Four to Score

She'll be back," Ranger said. "But not tonight." [Stephanie] "How'd you get her to leave?" "Told her I was gonna spend the next twelve hours ruining you for all other men, and so she might as well go home." I could feel the heat rush to my face. Ranger gave me the wolf smile. "I lied about it being tonight," he said.

Some men go a lifetime and never have their kid blow up a car, but I have a daughter who's knocked off three cars and burned down a funeral home. Maybe that's some kind of record.

Cupcake, your middle name is trouble.

I always wanted to eat with a Negro,” Grandma said. Yeah, well I always wanted to eat with a boney-assed old white woman,” Lula said. “So I guess this works out good.

I met a real looker. He picked me up at the two dollar slot machines, so you know he's no cheapskate." Grandma Mazur

You're going to find this hard to believe, but cops aren't required to carry emergency condoms." Joe Morelli

Bitch." "Slut." "Whore." "Cunt." I kicked Joyce in the shin. I draw the line at cunt.

Joe" I said. "It's Stephanie." "Does this involve death?" "Not yet." "Does this involve sex?" "Not yet." "I can't imagine why else you'd be calling me.

Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?" Lula

The kid pulled a Buck knife out of his pants pocket. "How about giving me your purse, bitch?" Sally hiked up his skirt, reached into his briefs and pulled out a Glock. "How about using that knife to slice off your balls?" Lula whipped a gun out of her red satin purse and Grandma hauled out her .45 long-barrel. "Day my make, punk," Grandma said. "Hey, I don't want any trouble," the kid said. "We were just having some fun." "I want to shoot him," Sally said. "Nobody'll tell, right?" "No fair," Lula said. "I want to shoot him." "Okay," Grandma said. "On the count of three, we'll all shoot him.

You're probably gonna find this hard to believe, but I was sort of weird when I was a kid." Salvatore "Sally" Sweet

I was going to go to church, but I decided to get doughnuts instead.

Mrs. Zuppa was coming in from bingo just as I was leaving the building. "Looks like you're going to work," she said, leaning heavily on her cane. "What are you packin'?" "A thirty-eight." "I like a nine-millimeter myself." "A nine's good." "Easier to use a semiautomatic after you've had hip replacement and you walk with a cane," she said. One of those useful pieces of information to file away and resurrect when I turn eighty-three.

My mother had been slicing up the chicken. She took a drumstick and dropped it on the floor. She kicked it around a little, picked it up and put it on the edge of the plate. "There," she said, "we'll give him this drumstick." "Deal.

THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds.

This isn't just a job. This is a service profession. We uphold the law, babe." Ranger

Life is about survival of the fittest, and Jersey is producing the master race.

Sally put his gun back in his pants. "Guess I flunked the estrogen test." We all stared at his crotch, and Grandma said what Lula and I were thinking. "I thought that bulge was your dingdong,"Grandma said. "Jesus," Sally said, "who do you think I am, Thunder the Wonder Horse? My gun wouldn't fit in my purse." "You need to get a smaller gun," Lula said. "Ruins your lines with that big old Glock in your drawers.

I always know it's Sunday because I wake up feeling apologetic. That's one of the cool things about being a Catholic . . . it's a multifaceted experience. If you lose the faith, chances are you'll keep the guilt, so it isn't as if you've been skunked altogether.

And then it gets so hot that they keep the supermarkets too cold. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. It gives me the runs." Mr. Landowsky

Mr. Landowsky was eighty-two and somehow his chest had shrunk over the years, and now he was forced to hike his pants up under his armpits. "Oi," he said. "This heat! I can't breathe. Somebody should do something." I assumed he was talking about God. "That weatherman on the morning news. He should be shot. How can I go out in weather like this? And then when it gets so hot they keep the supermarkets too cold. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. It gives me the runs." I was glad I owned a gun, because when I got as old as Mr. Landowsky I was going to eat a bullet. The first time I got the runs in the supermarket, that was it. BANG! It would all be over.

If Mickey Mouse could fly, he'd be Donald Duck.

No Ranger in sight. That's because he's in the wind. You can't see the wind. Or maybe the wind went home to watch Tuesday night fights.

Concentrate on doing the job, not the fear.

Okay," Ranger said. "We're going to walk through the room and look for this guy. Pretend I'm not here." "You going to be the wind again?" I asked. Ranger grinned. "Wiseass.

Even more bothersome was the fact that Eddie Kuntz's napkin was moving on his lap without benefit of hands. My first inclination was to shout "Snake!" and shoot, but probably that wouldn't hold up in court. Besides, as much as I disliked Eddie Kuntz, I could sort of identify with a man who got a stiffie over banana cream pie.

Lennie Smullenski and Anthony Zuck bake the goodies in the back room in big steel ovens and troughs of hot oil. Clouds of flour and sugar sift onto table surfaces and slip under foot. And lard is transferred daily from commercial sized vats directly to local butts.

I wanted to marry Aladdin so I'd get to fly on his magic carpet. So you can see that we were coming from different places.