|
0d2c9c8
|
The collapse of the economy, the systemic spread of fear, the threat of imagined foreign adversaries would probably be enough to pull it off. But one way or another
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
3708b74
|
The sky was purple, streaked with fire, the palm trees like scorched tin cutouts against the sun. I woke at four in the morning and could not sleep again, my heart congealed with a sense of mortality that I could not explain.
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
6225d10
|
His round, pink face was smiling and happy, his green eyes lighted with an alcoholic shine.
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
254cc27
|
The rumors that he did business with the Giacanos were I'm sure true. To what degree was up for debate. In the state of Louisiana, systemic venality is a given. The state's culture, mind-set, religious attitudes, and economics are no different from those of a Caribbean nation. The person who believes he can rise to a position of wealth and power in the state of Louisiana and not do business with the devil probably knows nothing about the de..
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
714664f
|
What Victor Charles and the NVA couldn't do to him, or the Mob or his enemies inside NOPD, Clete had done to himself with fried food, booze, weed, whites on the half shell, and calamitous affairs with strippers, junkies, and women who seemed to glow with both rut and neurosis.
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
51b97c5
|
how many decisions did you make that at the time seemed inconsequential but down the track had enormous influence on either you or others?
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
b2f433d
|
Joe Molinari's role in life had been being used by others, as consumer and laborer and voter and minion, which, in the economics of the world I grew up in, was considered normal by both the liege lord in the manor and the serf in the field.
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
3db46fc
|
No matter how you cut it, I was back to the short form of the Serenity Prayer, known in AA and other recovery groups as Fuck It.
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
9cd274d
|
But I was falling prey to that old self-serving notion that well-intended rhetoric can remove a stone bruise from the soul.
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |
|
4ae5450
|
The word criminal is more an emotional than legal term. Go to any U.S. post office and view the faces on the wanted posters. Like Dick Tracy caricatures, they stare out of the black-and-white photographs often taken in late-night booking rooms--unshaved, pig snouted, rodent eyed, hare lipped, reassuring us that human evil is always recognizable and that consequently we will never be its victim. But
|
|
|
James Lee Burke |