Authors: William T. Vollmann
Tags: #Private Investigators, #Action & Adventure, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Erotica, #General
*
Fifty dollars for the “flatback” and ten dollars for an hour in the room.
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Murder him; execute him.
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Old gangster.
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Reputation.
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The penal code for homicide is 187. Hence the street slang: “pull a 187.”
†
Years of prison time.
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Kilos (of marijuana).
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A top is an S & M dominant. A bottom is a submissive.
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And there’s a good side to this, for (much to its credit) Geary Street remains immune to the sterile
noblesse
of the hedges and the fountain at Leavenworth and Green.
*
Execute.
*
Psalm 88:3.
†
Isaiah 14:18–19.
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE ROYAL FAMILY
William T. Vollmann was born in Los Angeles in 1959. He attended Deep Springs College and Cornell University, where he graduated
summa cum laude
in comparative literature. Vollmann’s novels include
You Bright and Risen Angels
,
Whores for Gloria
,
The Butterfly Stories
, and four of a projected series of seven novels dealing with the repeated collisions between Native Americans and their European colonizers and oppressors:
The Ice-Shirt
,
Fathers and Crows
,
The Rifles
, and
Argall
. Vollmann is also the author of three short story collections (
The Rainbow Stories
,
Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs
, and
The Atlas
, winner of the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction), and a work of nonfiction,
An Afghanistan Picture Show
. Vollmann won a 1988 Whiting Award and the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Award in 1989. His journalism and fiction have appeared in such magazines as
The New Yorker
,
Esquire
,
Outside
,
Spin
,
Gear
,
Granta
,
Grand Street
, and
Conjunctions
. He lives in California.