Fun and Games

and still comes out on the other side alive.

—Bruce Campbell in Cashiers du Cinemart

HARDIE LAY in the dry grass, bleeding, handcuffed to his demon girl. She’d stopped laughing, thankfully. It had started to creep him out.

“Now, if I can just wait until the cavalry arrives…,” he said, wondering if Mann would get the reference. If she did, she gave no indication.

The police arrived, along with a flotilla of EMTs. Somebody used a key on the cuffs and separated the two. Somebody else checked his neck, his vitals, shined a light in his eyes, and then he was loaded onto a gurney and carried through the Hunter home. Psycho Phil and his sister were still groaning—they would probably live. Same deal with the gunmen, which meant that Hardie was losing his touch. Either that, or nobody died in purgatory.

Of course, all of this was kinda sorta deja vu–like in a bizarro universe kind of way. Being shot and beaten to the brink of death and then carried through some innocent family’s home. Just like when he was carried through Nate’s home, after all the shooting had stopped three years ago.

Maybe this was it, finally, at long last—the end credits that had been waiting three long years to crawl across the screen.

Please, God, let me just fade out and realize that the past three years have been an elaborate imagined fantasy sequence as my dying brain fired off its last few synapses. Please tell me I actually died at Nate’s house, and all of this has been some kind of fire I had to pass through before making it to the next life. Please tell me this was meant to purify my soul, and now I can rest in peace.

God—if listening—declined to respond.

Some time passed. Hardie wasn’t sure how long, exactly. A minute maybe. He felt his eyes go out of focus. His mind wandered, like he was on the edge of sleep. His life didn’t flash before his eyes. There were no last-minute revelations or epiphanies. Everything was just gray and soft and numb.

An EMT appeared next to him. He ripped open some plastic. Pulled out a syringe. Pried off the plastic top. Slid the needle into a glass bottle. Flicked the syringe with a finger. Drew back the plunger.

“Oh, they’re going to have fun with you,” the EMT said, then slid the needle into Hardie’s arm.

THANKS & PRAISE

This book has many fathers, as well as a mother or two. Three of those fathers are named David, strangely enough.

A little over two years ago, David J. Schow invited me to his birthday party in the Hollywood Hills, and the moment I almost died backing out onto the edge of Durand Drive, I knew I had to set a novel there. The germ of Fun and Games (at least the germ of the setting ) was planted then; it would reach full bloom this past summer when Schow took me on a crazy driving/walking tour of Beachwood Canyon, from the Hollywood Reservoir to the Bronson Caves—the setting for countless genre films over the years. Hardie and Lane didn’t make it over to the caves, but they hit pretty much everything else Schow showed me. I owe him a huge debt. If there were such a title as “locations manager” for a novel, that would be Mr. Schow. Read his short stories (my personal favorite collection: Lost Angels ), read his novels (faves: The Kill Riff, Internecine ), pray your kids grow up half as cool and kind as him.

My longtime novel-baby daddy (aka literary agent), David Hale Smith, who was right there at conception, as well as on the day I heard the happy news and delivery day. He’s not the kind of agent who paces and smokes out in the lobby; he’s right in the room with you, holding your hand, telling you to breathe.

I’ll save my third baby daddy, also named David, for the end; you’ll understand when you get there.

This book’s fourth baby daddy—the one who force-fed me prenatal vitamins and made pickle-and-ice-cream runs at four a.m.—is a non-David. His name is John Schoenfelder, and he’s the editor of Mulholland Books. We kicked this baby around in a Scarface-style restaurant not far from Grand Central Station, then kicked it around a little more in a bustling Irish joint. And thanks to John, this little runt of an idea I had grew up into this big, crazy trilogy you’ll (hopefully) be reading. His creativity knows no bounds; his enthusiasm is like Ebola—one lunch with John and you’ll be bleeding awesome from every orifice.

Also in the delivery room were Miriam Parker, Wes Miller, Luisa Frontino, Michael Pietsch, and the rest of the stellar Little, Brown/Mulholland Books team. Pamela Marshall’s spot-on copyedits made sure nobody would make fun of this child in school someday. And let me thank two members of LB’s extended family, in the “kindly uncle” category: Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos. Their novels set the standard; their kindness and support are legendary.

If I could hand out cigars, I’d be giving some fancy Cubans to Danny and Heather Baror, Lou Boxer, Ed Brubaker, Angela Cheng Caplan, Jon Cavalier, Joshua Hale Fialkov, James Frey, Sara Gran, McKenna Jordan, Anne Kimbol, Joe Lansdale, Paul Leyden, Ed and Kate Pettit, Eric Red, Brett Simon, Shauyi Tai, and Jessica Tcha, as well as everyone else I somehow forgot to mention. But please forgive me; I’m a new father and kind of frazzled.

Last but nowhere near least is my real-life family: I could not have written this novel without the patience and support and love of my wife, Meredith, my son, Parker, or my daughter, Sarah. They watched me write this book as we traveled across the United States and back again, and they don’t mind that I have all these baby daddies. Which would freak some people out, to be honest.

I mentioned a third baby daddy named David; that would be my friend David Thompson. Sadly, I am not able to thank him in person; David passed away unexpectedly at the insanely young age of thirty- eight.

As I type these words a few short months later… well, fuck. I still can’t believe I’m typing those words. I thought David and I would grow old together, and that someday—if we were lucky—we’d be the cranky old men of the genre, commenting on all of the young whippersnappers coming up, and trading our favorites back and forth via e-book readers or direct mental implants or whatever. David was literally the second person (after my own agent) to congratulate me on my Mulholland deal, which was appropriate, because David’s been there from the beginning. Literally. Whenever I meet someone who’s read my stuff, more often than not—and I am not exaggerating here—it’s because David Thompson put one of my books in their hands and said, “I think you’ll really like this.” I can hear him speaking those words now, in that wonderful Texas accent of his. He spoke those words often; he was a tireless promoter and supporter of crime fiction, and had this uncanny ability to match reader with novel. I don’t say this lightly: I owe my career to him.

So of course I couldn’t wait to send David an early peek of Fun and Games. I was still writing the first draft when he died; I finished it in a Houston hotel room the weekend of his memorial service (which was packed with family, friends, and a veritable who’s who of mystery and crime fiction). This novel is dedicated to David not because he’s gone; it’s because he was my ideal reader, and forever will be. There’s no replacing him. There will never be anyone else like him.

Someday I hope to tell the whippersnappers all about him.