The Getaway God

  “Mr. Stark?”

  “Yeah?”

  “May I speak to you for a moment?”

  “No. It’s Christmas. Go away.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. Aim your feet. First right, then left. Try it.”

  He knocks again.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Stark. I understand you do investigations.”

  “No. That’s my boss. She’s outside. In the back with a drunk Czech and a hot blonde. You can’t miss them.”

  He knocks.

  “Please, Mr. Stark. I’d rather deal with you. My case is unique.”

  “How unique?”

  The guy who pushes the stall door open looks like yesterday’s lunch, eaten and thrown back up again. A gray, patchy beard. Hair a terminal thicket of cowlicks. A trench coat that might have been tan once, but is now the color of cold grease and rhino shit.

  “Please, Mr. Stark,” he says. “It has to be you.”

  “Why?”

  He opens his coat. He isn’t wearing a shirt. His chest is a mass of torn muscle and cracked bones. There’s a gaping hole where his heart should be.

  “Mr. Stark, I need your help with an investigation. My name is Death. And I appear to have been murdered.”

  I hate this job already.

  About the Author

  New York Times bestselling author Richard Kadrey has published nine novels, including Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha from Hell, Devil Said Bang, Kill City Blues, Butcher Bird, and Metrophage, and more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short story “Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and his novel Butcher Bird was nominated for the Prix Elbakin in France. The bestselling and acclaimed writer and photographer lives in San Francisco, California.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  ALSO BY RICHARD KADREY

  Dead Set

  Sandman Slim Novels

  Kill City Blues

  Devil Said Bang

  Aloha from Hell

  Kill the Dead

  Sandman Slim

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Harper Voyager and design is a trademark of HCP LLC.

  THE GETAWAY GOD. Copyright © 2014 by Richard Kadrey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  FIRST EDITION

  Designed by Paula Russell Szafranski

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kadrey, Richard.

  The getaway god : a Sandman Slim novel / Richard Kadrey. — First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-06-209461-2 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-06-219762-7 (paperback) 1. Imaginary wars and battles—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3561.A3616G48 2014

  813’.54—dc23

  2014007995

  ISBN 978-0-06-209461-2

  EPUB Edition Month 2014 ISBN: 9780062094629

  14 15 16 17 18 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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