Chapters (60)
- DAW Books Presents
- HAPPY HOURINHELL
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Dedication
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- interlude
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- interlude
- thirteen
- fourteen
- interlude
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- interlude
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- epilogue
I had finally worked my upper body free when the car stopped. Someone fumbled with the trunk lid. Disgusted with myself for not having hidden some kind of weapon on my body before leaving it helpless, I braced myself against the floor of the car. When the trunk popped open, I shut my eyes to keep myself from being blinded by the glare, and struck out as hard as I could with my fist. I had the deep satisfaction of hearing somebody gasp in serious discomfort and fall down, so I opened my eyes, kicked my way loose from the canvas, and started climbing out of the trunk, but slowed down a bit when I saw that instead of Luca Brasi or one of Don Corleone’s other button-men, I had instead just punched Clarence the Junior Angel right in the nuts.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I shouted. “In fact, what are you doing period? Why am I in the trunk of a car?” This might have been a bit unfair to Clarence, who was lying on his back, curled up like a dying insect, moaning with pain and nausea, and not in the best position to answer questions.
I heard the driver’s side door slam. A moment later Garcia Windhover, aka “G-Man,” aka “World’s Most Useless Human” came trotting around the side, dressed in his usual gangster drag, like he’d put together his Young Jeezy outfit during a sale at Hot Topic. He’d added to it this time with a black eye patch, which made him look less like a pirate or Nick Fury than like a fourth-grader being treated for lazy eye. “Whoa!” he said, looking worriedly at Clarence, who was lying in the road next to the car quietly retching and panting like a woman in painful labor. “Bobby, dude, why’d you do that?”
“Why’d I do that? No, why am I in the trunk of a car?” I looked at the gaudiness and unnecessary chrome and winced. “Even worse, your car? I don’t want even my dead body in this car, ever. And what’s Clarence doing here, Windhover? He wasn’t supposed to know about this.”
“I needed some help.”
“You’re going to. That’s a promise. I didn’t mean to sock Clarence in the balls, I was just defending myself against kidnappers, but you . . .” I glared at G-Man so direfully that he actually took a couple of steps back. “I’m going to punch you in the manfruit over and over again until you’re ringing like the bells of Notre Dame when the hunchback bought caffeinated by mistake.”