Larry Bassett’s Reviews > Killing Orders > Status Update

After that, I didn’t have anything to do except sleep and eat and furnish the new place. I didn’t like to think too much. About Rosa, or my mother, or the ugliness I’d found in myself that night with Walter Novick in the snow. Roger helped keep the thoughts at bay. At least during the day. He couldn’t do much about my dreams. SOME PRETTY BAD CHARACTERISTICS, OF VI SHOWED UP HERE!

As I’d hoped, she was sitting there in front of the fire, the needlepoint project in her lap but her hands still. Standing at an angle in the hall, I watched her. Her handsome angry face was strained. She was waiting for the sound that would tell her I had been shot. HOW MANY ADVENTURES CAN ONE DETECTIVE HAVE IN ONE BOOK?

That’s why Mallory hates talking to me about crime. He thinks Tony Warshawski’s daughter should be making a better world by producing happy healthy babies, not by catching desperadoes.

I didn’t say anything. Whether the Church was working for the poor, as in El Salvador, or supporting the government, as in Spain, it was still, in my book, up to its neck in politics. But it didn’t seem polite to pursue the argument. (one of the nice things about VI is her progressive politics!)

A store in Lincolnwood sold me three dozen bullets for twenty-five dollars. Despite what the gun haters may think, it isn’t cheap killing people. Not only is it not cheap, it’s time-consuming. It was nearly three. I didn’t have time for lunch if I wanted to get to the priory on schedule.

“It’s a gamble, Don Pasquale,” I finally said. “I know now who called to threaten me. If your interests are tied to his, then it’s hopeless. One of these times, someone will kill me. I won’t always make it out of the burning apartment, or be able to break my attacker’s jaw. I will fight to the end, but the end will be clearly discernible to everyone.

But I do believe, with Roger Fox, that we all have to listen to the voice within us, and how easily you can look at yourself in the mirror depends on whether you obey that voice or not. Everyone’s voice gives different counsel, but you can only interpret the one you hear.”

At home I peeled off layers of shirts and leggings and soaked in a hot tub for a while. Being self-employed, I can hold my review of operations and management anywhere. This means time spent thinking in the bath is time spent working. Unfortunately, my accountant doesn’t agree that this makes my water bill and bath salts tax deductible.

The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world.