Reviewing restaurants is normally a safe pursuit, but Lorne and Catherine face torture and death when they try to unravel organised crime's infiltration of the fine dining scene.
Their longstanding friendship deepens when they meet again seven mont...
Samir shouted into the phone. "Who the fuck is this?"
"Who? Who you talking about?"
"The fellow strapped to the table, that's who."
"That's Lorne. They said they nabbed him as he came off the escalator a little before midnight. Took him to the room, recovered the tracker."
"This isn't him, you fucking incompetent Quebecois asshole. Can't you idiots do anything right? Decide on which finger."
"Please, give me a bit. We got the cab driver. Pretends he can't remember them. I'll get Cheng to come and coax him. He'll talk. Besides, we have George at Molly's. I can go over there and help."
"And cause another fuck-up? No, you come here and get rid of this body. Now!"
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Catherine and Lorne sailed silently for a while as she absorbed the Doctor Kellogg information. After they had tacked to point up Queen Charlotte Channel, she asked, "Is there other stuff on this? There must be... How did you run across it?"
"Connolly made me read through it as part of my sex education. That was early on, I guess to prepare me for what was to come. The medical literature is filled with stuff like this. There's a good summary... It's been years now, but it should still be there." He brushed the back of his hand across her cheek and leaned to kiss her. "You want to carry on? We can stop now."
She looked at him and twisted her lips. "No, let's keep going."
"Okay..." He paused to think. "Google circumcision history USA. That should do it."
Catherine clicked in the search and entered it. "Over two million hits. Seems popular."
He read the screen, then pointed. "That one, the one after the wiki — whale.to."
She clicked the link, and they watched the text load. "That's the one. It's a good summary of the spread of the aberration." They read the page together:
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1860: 0.1% of the U.S. male population circumcised — In cases of masturbation we must, I believe, break the habit by inducing such a condition of the parts as will cause too much local suffering to allow of the practice being continued. For this purpose, if the prepuce is long, we may circumcise the male patient with present and probably with future advantage; the operation, too, should not be performed under chloroform, so that the pain experienced may be associated with the habit we wish to eradicate." Athol A. W. Johnson, On An Injurious Habit Occasionally Met with in Infancy and Early Childhood, The Lancet, vol. 1 (7 April 1860): pp. 344-345.
"Fuck! Published in The Lancet, the authority," she said after reading the first entry.
1871: 1% of the U.S. male population circumcised — I refer to masturbation as one of the effects of a long prepuce; not that this vice is entirely absent in those who have undergone circumcision, though I never saw an instance in a Jewish child of very tender years, except as the result of association with children whose covered glans have naturally impelled them to the habit." M. J. Moses, The Value of Circumcision as a Hygienic and Therapeutic Measure, NY Medical Journal, vol. 14 (1871): pp. 368-374.
