Noir

by Christopher Moore

Not the scream of a startled little girl, mind you, but a manly scream: the scream of a fellow who has caught his enormous dong in a revolving door while charging in to save a baby that was on fire or something.

a tough cookie.

“That’s the spirit!”

most of them so wrinkled and desiccated they could have been constructed entirely of scrotal skin.

you are both a mook and a jamoke. You, sir, are a jamook.”

When I set the alarm clock I tell it, “Sorry, pal, but this afternoon you may die for that little fucker’s sins.”

“A preponderance?” “Yeah, it means a shitload.

That mug couldn’t catch a cough in a tire fire.

She rolled onto her face to give him a good shot at the hooks in the back. “Free my people!” “I will. I am the Harriet Tubman of your breasts.”

“Who shit in your tuba?” asked the cabbie.

not that Chinese stick-fiddle stuff you hear from the musicians working Grant Street that sounds like cats fucking.

“No chaser?” “Rehearsal’s over,” Sammy said.

“Yeah, if you see him, tell him I said to piss up a rope.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said. So compared to getting Sal into the ice machine, consoling his widow seemed like a piece of cake.

Moo Shoes and I needed to raise numerous ducats with which to pay upkeep

“What’s the haps, paps?”

built like she could play linebacker on the tiny European grandma football team.

“That’s malarkey,” I said. “How do you know this, anyway?

scuttlebutt.

We have an arrangement.” “An arrangement as in dividing the pie, or an arrangement as in hiding the banana?”

“What’s the riff, Biff?” he said, by way of greeting.

Every guy can basically be boiled down to what he wants and what he’s afraid of.

he seemed to be saying, “What’s the tune, June?”

“Hogwash, then?” “Oh, complete hogwash.

“I guess that’s the song, Armstrong.