Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux, #17)

by James Lee Burke

“Maybe it’s time to lose the Bozo the Clown routine. I’d like to help you. But frankly, you act like an idiot.”

But the ex-convict was also known as a pathological liar, and he later tried to sell his story to a detective magazine.

When my friend asked her where God was when her family died, she replied, “Looking down from above, wondering at what His children had done.”

“Hell is a black box that’s got locks all over it. Kick the door and you’ll hear them rattle, but it won’t do you no good. You don’t die to get to hell. You’re already there.”

Clete Purcel was a man of large physical appetites and a propensity for violence and mayhem when the situation required it. He also had a propensity for violence and mayhem when the situation did not require it.

From this moment on, you’re deaf, dumb, and don’t know.”

You’re either handing out moral observations, or you’re the laconic Spartan who has trouble putting two words together.”

A time comes when you simply have to tell the truth and let the dice create their own arithmetic.

“How would you like to take yourself to hell and gone down the road?” Molly said.

“She accused me of being a sexual Benedict Arnold.

“You’ve got an anvil for a head, Dave. Everybody knows that except you. If it weren’t for me, your life would be a mess. I have to screw up for both of us. It’s a big job.” Try to argue with a mind-set like that.

The great joke is that any wisdom most of us acquire can seldom be passed on to others. I suspect this reality is at the heart of most old people’s anger.

You give unto Caesar and hope he chokes on it. Like Clete says, good guys forever, and fuck the rest of it.”

With you, it’s always full throttle and fuck it, no matter who gets hurt.”

“Dust ‘em or bust ‘em, noble mon” or “Take it to them with tongs.”

Unfortunately, being unafraid of death was not the same as being brave.

He put a bed in his garage and spent his nights there because his wife could not sleep with an armed man wired for sounds that no one else could hear.

You know why criminals are criminals? It’s ‘cause most of them majored in dumb.”

If I ever get out of this, I’m buying a charter fishing boat in Baja. Let all these people drown in their own shit. You’re looking at the new marlin king of the Pacific Coast.”

She felt a terrible sense of urgency, as though she were drowning in full view of others and no one on the bank could hear her voice.

This is three monkeys fucking a football.” “Why don’t you get out of your bad mood?” I said.

“Your lack of both wisdom and judgment never ceases to amaze me, Mr. Robicheaux,” Wellstone said.

“I majored in low expectations,” I replied. “That’s not bad. I’ll have to remember that,” he said.

“You know why most crimes go unsolved? Because most cops have IQs of minus eight. Those are the smart ones.”

“Sal, you were a pretentious douche bag twenty years ago, and you’re a pretentious douche bag now. In the joint, you were a sissy and a cunt. Your old man sent you out to Reno because you couldn’t even run one of his whorehouses on your own. After your plane crashed, a couple of your ex-punches told me you were a needle dick your skanks laughed at behind your back.”

“I think the Dio family clap has finally climbed from your dick up into your brain, Sal,”

Consequently, he was more clever than Bundy, less compulsive, and not given to the thespian temptations of televised trials.

But unlike the fifth act of an Elizabethan tragedy, order is seldom reimposed on the world.

The faces of the actors may change, but the story is ongoing, and neither religion nor government has ever rid the world of sin or snake oil.