Word: lockups
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...This is partly because his dim sidekick Rooski foolishly shot a Chinese druggist when the two of them were fumbling what was supposed to be a peaceful, harmless burglary. The main reason is that Joe belongs in jail, feels comfortable there. Not secure, understand, because dope selling in the lockup is even tougher than it is on the streets. Everyone there is a villain, and every villain has at least a shank, a homemade knife. Black and Aryan gangs feud murderously. Studs and lovers brutalize each other. And Joe, of course, misses Kitty Litter, his stripper girlfriend...
There is more than a slight whiff of jailhouse self-pity: Joe loves Kitty, goes to the lockup, survives the schemes of bad villains with the help of good villains, and gets out to find true-blue Kitty and the child he has never seen waiting for him. The best of the book is Morgan's wildly reinvented con lingo. His ear fails him occasionally, when he uses lace-curtain language -- "caparisoned," "implacable mien" -- that some editor should have yanked from the manuscript with tongs. But at other times he's cooking: "Saturday night movies in the Gym were...