How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"It's not your fault, darling. You said yourself that there was nothing else you could do." (20.35)
Dinah tries to comfort the Op when he expresses disgust with himself for having set the final cogs into motion that will lead to an explosion of violence. But it's hard to tell whether Dinah really believes what she's saying is true. The Op himself argues against Dinah's comment by insisting he could have done other plenty of other things. But instead he chooses to juggle death and murder.
Quote #8
"Look. I sat at Willsson's table tonight and played them like you'd play trout, and got just as much fun out of it. I looked at Noonan and knew he hadn't a chance in a thousand of living another day because of what I had done to him, and I laughed, and felt warm and happy inside. That's not me. I've got hard skin all over what's left of my soul, and after twenty years of messing around with crime I can look at any sort of a murder without seeing anything in it but my bread and butter, the day's work. But this getting a rear out of planning deaths is not natural to me. It's what this place has done to me." (20.38).
Notice here how the Op spends a lot of time separating his old self from his current self. He emphasizes that the person he is right now "isn't me." Personville has poisoned him so that now he gets a kick out of "planning deaths" and feels "warm and happy inside" as he plots Noonan's demise. I guess we have to give the Op credit for being self-aware of his flaws, but he doesn't try to stop the murders from happening. So how sorry does he feel really?
Quote #9
In the dining room again, I knelt beside the dead girl and used my handkerchief to wipe the ice pick handle clean of any prints my fingers had left on it. I did the same to the glasses, bottles, doors, light buttons, and pieces of furniture I had touched, or was likely to have touched. Then I washed my hands, examined my clothes for blood, made sure I was leaving none of my property behind, and went to the front door. I opened it, wiped the inner knob, closed it behind me, wiped the outer knob, and went away. (21.23)
This is probably the most horrifying scene in the entire novel, and that's saying a lot given that there are more than two dozen bodies littered across Red Harvest. When the Op realizes that Dinah has been murdered, he doesn't tell us one word about how he feels. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Instead, he gives a cold, detached description of how he removes any possible clue that could link him back to the murder. Not only is he tampering with evidence, but now the Op even stoops to lying in order to figure out the identity of Dinah's murderer.