she bent over the side of the bed and opened the portfolio along the side of the wall. we were drinking. she said, “you promised me these

A week later I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard with Lydia. A weekly entertainment newspaper published in California at that time had asked me to write an article on the life of the...

She wasn’t really a cop, she was a clerk-cop. And she started coming in and telling me about a guy who wore a purple stick pin and was a “real gentleman.” “Well,” I’d ask, “how was old ...

“I’ve made it,” she said, “I’ve c… through.” she had on new boots, pa… and a white sweater. “I know what… want now.” she was from Chicago an… had settled in L.A.’s Fairfax dis…

This is advance notice that it is proposed to remove you from the Postal Service or to take such other disciplinary action as may be determined to be appropriate. The proposed action is...

a great white light dawns across t… continent as we fawn over our failed traditi… often kill to preserve them or sometimes kill just to kill.

That summer, July 1934, they gunned down John Dillinger outside the movie house in Chicago. He never had a chance. The Lady in Red had fingered him. More than a year earlier the banks h...

John F. Kennedy flower knocks upo… shot through the neck; the gladiolas gather by the dozens… India dripping into Ceylon;

There was this place. It stretched over the sea, it was built over the sea. An old place, but with a touch of class. We got a room on the first floor. You could hear the ocean running d...

A couple of nights later Becker walked in. I guess my parents gave him my address or he located me through the college. I had my name and address listed with the employment division at ...

women don’t know how to love, she told me. you know how to love but women just want to leech.

a symphony orchestra. there is a thunderstorm, they are playing a Wagner overture and the people leave their seats u… and run inside to the pavilion

I don’t know how it happens to people. I had child support, need for something to drink, rent, shoes, shirts, socks, all that stuff. Like everyone else I needed an old car, something to...

I kept getting letters from a lady who lived only a mile or so away. She signed them Nicole. She said she had read some of my books and liked them. I answered one of her letters and she...

Back in L.A., there was almost a week of peace. Then the phone rang. It was the owner of a Manhattan Beach nightclub, Marty Seavers. I had read there a couple of times before. The club ...