The Gold Coast

by Nelson DeMille

I wondered where Susan was and if I was supposed to meet her somewhere. Susan has this habit of thinking she’s told me something when she hasn’t, and then accusing me of forgetting. I understand from friends that this is quite common among wives.

But he never forgot the most important Wasp dictum: Never touch the principal.

Men follow their cocks around and that’s how they ruin their lives.

But then I realized that all my years of good citizenship would only count toward a favorable presentencing report to the judge. My logic—no, my survival instincts—told me I needed to stop being a good citizen if I wanted to be a free citizen. So, voluntary compliance or come and get me, pigs? Come and get me, pigs.

And I’ll tell you this, Counselor, it don’t matter if you led your whole life like I did, or like you did. When they decide to stick it up your ass with a felony, we’re both looking at the same five or ten years, and maybe more. You get time off for good behavior after you’re inside, not before. Capisce?

And, I think, we’ve all, to some extent, come to believe that death is unnatural in modern American society, that somehow the deceased and the family of the deceased have been cheated. I said to him, “Death is the natural order of things. I would not want to live in a world without death, Edward. In the old days, they used to call death the final reward. It still is.”