I don't know that story, but I think I'd like it too. The denouement is akin to Dashiell Hammett's story "The Golden Horseshoe." The plot is more than I can recall, but at the end, Hammett's nameless detective narrator works out a way to punish a killer with an airtight alibi:
"I can't put you up for the murders you engineered in San Francisco;
but I can sock you with the one you _didn't_ do in Seattle--so justice
won't be cheated. You're going to Seattle, Ed, to hang for Ashcraft's
suicide."
And he did. -- Curtiss
>
> Question: 30 years ago I read a detective story (or was it a movie?) where
> a guy came into an office and found someone he hated more than anyone in
> the world lying on the floor, shot dead by his own hand, the gun lying on
> the table. Overcome with jubilation, he picked up the gun and shot the
> corpse three more times. Standing there deep in thought, he went over his
> entire history with the dead man (which comprised the bulk of the story).
> At the end of his reverie he put the gun down on the desk, walked toward
> the door -- and in burst the police, saying they'd caught him red-handed,
> and Look Sarge, the gun's still warm!
>
> Does anyone recognize this story? I feel like reading it again.
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 18:23:09 -0500
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> Subject: Re: Body Count
>
> >On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >> >For such a neo-colonial empire, you don't need Colonel Massus.
> >> >Local colonels do just fine.
> >>
> >> Not if the salaries of local colonels have to be paid for by the
> >> empire, rather than by taxes on the colonized natives.
> >
> >That argument has even more force when turned against colonialism: if you
> >are spending than you are taking in, it's not worth it. And since
> >colonialism costs more, this is an argument for preferring WTO-style
> >neocolonialism. (And for preferring stability to tumult.)
> >
> >This is not to say you can't have an imperialism that's capitalistically
> >irrational. But then by definition it isn't following capitalistic laws.
> >It's following some other kind of logic.
> >
> >Michael
>
> (1) Remember, capitalism socializes production and its
> "externalities" while profits remain privatized. A few capitalists
> manage to benefit from the whole fucking mess out there in the Stan.
> They don't mind paying for Karzais and sepoys, because they are
> paying them with "other people's money": taxes paid by Americans
> whose unions are getting busted and whose social programs are being
> cut; and tributes from vassals of the empire, like Japan, who will
> also be made to pay for higher fossil fuel costs due to the
> Anglo-American war on Iraq. Imperialism pays for some capitalists,
> but, for everyone else, it's a losing proposition, as it has always
> been the case.
>
> (2) More importantly than (1), while the logic of an individual
> capitalist may be quarterly cost-benefit calculations, the logic of
> the capitalist mode of production (whose guardians imperialists are)
> isn't. Conrad put the logic of imperialism in this way: "Those
> Englishmen live on illusions which somehow or other help them to get
> a firm hold of the substance" (_Nostromo_, Part 2 "The Isabels,"
> Chapter 7). Ironically, what is a firm hold at one point may later
> become a quicksand, for imperialists don't have all the cards
> necessary to win once and for all. When threatened, imperialists may
> very well prefer an assertion of class power to profit. In
> _Nostromo_, rather than allowing the populist rebels to take over the
> silver mine that he inherited from his father, Charles Gould would
> prefer to blow up the mine and half the country with it: "'I have
> enough dynamite stored up at the mountain to send it down crashing
> into the valley' -- his [Charles's] voice rose a little -- 'to send
> half Sulaco into the air if I liked.'...'Why, yes,' Charles
> pronounced, slowly. 'The Gould Concession has struck such deep roots
> in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the mountains,
> that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it from there.
> It's my choice. It's my last card to play'" (_Nostromo_, Part 2 "The
> Isabels," Chapter 5).
> - --
> Yoshie
>
> * Calendar of Events in Columbus:
> <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of lbo-talk-digest V1 #7097
> *******************************
>