Mucho Mojo: A Hap and Leonard Novel (2) [Paperback]

In the second installment of the Hap Collins-Leonard Pine series, Leonard is still recuperating from the injuries he suffered in the first book (Savage Season) when he learns that his Uncle Chester has died. Hap agrees to stay with Leonard and help clean out the rundown house that he's inherited; when they find a small skeleton buried under the floor, it's up to them to prove that Chester wasn't responsible for a string of child murders by finding the real killer.

Lansdale slowly develops the relationship between his two protagonists as they banter with each other throughout their pursuit of the killers. Mucho Mojo also introduces two other characters, LaBorde Police Department members Lieutenant Marvin Hanson and his sidekick, Charlie, who serve as ongoing sources of friction--and, when it's most needed, support. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The publicist raved about this dark suspense novel, which concerns a gay couple who unearth a tiny skeleton that may be linked to a series of child murders.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Hap Collins is an East Texas field worker. His buddy, Leonard Pine, is gay, black, and tough as hell. Leonard's uncle dies and leaves a house and money. When Leonard and Hap begin to clean the place out, they discover an old trunk containing a child's skeleton and some porno mags. Leonard persuades Hap to help him clear his uncle's name before they tell the authorities. Their haphazard on-again, off-again investigation--interrupted by a series of confrontations with the crack-house gang next door--reveals that Leonard's uncle and a friend of his, also murdered, were gathering evidence intended to expose a serial killer. It's one way to while away one's golden years. Hap and Leonard--East Texas' dusty version of Spenser and Hawk--wisecrack their way to a resolution, clean out the crack house in a satisfying conflagration, and exorcise a couple of personal demons along the way. Lansdale has written hundreds of short stories and numerous novels; all that went before has crystallized into this extraordinarily memorable book. The friendship and smart-ass patter between Hap and Leonard is so real it's palpable; the plot is compelling; and one can practically hear the wind and taste the dust of an East Texas summer. Damn, this is good. Wes Lukowsky --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A raunchy tale of perversion and murder with a distinctly East Texan twist. Chester Pine has just died, leaving his house and property to the care of his gay nephew, Leonard. When Leonard, who's black, and his white friend, Hap Collins, begin repairs on the dilapidated house, they find a box beneath the floorboards containing a rotting baby skeleton sandwiched between pages of Psalms and kiddie-porn magazines. When they look further, they find more skeletons. Local police lieutenant Marvin Hanson suggests that Chester murdered the children. The trail of the exploration leads them to a close friend of the deceased named Ilium Moon, who might be able to give them some insight into the death of the children. They find Moon's corpse at the bottom of a lake. Next on Hap and Leonard's trail lies the local reverend, whose edginess in the face of questioning and probable association with the Psalms sheets make him a likely candidate for villainhood. And so he is: During a village carnival, Hap and Leonard catch him before he can spirit away a busload of toddlers for seemingly innocent purposes. Other plots include Hap's destruction of a crack house and a failed love affair between Hap and Florida Grange, a black lawyer. Although the book drags a bit, it tantalizes with its odd syntax--characters say such things as ``I'd been younger, I'd did it,'' a reproduction of the fractured grammar native to Lansdale's (Dark at Heart, 1992, etc.) imaginary East Texas town of LaBorde. Also, Chandler-esque oddballs pop up throughout the book, providing refreshing breaks from the darkness of the plot. A hybrid between a thriller and a comedy of manners that is imaginative and chilling. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"A witch's brew of a tale. . . . [Lansdale has] a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace.”—The New York Times Book Review“Mucho Mojo is some major magic. . . . as funny as all get out. . . . A story of richness of character and setting.”—Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel “Lansdale's prose has the mean terseness of James M. Cain. . . . Welds the grungy nihilism of pulp to the deliberate exaggerations of the tall tale.”—Newsday"Like 10-alarm chili, Lansdale is pretty hot stuff."—People

Hap and Leonard return in this incredible, mad-dash thriller, loaded with crack addicts, a serial killer, and a body count.Leonard is still nursing the injuries he sustained in the duo's last wild undertaking when he learns that his Uncle Chester has passed. Hap is of course going to be there for his best friend, and when the two are cleaning up Uncle Chester's dilapidated house, they uncover a dark little secret beneath the house's rotting floor boards—a small skeleton buried in a trunk. Hap wants to call the police. Leonard, being a black man in east Texas, persuades him this is not a good idea, and together they set out to clear Chester's name on their own. The only things standing in their way is a houseful of felons, a vicious killer, and possibly themselves.

Joe R. Lansdale has written more than a dozen novels in the suspense, horror, and Western genres. He has also edited several anthologies. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, and seven Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers of America. He lives in East Texas with his wife, son, daughter, and German Shepherd.

1.It was July and hot and I was putting out sticks and not thinking one whit about murder.All the other rose-field jobs are bad, the budding, the digging, but putting out sticks, that's the job they give sinners in Hell.You do sticks come dead of summer. Way it works is they give you this fistful of bud wood, and you take that and sigh and turn and look down the length of the field, which goes on from where you are to some place east of China, and you gird your loins, bend over, and poke those sticks in the rows a bit apart. You don't lift up if you don't have to, 'cause otherwise you'll never finish. You keep your back bent and you keep on poking, right on down that dusty row, hoping eventually it'll play out, though it never seems to, and of course that East Texas sun, which by 10:30 A.M. is like an infected blister leaking molten pus, doesn't help matters.So I was out there playing with my sticks, thinking the usual thoughts about ice tea and sweet, willing women, when the Walking Boss came up and tapped me on the shoulder.I thought maybe it was water break, but when I looked up he jerked a thumb toward the end of the field, said, "Hap, Leonard's here.""He can't come to work," I said. "Not unless he can put out sticks with his cane.""Just wants to see you," the Walking Boss said, and moved away.I poked in the last stick from my bundle, eased my back straight, and started down the center of the long dusty row, passing the bent, sweaty backs of the others as I went.I could see Leonard at the far end of the field, leaning on his cane. From that distance, he looked as if he were made of pipe cleaners and doll clothes. His raisin-black face was turned in my direction and a heat wave jumped off of it and vibrated in the bright light and dust from the field swirled momentarily in the wave and settled slowly.When Leonard saw I was looking in his direction, his hand flew up like a grackle taking flight.Vernon Lacy, my field boss, known affectionately to me as the Old Bastard though he was my age, decked out in starched white shirt, white pants, and tan pith helmet, saw me coming too. He came alongside Leonard and looked at me and made a slow and deliberate mark in his little composition book. Docking my time, of course.When I got to the end of the row, which only took a little less time than a trek across Egypt on a dead camel, I was dust covered and tired from trudging in the soft dirt. Leonard grinned, said, "Just wanted to know if you could loan me fifty cents.""You made me walk all the way here for fifty cents, I'm gonna see I can fit that cane up your ass.""Let me grease up first, will you?"Lacy looked over and said, "You're docked, Collins.""Go to hell," I said.Lacy swallowed and walked away and didn't look back."Smooth," Leonard said."I pride myself on diplomacy. Now tell me it isn't fifty cents you want.""It isn't fifty cents I want."Leonard was still grinning, but the grin shifted slightly to one side, like a boat about to take water and sink."What's wrong, buddy?""My Uncle Chester," Leonard said. "He passed."I followed Leonard's old Buick in my pickup, stopping long enough along the way to buy some beer and ice. When we arrived at Leonard's place, we got an ice chest and filled it with the ice and the beer and carried it out to the front porch.Leonard, like myself, didn't have air-conditioning, and the front porch was as cool a spot as we could find, unless we went down to the creek and laid in it.We eased into the rickety porch swing and sat the ice chest between us. While Leonard moved the swing with his good leg, I popped us a couple."Happen today?" I asked."They found him today. Been dead two or three days. Heart attack. They got him at the LaBorde Funeral Home, pumped full of juice."Leonard sipped his beer and studied the barbed-wire fence on the opposite side of the road. "See that mockingbird on the fence post, Hap?""Why? Is he trying to get my attention?""He's a fat one. You don't see many that fat.""I wonder about that all the time, Leonard. How come mockingbirds don't normally get fat. Thought I might write a paper on it.""My uncle's favorite bird. I always thought they were ugly, but he thought they were the grandest things in the world. He used to call me his little mockingbird when I was a kid because I mocked him and everybody else. I see one, I think of him. Hokey, huh?"I didn't say anything. I focused my eyes on the floorboards at the edge of the porch, watched as a hot horsefly staggered on its disease-laden legs, trying to make the little bit of shade the porch roof provided. The fly faltered and stopped. Heatstroke, I figured."I want to go to Uncle Chester's funeral tomorrow," Leonard said. "But I don't know. I feel funny about it. He probably wouldn't want me there.""From what you've told me about Uncle Chester, spite of the fact he disowned you when he found out you were queer--" "Gay. We say gay now, Hap. You straights need to learn that. When we're real drunk, we call each other fags or faggots.""Whatever. I'm sure, in his own way, Chester was a good guy. You loved him. It doesn't matter what he would have wanted. What matters is what you want. He's dead. He's not making decisions anymore. You want to go to the funeral and tell him 'bye because of the good things you remember about him, go on.""Come with me.""Hey, I'm sorry for Uncle Chester on account of what he meant to you, but I don't know him from brown rice. Fact is, him dying, you coming around upset, and me leaving the rose fields like that, I figure 1 don't have a job anymore. He screwed up my income, so why the hell would I want to go to his funeral?""Because I want you to and you're my friend and you don't want to hurt my teeny-weeny feelings."This was true.I didn't like it, but I agreed. Going to a funeral seemed harmless enough.2.Funeral was the next day at three in the afternoon, so early next morning we drove to LaBorde in Leonard's car and over to J. C. Penney's.We went there to buy suits, something neither Leonard or I had owned in years. My last suit had had a Nehru collar and a peace symbol about the size of an El Dorado hubcap on a chain a little smaller than you might need to tow a butane truck. Leonard's last suit had been designed by the military. Suits from Penney's didn't come with a vest and two pairs of pants anymore, least not the decent ones, and the prices were higher than I remembered. I thought perhaps we ought to go over to Kmart, see if they had something in sheen green.Something we got tired of wearing, we could use to upholster a chair.I ended up with a dark blue suit and a light blue shirt and a dark blue tie. I bought black shoes, socks, and a belt. I tried the stuff on and looked at myself in the mirror. I thought I looked silly. Like a tall, biped pit bull in mourning.Leonard bought a dark green Western-cut suit, a canary-yellow shirt, and a tie striped up in orange and green and yellow. Shoes he got were black with pointy toes and zippers down the side. Kind of shoes you hoped they stopped making about the time the Dave Clark Five quit making records."You're gonna bury Uncle Chester," I said. "Not take him on a Caribbean cruise. Show up in that, he might jump out of the box and throw a blanket over you.""Jealousy is an ugly thing, Hap.""You're right. I wish I looked like a head-on collision between Dolly Parton and Peter Max."We changed back into our clothes, and I paid up because I was the only one working these days, even if it was sporadically, and because Leonard never let me forger it was my fault his leg was messed up. He'd say stuff like, "You know I got this leg messed up on account of you," then he'd pick something he wanted and I'd pay for it, because what he said was true. Wasn't for him, my funeral would have come before Uncle Chester's.The services were in a little community on the outskirts of LaBorde, and after we went home and hung our awhile, we put the suits on and drove over in Leonard's wreck with no air-conditioning.Time we got to the Baptist church where the funeral was being held, we had sweated up good in our new suits, and the hot wind blowing on me made my hair look as if it had been combed with a bush hog. My overall appearance was of someone who had been in a fight and lost.I got out of the car and Leonard came around and said, "You still got the fucking tag hanging on you."I lifted an arm and there was the tag, dangling from the suit sleeve. I felt like Minnie Pearl. Leonard got out his pocket knife and cut it off and we went inside the church.We paraded by the open coffin, and of course, Uncle Chester hadn't missed his chance to be guest of honor. He was one ugly sonofabitch, and I figured alive he hadn't looked much better. He wasn't very tall, but he was wide, and being dead a few days before they found him hadn't helped his looks any. The mortician had only succeeded in making him look a bit like a swollen Cabbage Patch Doll.After the eulogies and prayers and singing and people falling over the coffin and crying whether they wanted to or nor, we drove out to a little cemetery in the woods and the coffin was unloaded from an ancient black hearse with a sticker on the back bumper that read BINGO FOR GOD.Underneath a striped tent, with the hot wind blowing, we stood next to an open grave and the ceremony went on. There was a kind of thespian quality about the whole thing. The only one who seemed to be truly upset was Leonard. He wasn't saying anything, and he's too macho to cry in public, but I knew him. I saw the way his hands shook, the tilt of his mouth, the hooding of his eyes."It's a nice enough place to get put down," I whispered to Leonard."You're dead, you're dead," Leonard said. "You told me that. It's a thing takes the edge off how you feel about your surroundings.""Right. Fuck Uncle Chester. Let's ta...