Christopher Moore - Coyote Blue

Praise for
Christopher Moore

Clearly the unhinged Hiaasen. Hes Daily Showfunny and willing to subvert anything.

Janet Maslin, The New York Times

The funniest writer of comic fantasy novels working today.

Washington Post Book World

The careers of the writers with even a quarter as much wit and joie de vivre as Moore are always worth following.

USA Today

Few contemporary authors are as consistently bizarre, poignant, funny and wonderful as Christopher Moore.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

Christopher Moore is a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.

Carl Hiaasen

The thinking mans Dave Barry or the impatient mans Tom Robbins.

The Onion

If theres a funnier writer out there, step forward.

Playboy

Christopher Moore is rapidly becoming the cult author of today, filling a post last held by Kurt Vonnegut.

The Denver Post

Also by Christopher Moore

You Suck: A Love Story

A Dirty Job

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christs Childhood Pal

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Bloodsucking Fiends

Practical Demonkeeping

CHRISTOPHER
MOORE

Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 1994 by Christopher Moore

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition March 2008

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales
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Designed by Jill Putorti

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Control No.: 93030469

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5847-7
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5847-0
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-9148-4

This book is dedicated to the Crow people.

The author would like to thank the following people who helped during the research and writing of Coyote Blue:

IN CAMBRIA, CALIFORNIA: Darren Westlund, Dee Dee Leicht-fuss, Jean Brody, Kathy OBrian, Mike Molnar, Allison Duncan, and Elizabeth Sarwas.

IN LIVINGSTON, MONTANA: Tim Cahill, Bev Sandberg, Marnie Gannon, Cal Sorensen, Scott McMillian, Steve Potenberg, Dana and David Latsch, and Libby Caldwell.

IN CROW COUNTRY: Larry Kindness, the Oliver and Elizabeth Hugs family, the Hartford Stops family, Dale Kindness, Clara Whitehip Nomee, Melody Birdin Ground, John Doyle, and Barbara Booher at the Custer Battlefield National Monument.

IN WASHINGTON: Kathe Frahm in Seattle, for letting me be sick on her couch for a month; Adeline Fredine, the Colville tribal historian; Deborah J. MacDonald; and Mike Robinson.

And Nick Ellison in New York, Paul Haas in Los Angeles, and Rachelle Stambal at my side. Thanks.

The people in this book are all products of my imagination and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. While some of the places in this book do exist, Ive changed them for my own purposes, and any resemblance to real places is just an oversight on my part. In short, the whole thing is a damnable lie and contains not a shred of truth.

When the word coyote refers to a canine animal, it is pronounced KAI-YO-TEE.

When Coyote refers to a character of human appearance, or in the name Old Man Coyote, it is pronounced KAI-YOTE.

When coyote is used as a modifier, as in coyote ugly (if you wake up in bed with your arm under the head of someone who is coyote ugly, and you would gnaw it off rather than wake that person up), it is pronounced KAI-YO-TEE.

The title of this book is pronounced KAI-YO-TEE BLEW. Readers who have a problem with pronunciation might want to read it silently the first time through. This is doubly important if you are reading this on an airplane.

COYOTE BLUE

SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA

While magic powder was sprinkled on the sidewalk outside, Samuel Hunter moved around his office like a machine, firing out phone calls, checking computer printouts, and barking orders to his secretary. It was how he began every business day: running in machine mode until he left for his first sales appointment and put on the right persona for the prospect.

People who knew Sam found him hardworking, intelligent, and even likable, which is exactly what he wanted them to find. He was confident and successful in business, but he wore his success with a humility that put people at ease. He was tall, lean, and quick with a smile, and people said he was as comfortable in a Savile Row suit before a boardroom of businessmen as he was lounging in jeans at Santa Barbaras wharf, trading stories and lies with the fishermen. In fact, the apparent ease with which Sam mastered his environment was the single disturbing quality people noticed in him. How was it that a guy could play so many roles so well, and never seem uncomfortable or out of place? Something was missing. It wasnt that he was a bad guy, it was just that you could never get close to him, you never got a feel for who he really was, which is exactly how Sam wanted it. He thought a show of desire, of passion, of anger even, would give him away, so he suppressed these emotions until he no longer felt them. His life was steady, level, and safe.

So it happened that on an autumn-soft sunny day, not two weeks after his thirty-fifth birthday, some twenty years after he had run away from home, Samuel Hunter stepped out of his office onto the sidewalk and was poleaxed by desire.

He saw a girl loading groceries into an old Datsun Z that was parked at the curb, and to the core of his being, Sam wanted her.

Later he would recall the details of her appearancea line of muscle on a tan thigh, cutoff jeans, the undercurve of a breast showing below the half shirt, yellow hair tied up haphazardly, tendrils escaping to brush high cheekbones and wide brown eyesbut her effect on him now was like a long, oily saxophone note that started somewhere in that lizard part of the brain where the libido resides and resonated down his body to the tendons in his groin and back into his stomach to form a knot that nearly doubled him over.