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...
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....
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 lobby pay phone, and called her. She answered on the second ring.
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...
Second voice spoke, young and uncertain. This is Ilan. Can you hear me? Their voices had the hollow, faraway quality that came with being on speaker. I
Know. She took a breath, and suddenly I liked her smile a great deal. Maybe you are.
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’ll notice, Pike said, that the only people in here who look like thugs are me and you. You, maybe. I look like Don Johnson. You look like Fred Flintstone.
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...
Wilson said, It was the same two cops as yesterday, the Mexican gal, what’s her name? Dru frowned. Officer Hydeck probably wouldn’t appreciate being called a Mexican. Or a gal. She’s supposed to tell...
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 the doors opened, Bud led them into a reception area where an older woman with curly blond hair sat at a desk. She recognized Bud and waved them past. He’s back there somewhere. If he’s not in hi...
When I reached the sidewalk a tall, muscular black guy appeared beside my car. As he reached the car a heavy white guy in his early fifties climbed out of a blue sedan parked across the street and sta...
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 went through an unmarked door and along a sterile tile corridor and through another unmarked door and then we were in the Blue Corridor and then the Blue Room.
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...
Video cams set up on a little platform at the rear of a place that might be called a grand ballroom if you thought small.