“If something bad can happen, it will.”

“Smile! Tom orrow will be worse!”

“Rita folded her arms around herself and peered up at me. “If you’d asked methree months ago I’d have said you were hitting the bottle too hard. But then Igot stabbed and should have died, but instead a bunch of cops and ambulancepeople showed up because somebody who wasn’t even there sent them on ahead to save my life. If something like that happens to someone like me, you start tohave a little faith in something bigger. I don’t know if I believe in magic or miracles all the time. But I believe in you, Detective Walker. I believe in you.”

“She’s consuming me and I’m letting it happen. Revelling in it, really.”

“Anticipation tingled in my stomach: the kind of tingle that at first you don’t know if it’s a good tingle or a bad tingle – just a tingle.”

“My mother always said that I would come to a bad end but I never thought she meant this - writing allegory in literal times.”

“I really need to break him of the bad language habit he’s developing at a rapid pace, but who am I to talk? I curse all the fucking time.”