the glint of light on broken glass

“The history of the New York police is not a particularly illustrious one, at least in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as throughout the period the law enforcement agents of the city continually and recurrently demonstrated corruption, complacency, confusion, sloth, and brutality. Conventionally defined, the police existed to keep the peace, to protect the population, to enforce the laws that had been passed for the common good of all. In truth, however, the police were squeezed by the city’s power structure into a position where peace was a relative term, where protection of one part of the population was carried out at the expense of another, and where the meanings of laws shifted according to whomever was in a position to interpret them. Thus the police became a repressive and profit-gathering force halfway between gangsters and politicians, having to serve as interpreters between the two. They were expected to be stern and benevolent at once, or perhaps stern with the poor and benevolent to what was held as the respectable part of society, and this contradiction led to the extremes of viciousness and indolence. They were intended to be the pure element in a system that was corrupt from top to bottom, while simultaneously being underpaid, expected to tender financial homage to those who did them favors and to enforce the terms of the graft passed between other levels of society. At times they seemed like gangsters in uniform, and at times, particularly in the slums, like a capricious local government in which they combined the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Cops felt that they had the choice of inspiring jokes or inspiring fear, of starvation or extortion, of being treated as servants by the rich or as the enemy by the poor, of upholding moral standards or of upholding the standards temporarily raised at the whim of power and fashion. It is not terribly surprising that, in each case, most cops chose the latter option.”

'I believe in everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.'

Without sound, Parry said, "Hello, George." Without sound, Fellsinger said, "Hello, Vince." "Are you dead, George?" "Yes, I'm dead." "Why are you dead, George?" "I can't tell you, Vince. I wish I could tell you but I can't." "Who did it, George?" "I can't tell you, Vince. Look at me. Look what happened to me. Isn't it awful?"

He told himself she wasn't really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear.

He tried to build a mental microscope to deal with these tiny things he had on the table of his mind.

"Boo'ful," she said, "life could be so diff'rent --" "But it never is," I said.

I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge.

I let the current take me downriver. Water and moonbeams formed a silvery liquid, like donkey milk about to freeze. Behind me, the boat's motor was making crazy noises, while from the riverbank came a chorus of shouts. The only one I could distinguish was: "Shoot him! Shoot!"

Only Mr. Lucas hadn't arrived by two o'clock, and they gave him up, feeling annoyed with him - which wasn't quite fair, for Mr. Lucas had been stabbed to death in Islington the previous evening and robbed of the best part of his casino's takings by a much-embittered all-time loser who, by the following Monday, would fall downstairs and kill himself while taking the money to the bank.

And it is my conviction that the schools are responsible for the gross foolishness of our young men, because, in them, they see or hear nothing at all of the affairs of every-day life, but only pirates standing in chains upon the shore, tyrants scribbling edicts in which sons are ordered to behead their own fathers; responses from oracles, delivered in time of pestilence, ordering the immolation of three or more virgins; every word a honied drop, every period sprinkled with poppy-seed and sesame.

Heads would nod, but only in mild disapproval. As over some minor defect, easily forgiven, certainly not enough to strain their group loyalty. Then they wouldn't refer to it again for another two months. Because it wasn't a very glaring difference. Just a shading of character.

Plundering and stealing, cheating and lying, laboring, fighting and loving; taking all we could and returning little, we went our careless and irresponsible ways, with laughter in our hearts and sneers on our lips - as anti-social as hyenas who howled at the changes in the weather.

A crowd of men stood in front of them. Of all ages, with expressions of sex-wonder in their eyes, gazing curiously as men who cannot solve a mystery that populates graveyards and through the ages has sent poets, popes, kings and fools to the junk heap.

'Law? What the hell's the good of it?' leered Jock. 'If they'd put everybody in jail that's out, an' let everybody out that's in, we'd be just as well off. Them on the outside's the biggest crooks. They're smooth enough to keep out,' he said with finality.

The Moss-Haired Girl, The Strong Woman, Aimee, the Beautiful Fat Girl, The Lion Tamer, Whiteface, Lefita and Jock are people that I shall never meet again. But I would trade the empty honor of a writer's name to be once again their comrade.