‘My Friends, My Murderers’

“The thing was that it was a joke. The name sounded like a joke, like a character in a comedy sketch, a suburban Rambo convinced that his small town was a warzone. And that ‘Dangerous Brian’ was a joke meant that he was also a joke. Nothing more than a braggart and a danger only to himself.

I did not think much about him for years afterwards until I read one day that he had murdered a man, and then he was not a joke any more. But then none of it was a joke, really—it was just sad and squalid.”