They gathered around the living room TV and the media woman plugged a thumb drive into the digital port and brought the advertisement up: Smalls was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, bankerish, but...
The aisles of the Varied Industries building had grown too coagulated, so Marlys led the girl around the building, the girl’s legs churning to keep up. They came out directly behind the fire hydrant t...
Somewhere along the line, it occurred to him that he hadn't spoken to Virgil Flowers. He'd probably taken the day off, and knowing Flowers, he'd done it in a boat. The thing about Flowers was, in Luca...
My problem with that is I don’t believe God cares what we do. Everything is equally relevant and irrelevant to God. A religion is nothing more than a political party organized around some guy’s moral...
Murdered? Somebody murdered him? Palmer was agog. A thin, soft man with a pitted nose and a bald, bumpy egg-shaped head dotted with dime-sized freckles, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said, N...
I’m pretty delicate, Lucas admitted. You know, when I’m not beating somebody senseless.
I was skateboarding on the levee and lost my edges, she said. You were skateboarding? She turned and looked at him and shook her head in exasperation: No, you dummy, I fell. On the ice. On the sidewal...
I once defenestrated a guy. The cops got all pissed off at me. I was drunk, but they said that was no excuse.Ah well, Virgil said. Then, The guy hurt bad?Cracked his hip. Landed on a Prius. Really fuc...
His ex-wife, Truly, whom he still occasionally visited, wore various pieces of camo, depending on daily fashion demands—more at Walmart, less at Target.
Got Hollow Points? Another said: Heavily Armed . . . and easily pissed. A third one: Point and Click . . . means you’re out of ammo.
Felt the dark finger of hypocrisy stroking his soul.
But the laughter was like a water bug on a pond, skating across the surface of his mind. He was amused and he laughed, but nothing was deeply funny; life was simply stupid most of the time.
But as cops began to develop FBI-like attitudes, and to build FBI-like fortresses, as they sealed themselves away in patrol cars, as they fended off contact with the public, they began to resemble a p...
And he still had those two big nuts in his pocket that he’d picked up from the Purdys’ barn workshop, the one with the green-and-yellow overspray on the floor, a green-and-yellow spray that didn’t mat...
All right. I’ll keep it quiet. Attaboy. This thing is going to work out, Lucas. For us. It really shouldn’t matter whether we get the killer this week or in two weeks. What matters right now is to try...
There are as many nuts on the left as there are on the right, and in the long run, the lefties are probably more dangerous.
You think we could get them around by the pool? Taryn asked. Well, we could, but why would we? Because it looks rich. The point is, if this hurts me, I’ll be hurt with the more conservative voters out...
Yael chipped in: He is trying to sell this artifact he stole. The people he is trying to sell it to are extremely dangerous. People who might kill him, if they need to, to get the stone. Virgil added,...
She made a moue, then said, There’s one exception. If he is, in fact, in love with Ms. Grant, he might take one for her . . . if she’s involved. If he thinks Carver acted alone, he might also turn on...
NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER: Has excessive feelings of self-importance. Reacts to criticism with rage. Takes advantage of other people. Disregards the feelings of others. Preoccupied with fantas...