Khaled
Khaled 2025 I first knew Khaled Abdel Aziz as a landlord, then as a client and finally, after accompanying him through shadows, deceptions and blood, as a friend, the most unlikely of friends. In 1974, wedged between late winter’s rain and late spring’s marine layer,...
Unassuming
Unassuming 2025 In unassuming offices prosperous enterprises may be easily masked. Conversely, in more impressive offices in more fashionable or august neighborhoods, the showmanship required from tenants to display the trappings of success could be difficult to...
Clandestine
Clandestine 2025 My second floor neighbors were an insurance agent, an immigration lawyer, an accountant and my landlord. I had the feeling none were especially skilled or prosperous. Whether their clandestine careers were ascending or descending was difficult to...
Armenians
Armenians 2025 Armenians were starting to move in and forty year old apartment buildings, once home to aspiring screenwriters, and afterward industrious Hispanics, were again in transition. My office was a second floor walkup on the north side of Sunset. The four...
Raffish
Raffish 2025 With a plump out of court financial settlement and a full head of steam I was issued my California private investigator license. I set up shop on the eastern fringe of Hollywood in a two story building on Sunset and Normandie, a neighborhood appreciated...
Riven
Riven 2025 Showgirls and strippers, card sharks and grifters, Hopes shatter like a thousand champagne flutes. Conventioneers cast upon the desert, losers on arrival, exposed, lost and alone. Cockiness collapses on green felt tables. Terrified to make the phone call...
Andante
Andante 2025
Snakebit
Snakebit 2025
Lane Change
Lane Change 2025
Whirling Falsehoods
Whirling Falsehoods 2025
Backroad Redemption
Backroad Redemption 2025
Silk Set Ablaze
Silk Set Ablaze 2025 It was late when we pulled off the highway into the Desert Sands Motor Lodge. The neon vacancy sign warbled in a frenzied staccato rhythm, a welcome promise of imminent rest. In the office, the radio with the Dodgers game was on and it was an...
Solar Storm
Solar Storm 2025
Abundant Angels
Abundant Angels 2025 She told me you don’t have to go to church or believe in God to believe in angels. “They appear in Zoroastrian scriptures from Persia and also in the Hebrew Bible. Hundreds of years before Christianity angels are floating about.” I asked her if...
Empty Air
Empty Air 2025
Castrated Lobbyists
Castrated Lobbyists 2025 In Washington D.C. there were 12,566 active individual lobbyists. In Washington, D.C. there are 4,800 public school teachers. The Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department has 3,200 sworn officers.
The Pale Man
The Pale Man 2025 When the pale man took his razor And cut the crimson sky He couldn’t see the gardeners And he couldn’t see them cry.
Cauliflower Candles
Cauliflower Candles 2025
