through Everglades muck? Iâve talked to people. They say itâs wet andâll cave in on you.â Chino said, yeah, thatâs what people thought, but the tunnel only caved in once. . . .
Foley said to Chino that Christmas Day, âIf I caught on, how come none of the hacks have?â
Be Cool (1999)
After one triumph and one flop, Mafia loanshark-turned-Hollywood producer Chili Palmer is desperate for another hit . . . of the celluloid sort. And when a similarly relocated former mob associate takes a hit of the bullet-in-the-brain variety while theyâre power-lunching, Chili begins to see all kinds of story possibilities. The whacked recording company mogulâs midday demise is leading Chili into the twisted world of rock stars, pop divas, and hip-hop gangstas, which is rife with drama, jealousy, and betrayal â all the stuff that makes big box office. Tinsel Town had better take cover, because Chili Palmerâs working on another movie. And thatâs when people tend to die .
Washington Post Book World : âSuperior, stunningly alive writing. . . . Be Cool is another boss entry in an incredible body of work.â
From the novel:
The front door of the sedan opened and the guy with the rug got out. A wiry little guy fifty or so wearing some Korean girlâs hair so heâd look younger. Chili felt sorry for him, the guy not knowing the rug made him look stupid. Somebody ought to tell him, and then duck.He looked like the kind of little guy who was always on the muscle, would take anything you said the wrong way. Chili saw him looking toward Swingers no, staring. Then saw him raise both hands, Christ, holding a revolver, a nickelplate flashing in the sunlight, the guy extending the gun in one hand now, straight out at armâs length as Chili yelled, âTommy!â Loud but too late. The guy with the rug was firing at Tommy, squeezing them off like he was on a target range, the sound of gunfire hitting the air hard, and all at once here were screams, chairs scraping, people throwing themselves to the ground as the plate glass shattered behind Tommy still in his chair, head down, broken glass all over him, in his hair. . .
Chili saw the guy with the rug standing there taking in what he had done. Saw him turn to the car, the door still open, and put his hand inside on the windowsill. But now he took time to look this way, to stare at Chili. Took a good look before he got in and drove the car off.
Pagan Babies (2000)
Father Terry Dunn thought heâd seen everything on the mean streets of Detroit, but that was before he went on a little retreat to Rwanda to evade a tax-fraud indictment. Now the whiskey-drinking, Nine Inch Nails T-shirt-wearing padre is back trying to hustle up a score to help the little orphans ofRwanda. But the fund-raising gets complicated when a former tattletale cohort pops up on Terryâs tail. And then thereâs the lovely Debbie Dewey. A freshly sprung ex-con turned stand-up comic, Debbie needs some fast cash, too, to settle an old score. Now theyâre in together for a bigger payoff than either could finagle alone. After all, it makes sense . . . unless Father Terry is working a con of his own.
Entertainment Weekly : âWildly entertaining.â
From the novel:
The church had become a tomb where forty-seven bodies turned to leather and stains had been lying on the concrete floor the past five years, though not lying where they had been shot with Kalashnikovs or hacked to death with machetes. The benches had been removed and the bodies reassembled: men, women and small children laid in rows of skulls and spines, femurs, fragments of cloth stuck to mummified remains, many of the adults missing feet, all missing bones that had been carried off by scavenging dogs.
Since the living world no longer enter the church, Fr. Terry Dunn heard confessions in the yard of the rectory, in the shade of the old pines