The Last Good Kiss
"THIS IS UP
THERE WITH THE BEST!"
-People Magazine
"H1zen !finally caught up with Abraham
Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic
bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle
joint just outside ofSonoma, California, drinking the
heart out of a fine spring afternoon ... "
That's how Detective C. W Sughrue ended one
search and began another-a search for a girl in
a dog-eared photo, ten years lost and gone. Now
Sughrue has finally hit the big time, hunting down
Betty Sue Flowers, the barmaid's beautiful
daughter-whose path takes him careening from
Frisco's tenderloin to a Denver jail, from an
Oregon commune to an unmarked grave to the
middle of a pornographic nightmare ...
passing the time with a boozing poet and
a willing woman or two.
Who, what, and where is Betty Sue Flowers? ...
Ask the men who knew her, but never well
enough ... ask the mobster who wants her dead ...
the friend who says she is ... But don't ask Sughrue
-who's putting his life on the line for87 bucks
and a passionate obsession for a girl
in a dog-eared photo.
"What Chandler did for Los Angeles
in the Thirties, James Crumley does for
the roadside West of today."
ISBN D-671-82813-4
IAIIES CIUEEY
PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK
The lines from "Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg" are reprinted from The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir by Richard Hugo with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. copyright© 1973 by Richard Hugo.
POCKE T BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of
GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020
Copyright© 1978 by James Crumley
Published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-90286
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Random House, Inc., 201 East
50th Street, N.Y. 10022
ISBN: 0-671-82813-4
First Pocket Books printing January, 1981
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
POCKET and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster.
Printed in the U.S.A.
for Dick Hugo,
grand old detective of the heart
You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he's done . . .
-Richard Hugo, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
1 ••••
WHEN I FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH ABRAHAM TRAhearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just
outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right
out of a fine spring afternoon.
Trahearne had been on this wandering binge for
nearly three weeks, and the big man, dressed in
rumpled khakies, looked like an old soldier after a long
campaign, sipping slow beers to wash the taste of death
out of his mouth. The dog slumped on the stool beside
him like a tired little buddy, only raising his head
occasionally for a taste of beer from a dirty ashtray set
on the bar.
Neither of them bothered to glance at me as I slipped
onto a stool between the bulldog and the only other two
customers in the place, two out-of-work shade-tree
mechanics who were discussing their lost unemployment checks, their latest DWI conviction, and the probable location of a 1957 Chevy timing chain. Their
knotty faces and nasal accents belonged to another
