Chen turned back to the box and examined the picture through the glass. White smudges were appearing on the front and back surfaces of the photograph, but he still had a long way to go. Fingerprints w...
Being a friend is hard. If it was easy, anyone could do it. I love smart women. Smart women love you. I’d better go. Call me later.
Another man came in behind Jonathan. He was a little shorter than me, but his arms were as long as backhoe shovels and his shoulders so wide they looked like they had been built of steel frame girders...
A short, slight gentleman was standing in the living room. He had wavy marcelled hair and he was wearing a brown summer-weight suit that had probably been new twenty years ago. His hair was more gray...
A girl came out of the school. She was thin, and wispy, and appeared to be fifteen or sixteen. She stopped outside the doors, lit a cigarette, and inhaled hard enough to inflate her body. I watched he...
A black Chevy coupe with acne corrosion passed in the opposite direction, and two aging black pickups.
Was gone when I arrived at Sanchez & Sons, but the man in the Subaru was parked a car-length away from a tiny white taqueria stand with an easy view of the tow yard on the opposite side of the street....
Videographer stopped taping and looked me up and down as if he found me lacking but wasn’t quite sure how. Then it hit him. Don’t you have a gun? He glanced around the office as if there might be one...
There was a quality of loneliness to her that comes when your only friend walks away and you don’t know why and there’s no one else and never will be. A left-behind look.
The birds scratch the seed out of the feeder, then fly down to the deck to eat the seed. They know there’s a cat, but still they go down to pick at the seed. When you think about it, people are often...
Know. She took a breath, and suddenly I liked her smile a great deal. Maybe you are.
He believed the window of time through which he could enter was shrinking.
Depressed, as if this wasn’t a place where someone lived, but more a place where someone died. I went to the sleeping bag and squatted. A photograph had been pushpinned to the wall. It was an older pi...
You’re a strange dude, Cole. Not as strange as Pike, but strange. Scott slid into his car, and drove away. I looked at Pike. Are we strange? Pike went to his Jeep without answering, and brought me bac...
You. Yeah, you, c’mon, get up. He spoke perfect English, but Jack couldn’t tell if the Korean kid understood English or not. The guard motioned him to get up, so he slowly stood. The guard motioned hi...
Why did Colinski want the house? Who knows? A place to hide, cut dope, stash cash, party. Stupid, I said, how are you going to clean up, being involved with a man like this, but the Great Colinski had...
When the man’s eyes regained focus, Pike reached out with his left hand. This time he moved slowly, as if he were going to caress the man’s cheek. He dug his thumb into the nerve where the jaw hinged...
When I got home that evening the cat was sitting by his bowl in the kitchen. I talked it over with him while I was making dinner, and said, What would you do? The cat blinked, then bent over and licke...
We said our good-byes and I called Joe Pike to tell him that we were once more employed. His answering machine picked up on the first ring and beeped. He used to have a one-word message that just said...
We pulled into Spago and let the valet have the car. Lucy suggested that I wear my Groucho Marx nose as a disguise to prevent adoring fans from mobbing me, but I pointed out that then everyone might t...