Samples

I think I’ve lived long enough to figure it out: Everybody is in one way or another corrupt. Maybe they got a little too much change back from a supermarket cashier and quietly pocketed it without comment. Maybe in school they copied answers from another kid’s paper—or shoplifted a comic book or a candy bar from the local store. Maybe they cheated on their income tax …

When a child goes missing, there is nothing more frightening, tragic, or terror-inducing for the distraught parent. Most never give up hoping. That’s how it was for my new client, Savannah Dacey—even though her “child” was a grown man in his twenties.

Three surprises make a high school reunion strongly resemble a visit to hell. First, you’re surprised some of the people you were sure would be there are missing. They’ve either moved far away, or they have no desire to join the reunion. Second, you’re surprised some of those you never dreamed would attend actually show up.
Third: you find yourself there too.

The atmosphere in the bar seemed to actually be humming, or rather vibrating like a well-played violin string, with a purity of tone and pitch worthy of a concert hall. Whether it was in anticipation of great food or the promise of something yet unspoken, I didn’t know. You won’t find a better-dressed, better-connected, or better-looking crowd in all of Cleveland …

The dark space under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge is, I think, a singularly lousy place to die. The bridge, with its four landmark pylons in the shape of giants, “Titans of Transportation,” holding in their huge hands various modes of travel like buses and trucks and streetcars, stretches across the Cuyahoga River and connects the two avenues for which it is named, and is one of the primary arteries between the east and west sides of Cleveland. …

It was snowing hard the first time I saw the old Indian. A gentle, Currier and Ives Christmas card kind of snowfall, with big fat flakes whose facets catch the light as they drift downward, pirouetting madly in the eddying currents of the warmer air closer to the earth.