressed by George Ayers in Ethiopia. Sure, the man had originally been on the wrong side, but spending ten years as an ascetic forcing the mouth in his stomach to calcify was certainly worthy of respect. And he was glad to help others fight the Liar, to the degree he could.

Vito had worked with Lillian (in flashback) to create a version of the Rituals of Self Denial couched in Catholic terms. Vito no longer believed in God, but he did believe that religion was important as something man-made, and those who did believe might be more able to use this version of the Rituals of Self Denial, while those who didn't could still camoflauge its origin. It certainly wasn't going to hurt, and George Ayers was very much in favor of disseminating this knowledge.

That said, Vito knew that the rituals would not work for him. He had no doubt in his mind that he could give up sex and speech, and perhaps even most food and liquid. But, he was a warrior, a soldier, and he was not prepared to give up violence or his fight against the evils of the mythos. He had already come to terms with the idea that he was going to have to have his arm amputated.

I noted that it would be MUCH much much safer to have the amputation done in a state of the art medical facility, by someone with state of the art surgical skills. Sure, Lillian could assist, and in a pinch, did have a shot at performing the amputation herself, but it really would be better to get a trained surgeon to do it.

Vito's player said that Rome would be the best place to do this. I think the idea was that there would be both a surgeon and an exorcist.

Vito used meat to lure the mouth as low down on his arm as it would go, and after the amputation, got a hook. He rejoined Joyce and Lillian at their hoel room.

Joyce: I'm sorry -- whenever you talk, I just hear "Hook! Hook! Hook! Hook!"

Lillian: Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock.

They brought Vito more or less up to date -- I'm not sure exactly what they left in or took out, but I'm fairly sure they did explain that Martin had gone to Montgomery Donovan's house to go on a Nectar bender. Someone made some kind of suggestion about Martin that got this response:

Lillian (I think): Does he really need more rope to hang himself? The character is MADE out of rope!

They called down for room service. Martin arrived around this time and knocked.

GM: It's too early for it to be room service.

Lillian: Come on in, Martin.

Martin: Hi.

Folks took in that he was carrying a bloody shirt, various papers, and a letter opener, and that he looked really bad, both physically and mentally.

Lillian: F*ck! What did you do?

Joyce: Who did this to you, Marty?

Martin: Lillian -- I mde a deal with the Stranger without you. I'm sorry.

Lillian: Of course you did.

Martin: I killed Donovan. Framed Husain. for it, I think. I have -- maps -- diaries -- diagrams. (puts those on the table, gets his first good look at Vito) You -- have a hook on your arm.

Martin sounded about as good as you'd expect someone who's drugged and shaken, having cold-bloodedly murdered a man and seriously considered murdering someone else.

Joyce was utterly disgusted, I think. Martin had just made their lives more complicated, since Montgomery Donovan could theoretically have gotten them into the warehouse, and with him dead, the cultists would be expecting maximum trouble. I think this was where Vito first raised the question about whether it might be time to kill Martin.

Lillian had a conversation with Vito of which I only remember this:

Lillian: He rarely lies -- Hm.

She'd been going to say, "He rarely lies to us", but she had thought better of it.

The Mouth Awakes

Joyce handcuffed Martin to a chair and told him not to go anywhere. She told Vito not to let Martin leave the hotel room or make a call or do, well, anything. Then she told Lillian to come with her.

Lillian was willing to do this, but she did ask Joyce where they were going and why, so that she could be on the same page. Joyce took Lillian on her motorcycle, and then drove to Donovan's place. By now, it was a-buzz. Montgomery Donovan's body had been found, I figured, and his bodyguards were ticked off. Not only was their charge dead; they hadn't had a chance to attack whoever had done it.

Lillian climbed up the side of the house and into the library window. This breached Montgomery Donovan's magical wards.

Now, the book says that Donovan has a state of the art security system in addition to the wards, but that doesn't do me a lot of good as I don't know what that actually means. For the wards, though, it's fairly precise. Intruders in the library set off the magical alarm, and entering the house by any method other than the front door or the garage set it off. This was the first time anyone had done so.

The gargoyles on the roof and the gargoyles in the library started calling out and spitting Nectar. The gargoyles in the library also started moving. Husain, asleep in the libary, was woken up by this, sat up, and was promptly hit by Nectar.

Lillian took in the situation, which included the fact that Husain was naked and the fact that Husain was a woman.

Lillian (half in, half out of the window): Come with me if you want to live.

Husain (trying to give fair warning): If I come with you, I'm going to want to f*ck you.

Lillian (trying to make this a tease): Got to catch me first!

I'm not sure if Husain found the idea particularly appealing (intellectually, I mean), but she followed Lillian, who figured that Joycd could easily fit both Lillian and Husain on her motorcycle. Joyce disagreed, ceding the motorcycle to the other two. She watched the increased chaotic activity at Donovan's townhouse, then took a cab back to the hotel.

Husain held on to Lillian and started dry humping her. Lillian stopped by somewhere she could grab a smock or something for Husain, probably someone's clothesline somewhere.

The gargoyle mouths were linked to the Mouth of Malta, so it was now aware that there had been a breach at Donovan's house. Husain was aware that the Mouth was aware of this, and she managed to tell Lillian as much.

In the hotel room, Martin was also aware of it.

Martin: Vito?

Vito: No, I'm not sucking your d*ck.

Martin: No, Vito -- the Mouth is on full alert.

Lillain and Husain came into the room with Joyce practically on their heels. Lillian had not had any Nectar, but she was aroused enough to take Husain into her bedroom and have sex with her. Then, she returned to the others.

By now, Joyce knew that the Mouth had been alerted.

Joyce (to Martin): The only reason I'm not handing you to the police is because you know too much. (to Lillian) Call King Arthur -- we're heading for the tunnels.

Lillian noted that the alarm hadn't been raised by Martin but by her and Joyce. Joyce noted that this could all be traced back to Martin's actions. Vito again raised the question of whether Martin was a liability and needed to be killed.

Vito: Martin, do you feel like you've been compromised?

Martin: Vito, I'm working for the King in Yellow. I'm probably the most compromised I've ever been.

Vito wasn't happy about that. He understood that they needed Martin, and that Martin's part of the bargain was to make sure that the Liar was killed or banished. All well and good, but after that? Vito wanted Martin to go to Carcosa, I think. But, whether this was a balancing of the scales, desirable, or even practical, it was tabled for the moment.

Martin: I'm going to live.

This was something he repeated several times.

Vito asked how Amelia was doing. Joyce asked if Vito thought Martin had actually bothered to care about anyone other than Martin. Vito said that perhaps Martin had seen her. Martin said that he hadn't, but that he had seen the Stranger, aka Vito's old comrade in arms, Geoffrey Whitcombe.

Joyce walked over to Martin, who was still handcuffed to the chair.

Joyce: How does it feel, killer?

Martin dry heaved.

Lillian took Joyce aside and asked her to please not destability Martin further, at least for a few hours. They were going to need him in the catacombs. Meanwhile, Vito had words for Martin.

Vito: The only thing keeping me from popping you like a f*cking zit is Jeremiah.

I think Martin agreed that Jeremiah was the only good thing about Martin, but I don't recall.

Joyce: I told Martin to stop being a f*cking selfish git. I guess the lesson sank in.

(I assume this was complete sarcasm.)

Somewhere around here, the question of what to do with Husain came up. I noted that the door to Lillian's room was closed. Vito broke it down, but Husain was gone. Somehow, she just didn't feel like trusting the group not to kill her.

The general consensus was that folks didn't have time to track Husain down.

Joyce (counting): 1-2-3-4 -- I'm leaving a tip for the chamber maid. What? I used to date one!

Lillian didn't argue, but put down a bigger bill.

The primary objective, folks agreed, was to get the spell to Open the SKy. Destroying the Mouth of Malta was a secondary objective. Montgomery Donovan had told them it was at least thirty feet across.

Someone: This one's big enough to eat the warehouse.

Martin talked to Lillian about Husain.

Martin: She's a good kid is the worst thing.

Lillian: Brainy type. Attracted to Nectar.

Martin (knowing full well what a mirror looks like, thank you): Funny, that.

Folks had come to the conclusion that no one was killing Martin, at least, not yet, and that he was needed in the tunnels. But, he still had Nectar and laudanum in his system.

However, he also had some cocaine on him. Why, yes, Martin had All the Drugs. So, Joyce and Vito set out a couple of lines for him, because using cocaine to counteract laudanum can't possibly be a bad idea. Martin now felt quite capable of doing anything. Lillian told him he'd love Sir Godfrey's sanctum, and Martin said that he hoped so.

Into the Catacombs

In fact, Martin did love the Knights Hospitaller shrine. Vito was in awe of Sir Godfrey. Up to now, Vito had thought that the shadow world he had entered in the late 1920s was populated solely by cults, cults, monsters, and cults. But, Sir Godfrey had been raised in a tradition of fighting this evil! Vito intended to find some way to support him in the long run, assuming the mobster survived fighting the Liar.

Sir Godfrey gave folks what he'd written down about the traps the Knights Hospitaller had left in the catacombs and asked whether they wanted him coming with them or staying behind. They told him to stay behind; then Joyce got an idea. She put him in touch with her / Colonel Hivers's network of retired British pensioners. The latter knew nothing about the mythos, but the "colonel" had told them that their services were needed to block attempts to enter or leave the warehouse. This wasn't to be a direct attack, just -- block the road with vehicles that had gotten into fake accidents and the like.

Sir Godfrey agreed that he could do this, and barely managed to keep the group from rushing to the catacombs long enough to offer them additional aid. Years ago, he had known a particularly devout priest and had brought to that priest some Nectar, hoping that the man could turn it back into water. He still had five vials of the result, water that could counteract the effects of Nectar. Each vial was a single dose, and each does could counteract the effects for an hour, no matter how much of it one might have consumed. The priest had long since died, and no one else had been able to do what he had done, so those five doses were the last.

Martin asked for and was given one, which helped clear his head. It may or may not have counteracted the cocaine, but he still felt confident in his ability to navigate the tunnels.

Meanwhile, Vito had been skimming Donovan's diary (and his player put a point into Library Use). The diary mentioned two things that Montgomery Donovan had, ah, neglected to tell anyone.

First, the reason the guards stuck strictly to the gravel paths when patrolling the grounds outside the warehouse is that the rest of the grounds was covered with hundreds of small mouths. On hearing this, Joyce told Sir Godfrey to make sure that the pensionners did not run afoul of them.

For the second, I showed Vito's player the picture on page 257 of the book. I'd printed out the page and cut out just the picture. For a moment or two, we played an unintentional game of tug of war, as he kept trying to turn it sideways. Finally, it occurred to me to tell him, "No, that's not the right orientation." I righted it again.

Vito's Player (realization dawning): It's up?

Yep. Montgomery Donovan had neglected to mention that the thirty foot mouth was in the ceiling of the room in the tunnels, not in the floor.

Vito: We would have been walking right into a trap.

He, Joyce, and Lillian started pondering how to take out a giant mouth with a long tongue from below as they headed for the catacombs with Martin.

I had pondered whether or not to reveal the field of mouths or the twist in the location of the large Mouth of Malta. I'm not sure I figured out during the session why it was the correct move to do so, but I think I know now. If folks had hit the catacombs at the beginning of a session, if the focus had been on what Robin Laws calls the procedural, then perhaps it would have been better to keep these things secret until the group learned by encountering them.

But, given that the focus of this session, and this run of the campaign, is more emotional / dramatic, it is less necessary for the procedural to be set on maximum difficulty. This is not the first time it's been more a chance for the characters to shine or to show their, er, character than a chance for a TPK.

Or, to put it another way, the players were doing a much better job of being horrible to their characters than I could have this session. Certainly, the tension between Martin and Joyce was far more interesting than the position of the Mouth could have been.

Martin might not have been able to get through the catacombs on his own, but his knowledge combined with Sir Godfrey's instructions, Joyce's technical expertise, and her, Lillian's, and Vito's sharp eye, folks were able to avoid all the traps in the upper levels of the catacombs that had not already been sprung over the centuries.

After the first one or two of these, Joyce told Martin she needed him to stay focused enough to get them through the catacombs.

Martin (I think flush with confidence from the cocaine or the water or both): I can -do- that.

Joyce: Yes, I know that.

Martin (I can't find the words to describe the tension in the delivery): Lucky you brought me. Isn't it? Who knows what I would have gotten up to in the hotel room?

Joyce: Well, Husain, if she hadn't scarpered.

At one point, they needed to figure out whether a tarnished cross set in a wall was silver or tin.

Martin: Does anyone have alcohol? The answer is, oddly, not me.

The cross in question turned out to be tin, hence not the one mentioned in Sir Godfrey's directions.

They descended from the upper catacombs through an empty well to the lower. They didn't have rope, but Joyce had a whip, which amounted to much the same thing. This led to the Hall of Pillars, a place where the ceiling had been coming down for decades, perhaps centuries, and it didn't help that stuff had been build on top of it.

In order to get through the hall, pillars needed to be shifted and replaced. Martin and Joyce had the skills between them to make that less difficult. Everyone managed to get through unscathed, and the hall was, while not better than they had left it, at least no worse.

They then needed to wade through a flow of muck and Nectar. Martin asked for and received a second dose of the water, and I think everyone else took a dose as well.

Once through the catacombs, the group snuck into the tunnels beneath the warehouse and made their way to Montgomery Donovan's office. Inside were Diana Hantz, Victor Prescott, and two guards armed with rifles. Joyce killed the light in the office. We figured if it is indeed "Art Deco", as the book says, there was probably alight switch, but even if it was a lamp on the desk, Joyce could probably have shot it, getting the same result.

Lillian and Vito were both wounded in the fight that followed, but the cultists fell. Vito glared at Diana Hantz, who stared back at him with pure hatred and probably a certain lack of understanding of Vito's convictions.

Vito: Did you think no one would rise against you, that people don't care about their families or the human race? You arrogant sons of bitches. The arrogance, the fucking arrogance!

They searched the office, finding a letter Montgomery Donovan had started to Jonathan Brooks, basically confirming what Montgomery had already told them. They also found the spell to Open the Sky. Vito looked at it, all sorts of implications occurring to him.

Vito: We could destroy the world.

Lillian: We're just going to destroy the monster.

Joyce: Yeah, it's not like dropping a bomb on an entire city -- that would be insane!

Meanwhile, Martin had been running interference for the others. It had previously been quite well established that his Art skill included Ventriloquism. When people started gathering because they heard the noise coming from the office, he threw his voice, making it sound like Montgomery Donovan's, and called for help from up ahead, where invaders were coming through the tunnels.

I noted that the place where the catacombs joined the tunnel wasn't all that far from the hall of pillars.

Martin's Player: I am leading them into the hall full of pillars and cold bloodedly murdering them using architecture.

Between gaining Stability earlier for following his drive, Closure, to the point of insanity, and losing Stability for this, Martin was now at -3 Stability. As I understand it, this does not result in a Sanity loss because it was not caused by a mythos shock.

That isn't to say that Martin was in anything resembling good condition. After successfully collapsing the ceiling on the cultists, he curled up into a foetal ball.

Lillian started hacking limbs off dead cultists. She got out a stop watch and started tossing the limbs into the area under the Mouth of Malta and timing how long it took the Mouth to grab them. Based on this data, she and Joyce took what was left of the cultists' corpses and rigged them, as well as the area around the Mouth, with explosives and perhaps hand grenades, setting up the situation they'd been taught was necessary to properly destroy a Mouth -- blowing it up simultaneously from within and without.

This fell into procedural, and the kind of situation where the characters could and should shine. The players rolled well enough that I figured that they could decide exactly what exploded and how. Good research, good information, solid tactics, enough points, and a good roll.

Vito went to find Martin. Based on the state of the hall of pillars, he figured out what had happened and put a hand on Martin's shoulder.

Vito: Time to go.

He slung Martin over his shoulder.

Vito: We're not even yet, but you're becoming more like Lillian and me every day.

Martin: Yeah. I am.

They rendezvoused with the others.

Joyce (after one look at Martin): What'd he do?

Vito: Oh, just used the hall of pillars to murder a whole lot of people -- very artistic, might I say.

Lillian (not even turning her head to look): It broke him, didn't it?

The explosives were set off, and everyone got safely out of the warehouse. The pensioners were holding the freighter crew off from the warehouse, under the direction of Sir Godfrey.

The group left the area and discussed their next move. Joyce was all for moving right on to the Yucatan, but Janet Winston-Rogers wanted to speak with everyone in person, Vito wanted to visit his mistress, and Martin wanted to see Jeremiah. Also, Vito was uneasy about leaving the Thyrsus crew and quite possibly Luc Fauche and Alex Kramer, as well as Husain Soliman, alive. They were loose ends, and he didn't like loose ends.

No one was sure they wanted to spend the time necessary to chase down those loose ends, though, especially as, with the Mouth of Malta destroyed, getting more Nectar would be challenging. Of course, the Los Angeles and Mexico City Mouths might not be entirely dead, and Lillian had a suspicion that there might be Mouths underneath Joy Grove and Ramon Echevarria's farm in Los Angeles.

Lillian wanted to go to Hospital Superbissima to check on Alexi, Monte, Jr., and the adult patients of Dr. Solazzio. Martin suggested Lillian kill Dr. Solazzio while she was at the hospital. She said that she just might, for it was not a bad idea.

Martin: Since we're murdering people.

Joyce: Actually, today, it's mostly you.

Martin: Others could join in.

Joyce decided that, as folks were doing various things on their own anyway, she'd check out Montgomery Donovan's yacht. She currently wants to fly in to Miami, perhaps have Janet Winston-Rogers meet people there, let Martin and Lillian handle any business on the East Coast, and have Vito catch up when he does. Whether anyone wants to go to Los Angeles, where Samson Trammel, his lawyer, and Nyarlathotep are is another question.