Joe Schreiber - Pretty Lethal

First published as Perry’s Killer Playlist in the USA in 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2012 Joe Schreiber

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Published by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

First e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978 1 4052 5944 6

eISBN 978 1 7803 1112 8

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover

Title page

Copyright page First published as Perry’s Killer Playlist in the USA in 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN Text copyright © 2012 Joe Schreiber The moral rights of the author have been asserted Published by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company First e-book edition 2014 ISBN 978 1 4052 5944 6 eISBN 978 1 7803 1112 8 www.egmont.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

PROLOGUE: ‘American Idiot’ – Green Day

1. ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ – The Killers

2. ‘Ever Fallen in Love’ – Buzzcocks

3. ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ – Duran Duran

4. ‘The Loved Ones’ – Elvis Costello and the Attractions

5. ‘You Are a Tourist’ – Death Cab for Cutie

6. ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ – The Replacements

7. ‘Waiting for Somebody’ – Paul Westerberg

8. ‘Never Let Me Down Again’ – Depeche Mode

9. ‘Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)’ – Gnarls Barkley

10. ‘Police and Thieves’ – The Clash

11. ‘Jump’ – Van Halen

12. ‘Here I Go Again’ – Whitesnake

13. ‘Church of the Poison Mind’ – Culture Club

14. ‘The World Has Turned and Left Me Here’ – Weezer

15. ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ – The Beatles

16. ‘Know Your Enemy’ – Green Day

17. ‘There Are Some Remedies Worse Than the Disease’ – This Will Destroy You

18. ‘Panic Switch’ – Silversun Pickups

19. ‘Busy Child’ – The Crystal Method

20. ‘Darklands’ – The Jesus and Mary Chain

21. ‘Sweetest Kill’ – Broken Social Scene

22. ‘Love Removal Machine’ – The Cult

23. ‘If There’s a Rocket Tie Me to It’ – Snow Patrol

24. ‘Hold Your Colour’ – Pendulum

25. ‘Everybody Daylight’ – Brightblack Morning Light

26. ‘Hurt’ – Nine Inch Nails

27. ‘99 Problems’ – Jay-Z

28. ‘King of Pain’ – The Police

29. ‘Family Man’ – Hall & Oates

30. ‘Timebomb’ – Beck

31. ‘Blow Up the Outside World’ – Soundgarden

32. ‘Wake Up’ – Rage Against the Machine

33. ‘Cold Hard Bitch’ – Jet

34. ‘I Will Buy You a New Life’ – Everclear

35. ‘This Is Not America’ – David Bowie

36. ‘Bullet with Butterfly Wings’ – The Smashing Pumpkins

37. ‘Don’t Let Me Explode’ – The Hold Steady

38. ‘Needle Hits E’ – Sugar

39. ‘I Am the Highway’ – Audioslave

40. ‘The Metro’ – Berlin

41. ‘Teenagers’ – My Chemical Romance

42. ‘Baby Goes to Eleven’ – Superdrag

43. ‘Icky Thump’ – The White Stripes

44. ‘Walking Far from Home’ – Iron & Wine

45. ‘Stand Up’ – The Prodigy

46. ‘Brand New Friend’ – Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

47. ‘We Own the Sky’ – M83

Acknowledgements

‘Don’t kill me.’

Nine hundred feet up in the November wind, it’s hard to enunciate properly, especially with the barrel of a Glock nine-millimeter jammed in your mouth. They don’t tell you these things on the Travel Channel.

Gobi takes the automatic out from between my lips. Her eyes sparkle and shine. I think about what she told me back in Venice, what she said at the hotel that night. That all seems like a long time ago now.

She smiles, blood and lipstick smeared over her face. Down below, blue lights on the Champ de Mars flash off the steel framework of the Eiffel Tower, warping in the rain. Over her shoulder I can see the gendarmes on the other side of the observation platform with automatic weapons, yelling at us in the language of love. I remember just enough from two years in Mrs. Garvey’s French class to decipher ‘ police ’ and ‘ surrender .’

‘As tave myliu,’ Gobi says. With her free hand, she reaches out and brushes the wet hair out of my eyes. Her fingers are ice cold. ‘Your hair is getting shaggy, mielasis .’ Then she points the pistol back at my head.

‘ Just tell me what you’ve done with my family .’ I’m begging now, and I don’t care how it sounds. ‘Just tell me where they are.’

‘I am so sorry, Perry.’ An almost inaudible click as she switches off the safety. ‘Au revoir.’

‘Miss me?’ she asked.

I leaned forward to kiss the ice cream from her upper lip – maple fudge ripple, arguably the best flavor in the known universe. We were standing barefoot next to the picnic tables by the Twin Star restaurant on Route 26, watching the gray waves of October rolling up and crashing on the shore.

Me and Paula.

It was Fall, the best time of the year for this battered stretch of shoreline that Connecticut shares with the sea. All around us, the rest of the beach was deserted, a long, unhurried curve of sand, eel grass and wooden fence slats bullied and pushed over sideways by decades of rough Atlantic weather. During the summer this place was mobbed with families and kids, teenagers, bikers, couples – my parents had even come up here on a date once, according to family lore. Now it all felt pleasantly haunted, the parking lot almost empty, the restrooms already locked up for the season, leaving the two of us and the guy behind the ice cream counter just itching to put up his handwritten SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER! sign in the window.