N o c t u r n e

(Narrator) :
Catch a man red-handed, about to shoot his girlfriend, a gun in his fist, the barrel in the woman's mouth, and he will tell you first that it isn't his gun, hey, what kind of individual do you think I am? Besides, we're only rehearsing a play here. Or if they won't quite appreciate that one [...], then how about she was choking on a fish bone, and I was trying to hook it out with the gun barrel while we were waiting for the ambulance to take her to the hospital? Or if that sounds a bit fishy, how about she ASKED me to put the barrel in her mouth in order to test her mettle and her courage? Anyway, this isn't even my gun, and if it is my gun, it was stolen or lost. Besides, I'm a juvenile.

T h e · F r u m i o u s · B a n d e r s n a t c h

(Narrator) :
If much of what Whittaker was saying sounded like total horseshi_t, that’s because much of it WAS total horseshi_t.

(Narrator) :
Now that food was on the table, he was even less interested in Parker’s rape or kidnapping or whatever it was.

Parker : "I lived with a Spanish girl for six months. In the end, she cut off my d_ick for a nickel and sold it to a cuchu frito joint. [...] You want to go out with Spanish girls, then you better go hide your COJONES in the olive jar."
[...]
Ollie : "Well, Patricia didn’t cut off my d_ick. [...]"
Parker : "You’re missing my point, friend. And what’s this on the platter here? It looks like somebody but off the CHEF’s d_ick."

(Narrator) :
Carella had begun walking a beat in the Eight-Seven, a precinct uptown in the asshole of creation.

Avery : "Who’s this?"
Carella : "Detective Carella."
Avery : "What’s your first name, Detective?"
Carella : "Steve."
Avery :Would you mind if I called you ‘Steve’ ?
Carella : "Not at all."
Avery : "I have trouble with Italian names, you see."
(Narrator) : And f_uck you, too, Carella thought.

(Narrator) :
One certain axiom of this city is that you will never find a homeless shelter, a rehab center, or a parole office in a good neighborhood. If you’re apartment-hunting, and you ask the real estate agent the nearest location of any of these places, and she replies, “Why, right around the corner, dearie!” then what you do is hike up your skirts and run for the hills because the onliest place you don’t wish to live is right here, honey.

(Narrator) :
The superintendent of the building at 8412 Winston Road told them his name was Ralph Hedrings. Hawes thought he’d said “Ralph Headrinse.” That was okay because Hedrings thought Hawes had said “Detective Horse.”

E i g h t · B l a c k · H o r s e s

(Narrator) :
Carella and Brown liked being partnered together.
They figured it was effective against the bad guys.

The bad guys took one look at Carella, and they figured THIS one is the pushover, it’s the bad-ass nigger you gotta watch out for. Whenever they were partnered together, Carella and Brown played Mutt and Jeff to the hilt. Carella played Mr. Clean—“Golly, Artie, it don’t look to me like this nice young man here even knows what marijuana IS!

Brown played Big Bad Leroy, born in a ghetto garbage can, shooting dope since he was six years old, done time at Castleview upstate, seen the light afterward and became a cop by way of penance for his formerly evil life. Mean, though, still as mean as a hooker’s snatch. “You lyin’ little punk, I’m gonna kill you right here on the spot, save the state a ‘lectric bill. Get your hands off me, Steve, I’m gonna throw this man off the roof!”

Mean, oh man, REAL bad-ass. Big Bad Leroy. It worked nicely.

(Narrator) :
Parker wished Santa Claus was dead, too.
Parker wished Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would get shot some starry Christmas Eve and be served as venison steak on Christmas Day. Or, better yet, venison stew.

(Narrator) :
Same old songs every year.

“Silent Night” and “God rest Ye Merry Gentlement” and “Little Drummer Boy”—he wished the little drummer boy would get shot together with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer—and the worst f_uckin' Christmas song ever written in the history of the world: “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.” If Parker ever met the guy who wrote that song, he’d give him his two front teeth all right, on a platter after he knocked them out of his mouth.

Parker hated Christmas songs.
He hated everything about this city at Christmastime.
He hated the city ALL the time, but he hated it most at Christmastime.

L o n g · T i m e · N o · S e e

Monoghan : "I hate stabbings."
Monroe : "This ain’t a stabbing."
Monoghan : "No, then what is it? A poisoning? Man’s laying there with his throat cut open—what is it, a hanging?"

(Narrator) :
The thought was inconceivable. You did not slay blind men or little children. You did not strangle bluebirds or pull the wings off butterflies.

(Narrator) :
She gave him an area code, and he dialed first the number 1, and then the area code, and then the numerals 555, and then the numerals 1212. By that time he’d forgotten why he was dialing this long succession of numbers, and he’d also forgotten his shield number, his social security number and his middle initial.

(Narrator) : The last time Carella had met a private detective was never.

(Narrator) :
[...] where WAS Janet again? She had undoubtedly gone to Colombia for the coffee.

(Narrator) :
Carella even avoided CALLING the Eight-Three [precint] unless a hatchet murderer was last seen on the steps leading up to the station house there.

(Narrator) :
He did not smile. He rarely smiled. Carella imagined he was constipated a lot. He wondered suddenly why no one on the squad called Genero “Richard” or “Richie” or “Dick” or anything but “Genero.” Everyone else on the squad called everyone by their first name. But Genero was Genero. Moreover, he wondered WHY Genero had never noticed this. Was it possible that people outside the squadroom also called him Genero? Was it possible that his MOTHER called him Genero? Did she phone him on Fridays and say, “Genero, this is Mama. How come you never call?”

(Narrator) :
There used to be a time when most murders started as family quarrels resolved with a hatchet or a gun. Find a lady dead on the bathroom floor, go look for her husband. Find a man with both legs broken and a knife in his heart besides, go look for his girl friend’s husband, and try to get there fast before the husband threw HER off the roof in the bargain. Those were the good old days. Hardly ever would you get a murder where everything had been figured out in advance—woman wanted to get rid of her husband, she worked out a complicated plot involving a poison extracted from the glands of a green South American snake, started lacing his cognac with it every night, poor man went into convulsions and died six months later while the woman was on the Riviera living it up with a gigolo from Copenhagen.

(Narrator) :
So far, so good. With brilliant deductive work like this—finding an office after having consulted a lobby directory—Carella figured he’d make Detective/First within the month. He opened the door. This, too, indicated high intelligence and good small-motor control—grasping a doorknob in one’s right hand, twisting it, pushing the door inward.

Hard-Boiled · Wonderland · and · the · End · of · the · World

(Narrator) :
Around young, beautiful, fat women, I am generally thrown into confusion. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because an image of their dietary habits naturally congeals in my mind. When I see a goodly sized woman, I have visions of her mopping up that last drop of cream sauce with bread, wolfing down that final sprig of watercress garnish from her plate. And once that happens, it’s like acid corroding metal: scenes of her eating spread through my head and I lose control.

(Narrator) : Sex is an extremely subtle undertaking, unlike going to the department store on Sunday to buy a thermos.

(Narrator) : Chubby girls in pink tend to conjure up images of images of big strawberry shortcakes waltzing on a dance floor, but in her case the color suited her.

(Narrator) : All my flashlight revealed was the wiggling of her bulbous behind. It reminded me of a head of Chinese cabbage in a wet skirt, tight over her thighs.

T h e · L a s t · D a n c e

(Narrator) :
Carella wondered what had happened to those simple cases where you walked in and found a guy with a smoking gun in his fist and a bloody corpse at his feet.

Parker : "You want a mystery? Here's a mystery for you."
Carella : "We don't want a mystery."
Meyer : "We already have a mystery."
Kling : "Two mysteries."
Brown : "Too many mysteries."

F a t · O l l i e ' s · B o o k

(Narrator) : Ollie rose from his swivel chair like a whale off the coast of Mexico."

(Narrator) :
[...] Jews weren’t allowed to eat pig, nor Muslims either, same as Catholics weren’t allowed to eat meat of any kind on Good Friday, man, these religions. Ollie sometimes felt if everybody in the world was allowed to eat whatever the hell he wanted, there wouldn’t be wars anymore. It all got down to eating. Which reminded him that it was almost twelve noon and he was getting hungry again.

M o n e y , · M o n e y , · M o n e y

Ollie : "What is it, ma'am?"
Hoskins : "An apple upside down cake."
Ollie : "I'll bet it's delicious."
(Narrator) : But she didn't offer him any. Instead, she suddenly burst into tears. Sometimes apple upside down cakes did that to people. Or maybe she had just realized her husband was dead. Either way, if she wasn't going to offer him anything to eat, he had no sympathy at all for the woman.

Ollie : "Your husband had a permit for the gun."
Hoskins : "A PERMIT!"
(Narrator) : She had a very bad habit for repeating the key words in everything he said and shouting them back at him, very loudly, as if he were deaf. Each time she did that, he winced.

(Narrator) :
That was what Carella couldn't understand, but maybe he was just old-fashioned. Maybe he thought real life here in the big bad city wasn't the same thing as Greek tragedy where you slept with your father's murderer or ate your own children.

(Narrator) :
If you are dealing in controlled substances, you do not buy radio commercials or newspaper ads announcing that you are in town looking for a man who paid you with bad money. You play it cool, which is difficult to do when you are eager to tie a man to a chair and pull out his fingernails.

I c e

(Narrator) :
It further occurred to him that nobody in the squadroom ever called Genero by his first name, which was Richard. It was always, "Come here, Genero" or—more likely—"Go away, Genero." Occasionally, he was called Genero the Asshole, the way an ancient king might have been dubbed affectionately Amos the Simple or Herman the Rat.

H a i l · T o · T h e · C h i e f

(Narrator) :
[...] and again she smiled her radiant smile, and Carella suddenly felt terribly uncomfortable and wanted to get out of there and go home, and say to his wife, “Hey, guess what honey? A beautiful twenty-year-old blonde was flirting with me today, what do you think of that, honey?” Except that Lisa Knowles wasn’t flirting. Or was she? It was she, after all, who’d made the reference to prostitution. Why are you showing me all these dirty pictures, Doctor? Carella thought, and smiled.

C a l y p s o

(Narrator) :
[...] Caricou Corner was perhaps the worst name ever devised for a restaurant, and especially a steak joint. In trying to think up names that were potentially worse when it came to attracting customers to an eatery, he could think only of The Hairy Buffalo.

(Narrator) :
If Meyer were naming him, he’d have called him Jack. Bruce Fowles looked like a Jack. He extended his hand, and took Meyer’s hand in a good Jack Fowles grip, never mind this Bruce crap.

Ungar : "Mr Coppola?"
Carella : "Carella."
Ungar : "Um..."
(Narrator) : ...she said, this time managing to convey doubt that Carella knew his own name.

L u l l a b y

(Narrator) :
You’d expected a teenager girl to be somewhat bursting with raucous energy, but Annie...
Those thoughtful green eyes.
The subtlety of her glances.
Secrets unspoken in those eyes.
The fiery red hair.
He’d wondered if she was red below.

T h e · H o b b i t

Bilbo : "Good Morning!"
Gandalf : "What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it nor not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a good morning to be good on?"
Bilbo : "All of them at once!"

Bilbo : "We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!"

Great Goblin : "Slash them! Beat them! Bite them! Gnash them! Take them away to dark holes full of snakes, and never let them see the light again!"