keller

An orchard is an idealized or domesticated version of a forest, and the transformation of a shadowy tract of wilderness into a tidy geometry of apple trees offered a visible, even stirring, proof that a pioneer had mastered the primordial forest. Compared to the awesome majesty of the old-growth trees the early settlers encountered, the modesty of an apple tree, the way it obligingly takes...
Read More

Dusk was setting in by the time they reached the old Malta-Vita plant at the corner of Verona Avenue and Wattles Lane. The company had enjoyed a brief but spectacular success some six years earlier, improving on Dr. Kellogg's Granose Flakes by sweetening them with barley-malt syrup and obtaining a patent on the new product. A pair of out-of-town promoters, men not unlike Goodloe H....
Read More

There was a stand of tall carrizo cane growing along the American side of the river below him and he set the zipper bag down and took hold of the case by the handles and swung it behind him and then heaved it over the rail and out into space.

Whitehot pain. He held his side and watched the bag turn slowly in the diminishing...
Read More

I'm a tree that grows hearts,
One for each that you take.
You're the intruder's hand,
I'm the branch that you break.

-- Excerpt from 'Bachelorette', Bjork ("Homogenic")

She hunched low against the back of the couch as a fresh flurry of gunfire flayed the cushions. The air filled with downy couch stuffing, like a souvenir snow globe gone horribly wrong. Bullets tore through the couch an inch from Nikki's face. Not much of a hiding place.

Nikki took a miniature flash grenade from one of her belt pouches. About the size of...
Read More

At noon the following day he was in his rented car when Dinsmore and his bodyguard drove downtown and parked in front of a restaurant in the Old Market district. Keller waited outside for a few minutes, then found a parking space and went in after them. The hostess seated Keller just two tables away from Dinsmore. Keller ordered shrimp scampi and watched Dinsmore and...
Read More

Gus reached in his jacket and took out a fat sausage, like you'd have for barbeque. He held it up for Kaiser to see, like he was trying to sell it. Then he took out a coil of copper wire and cut off a piece with a pair of pliers.

"You wrap it around like this," Gus said. "Couple of times, nice and tight, so...
Read More

Roma (To Baylen): Asshole...(To Levene) Guy couldn't find his fuckin' couch in the living room...Ah, Christ...what a day, what a day...I haven't even had a cup of coffee...Jagoff John opens his mouth he blows my Cadillac....(Sighs.) I swear...it's not a world of men...it's not a world of men, Machine...it's a world of clockwatchers, bureaucrats, officeholders...what it is, it's a fucked-up world...there's...
Read More

Chance and time are intimately linked in our universe. Every day, chance occurrences take place that present us with new opportunities, challenges and perils. To make the best of them requires a knowledge of how to make decisions in sequence. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of love. A single person will meet a large but limited number of available prospects over...
Read More

Professional thieves prided themselves on not having to use violence when I was coming up. To a good jewel thief like Johnny Feinstein, part of the job was setting things up so that his victim would turn over the jewelry without offering any resistance. When you stole some jewelry only the insurance company was unhappy. If you had to hit a rich lady or her...
Read More