The Drop

by Dennis Lehane

The old man just cackled. Just lay there without his wheelchair, cackling with a soft, distant look in his milk-pale eyes, like he could see into the next world and everyone there was just as full of shit as everyone in this one.

“Everyone’s bad.” “No,” Bob said, “they’re not. Most people are okay.” “Yeah?” A smile of disbelief. “Yeah. They just, I dunno, make a lotta messes and then they make more messes trying to clean those first messes up and after a while that’s your life.”