Police Wife Quotes

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

And there it was. Just like that I had my next case and my curiosity was piqued. Connecting to the ship’s Wi-Fi, I did a Google search of Judge Russell Hastings of Tallahassee, Florida. Wow. Wow. Wow. Perusing just a few of the hundreds of listings it became quickly apparent that the judge was both well-known and well-respected. The murder of a high-profile appellate judge in his own chambers was a mystery that had baffled the Tallahassee police for over a year. There were pictures of the judge and his family; including a beautiful wife and three grown daughters.

It's vampire Barbie" ……….. "get a load of this," I said, " perfect makeup, perfect nails, perfect figure --- it makes me want to shove her head-first into a steaming pile of horse crap. Why is it you can never find a mounted police when you need one?" …… "your ….late….wife?" I whispered. Vayl nodded, just a slight jerk of his head. " She died. Then she killed me. Ergo…. Late wife.

If he puts his hand on your head to keep you from bumping it when he helps you in the car. -You might be a police wife

Clock time is our bank manager, tax collector, police inspector; this inner time is our wife.

The bottom line is the driver was twenty to twenty-five years older than the robbery suspect. Both husband and wife were college- educated, middle-class American citizens, like you and me.” “Except that they were black, and we are not,” Jennifer states the obvious.

A racist cop pulls over a black driver for little reason other than the fact that the driver is black and a recent robbery was committed by a couple of young black guys in a white community. The cop quickly realizes the driver is not one of the robbery suspects. He sees a man with a wife and two small children. They are not a couple of young punks. Still,he persists. Why? “He asks to see the driver’s license and registration. While locating the appropriate documents, the black driver respectfully volunteers that he is legally carrying a handgun. The cop panics—is it the image of a black man with a gun? He barks out conflicting orders and then shoots the man to death, in front of his family. Why? “Is it because the cop is an insensitive racist? Maybe he wasn’t trained or taught any better? Perhaps he lived a completely different life in a completely different world than that of the black man. In this cop’s world, were all black men potential criminals, people to be watched, people to be feared?

When you’ve fallen from the sky, been abandoned by your friend, suffered police brutality, metamorphosed into a goat, lost your work as well as your wife, learned the power of hatred and regained human shape, what is there left to do but, as you would no doubt phrase it, demand your rights?

And somewhere out there, in the river of addicts, alcoholics, wife beaters, doormats, overeducated legalized thieves, fascist police, and bitter rivalries— someone told me it’s a good city, and I don’t know what’s more frightening

Walls keep you from seeing things. They help make things less real. Sure, maybe you hear loud, sharp noises outside some nights. But it’s easy to tell yourself that those aren’t gunshots, that there’s no need to call the police, no need to even worry. It’s probably just a car backfiring. Sure. Or a kid with fireworks. There might be loud wailing or screams coming from the apartment upstairs, but you don’t know that the drunken neighbor is beating his wife with a rolling pin again. It’s not really any of your business, and they’re always fighting, and the man is scary, besides. Yeah, you know that there are cars coming and going at all hours from your neighbor’s place, and that the crowd there isn’t exactly the most upright-looking bunch, but you haven’t seen him dealing drugs. Not even to the kids you see going over there sometimes. It’s easier and safer to shut the door, be quiet, and turn up the TV. We’re ostriches and the whole world is sand.

It's bitten her!' he cried. 'It's Bitten her! It's bitten her! Calm down! Get moving! Call an ambulance! Call the police! Call a scientist! Call my wife! This is terrible! This is awful! This is ghastly! This is phantasmagorical! This is-

Good luck tended to avoid me. Charlie left first, off to the police station that was his wife and family.

I haven't reported my missing credit card to the police because whoever stole it is spending less than my wife.

He thought of his wife, of his son, of his youth. He thought of life. He thought of death and then he thought of life again.

Where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?" "She's gone forrard to the Police Office," returns Mr Bucket. "You'll see her there, my dear." "I would like to kiss her!" exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-like. "You'd bite her, I suspect," says Mr Bucket. "I would!" making her eyes very large. "I would love to tear her, limb from limb." "Bless you, darling," says Mr Bucket, with the greatest composure; "I'm fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another, when you do differ.

He took a breath. “My future wife’s in the police... “Wait, wait, wait. How long have you been going out with this woman?” Luca cleared his throat again, this time with deserved sheepishness. “We met yesterday.

I always thought 'love at first sight' was silly and incredibly irresponsible. Then, you came along and you flipped it on me. I understand it now. I do! ~Sheriff Derrick Decker

Some men want to go out with a bang. Personally, I'd rather not die from sex. I mean, what will my wife think when the police tell her?

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that at any moment now they will discover you. It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened The Fraud Police. In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don't know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read.

At last he said, “I’ve been fourteen years on the police force. I’ve learned from seasoned veterans. I’ve handled all types of criminal cases. But my wife, newly arrived from the backwoods of Ireland, manages to tie up all my unsolved cases for me with apparently no effort at all. I should just quit my job and stay home looking after the babies while you go out to work for us.

I couldn't bring this sorrow home. Couldn't tell my wife. Wouldn't tell my children. As my friend Edward Dee says, we live in the worst twenty minutes of someone else's life. So I leave it behind . . . where it happened . . . where it belongs . . . not in my house.

It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

He had murdered his wife in a fit of jealousy, and immediately given himself up to the police. (This had considerably mitigated his sentence). Such crimes are never judged harshly in Siberia, but rather looked upon as an unfortunate accident which ought to be pitied and regretted rather than punished.

Now we will live!” This is what the hungry little boy liked to say, as he toddled along the quiet roadside, or through the empty fields. But the food that he saw was only in his imagination. The wheat had all been taken away, in a heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe’s era of mass killing. It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Soviet Ukraine. The little boy died, as did more than three million other people. “I will meet her,” said a young Soviet man of his wife, “under the ground.” He was right; he was shot after she was, and they were buried among the seven hundred thousand victims of Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. “They asked for my wedding ring, which I….” The Polish officer broke off his diary just before he was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He was one of about two hundred thousand Polish citizens shot by the Soviets or the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, while Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupied his country. Late in 1941, an eleven-year-old Russian girl in Leningrad finished her own humble diary: “Only Tania is left.” Adolf Hitler had betrayed Stalin, her city was under siege by the Germans, and her family were among the four million Soviet citizens the Germans starved to death. The following summer, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: “I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive.” She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.

A racist cop pulls over a black driver for little reason other than the fact that the driver is black and a recent robbery was committed by a couple of young black guys in a white community. The cop quickly realizes the driver is not one of the robbery suspects. He sees a man with a wife and two small children. They are not a couple of young punks. Still,he persists. Why? “He asks to see the driver’s license and registration. While locating the appropriate documents, the black driver respectfully volunteers that he is legally carrying a handgun. The cop panics—is it the image of a black man with a gun? He barks out conflicting orders and then shoots the man to death, in front of his family. Why? “Is it because the cop is an insensitive racist? Maybe he wasn’t trained or taught any better? Perhaps he lived a completely different life in a completely different world than that of the black man. In this cop’s world, were all black men potential criminals, people to be watched, people to be feared?

A blanket could be used as a bathtub tarp, keeping all the body’s heat in, and the police’s and murder victim’s wife’s eyes out.


Clock time is our bank manager, tax collector, police inspector; this inner time is our wife. — J.B. Priestley, Man and Time

Thus we institute today this law, that each man in the country must have his passport and other official documents stamped with the name of his female guardian. Her written permission will be needed to any journey he undertakes. We know that men have their tricks and we cannot allow them to band together. Any man who does not have a sister, mother, wife or daughter, or other relative, to register him must report to the police station for the protection of the public. Any man who breaks these laws will he subject to capital punishment. This applies also to foreign journalists and other workers.

It’s as though men are prone to policing their wives than husbanding them; so, as though to celebrate the poetic justice to their predicament, won’t women turn gleeful whenever they cuckold their caretakers?

The male victims were born in the forties and fifties, a generation for whom therapy was mostly an alien concept. In the police files, gender roles are rigid and unambiguous. Detectives ask the women where they shop and the men about the locking mechanisms on the doors and windows. They drape blankets over the women's shoulders and ferry them to the hospital. The men are asked what they saw, not what they felt. Many of the male victims had military experience. They had toolsheds. They were doers and protectors who'd been robbed of their ability to do and protect. Their rage is in the details: one husband chewed the bindings off his wife's feet.

Six bad hombres have tried to kill Ramos. Ramos went to all six funerals, just in case any of the bereaved wanted to take a shot at revenge. None of them did. He calls his Uzi “Mi Esposa”—my wife. He’s thirty-two years old. Within hours he has in custody the three policemen who picked up Ernie Hidalgo. One of them is the chief of the Jalisco State Police. Ramos tells Art, “We can do this the fast way or the slow way.” Ramos takes two cigars from his shirt pocket, offers one to Art and shrugs when he refuses it. He takes a long time to light the cigar, rolling it so that the tip lights evenly, then takes a long pull and raises his black eyebrows at Art. The theologians are right, Art thinks—we become what we hate. Then he says, “The fast way.” Ramos says. “Come back in a little while.” “No,” Art says. “I’ll do my part.” “That’s a man’s answer,” Ramos says. “But I don’t want a witness.

there's a part in the essay that kind of does this academic "Let's unpack the idea of Lynchian and what Lynchian means is something about the unbelievably grotesque existing in a kind of union with the unbelievably banal," and then it gives a series of scenarios about what -- what is and what isn't Lynchian. Jeffrey Dahmer was borderline Lynchian...what was Lynchian was having the actual food products next to the disembodied bits of the corpse. I guess the big one is, you know, a regular domestic murder is not Lynchian. But if the man -- if the police come to the scene and see the man standing over the body and the woman -- let's see, the woman's '50s bouffant is undisturbed and the man and the cops have this conversation about the fact that the man killed the woman because she persistently refused to buy, say, for instance, Jif peanut butter rather than Skippy, and how very, very important that is, and if the cops found themselves somehow agreeing that there were major differences between the brands and that a wife who didn't recognize those differences was deficient in her wifely duties, that would be Lynchian -- this weird confluence of very dark, surreal, violent stuff and absolute, almost Norman Rockwell, banal, American stuff, which is terrain he's been working for quite a while -- I mean, at least since -- at least since "Blue Velvet.

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging his own garden--that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

clumsy fingers, feeling faintly guilty about going through his wife’s purse. It feels private. But this is an emergency. He dumps the contents onto the middle of their neatly made bed. Her wallet is there, her change purse, lipstick, pen, a tissue packet—it’s all there. Not an errand then. Maybe she stepped out to help a friend? An emergency of some kind? Still, she would have taken her purse with her if she was driving the car. And wouldn’t she have called him by now if she could? She could borrow someone else’s phone. It’s not like her to be thoughtless. Tom sits on the edge of the bed, quietly unraveling. His heart is beating too fast. Something is wrong. He thinks that maybe he should call the police. He

They tied them up and forced them to watch as each was ultimately stabbed repeatedly or shot, the last victim, according to the police, being Cici Riorden, Paul’s new, young wife, and left cryptic symbols carved into their victims’ bodies.

Yet only minutes before, on the roof, a cold Havana between his lips, he had been silent, both he and his wife bundled in winter coats and hats as if about to set out on a journey. Dark against the sky. A statuesque couple. For a while the Brandenburg Gate was only a black mass, scanned off and on by police searchlights. But then the torchlight procession arrived, spreading like a stream of lava which, separated for a short time by the pylons, eventually flowed together again, unremitting, unstoppable, solemn, portentous, lighting up the night, lighting up the Gate to the quadriga of stallions, to the goddess's sign of victory. We too on the roof of Liebermann's house were lit by that fatal glow, even as we were hit with the smoke and stench of a hundred thousand and more torches.

My wife of more than forty-years shot herself yesterday afternoon. At least that is what the police assume, and I am playing the part of grieving widower with enthusiasm and success. Life with Sarah has schooled me in self-deception, which I find--as she did--to be an excellent training in the deceiving of others. Of course I know that she did nothing of the kind. My wife was far too sane, far too rooted in the present to think of harming herself. In my opinion she never gave a thought to what she had done. She was incapable of guilt. It was I who killed her.

In place of a firing squad, I stare down the barrels of endless interrogation. Why did she not run away? Why did she not use the opportunities she had for escape? Why did she stay if, indeed, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn't really consensual? Let me tell you a story. Not mine, this time around. It is the story of a girl we call after the place of her birth, lacking the integrity to even utter her name. The Suranelli Girl. Forty-two men rape this girl, over a period of forty days. She is sixteen years old. The police do not investigate her case. The high court questions her character. The highest court in the land asks the inevitable. Why did she not run away? Why did she not have the opportunities she had for escape? Why did she say, if need, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn't really consensual? Sometimes the shame is not the beatings, not the rape. The shaming is in being asked to stand for judgement.

The Mad Gardener's Song He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, 'The bitterness of Life!' He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister's Husband's Niece. 'Unless you leave this house,' he said, 'I'll send for the Police!' He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. 'The one thing I regret,' he said, 'Is that it cannot speak!' He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk Descending from the bus: He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. 'If this should stay to dine,' he said, 'There won't be much for us!' He thought he saw a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill: He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. 'Were I to swallow this,' he said, 'I should be very ill!' He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four That stood beside his bed: He looked again, and found it was A Bear without a Head. 'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing! It's waiting to be fed!' He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny-Postage Stamp. 'You'd best be getting home,' he said: 'The nights are very damp!' He thought he saw a Garden-Door That opened with a key: He looked again, and found it was A Double Rule of Three: 'And all its mystery,' he said, 'Is clear as day to me!' He thought he saw a Argument That proved he was the Pope: He looked again, and found it was A Bar of Mottled Soap. 'A fact so dread,' he faintly said, 'Extinguishes all hope!

My Parents couldn't get me to stop drinking. The Police couldn't get me to stop drinking. The Courts couldn't get me to stop drinking. The threat of losing my job couldn't get me to stop drinking. My Wife couldn't get me to stop drinking. But when my eldest daughter was 5 years old and said, "Daddy, we don't like you when you drink!" That is when I stopped!

Kids didn’t just disappear unless someone made them disappear.‘Relax, mate,’ the head of security said. ‘We’ve never lost one yet.’ Lots of kids wandered off at the Easter Show, he told them. They were always found, usually somewhere near the food.Doug had tried to relax, to stay calm, but he could feel the panic building inside him.The place was too big.There were too many people.Lockie could be anywhere. The police were called. It took hours for everyone to leave the showgrounds because every family was stopped. Every parent was questioned and every child identified. It was way past midnight when everyone had finally gone home, and still they had not found Lockie.The head of security changed his tone. The police held whispered conversations in groups. They began to look at him with sympathy in their eyes.Doug felt his heart slow down. There was a ringing in his ears. He was underwater and he couldn’t swim.Lockie was gone.They had lost one.Sammy had gone from impatience to hunger to exhaustion. She didn’t understand what was happening.Sarah sat next to the pram twisting her hands. She did not cry. She didn’t cry for days, but every time Doug went near her he could hear her muttering the word ‘please’. ‘Please, please, please, please.’ It drove Doug mad and he had to move away because he wanted to hit her, to snap her out of her trance. He had never lifted a hand to his wife or his children, but now he had to close his fist and dig his nails into his palm to keep himself from lashing out Sarah didn’t believe in hitting children; she believed in time out and consequences. It was different to the way Doug had been raised but he had come around to the idea. The thought of anyone—especially himself—hurting Sarah and the kids was almost too much to bear.Doug sometimes wondered, after, if whoever had taken his son had hit him. When he did think about someone hurting his boy he could feel his hands curl into fists. He would embrace the rush of heat that came with the anger because at least it was a different feeling to the sorrow and despair. Anger felt constructive. He wanted to kill everyone, even himself. But as fast as the anger came it would recede and he would be back at the place he hated to be. Mired in his own helplessness. There was fuck-all he could do.

Seems to be catching." "What is?" asked Neku. "Wanting Kit dead." Neku shrugged. "He was fucking the wife of a gang boss and bikers used his bar to deal drugs, plus lots of uyoku felt Yoshi Tanaka should be married to someone Japanese. Then there's chippu he owed to the local police and unpaid bills from a Brazilian transvestite who mends his motorcycle. It could have been anyone.

In the eyes of the Church,’ said he, ‘adultery is a crime; in those of your tribunals it is a misdemeanor. Adultery drives to the police court in a carriage instead of standing at the bar to be tried. Napoleon’s Council of State, touched with tenderness towards erring women, was quite inefficient. Ought they not in this case to have harmonized the civil and the religious law, and have sent the guilty wife to a convent, as of old?

I am not going to stress the usual argument that the police habitually mistreat Negroes. Every Negro knows this. There is scarcely any black man, woman, or child in the land who at some point or other has not been mistreated by a policeman. (A young man in Watts said, "The riots will continue because I, as a Negro, am immediately considered to be a criminal by the police and, if I have a pretty woman with me, she is a tramp even if she is my wife or mother.")

1)    The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk. 2)    At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage. 3)    He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence. 4)    He is verbally abusive. 5)    He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide. 6)    He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.). 7)    He has battered in prior relationships. 8)    He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty). 9)    He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”). 10)   His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery). 11)   There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things). 12)   He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner. 13)   He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time. 14)   He refuses to accept rejection. 15)   He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.” 16)   He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them. 17)   He minimizes incidents of abuse. 18)   He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc. 19)   He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship. 20)   He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner. 21)   He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave. 22)   He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise. 23)   He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified. 24)   He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed. 25)   He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions. 26)   He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge. 27)   Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons. 28)   He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”). 29)   He experienced or witnessed violence as a child. 30)   His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).

I was recently pulled over by the police in the wee hours of the morning on my way to vacation in Alabama. I was traveling with my family, and my wife and kids were asleep. I was on the phone with my brother Al, trying to get directions to our beach house. There was no one else on the road as I was driving through a small town. All of a sudden, flashing lights appeared out of nowhere and I pulled over. The lights woke up everybody in the car, and one of my kids said, “Maybe the policeman watches Duck Dynasty.” The officer came up to my window and asked for my driver’s license and insurance card. When I began to speak to the policeman, he put his hand on his holstered gun. My wife said, “Guess he’s not a fan.” The cop gave me a speeding ticket for driving forty-four miles per hour in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone, which was fine. Hey, I broke the law! But what made me a bit uncomfortable was that every time I opened my mouth he put his hand on his gun!

But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

In the official police account, the plumber was shot and robbed on the street. Not true—guys stick together—the detective didn't want the victim's wife to know he was flagrante delicto with a prostitute when wounded. I didn't want her hurt or embarrassed either. She figured it out herself. I met her later, after their divorce, and she brought up the subject. The hospital returned her injured husband's garments. She was washing them when she realized that, although there were a number of bullet holes in his body, there were none in his clothes.

IN AN OLD YUGOSLAV JOKE mocking police corruption, a policeman returns home unexpectedly and finds his wife naked in their marital bed, obviously hot and excited. Suspecting that he surprised her with a lover, he starts to look around the room for a hidden man. The wife goes pale when he leans down to look under the bed; but after some brief whispering, the husband rises with a satisfied, smug smile and says “Sorry, my love, false alarm. There is no one under the bed!,” while his hand is holding tightly a couple of high denomination banknotes.

A totally corrupt police-force is the next best to a perfectly honest one. Ours is quite livable with. Mark you, it takes a bit of time occasionally finding out who’s bidding against you, but there are only a few possibilities in a small community like ours.” “So when he said he had a clean genotype but he was going to be sterilised anyway I lost my temper—can you blame me?” “It’s twentieth-century for me to be jealous, isn’t it? You keep away from my wife or I’ll get Gwinnie to make you pay forfeit for behaving in a twenty-first century manner!

Darling!” Alessandro exclaimed with a cold sneer as a police guard led him into a holding cell. “What are you doing here? Did you come to tell me that the crazy fog has lifted and you’re ready to resume your place by my side?” “Not in this lifetime. That nut house is not my home, and you really are crazy if you think I’m going anywhere with you.” Alessandro’s eyes flickered dangerously. “Careful, sweetheart. You are still my wife. Let’s not forget that, eh?” Bree shook her head. “You are unbelievable. Do you feel any remorse at all for what you did?” Alessandro clenched his jaw. “I believe I expressed my remorse quite thoroughly if you recall. I begged you to forgive me and I beg for nothing, Brianna. I laid myself bare and pleaded for you to understand but all you had for me were hateful words.” “Oh, was I supposed to believe that little performance?” Bree snapped, forcing herself to block out the image of his hands cupping her face, his tears mingling with her own. “It’s hard to know because I believed you when you looked me in the eye and told me you had nothing to do with what happened to Colin.

In 1956, with no leads and public outcry mounting, the police turned to James A. Brussel, a psychiatrist and criminologist and the assistant commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, who lived with his wife on the grounds of Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens. Brussel examined the letters from the bomber and the crime scene photos and came up with a “portrait” of the bomber—the very first case of criminal profiling ever. Among his many predictions: that when he was found, the bomber would be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned.

We have so much further to go, but looking back at how far we’ve come can be encouraging. Domestic violence was mostly invisible and unpunished until a heroic effort by feminists to out it and crack down on it a few decades ago. Though it now generates a significant percentage of the calls to police, enforcement has been crummy in most places—but the ideas that a husband has the right to beat his wife and that it’s a private matter are not returning anytime soon. The genies are not going back into their bottles. And this is, really, how revolution works. Revolutions are first of all of ideas.

of food, François Mitterrand, the French president, ordered a final course of ortolan, a tiny yellow-throated songbird no bigger than his thumb. The delicacy represented to him the soul of France. Mitterrand’s staff supervised the capture of the wild birds in a village in the south. The local police were paid off, the hunting was arranged, and the birds were captured, at sunrise, in special finely threaded nets along the edge of the forest. The ortolans were crated and driven in a darkened van to Mitterrand’s country house in Latche where he had spent his childhood summers. The sous-chef emerged and carried the cages indoors. The birds were fed for two weeks until they were plump enough to burst, then held by their feet over a vat of pure Armagnac, dipped headfirst and drowned alive. The head chef then plucked them, salted them, peppered them, and cooked them for seven minutes in their own fat before placing them in a freshly heated white cassole. When the dish was served, the wood-paneled room—with Mitterrand’s family, his wife, his children, his mistress, his friends—fell silent. He sat up in his chair, pushed aside the blankets from his knees, took a sip from a bottle of vintage Château Haut-Marbuzet. —The only interesting thing is to live, said Mitterrand.

Willa maintains a vigil. Certain tasks are relegated to women. Mourning, staring into the wastes, waiting for no one to surface. It's a white man who's missing. Usually, that would be enough to keep it in the news, but eight days in, the police release their grief in an official report. The art of blame-casting is a lesser sorcery. History is written in sand, and a broom changes everything. Every woman knows the art of covering up a mess: a carpet, a dustpan, bleach on the boards. What do you do with the cleaning supplies of the world? Use them to wash the blood away, and grind the bones into bread. Swallow the confessions whispered in bed. If events don't make sense, a story grows to cover up the confusion. Motives and mistakes.

The most servile Negroes are suspect, and every means is used to impress upon them the power of the White Citizens Councils. Even police brutality can be put to good use. An incident in Ruleville, Sunflower County, birthplace of the Council, will illustrate the point. Preston Johns, Negro renter on Senator Eastland's plantation near Blanc, is a "good nigger who knows his place." One day in May 1955, Preston's wife got into a fight with another Negro woman in the Jim Crow section of the Ruleville theater. The manager threw the women out and notified the police. While the police were questioning the women, Preston's daughter came up to see what was happening to her mother. Without warning, a policeman struck her over the head with the butt of his gun. She fell to the pavement bleeding badly. The police left her there. Someone went for her father. When he came up, the police threatened to kill him. Preston left and called Mr. Scruggs, one of Eastland's cronies. After half an hour, Scruggs came and permitted the girl to be lifted from the street and taken to the hospital. When Scruggs left, he yelled to the Negroes across the street: "You'll see who your friend is. If it wasn't for us Citizens Council members, she'd have near about died." One old Negro answered back, "I been tellin' these niggers Mr. Scruggs and Mr. Eastland is de best friends dey got." A few days later, Senator Eastland came to Ruleville to look the situation over. Many Negroes lined the streets and beamed at their "protector.

The bold, black masked pup goes to a surgeon in Santa Barara with two young daughters. The surgeon’s wife, Jill, takes one look at the pup’s confident gait and names him “Brag.” He’s a handsome fellow with over-sized paws and a serious disposition. The official name for his coloring is sable, which means he has as much black on him as he does brown. Brag grows deeply attached to his new family, never straying far from the little girls and always with one eye on Jill, whom he adores. Before Brag is a year old, Jill’s husband – an amateur pilot – hops in his plain and flies to Bakersfield for business. On his way home later that night, with two friends seated behind him, he miscalculates his position and flies into a mountain north of Santa Barbara. The plan disintegrates on impact. No one survives

Georgia pines flew past the windows of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac Woodard home to Winnsboro, South Carolina. After serving four years in the army in World War II, where he had earned a battle star, he had received an honorable discharge earlier that day at Camp Gordon and was headed home to meet his wife. When the bus stopped at a small drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, Woodard asked the white driver if he could go to the restroom and a brief argument ensued. About half an hour later, the driver stopped again and told Woodard to get off the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Woodard stepped from the stairs and saw white police waiting for him. Before he could speak, one of the officers struck him in the head with a billy club, then continued to beat him so badly that he fell unconscious. The blows to Woodard’s head were so severe that when he woke in a jail cell the next day, he could not see. The beating occurred just four and a half hours after the soldier’s military discharge. At twenty-six, Woodard would never see again.83 There was nothing unusual about Woodard’s horrific maiming. It was part of a wave of systemic violence that had been deployed continuously against Black Americans for decades since the end of Reconstruction, in both the North and the South. As the racially egalitarian spirit of post–Civil War America evaporated under the desire for national reunification, Black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded Black people almost entirely from

Georgia pines flew past the windows of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac Woodard home to Winnsboro, South Carolina. After serving four years in the army in World War II, where he had earned a battle star, he had received an honorable discharge earlier that day at Camp Gordon and was headed home to meet his wife. When the bus stopped at a small drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, Woodard asked the white driver if he could go to the restroom and a brief argument ensued. About half an hour later, the driver stopped again and told Woodard to get off the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Woodard stepped from the stairs and saw white police waiting for him. Before he could speak, one of the officers struck him in the head with a billy club, then continued to beat him so badly that he fell unconscious. The blows to Woodard’s head were so severe that when he woke in a jail cell the next day, he could not see. The beating occurred just four and a half hours after the soldier’s military discharge. At twenty-six, Woodard would never see again.83 There was nothing unusual about Woodard’s horrific maiming. It was part of a wave of systemic violence that had been deployed continuously against Black Americans for decades since the end of Reconstruction, in both the North and the South. As the racially egalitarian spirit of post–Civil War America evaporated under the desire for national reunification, Black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded Black people almost entirely from mainstream American life—a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies.84

Jeremy Spencer, always religious to an obsessive degree, had disappeared hours before a show while on tour with Fleetwood Mac in the U.S. According to band lore, it had happened right here in Los Angeles in 1971. He walked out of the band’s hotel room announcing, “Just going out to a bookstore”, and never returned. Somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard he climbed into a van belonging to members of a religious group who called themselves the Children of God. After a long, frantic search involving the police and close friends, Jeremy was finally tracked down to a ramshackle house that was the headquarters of the Children of God. He’d become a full-fledged member of a religious group that some would label a cult. And there he stayed. He refused to come back to either Fleetwood Mac or his wife and children, choosing instead to join a group of religious fanatics and leave all that he had ever known behind. And now he was standing in

She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I'd been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I'd sought her out that day--I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I'd spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy: I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can't pretend to love you, I can't do the anniversary thing--it would actually be more wring than cheating on you in the first place (I know: debatable.) But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and--the catch-22---I craved Andie to make me feel better, But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite. The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed.

I have always had a weakness for footnotes. For me a clever or a wicked footnote has redeemed many a text. And I see that I am now using a long footnote to open a serious subject - shifting in a quick move to Paris, to a penthouse in the Hotel Crillon. Early June. Breakfast time. The host is my good friend Professor Ravelstein, Abe Ravelstein. My wife and I, also staying at the Crillon, have a room below, on the sixth floor. She is still asleep. The entire floor below ours (this is not absolutely relevant but somehow I can't avoid mentioning it) is occupied just now by Michael Jackson and his entourage. He performs nightly in some vast Parisian auditorium. Very soon his French fans will arrive and a crowd of faces will be turned upward, shouting in unison, 'Miekell Jack-sown'. A police barrier holds the fans back. Inside, from the sixth floor, when you look down the marble stairwell you see Michael's bodyguards. One of them is doing the crossword puzzle in the 'Paris Herald'.

6 Eight days before he died, after a spectacular orgy of food, François Mitterrand, the French president, ordered a final course of ortolan, a tiny yellow-throated songbird no bigger than his thumb. The delicacy represented to him the soul of France. Mitterrand’s staff supervised the capture of the wild birds in a village in the south. The local police were paid off, the hunting was arranged, and the birds were captured, at sunrise, in special finely threaded nets along the edge of the forest. The ortolans were crated and driven in a darkened van to Mitterrand’s country house in Latche where he had spent his childhood summers. The sous-chef emerged and carried the cages indoors. The birds were fed for two weeks until they were plump enough to burst, then held by their feet over a vat of pure Armagnac, dipped headfirst and drowned alive. The head chef then plucked them, salted them, peppered them, and cooked them for seven minutes in their own fat before placing them in a freshly heated white cassole. When the dish was served, the wood-paneled room—with Mitterrand’s family, his wife, his children, his mistress, his friends—fell silent. He sat up in his chair, pushed aside the blankets from his knees, took a sip from a bottle of vintage Château Haut-Marbuzet. —The only interesting thing is to live, said Mitterrand. He shrouded his head with a white napkin to inhale the aroma of the birds and, as tradition dictated, to hide the act from the eyes of God. He picked up the songbirds and ate them whole: the succulent flesh, the fat, the bitter entrails, the wings, the tendons, the liver, the kidney, the warm heart, the feet, the tiny headbones crunching in his teeth. It took him several minutes to finish, his face hidden all the time under the white serviette. His family could hear the sounds of the bones snapping. Mitterrand dabbed the napkin at his mouth, pushed aside the earthenware cassole, lifted his head, smiled, bid good night and rose to go to bed. He fasted for the next eight and a half days until he died. 7 In Israel, the birds are tracked by sophisticated radar set up along the migratory routes all over the country—Eilat, Jerusalem, Latrun—with links to military installations and to the air traffic control offices at Ben Gurion airport.

In a few weeks almost everyone’s gonna forget about the Beirut bombing, like we forgot about the ever-incoming nuke, like we forgot about the President campaigning on student loan forgiveness, like we forgot about the actor who said not enough Jews died in the Holocaust and that he hoped his wife got gang raped, like how each new President makes the other Presidents look kinder and gentler, like we forget about war crimes, like we forget about the secret police, like we forget about the homeless when we can’t see them, like we forget what it’s like to be poor to be hungry the minute we have food we have money, like we forgot about Three Mile Island, like we forgot that fall and spring used to be as long as winter and summer like we forgot we could do something about this, like we forget about anything we don’t turn into a holiday and remember only the signs and symbols of the horror, like we forget each time we remember that it’s not that we forget, it’s that there are just too many tragedies, every week, forever and ever, and to remember them all would kill you. Your heart would break and stop beating and you'd die. So we forget.

In Woolrich's crime fiction there is a gradual development from pulp to noir. The earlier a story, the more likely it stresses pulp elements: one-dimensional macho protagonists, preposterous methods of murder, hordes of cardboard gangsters, dialogue full of whiny insults, blistering fast action. But even in some of his earliest crime stories one finds aspects of noir, and over time the stream works itself pure. In mature Woolrich the world is an incomprehensible place where beams happen to fall, and are predestined to fall, and are toppled over by malevolent powers; a world ruled by chance, fate and God the malign thug. But the everyday life he portrays is just as terrifying and treacherous. The dominant economic reality is the Depression, which for Woolrich usually means a frightened little guy in a rundown apartment with a hungry wife and children, no money, no job, and desperation eating him like a cancer. The dominant political reality is a police force made up of a few decent cops and a horde of sociopaths licensed to torture and kill, whose outrages are casually accepted by all concerned, not least by the victims. The prevailing emotional states are loneliness and fear. Events take place in darkness, menace breathes out of every corner of the night, the bleak cityscape comes alive on the page and in our hearts. ("Introduction")

Back in Tahoe, when he had broken the news to her that they had to go home, he had been put on the defensive by the fact that he was the one who’d had personal contact with a murdered woman. He had the feeling now that she was never going to forgive him for what she viewed as rape, and this latest incident had only fueled her fire. For the first time in their married lives, she’d stood up to him and rejected his excuses. He was beginning to think she’d known about his dalliances for years but for her own reasons had chosen to play dumb. But when she’d learned that the police wanted to question him regarding Marsha Benton’s murder, her days of playing dumb seemed to have ended. Penny feigned interest in her magazine, but inside, her thoughts were tumbling wildly. Last night while Mark was in the shower, she’d called Ken Walters, their lawyer. Ken had started off by claiming he couldn’t divulge his conversations with Mark, at which point she promptly reminded him that the money in their house was hers first, not Mark’s, and if he wanted to stay on retainer for the Presley Corporation, he’d better start talking. So he did. Learning that Marsha had been pregnant when she was murdered had nearly sent her to her knees. Knowing that her body had been found on their oil lease outside Tyler only made what she was thinking worse. She’d known Mark was devious, but she’d never believed him capable of murder. Now she wasn’t so sure. What she was certain of was that she wasn’t going to be dragged down with him if he fell. Tonight they were back in Dallas in what had been her father’s home first and was now hers. This was her territory, and she wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Mark glanced up from the chair where he’d been reading, watching the casual attitude with which Penny was sipping her drink. She was flipping through the pages of the magazine in her lap and humming beneath her breath as if nothing was wrong. It was unnerving. As he watched, he began to realize Penny wasn’t her father’s daughter by birth alone. There seemed to be more of the old man in her than he would have believed. Ever since he’d put his hands around her neck back in Tahoe, she had been cold and unyielding, even when he’d apologized profusely. Then, when he’d had to tell her that the police demanded his presence back in Dallas for questioning regarding Marsha Benton’s death, she’d been livid. He’d tried to explain, but she wasn’t having any of it. He didn’t want to lose her. He couldn’t lose her. Even though the world assumed that Mark Presley was the reigning power behind the Presley Corporation, it was really Penny. Mark had the authority simply because Penny was his wife. If she kicked his ass to the curb, the only thing he would be taking with him were the bruises.

Parents need to awaken to the fact that some of today’s trendy tunes on the pop charts include lyrics that glamourize illicit drug usage, encourage demoralizing sexual activity, and blaspheme God. It was difficult enough for me to read the lyrics to some of these songs in my research for this book, much less think about what they represent and how they mock godly principles. “Just harmless music,” you say; “another form of artful expression.” After all, “no one bothers listening to the words anyway; they’re just interested in the beat . . . right?” Think on this disturbing story: A twenty-nine-year-old man confessed to police that he sang songs while fatally stabbing his wife and daughter. His four-year-old son survived the attack despite being stabbed eleven times. According to police, the husband and father said he was possessed and believed that his wife was a demon. (Note: It is not possible for a human being to become a demon, but one can be controlled by demonic forces.) The man reportedly told the police that just before stabbing his wife, he started screaming lyrics from a popular rap song, saying, “Here comes Satan. I’m the anti-Christ; I’m going to kill you.” Police said this father admitted that when the kids awoke to their mother’s screams, he stabbed them too. He said he stabbed his son the most because he loved him the most. Then he rolled a cigarette, said another prayer, and called 911.14

Is Joanna Gaines here? We have a warrant here for her arrest,” the officer said. It was the tickets. I knew it. And I panicked. I picked up my son and I hid in the closet. I literally didn’t know what to do. I’d never even had a speeding ticket, and all of a sudden I’m thinking, I’m about to go to prison, and my child won’t be able to eat. What is this kid gonna do? I heard Chip say, “She’s not here.” Thankfully, Drake didn’t make a peep, and the officer believed him. He said, “Well, just let her know we’re looking for her,” and they left. Jo’s the most conservative girl in the world. She had never even been late for school. I mean, this girl was straitlaced. So now we realize there’s a citywide warrant out for her arrest, and we’re like, “Oh, crap.” In her defense, Jo had wanted to pay those tickets off all along, and I was the one saying, “No way. I’m not paying these tickets.” So we decided to try to make it right. We called the judge, and the court clerk told us, “Okay, you have an appointment at three in the afternoon to discuss the tickets. See you then.” We wanted to ask the judge if he could remove a few of them for us. “The fines for our dogs “running at large” on our front porch just seemed a bit excessive. We arrived at the courthouse, and Chip was carrying Drake in his car seat. I couldn’t carry it because I was still recovering from Drake’s delivery. We got inside and spoke to a clerk. They looked at the circumstances and decided to switch all the tickets into Chip’s name. Those dogs were basically mine, and it didn’t make sense to have the tickets in her name. But as soon as they did that, this police officer walked over and said, “Hey, do you mind emptying out all of your pockets?” I got up and cooperated. “Absolutely. Yep,” I said. I figured it was just procedure before we went in to see the judge. Then he said, “Yeah, you mind taking off your belt?” I thought, That’s a little weird. Then he said, “Do you mind turning around and putting your hands behind your back?” They weren’t going to let us talk to the judge at all. The whole thing was just a sting to get us to come down there and be arrested. They arrested Chip on the spot. And I’m sitting there saying, “I can’t carry this baby in his car seat. What am I supposed to do?” I started bawling. “You can’t take him!” I cried. But they did. They took him right outside and put him in the back of a police car. Now I feel like the biggest loser in the world. I’m in the back of a police car as my crying wife comes out holding our week-old baby. I’m walking out, limping, and waving to him as they drive away. And I can’t even wave because my hands are cuffed behind my back. So here I am awkwardly trying to make a waving motion with my shoulder and squinching my face just to try to make Jo feel better. It was just the most comical thing, honestly. A total joke. To take a man to jail because his dogs liked to walk around a neighborhood, half of which he owns? But it sure wasn’t funny at the time. I was flooded with hormones and just could not stop crying. They told me they were taking my husband to the county jail. Luckily we had a buddy who was an attorney, so I called him. I was clueless. “I’ve never dated a guy that’s been in trouble, and now I’ve got a husband that’s in jail.

In a civilization frankly materialistic and based upon property, not soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes against the person. To pound one's wife to a jelly and break a few of her ribs is a trivial offence compared with sleeping out under the naked stars because one has not the price of a doss. The following illustrative cases are culled from the police court reports for a single week: South-western Police Court, London. Before Mr. Rose. John Probyn, charged with doing grievous bodily harm to a constable. Prisoner had been kicking his wife, and also assaulting another woman who protested against his brutality. The constable tried to persuade him to go inside his house, but prisoner suddenly turned upon him, knocking him down by a blow on the face, kicking him as he lay on the ground, and attempting to strangle him. Finally the prisoner deliberately kicked the officer in a dangerous part, inflicting an injury which will keep him off duty for a long time to come. Six weeks. Lambeth Police Court, London. Before Mr. Hopkins. 'Baby' Stuart, aged nineteen, described as a chorus girl, charged with obtaining food and lodging to the value of 5s., by false pretences, and with intent to defraud Emma Brasier. Emma Brasier, complainant, lodging-house keeper of Atwell Road. Prisoner took apartments at her house on the representation that she was employed at the Crown Theatre. After prisoner had been in her house two or three days, Mrs. Brasier made inquiries, and, finding the girl's story untrue, gave her into custody. Prisoner told the magistrate that she would have worked “had she not had such bad health. Six weeks hard labor.

the greatest inspiration for institutional change in American law enforcement came on an airport tarmac in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 4, 1971. The United States was experiencing an epidemic of airline hijackings at the time; there were five in one three-day period in 1970. It was in that charged atmosphere that an unhinged man named George Giffe Jr. hijacked a chartered plane out of Nashville, Tennessee, planning to head to the Bahamas. By the time the incident was over, Giffe had murdered two hostages—his estranged wife and the pilot—and killed himself to boot. But this time the blame didn’t fall on the hijacker; instead, it fell squarely on the FBI. Two hostages had managed to convince Giffe to let them go on the tarmac in Jacksonville, where they’d stopped to refuel. But the agents had gotten impatient and shot out the engine. And that had pushed Giffe to the nuclear option. In fact, the blame placed on the FBI was so strong that when the pilot’s wife and Giffe’s daughter filed a wrongful death suit alleging FBI negligence, the courts agreed. In the landmark Downs v. United States decision of 1975, the U.S. Court of Appeals wrote that “there was a better suited alternative to protecting the hostages’ well-being,” and said that the FBI had turned “what had been a successful ‘waiting game,’ during which two persons safely left the plane, into a ‘shooting match’ that left three persons dead.” The court concluded that “a reasonable attempt at negotiations must be made prior to a tactical intervention.” The Downs hijacking case came to epitomize everything not to do in a crisis situation, and inspired the development of today’s theories, training, and techniques for hostage negotiations. Soon after the Giffe tragedy, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) became the first police force in the country to put together a dedicated team of specialists to design a process and handle crisis negotiations. The FBI and others followed. A new era of negotiation had begun. HEART

University, where she is an adjunct professor of education and serves on the Veterans Committee, among about a thousand other things. That’s heroism. I have taken the kernel of her story and do what I do, which is dramatize, romanticize, exaggerate, and open fire. Hence, Game of Snipers. Now, on to apologies, excuses, and evasions. Let me offer the first to Tel Aviv; Dearborn, Michigan; Greenville, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Rock Springs, Wyoming; and Anacostia, D.C. I generally go to places I write about to check the lay of streets, the fall of shadows, the color of police cars, and the taste of local beer. At seventy-three, such ordeals-by-airport are no longer fun, not even the beer part; I only go where there’s beaches. For this book, I worked from maps and Google, and any geographical mistakes emerge out of that practice. Is the cathedral three hundred yards from the courthouse in Wichita? Hmm, seems about right, and that’s good enough for me on this. On the other hand, I finally got Bob’s wife’s name correct. It’s Julie, right? I’ve called her Jen more than once, but I’m pretty sure Jen was Bud Pewtie’s wife in Dirty White Boys. For some reason, this mistake seemed to trigger certain Amazon reviewers into psychotic episodes. Folks, calm down, have a drink, hug someone soft. It’ll be all right. As for the shooting, my account of the difficulties of hitting at over a mile is more or less accurate (snipers have done it at least eight times). I have simplified, because it is so arcane it would put all but the most dedicated in a coma. I have also been quite accurate about the ballistics app FirstShot, because I made it up and can make it do anything I want. The other shot, the three hundred, benefits from the wisdom of Craig Boddington, the great hunter and writer, who looked it over and sent me a detailed email, from which I have borrowed much. Naturally, any errors are mine, not Craig’s. I met Craig when shooting something (on film!) for another boon companion, Michael Bane, and his Outdoor Channel Gun Stories crew. For some reason, he finds it amusing when I start jabbering away and likes to turn the camera on. Don’t ask me why. On the same trip, I also met the great firearms historian and all-around movie guy (he knows more than I do) Garry James, who has become

You will make a very good Chief Magistrate, I think.” Shock swept over him that he fought mightily to disguise. So she knew of that, did she? “I’m only one of several possible candidates, madam. You do me great honor to assume I’ll be chosen.” “Masters tells me that the appointment is all but settled.” “Then Masters knows more than I do on the subject.” “And more than my granddaughter as well,” she said. His stomach knotted. Damn Mrs. Plumtree and her machinations. “But I’m sure you took great pains to inform her of it.” The woman hesitated, then gripped the head of her cane with both hands. “I thought she should have all the facts before she threw herself into a misalliance.” Hell and blazes. And Mrs. Plumtree had probably implied that a rich wife would advance his career. He could easily guess how Celia would respond to hearing that, especially after he’d fallen on her with all the subtlety of an ox in rut. His temper swelled. Although he’d suspected that Mrs. Plumtree wouldn’t approve of him for her granddaughter, some part of him had thought that his service to the family-and the woman’s own humble beginnings-might keep her from behaving predictably. He should have known better. “No doubt she was grateful for the information.” After all, it gave Celia just the excuse she needed to continue in her march to marry a great lord. “She claimed that there was nothing between you and her.” “She’s right.” There never had been. He’d been a fool to think there could me. “I am glad to hear it.” Her sidelong glance was filled with calculation. “Because if you play your cards right, you have an even better prospect before you than that of Chief Magistrate.” He froze. “What do you mean?” “You may not be aware of this, but one of my friends is the Home Secretary, Robert Peel. Your superior.” “I’m well aware who my superior is.” “It seems he wishes to establish a police force,” she went on. “He is fairly certain that it will come to pass eventually. When it does, he will appoint a commissioner to oversee the entire force in London.” She cast him a hard stare. “You could be that man.” Jackson fought to hide his surprise. He’d heard rumors of Peel’s plans, of course, but hadn’t realized that they’d progressed so far. Or that she was privy to them. Then it dawned on him why she was telling him this. “You mean, I could be that man if I leave your granddaughter alone.

Sebastian encountered Cam in the hallway outside the reading room. “Where is he?” he demanded without preamble. Stopping before him with an expressionless face, Cam said shortly, “He’s gone.” “Why didn’t you follow him?” White-hot fury blazed in Sebastian’s eyes. This news, added to the frustration of his vow of celibacy, was the last straw. Cam, who had been exposed to years of Ivo Jenner’s volcanic temper, remained unruffled. “It was unnecessary in my judgment,” he said. “He won’t return.” “I don’t pay you to act on your own damned judgment. I pay you to act on mine! You should have dragged him here by the throat and then let me decide what was to be done with the bastard.” Cam remained silent, sliding a quick, subtle glance at Evie, who was inwardly relieved by the turn of events. They were both aware that had Cam brought Bullard back to the club, there was a distinct possibility that Sebastian might actually have killed him— and the last thing Evie wanted was a murder charge on her husband’s head. “I want him found,” Sebastian said vehemently, pacing back and forth across the reading room. “I want at least two men hired to look for him day and night until he is brought to me. I swear he’ll serve as an example to anyone who even thinks of lifting a finger against my wife.” He raised his arm and pointed to the doorway. “Bring me a list of names within the hour. The best detectives available— private ones. I don’t want some idiot from the New Police, who’ll foul this up as they do everything else. Go.” Though Cam undoubtedly had a few opinions to offer on the matter, he kept them to himself. “Yes, my lord.” He left the room at once, while Sebastian glared after him. Seeking to calm his seething temper, Evie ventured, “There is no need to take your anger out on Cam. He—” “Don’t even try to excuse him,” Sebastian said darkly. “You and I both know that he could have caught that damned gutter rat had he wanted to. And I’ll be damned if I’ll tolerate your calling him by his first name— he is not your brother, nor is he a friend. He’s an employee, and you’ll refer to him as ‘Mr. Rohan’ from now on.” “He is my friend,” Evie replied in outrage. “He has been for years!” “Married women don’t have friendships with young unmarried men.” “Y-you dare to insult my honor with the implication that… that…” Evie could hardly speak for the multitude of protests that jammed inside her. “I’ve done nothing to merit such a lack of tr-tr-trust!” “I trust you. It’s everyone else that I hold in suspicion.

In the shock of the moment, I gave some thought to renting a convertible and driving the twenty-seven hundred miles back alone. But then I realized I was neither single nor crazy. The acting director decided that, given the FBI’s continuing responsibility for my safety, the best course was to take me back on the plane I came on, with a security detail and a flight crew who had to return to Washington anyway. We got in the vehicle to head for the airport. News helicopters tracked our journey from the L.A. FBI office to the airport. As we rolled slowly in L.A. traffic, I looked to my right. In the car next to us, a man was driving while watching an aerial news feed of us on his mobile device. He turned, smiled at me through his open window, and gave me a thumbs-up. I’m not sure how he was holding the wheel. As we always did, we pulled onto the airport tarmac with a police escort and stopped at the stairs of the FBI plane. My usual practice was to go thank the officers who had escorted us, but I was so numb and distracted that I almost forgot to do it. My special assistant, Josh Campbell, as he often did, saw what I couldn’t. He nudged me and told me to go thank the cops. I did, shaking each hand, and then bounded up the airplane stairs. I couldn’t look at the pilots or my security team for fear that I might get emotional. They were quiet. The helicopters then broadcast our plane’s taxi and takeoff. Those images were all over the news. President Trump, who apparently watches quite a bit of TV at the White House, saw those images of me thanking the cops and flying away. They infuriated him. Early the next morning, he called McCabe and told him he wanted an investigation into how I had been allowed to use the FBI plane to return from California. McCabe replied that he could look into how I had been allowed to fly back to Washington, but that he didn’t need to. He had authorized it, McCabe told the president. The plane had to come back, the security detail had to come back, and the FBI was obligated to return me safely. The president exploded. He ordered that I was not to be allowed back on FBI property again, ever. My former staff boxed up my belongings as if I had died and delivered them to my home. The order kept me from seeing and offering some measure of closure to the people of the FBI, with whom I had become very close. Trump had done a lot of yelling during the campaign about McCabe and his former candidate wife. He had been fixated on it ever since. Still in a fury at McCabe, Trump then asked him, “Your wife lost her election in Virginia, didn’t she?” “Yes, she did,” Andy replied. The president of the United States then said to the acting director of the FBI, “Ask her how it feels to be a loser” and hung up the phone.

HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES: Part I THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom's place, There was old Tom, boiled to the eyes, blind, (Don't you remember that time after a dance, Top hats and all, we and Silk Hat Harry, And old Tom took us behind, brought out a bottle of fizz, With old Jane, Tom's wife; and we got Joe to sing 'I'm proud of all the Irish blood that's in me, 'There's not a man can say a word agin me'). Then we had dinner in good form, and a couple of Bengal lights. When we got into the show, up in Row A, I tried to put my foot in the drum, and didn't the girl squeal, She never did take to me, a nice guy - but rough; The next thing we were out in the street, Oh it was cold! When will you be good? Blew in to the Opera Exchange, Sopped up some gin, sat in to the cork game, Mr. Fay was there, singing 'The Maid of the Mill'; Then we thought we'd breeze along and take a walk. Then we lost Steve. ('I turned up an hour later down at Myrtle's place. What d'y' mean, she says, at two o'clock in the morning, I'm not in business here for guys like you; We've only had a raid last week, I've been warned twice. Sergeant, I said, I've kept a decent house for twenty years, she says, There's three gents from the Buckingham Club upstairs now, I'm going to retire and live on a farm, she says, There's no money in it now, what with the damage don, And the reputation the place gets, on account off of a few bar-flies, I've kept a clean house for twenty years, she says, And the gents from the Buckingham Club know they're safe here; You was well introduced, but this is the last of you. Get me a woman, I said; you're too drunk, she said, But she gave me a bed, and a bath, and ham and eggs, And now you go get a shave, she said; I had a good laugh, couple of laughs (?) Myrtle was always a good sport'). treated me white. We'd just gone up the alley, a fly cop came along, Looking for trouble; committing a nuisance, he said, You come on to the station. I'm sorry, I said, It's no use being sorry, he said; let me get my hat, I said. Well by a stroke of luck who came by but Mr. Donovan. What's this, officer. You're new on this beat, aint you? I thought so. You know who I am? Yes, I do, Said the fresh cop, very peevish. Then let it alone, These gents are particular friends of mine. - Wasn't it luck? Then we went to the German Club, Us We and Mr. Donovan and his friend Joe Leahy, Heinie Gus Krutzsch Found it shut. I want to get home, said the cabman, We all go the same way home, said Mr. Donovan, Cheer up, Trixie and Stella; and put his foot through the window. The next I know the old cab was hauled up on the avenue, And the cabman and little Ben Levin the tailor, The one who read George Meredith, Were running a hundred yards on a bet, And Mr. Donovan holding the watch. So I got out to see the sunrise, and walked home. * * * * April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land....

One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to the hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had a concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A gas station attendant in a neighboring village, beside the bridge over the highway to Copenhagen, had seen her go the wrong way up the exit and drive at high speed into the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to maneuver around her, but about 200 meters after the junction she collided head-on with a truck. The Dutch driver was admitted for observation but released the next day. According to his statement he started to brake a good 100 meters before the crash, while the car seemed to actually increase its speed over the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck between the road and the truck's bumper, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived. On arrival at the hospital the woman was in very critical condition, and it was twenty-four hours before she was out of serious danger. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale. Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance. She had auburn hair and green eyes in a narrow face with high cheek-bones. She was slim and fairly tall. It turned out she was Danish, born in Copenhagen. Her husband, Andreas Bark, arrived with their small son while she was still on the operating table. The couple's home was an isolated old farmhouse in the woods seven kilometers from the site of the accident. Andreas Bark told the police he had tried to stop his wife from driving. He thought she had just gone out for a breath of air when he heard the car start. By the time he got outside he saw it disappearing along the road. She had been drinking a lot. They had had a marital disagreement. Those were the words he used; he was not questioned further on that point. Early in the morning, when Lucca Montale was moved from the operating room into intensive care, her husband was still in the waiting room with the sleeping boy's head on his lap. He was looking out at the sky and the dark trees when Robert sat down next to him. Andreas Bark went on staring into the gray morning light with an exhausted, absent gaze. He seemed slightly younger than Robert, in his late thirties. He had dark, wavy hair and a prominent chin, his eyes were narrow and deep-set, and he was wearing a shabby leather jacket. Robert rested his hands on his knees in the green cotton trousers and looked down at the perforations in the leather uppers of his white clogs. He realized he had forgotten to take off his plastic cap after the operation. The thin plastic crackled between his hands. Andreas looked at him and Robert straightened up to meet his gaze. The boy woke.

approach. Figure out who is benefiting. Didn’t take him long to piece it together. The textile processor up in Mississippi State looked good. He was under attack from the eight who died. Two of them were attacking him commercially. The other six were threatening to close him down. Spirenza pulled him apart. Turned him inside out. He was on his back for a year. The paperwork in my hand was a testimony to that. Spirenza had pulled in the FBI and the IRS. They’d searched every cent in every account for unexplained cash payments to the elusive shooter. They’d searched for a year and found nothing. On the way, they turned up a lot of unsavory stuff. Spirenza was convinced the guy had killed his wife. Plain beat her to death was his verdict. The guy had married again and Spirenza had faxed the local police department with a warning. The guy’s only son was a psychopath. Worse than his father, in Spirenza’s view. A stone-cold psychopath. The textile processor had protected his son every step of the way. Covered for him. Paid his way out of trouble. The boy had records from a dozen different institutions. But nothing would stick. New Orleans FBI had lost interest. Spirenza had closed the case.

Your wife?” “Right.” “What does she do?” Tracy asked. “She works for a janitorial company; they clean the buildings downtown.” “She works nights?” Kins said. “Yeah.” “Do you have kids?” Tracy asked. “A daughter.” “Who watches your daughter when you and your wife are working nights?” “My mother-in-law.” “Does she stay at your house?” Tracy said. “No, my wife drops her off on her way to work.” “So nobody was at home when you got there Sunday night?” Bankston shook his head. “No.” He sat up again. “Can I ask a question?” “Sure.” “Why are you asking me these questions?” “That’s fair,” Kins said, looking to Tracy before answering. “One of our labs found your DNA on a piece of rope left at a crime scene.” “My DNA?” “It came up in the computer database because of your military service. The computer generated it, so we have to follow up and try to get to the bottom of it.” “Any thoughts on that?” Tracy said. Bankston squinted. “I guess I could have touched it when I wasn’t wearing my gloves.” Tracy looked to Kins, and they both nodded as if to say, “That’s plausible,” which was for Bankston’s benefit. Her instincts were telling her otherwise. She said, “We were hoping there’s a way we could determine where that rope was delivered, to which Home Depot.” “I wouldn’t know that,” Bankston said. “Do they keep records of where things are shipped? I mean, is there a way we could match a piece of rope to a particular shipment from this warehouse?” “I don’t know. I wouldn’t know how to do that. That’s computer stuff, and I’m strictly the labor, you know?” “What did you do in the Army?” Kins asked. “Advance detail.” “What does advance detail do?” “We set up the bases.” “What did that entail?” “Pouring concrete and putting up the tilt-up buildings and tents.” “So no combat?” Kins asked. “No.” “Are those tents like those big circus tents?” Tracy asked. “Sort of like that.” “They still hold them up with stakes and rope?” “Still do.” “That part of your job?” “Yeah, sure.” “Okay, listen, David,” Tracy said. “I know you were in the police academy.” “You do?” “It came up on our computer system. So I’m guessing you know that our job is to eliminate suspects just as much as it is to find them.” “Sure.” “And we got your DNA on a piece of rope found at a crime scene.” “Right.” “So I have to ask if you would you be willing to come in and help us clear you.” “Now?” “No. When you get off work; when it’s convenient.” Bankston gave it some thought. “I suppose I could come in after work. I get off around four. I’d have to call my wife.” “Four o’clock works,” Tracy said. She was still trying to figure Bankston out. He seemed nervous, which wasn’t unexpected when two homicide detectives came to your place of work to ask you questions, but he also seemed to almost be enjoying the interaction, an indication that he might still be a cop wannabe, someone who listened to police and fire scanners and got off on cop shows. But it was more than his demeanor giving her pause. There was the fact that Bankston had handled the rope, that his time card showed he’d had the opportunity to have killed at least Schreiber and Watson, and that he had no alibi for those nights, not with his wife working and his daughter with his mother-in-law. Tracy would have Faz and Del take Bankston’s photo to the Dancing Bare and the Pink Palace, to see if anyone recognized him. She’d also run his name through the Department of Licensing to determine what type of car he drove. “What would I have to do . . . to clear me?” “We’d like you to take a lie detector test. They’d ask you questions like the ones we just asked you—where you work, details about your job, those sorts of things.” “Would you be the one administering the test?” “No,” Tracy said. “We’d have someone trained to do that give you the test, but both Detective Rowe and I would be there to help get you set up.” “Okay,” Bankston said. “But like I said, I have

It was at that moment Stephanie became acutely aware of the paradox of the police wife. She must be humble and grateful; she had a role to play for Jason and his profession. Although what she was feeling inside was contrary to what was expected, in a way she belonged to society as a movie star belongs to their fans. She stood for hours shaking hands and hugging well-wishers, hearing generic statements that were meant to ease her pain but couldn’t, making decisions to appease the people who wanted to grieve with her, and all the while the line of mourners kept getting longer. Stephanie wasn’t ungrateful. She was numb. When you live your life simply and are suddenly thrown into the spotlight, it becomes difficult to manage, understand, and cope. Being the center of attention because of a death brings a chaos that most people will never experience. Stephanie shared her husband, her grief, and her family with the public at the most private moment of her life. She knew that it was her responsibility as the wife of a public servant. For that, they thanked her.

Larry Hawkins, 35, editor-publisher of the People’s Times, a weekly newspaper devoted to local politics, was found dead this morning in an alley outside the Times offices at 1140 Cleveland Street, a police spokesman said. Hawkins, an apparent suicide, had fallen from his office window on the building’s seventh floor. A note was found, the spokesman said. Hawkins, self-styled “gadfly” of the City’s political establishment, was a well-known local figure. The People’s Times began publication three years ago. Hawkins is survived by his wife, Susanna, and two sons.

I’m Captain Florida, the state history pimp Gatherin’ more data than a DEA blimp West Palm, Tampa Bay, Miami-Dade Cruisin’ the coasts till Johnny Vegas gets laid Developer ho’s, and the politician bitches Smackin’ ’em down, while I’m takin’ lots of pictures Hurricanes, sinkholes, natural disaster ’Scuse me while I kick back, with my View-Master (S:) I’m Captain Florida, obscure facts are all legit (C:) I’m Coleman, the sidekick, with a big bong hit (S:) I’m Captain Florida, staying literate (C:) Coleman sees a book and says, “Fuck that shit” Ain’t never been caught, slippin’ nooses down the Keys Got more buoyancy than Elián González Knockin’ off the parasites, and takin’ all their moola Recruiting my apostles for the Church of Don Shula I’m an old-school gangster with a psycho ex-wife Molly Packin’ Glocks, a shotgun and my 7-Eleven coffee Trippin’ the theme parks, the malls, the time-shares Bustin’ my rhymes through all the red-tide scares (S:) I’m the surge in the storms, don’t believe the hype (C:) I’m his stoned number two, where’d I put my hash pipe? (S:) Florida, no appointments and a tank of gas (C:) Tequila, no employment and a bag of grass Think you’ve seen it all? I beg to differ Mosquitoes like bats and a peg-leg stripper The scammers, the schemers, the real estate liars Birthday-party clowns in a meth-lab fire But dig us, don’t diss us, pay a visit, don’t be late And statistics always lie, so ignore the murder rate Beaches, palm trees and golfing is our curse Our residents won’t bite, but a few will shoot first Everglades, orange groves, alligators, Buffett Scarface, Hemingway, an Andrew Jackson to suck it Solarcaine, Rogaine, eight balls of cocaine See the hall of fame for the criminally insane Artifacts, folklore, roadside attractions Crackers, Haitians, Cuban-exile factions The early-bird specials, drivin’ like molasses Condo-meeting fistfights in cataract glasses (S:) I’m the native tourist, with the rants that can’t be beat (C:) Serge, I think I put my shoes on the wrong feet (S:) A stack of old postcards in another dingy room (C:) A cold Bud forty and a magic mushroom Can’t stop, turnpike, keep ridin’ like the wind Gotta make a detour for a souvenir pin But if you like to litter, you’re just liable to get hurt Do ya like the MAC-10 under my tropical shirt? I just keep meeting jerks, I’m a human land-filler But it’s totally unfair, this term “serial killer” The police never rest, always breakin’ in my pad But sunshine is my bling, and I’m hangin’ like a chad (S:) Serge has got to roll and drop the mike on this rap . . . (C:) Coleman’s climbin’ in the tub, to take a little nap . . . (S:) . . . Disappearin’ in the swamp—and goin’ tangent, tangent, tangent . . . (C:) He’s goin’ tangent, tangent . . . (Fade-out) (S:) I’m goin’ tangent, tangent . . . (C:) Fuck goin’ platinum, he’s goin’ tangent, tangent . . . (S:) . . . Wikipedia all up and down your ass . . . (C:) Wikity-Wikity-Wikity . . .

You might have thought that bird watching would be recognized as the most harmless, inoffensive, innocent of pastimes, and yet .... There was the time I was brought out of my reverie by a police officer who clearly thought I was loitering with criminal intent.  When I responded "It's a Hudsonian Godwit!" he revised his assessment from "hardened criminal" to "dangerous loony". Fortunately my wife intervened, and he came to accept that I was in fact a harmless loony who could be safely left in her care.

Gary. I have another reason for talking to you. Let me introduce to you to Mikayla Robertson, she’s your new wife. Mikayla, this is your new husband, Gary Jackson.” Gary stood there, not sure what to say, so he said, “Really? Isn’t this kind of sudden? How can she be my wife if I’ve never seen her, and haven’t even dated her?” “Gary, have you not heard of betrothals? Both of your mothers were impregnated around the same time, by two different KGB agents, by the way. The powers-that-be at the time, decided to have you betrothed to each other. When the time came, and it was appropriate for you two to meet, you would be officially married. So, all I need to do is wed you two. The paperwork is all in order. So, when do you two want to begin?” Gary looked at Mikayla, who had been silent up to this point. She shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I don’t care. Mr. Jackson doesn’t seem like he likes this any better than I do. I had a fiancé, but he mysteriously disappeared, probably no thanks to the KGB or the police of this city. I thought the KGB had forgotten all about this, so I moved on with my personal life.

The English Ambassador writes to the Chief of the Paris Police, who replies that he’s confident I am not here, then turns round and surprises his wife with a new diamond bracelet. It’s all very civilized.

Whether you sweep the toilet of a school or you make cloths. Whether you take pictures of dancers or you are a full-time house wife. Whether you are a village jester or the president of a company, never trivialize what you do. Your work, no matter how small you think it is can make a difference in someone's life. It all begins with you. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. I have seen a traffic police bring minutes of joy and happiness to people's lives in a way that Presidents of nations cannot. Anytime you trivialize what gives you an income, you sell yourself cheap and lose your dignity. Do your work with all excitement, joy and positivity. Learn and grow from it. And if you haven't found a job to do, look for one with the same zeal as you would do the actual work. Good morning and may God bless our efforts. Emi Iyalla

was now over two million dollars, a nice little nest egg nobody knew about, not even his ex-wife. The $200,000 from Smith would simply be walking-around cash. The St. Paul police and the bureau suspected Smith had a partner when they took him down, but Smith never put Burton’s name in play. He took all the weight. When Smith was being sodomized in jail, when the bureau visited him, talking about how they could make his life easier if he just told them who he worked with, he didn’t give in, didn’t fold, and didn’t turn in his partner. Burton knew all this, tracking his partner’s incarceration, always worried he might break. He never did. Meanwhile, Burton moved to kidnapping and found his true calling within the bureau. When he brought home the daughter of one of New York’s wealthiest businessmen, taking down the kidnappers in a spectacular chase through the subway tunnels, his name and reputation were cemented. He published a book. Traveled the country speaking about his cases, and now performed training for the bureau. Retiring at the end of the year, he could expect to greatly enhance his wealth on the speaking circuit. Several prestigious colleges had inquired of his interest in teaching. His life was set. Then, four months ago Smith showed up on his doorstep. Burton owed him and there was no argument. His life was what it was because Smith never turned him in. Smith took all the heat, and Burton ended up with all the glory. Burton spent days and nights thinking of ways out of helping Smith. He offered up part of his nest egg. Smith wasn’t interested. Burton offered to put him in touch with people who would put him to work, let him earn a respectable living, start a new life, a comfortable life, a decent life. Smith wasn’t interested in any of that. He wanted one thing: he wanted Charlie Flanagan, and he didn’t just want to hurt him, he wanted to gut him. And Burton owed him. And if Burton refused, Smith would kill him. If he could just get through the next day, help Smith get what he wanted and get his crew theirs; he’d be free and clear. Smith would be gone. Burton could retire a happy and wealthy man. If Charlie Flanagan, Lyman Hisle, and their daughters had to pay the ultimate price for that—well, it was him or them. If that was the way it had to be, he’d

Rather than a state of equal brotherhood and sisterhood, Kim had introduced an elaborate social order in which the eleven million ordinary North Korean citizens were classified according to their perceived political reliability. The songbun system, as it was known, ruthlessly reorganized the entire social system of North Korea into a communistic pseudofeudal system, with every individual put through eight separate background checks, their family history taken into account as far back as their grandparents and second cousins. Your final rating, or songbun, put you in one of fifty-one grades, divided into three broad categories, from top to bottom: the core class, the wavering class, and the hostile class. The hostile class included vast swathes of society, from the politically suspect (“people from families of wealthy farmers, merchants, industrialists, landowners; pro-Japan and pro-U.S. people; reactionary bureaucrats; defectors from the South; Buddhists, Catholics, expelled public officials”) to kiaesaeng (the Korean equivalent of geishas) and mudang (rural shamans). Although North Koreans weren’t informed of their new classification, it quickly became clear to most people what class they had been assigned. North Koreans of the hostile class were banned from living in Pyongyang or in the most fertile areas of the countryside, and they were excluded from any good jobs. There was virtually no upward mobility—once hostile, forever hostile—but plenty downward. If you were found to be doing anything that was illegal or frowned upon by the regime, you and your family’s songbun would suffer. Personal files were kept locked away in local offices, and were backed up in the offices of the Ministry for the Protection of State Security and in a blast-resistant vault in the mountains of Yanggang province. There was no way to tamper with your status, and no way to escape it. The most cunning part of it all was that Kim Il-Sung came up with a way for his subjects to enforce their own oppression by organizing the people into inminban (“people’s groups”), cooperatives of twenty or so families per neighborhood whose duty it was to keep tabs on one another and to inform on any potentially criminal or subversive behavior. These were complemented by kyuch’aldae, mobile police units on constant lookout for infringers, who had the authority to burst into your home or office at any time of day or night. Offenses included using more than your allocated quota of electricity, wearing blue jeans, wearing clothes bearing Roman writing (a “capitalist indulgence”) and allowing your hair to grow longer than the authorized length. Worse still, Kim decreed that any one person’s guilt also made that person’s family, three generations of it, guilty of the same crime. Opposing the regime meant risking your grandparents, your wife, your children—no matter how young—being imprisoned and tortured with you. Historically, Koreans had been subject to a caste system similar to India’s and equally as rigid. In the early years of the DPRK, the North Korean people felt this was just a modernized revitalization of that traditional social structure. By the time they realized something was awfully wrong, that a pyramid had been built, and that at the top of it, on the very narrow peak, sat Kim Il-Sung, alone, perched on the people’s broken backs, on their murdered families and friends, on their destroyed lives—by the time they paused and dared to contemplate that their liberator, their savior, was betraying them—in fact, had always betrayed them—it was already much, much too late.

Regularly the police posted notices to alert us to some activity, previously considered normal, which had now become a crime. Going to a dance hall, attending the cinema, drinking a beer in a café—all became crimes for us Jews. And the worst crime of all, said Frau Fleschner, pointing to the notice, was Rassenschande, racial disgrace—specifically, sexual relations between Germans and Jews. You could go to jail for that, she said.

Even away from the set and in Joseph, Walter Brennan continued to police his performances—as Louise Kunz observed when he visited his wife in the hospital, where she was recuperating from an operation. At the only television set in the hospital, everyone gathered around to view The Real McCoys. Louise and a group of teenage kids watched as Walter said, “Oh, I did that okay. Oh, I’ve got to work on that, that’s terrible.” When the episode ended, a boy asked him how he remembered to limp. Walter said he put a tiny pebble in his shoe; otherwise he limped on the wrong foot. Diane Turner remembers the times Walter would enter the local drugstore, sit down at the soda fountain, and entertain everyone with his Grandpa Amos routines. When his granddaughter Tammy Crawford watched The Real McCoys, she would get upset because every episode the characters would get mad at her Grampy—although by the end of the show he would have learned his lesson.

He said that he saw my books and asked me whether I would teach him and his wife English. I thought that was an entrapping offer and I replied that I would gladly teach them German. He insisted that they would rather learn English. I offered to teach them as soon as he and his wife were ready. Father and myself walked home elated. He did not understand the long conversation, however, he realized that it was a very friendly chat. We got rid of a threatening charge and we even made a friend in the Secret Police, for he had warned me of that informer. Should that man try to threaten us, I should get in touch with him and trouble from that source would stop.

Tried together, they were dubbed the Ohio 7, although legal battles took some of them from Ohio to New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. These legal battles weren’t the only troubles greeting these revolutionaries: except for Williams, whose wife and children did not accompany him underground, the other six were couples who lived and raised their families underground. After the arrest, the government attempted to use the nine children, most of them under ten and all of them minors, as bargaining chips against their parents. The state offered the Levasseurs’ eight-year-old daughter $20 and some pizza to cooperate with the government against her family. The Mannings’ children were held incommunicado for two months after the parents were first arrested; they had to go on hunger strike to force the government to disclose the whereabouts of their children.

Eat," she said, shoving his bowl closer as she passed him. "You're going to need your energy." "For what?" He took a big bite and rolled his eyes in bliss. "You've really gotten so good at this lean stuff." She gathered her internal strength, vision blurring. "Packing and getting the hell out of here." He shook his head, chewing. "I don't have to leave right away," he said with a mouthful. "Oh yes, you do." Seeing how much he was enjoying her food enraged her. It was probably more accurate to say it pulled the pin on the anger that was already tightening deep beneath her disbelief, but whatever caused it, she found herself unable to fight it. "In fact, you've got three seconds to eat whatever else you're going to eat there before you're wearing it." He looked genuinely shocked. "Margo, this isn't like you!" "Correction: this isn't like Margo your wife." The flames of fury engulfed her. She couldn't believe this was happening, and that it was happening so... so casually. "Let me introduce you to Margo your ex-wife." "Can't we be friends?" The idea that they could suddenly shift baffled her violently. "No." She picked up the bowl and dumped the whole thing in his lap, careful to make sure the oily dressing saturated his shirt. She looked him over and clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Get yourself cleaned up, Calvin, honestly, you're a mess. Oh, and you have half an hour to pack what you want and get out. If you don't, I'll call the police. I don't know if they'll be able to enforce anything, but I do know that will embarrass you to death, and if there's one thing you hate, it's being embarrassed.

There and in the years that followed, I learned a society’s success isn’t just about expanding its wealth. It is about a rebel group not enslaving your eleven-year-old daughter as a wife. It is about sitting in front of your home without the fear of a drive-by shooting and a bullet gone astray. It is about being able to go to a police officer, a court, or a mayor and get some semblance of justice. It is about the government never being allowed to push you off your land and stick you in a concentration camp. Another economist, Amartya Sen, called this “development as freedom.” It is hard to imagine something more important to be free of than violence.

our drinks over to the table. ‘Thanks, Celia.’ ‘Do you want to give the police a ring now, while I’m

I have new words for the dictionary. to knock boots, phr., to have sexual intercourse tracks, n., contract (as in “I got a track to kill him”) to do, v., to fuck to do, v., to kill clean, adj., handsome to Brodie, v., to jump, usually from a building or a bridge; taken from a Mr. Brodie who claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge to lash, v., to urinate chronic, n., marijuana, esp. high-quality smudge, n., black person Ape Avenue, n., Eighth Avenue (police slang) puppy, n., handgun (Jamaican word) scrambler, n., low-level runner for a drug dealer cocola, n., black person (Puerto Rican word) spliv, n., black person to be hung like a horse, phr., to have influential connections in the police department; also a guy who is hung like a horse ground ball, phr., something easy or simple to pull a train, v., to have group sex, gang-bang stinger, n., drug dealer to inflash, v., to inform (as in “he inflash me with the bitch’s scenario”) to double, v., to double-park to sleep in a tent, exp., to have a large penis to be built like a tripod, phr., to have a large penis dixie cup, n., a person who is considered disposable her, she, pron., wife

One historian who went through fifty years of police reports about knife-fights in nineteenth-century Ionia discovered that virtually every one of them began when one party publicly suggested that the other’s wife or sister was a whore.

First of all,” Doran told me, “that red Escalade was a new model 2007, worth at least $55,000, and had been paid for in cash. Second of all, they found at least $54,000 in bills in the vehicle, and more envelopes with more letters and cash from his followers. There was also a police scanner, fifteen cell phones plus walkie-talkies, laptop computers, credit cards, and keys to several other luxury vehicles with them. They had wigs and sunglasses and all kinds of accessories to keep them unrecognizable.

His rookies had once been more than entries in a ledger, cogs in his cost-effectiveness machine. I tried to remember the last time I had seen him shout or laugh. I failed. Twenty years in the police force had killed everything, bit by bit: his ambition, thin his passion, then his wife.

On May 14, 1912—eight months after his stepmother’s awful death—Andrew Kehoe, then forty years old, took a wife. Her full name was Ellen Agnes Price—“Nellie” to everyone who knew her. Born in 1875, she came from a family of proud Irish Catholic immigrants, whose most prominent member was her uncle Lawrence. A Civil War hero who had fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, Lawrence had grown up in Michigan, returned to his home state after the war, and purchased a wilderness tract in Bath Township, which he eventually transformed into a flourishing 320-acre farm. In 1880, he turned his phenomenal energies to mercantile pursuits, successfully engaging in the grocery, lumber, dry goods, and hardware businesses before becoming a pioneer in the nascent automobile industry as founder and president of the Lansing Auto Body Company. In addition to his myriad enterprises, he served as Lansing’s chief of police and superintendent of public works, did a four-year term as a member of the city council, headed the Lansing Business Men’s Association, and ran as the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in 1916.1 Among his eight siblings was his younger brother, Patrick. Born in Ireland in 1848, Patrick had been brought to America as an infant and spent most of his life in Michigan. Financially beholden to his wealthy older brother, he worked as a farmhand on Lawrence’s spread in Bath before becoming an employee of the Auto Body Company. His marriage to the former Mary Ann Wilson had produced a son, William, and six daughters, among them his firstborn child, Nellie, the future Mrs. Andrew Kehoe.2

My wife Anna and I have tried to apply these ideas to our system of parenting. At one point, we had become concerned with how much screen time had crept into our family. Between television, computers, tablets, and smart phones it had become just too easy for the children to waste time on nonessential entertainment. But our attempts to get them to change these habits, as you can imagine, were met with friction. The children would complain whenever we turned the TV off or tried to limit their “screen time.” And we as the parents had to consciously police the situation, which took us away from doing things that were essential. So we introduced a token system.9 The children were given ten tokens at the beginning of the week. These could each be traded in for either thirty minutes of screen time or fifty cents at the end of the week, adding up to $5 or five hours of screen time a week. If a child read a book for thirty minutes, he or she would earn an additional token, which could also be traded in for screen time or for money. The results were incredible: overnight, screen time went down 90 percent, reading went up by the same amount, and the overall effort we had to put into policing the system went way, way down. In other words, nonessential activity dramatically decreased and essential activity dramatically increased. Once a small amount of initial effort was invested to set up the system, it worked without friction. We can all create systems like this both at home and at work. The key is to start small, encourage progress, and celebrate small wins. Here are a few techniques.