Chester Stone Quotes

Lawrence Stoning called Chester Stoning's hat, The Eyesore.

Chester's playing filled the station. Like ripples around a stone dropped into still water, the circles of silence spread out from the newsstand. And as people listened, a change came over their faces. Eyes that looked worried grew soft and peaceful; tongues left off chattering; and ears full of the city's rustling were rested by the cricket's melody.

Chester Stone said nothing. Just stood up and threaded his way by all the furniture and over to the door. Through the reception area and into the corridor and into the elevator. Down eighty-eight floors and back outside, where the bright morning sun hit him in the face like a blow.

As they picked their way around the house through knee-high weeds dense with booby traps of unseen bottles, tin cans, rusted bed springs, broken emery stones, rotting harness, dead cats, dog offal, puddles of stinking garbage, and swarms of bottle flies, house flies, gnats, mosquitoes, the first cop said in extreme disgust, “I don’t see how people can live in such filth.” But he hadn’t seen anything yet. When they arrived at the back they found a section of the wall had fallen from the second floor, leaving a room exposed to the weather, and the rubble piled on the ground formed the only access to the open back door. Carefully they climbed up the pile of broken bricks and plaster, their footsteps raising a thick gray dust, and entered the kitchen unimpeded.

Look at me, woman,” Lor growled. I turned my head and met his gaze coolly. “If he tells you anything about us, we’ll kill you. Do you understand that? One word, you die. So if you’re walking around feeling cocky and protected because Barrons likes to fuck you, think again. The more he likes to do you, the more likely it is that one of us will kill you.” I looked up at Ryodan. The owner of Chester’s nodded. “Nobody killed Fiona.” “She was a doormat.” I pushed the arm away from my neck. “Get out of my way.” “I would suggest you cure him of his little problem if you want to survive,” Lor said. “Oh, I’ll survive.” “The farther away from him you get, the safer you are.” “Do you want me to find the Book or not?” Ryodan answered. “We don’t give a fuck if the Book is out there. Or that the walls are down. Times change, we go on.” “Then why are you helping with the ritual? V’lane said Barrons asked you and Lor to handle the other stones.” “For Barrons. But if he breathes one word about himself, you’re dead.” “I thought he was the boss of you guys.” “He is. He made the rules we live by. We’ll still take you from him.” Take you from him. Sometimes I was so dense. “And he knows that.” “We’ve had to do it before,” Lor said. “Kasteo hasn’t said a word to us since. I say get over it already. It’s been a thousand fucking years. What’s a woman worth?” I inhaled slow and deep as the full ramifications of what they’d just told me sunk in. This was why Barrons never answered any of my questions and never would. He knew what they would do to me if he told me—whatever they’d done to Kasteo’s woman a thousand years ago. “You don’t need to worry about it. He hasn’t told me anything.” “Yet,” Lor said. “But more importantly,” I said, looking at Ryodan. “I won’t ask. I don’t need to know.” I realized it was true. I was no longer obsessed with having a name and an explanation for Jericho Barrons. He was what he was. No name, no reasons, would alter anything about him. Or how I felt.

The trail wasn’t hard to follow. It had a pattern. An irregular patch of scattered spots that looked like spots of tar in the artificial light was interspersed every fourth or fifth step by a dark gleaming splash where blood had spurted from the wound. Now that all the soul people had been removed from the street, the five detectives moved swiftly. But they could still feel the presence of teeming people behind the dilapidated stone façades of the old reconverted buildings. Here and there the white gleams of eyes showed from darkened windows, but the silence was eerie. The trail turned from the sidewalk into an unlighted alleyway between the house beyond the rooming house, which described itself by a sign in a front window reading: Kitchenette Apts. All conveniences, and the weather-streaked red-brick apartment beyond that. The alleyway was so narrow they had to go in single file. The sergeant had taken the power light from his driver, Joe, and was leading the way himself. The pavement slanted down sharply beneath his feet and he almost lost his step. Midway down the blank side of the building he came to a green wooden door. Before touching it, he flashed his light along the sides of the flanking buildings. There were windows in the kitchenette apartments, but all from the top to the bottom floor had folding iron grilles which were closed and locked at that time of night, and dark shades were drawn on all but three. The apartment house had a vertical row of small black openings one above the other at the rear. They might have been bathroom windows but no light showed in any of them and the glass was so dirty it didn’t shine. The blood trail ended at the green door. “Come out of there,” the sergeant said. No one answered. He turned the knob and pushed the door and it opened inward so silently and easily he almost fell into the opening before he could train his light. Inside was a black dark void. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed flattened themselves against the walls on each side of the alley and their big long-barreled .38 revolvers came glinting into their hands. “What the hell!” the sergeant exclaimed, startled. His assistants ducked. “This is Harlem,” Coffin Ed grated and Grave Digger elaborated: “We don’t trust doors that open.” Ignoring them, the sergeant shone his light into the opening. Crumbling brick stairs went down sharply to a green iron grille. “Just a boiler room,” the sergeant said and put his shoulders through the doorway. “Hey, anybody down there?” he called. Silence greeted him. “You go down, Joe, I’ll light your way,” the sergeant said. “Why me?” Joe protested. “Me and Digger’ll go,” Coffin Ed said. “Ain’t nobody there who’s alive.

It was rare for Walter Brennan to express more than satisfaction at work well done. But Three Godfathers (March 6, 1936) was something special. With its combination of an unusual director, Richard Boleslawski, and an ensemble of actors—Chester Morris, Lewis Stone, and Brennan— inspired by what has to be called a spiritual western, Three Godfathers told the story of how three outlaws come to care for and save the infant of a dying mother they find in the desert.

Barrons’ hand shot out and closed around V’lane’s throat. “You lying fuck.” V’lane grabbed Barrons’ arm with one hand, his throat with the other. I stared, fascinated. I was so discombobulated by recent developments that I hadn’t even realized Barrons and V’lane were standing face-to-face on a crowded dance floor for what was probably the first time in all eternity—close enough to kill each other. Well, close enough for Barrons to kill V’lane. Barrons was staring at the Fae prince as if he’d finally caught a fire ant that had been torturing him for centuries while he’d lay spread-eagled on the desert, coated in honey. V’lane was glaring at Barrons as if he couldn’t believe he’d be so stupid. “We have larger concerns than your personal grievances,” V’lane said with icy disdain. “If you cannot remove your head from your ass and see that, you deserve what will happen to your world.” “Maybe I don’t care what happens to the world.” V’lane’s head swiveled my way, cool appraisal in his gaze. “I have permitted you to retain your spear, MacKayla. You will not let him harm me. Kill him—” Barrons squeezed. “I said shut up.” “He has the fourth stone,” I reminded Barrons. “We need him.” “Keltars!” V’lane said, staring up at the foyer. He hissed through his teeth. “I know. Big fucking party tonight,” said Barrons. “Where? Is that who just came in?” I said. Barrons leaned closer to V’lane and sniffed him. His nostrils flared, as if he found the scent both repulsive and perfect for a fine, bloody filet. “Where is she?” a man roared. The accent was Scottish, like Christian’s but thicker. V’lane ordered, “Shut him up before his next question is, ‘Where is the queen,’ and every Unseelie in this place discovers she is here.” Barrons moved too fast for me to see. One second, V’lane was his usual gorgeous self, then his nose was crushed and gushing blood. Barrons said, “Next time, fairy,” and was gone. “I said, where the bloody hell is the—” I heard a grunt, then the sounds of fists and more grunts, and all hell broke loose at Chester’s.

She looked away. Her name was Marilyn. Marilyn Stone. She had been married to Chester for a long time. She knew it all. She had no real details, no real proof, no inclusion, but she knew it all anyway. How could she not know? She had eyes and a brain.

around the edges of the grand hall of Chatterton Court. It slipped down the wide stone staircase that wrapped its way around the circular space, emphasising the shadows in the niches behind the stone busts of Chatterton ancestors. Whatever lay up those stairs was no business of his, however. Those

Nine o’clock in the morning, the World Trade Center on its own is the sixth largest city in New York State. Bigger than Albany. Only sixteen acres of land, but a daytime population of 130,000 people. Chester Stone felt like most of them were swirling around him as he stood in the plaza. His grandfather would have been standing in the Hudson River. Chester himself had watched from his own office window as the landfill inched out into the water and the giant towers had risen from the dry riverbed.

It sounds like you’re munching on a rock!” “Oh,” Chester said through a mouthful of ground stone. “That’s why my teeth are falling out…