Michaels was an overweight guy in his early thirties with a wide butt and a hairline that hadn’t seen his eyebrows in years. He had pale skin and washed-away eyes and dry lips that he continuously lic...
Markov nodded and the steel fingers tightened into my shoulders like pliers. Alexei backhanded me with the Glock and a starburst of pain erupted from my other ear. Some days suck. Some days you should...
Lucy was beaming. We just turned on the news and there you were. You and Jonathan Green. Was it exciting? Being with Jonathan? No, silly! They said you made some kind of break-through that might turn...
Long strokes. Start at her neck and run your hand back to her tail. They like the long strokes. That’s the way her mama did it. James stroked her, long and slow, but he glared at Leland instead of rel...
Levy introduced them to Mike Fowler’s widow and four sons, Mellon’s wife, and Ash’s parents. All of them seemed drained, and Holman thought Fowler’s wife was probably sedated. Everyone treated him pol...
Kara Sykes held the door. That’s fine. You’ll go on in a few minutes, so we don’t have much time. Please come this way. We followed her down a long hall, then through a newsroom filled with desks and...
Jon Stone was more Joe’s friend than mine, though ‘friend’ probably wasn’t the right word. Jon was a private military contractor, which meant he was a mercenary. He was also a Princeton graduate and a...
Jimmy smiled, wide and mindless, the way a pit bull smiles before he bites you. He said, How about that, Terry. You think we got something as pussy as the mafia down here?
I’m a big brown mouse, I go marching through the house, and I’m not afraid of anything! I
It’s six. We’re closed. You need to leave, or I’ll call the police. Eddie said, Asshole fed. They were glaring at me when Eddie suddenly focused on something behind me, and his face sagged. Oh shit. I...
It was eighteen minutes after seven, and I was getting ready to take a shower when the phone rang. Adrienne. I said, Hi, Adrienne. Elvis Cole, Too Hip Detective, pretends he can read minds.
It was a lovely morning, hinting at a brutally hot day. Cole squinted into the milky haze that filled his canyon, enjoyed the coffee, and noticed a red-tailed hawk circling overhead, searching for fie...
Is it his job to lie? No, but you’re assuming it’s a lie. Reasonable people can disagree and have opposing interpretations of the facts. It’s Jonathan’s job to present an interpretation that’s favorab...
In L.A., next to riots and earthquakes, fires are our largest spectator sport.
I went over to the big couch and sat down next to Mimi. She was watching everything the way a goldfish watches the world from its bowl, all big eyes and vulnerability and with an assumption of invisib...
I put the Corvette in its spot in the parking garage and rode up in the elevator and went into my office and closed the door. There was a message on my answering machine from someone looking for Bob,...
I put out my hand. Harlan Green. He waved the cowboy toward me without shaking. He’s going to check you. You know what to do? I know. I stood with my feet apart and arms out. The wand looked like the...
I put everything back into the envelope, then called my friend Eddie Ditko at the Examiner. Eddie has been a reporter for about ten million years, and he answered with a voice that was maybe three wee...
I parked in the basement, then took an elevator to the lobby where I went through a metal detector and gave my name to a guy who looked like he ate a Pontiac for breakfast. Then I took another elevato...
I asked people about you, and those people said if you were looking for a guy, then you probably found him. I just can’t figure why you won’t come clean. Maybe they’re wrong. He nodded. Could be. But...