When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (Matthew Scudder, #6)

by Lawrence Block

Instead he and his partner had called their place Miss Kitty’s. Most people assumed a reference to “Gunsmoke,” but their inspiration had been a whorehouse in Saigon.

Maybe the whorehouse owner was the "Gunsmoke" fan.

They didn’t water the booze and they poured a good drink. Wasn’t that as much of a character reference as any man needed?

Somewhere along the way Ford declined to help the city through a financial crisis, and the News headline read, “Ford to City: Drop Dead! ”

A good headline.

I rarely missed the News, picking up an early edition on my way back to my hotel at night or scanning a later one over breakfast.

Thank you fo your service.

I was not a private detective—private detectives are licensed and fill out reports and file tax returns. So I did favors for people, and they gave me money, and my rent always got paid and there was always money for booze, and intermittently I was able to put a check in the mail for Anita and the boys.

“I’m always lost in Brooklyn,” he said. “I swear this place was settled by the Ten Lost Tribes. They couldn’t find their way back, they broke ground and built houses. Put in sewer lines, ran in electricity. All the comforts of home.”

“He’s cute, but cute disappears when you turn the lights out, you know? I don’t think he woulda done me much good.”

You know how many actors it takes to change a lightbulb? Nine. One to climb up and replace it and eight others to stand around the ladder and say, ‘That should be me up there!’ ”

But I did have that entry, notes on Mickey Mouse and his adolescent career as a fag-basher in the Village. So many working-class teenagers take up that sport, sure that they’re acting on genuine outrage and confirming their manliness in the process, never realizing they’re trying to kill a part of themselves they don’t dare acknowledge.

Nobody hates gays like a resentful closet case.

Talk about the American Dream, that’s the American Dream. Steal from the boss until you can afford to open up in competition with him.”

Just as money knows no owner, whiskey never remembers who paid for it.

So many changes, eating away at the world like water dripping on a rock.