A family man was doubly reckless to have broken rules that everyone in the shadow world knew like a catechism

Dexter was logy from the heavy lunch; he wanted to splash cold water on his face.

She wore a wedding ring (as did he) and a small gold cross at her neck, but a current of wayward sensuality had been unmistakable in her, making these symbols seem apotropaic

She followed the lieutenant down a hallway pocked with doors suggestively canted

The apartment was small, crowded, close. Femininity breathed from every surface down to the cheap wainscoting.

With a somnolent underwater motion, she hammered the nail until it perforated the soft wood and joined the two slats

The fillip of collective opprobrium had summoned their lust like a knife chiming crystal

Two points abaft of the port beam, he saw a straight dark edge.

Rather than keep the peace, he was one of the most captious, especially toward the bosun