When Pigs Fly (11 page)

“Then how
would
you like to impose on me? Look, my place is on your way to Tucson—well, almost. I’ll have my secretary cancel all my appointments for tomorrow. You can leave your car in my driveway, and I’ll pack sandwiches.”

Cal shook her head. “You have a secretary? You have a schedule?”

“Well, if I had a secretary, I’d have a schedule too, and I’d have her clear it. I mean, what’s in L.A. that can’t wait a few hours?”

“I guess you’re right. You’re not planning to show me your etchings, are you?”

“No etchings. And I tossed out my watercolors, but you can see my Jack Kerouac bobblehead doll. Really, I won’t hit on you.”

“You’re either a gentleman or a great liar. Give me directions to your place.”

Mack knew that gentlemen could be liars too, but that distinction seemed out of place. He just wanted to sip tequila and touch Cal Vrattos’s fingertips across the checkered tablecloth. He did neither—the former because he had to drive back to Tucson and the latter because a first date was too soon to ignite his jets. But candlelight flickered across her face, and he knew he wanted to see her again.

“I have to work tonight,” Mack said, “but then I’ll be off.” Mack had a police department pension that paid his bills, but he did occasional security consulting to pay for extras like the rare hot date.

Cal was thin, forty-something and pretty, with grown-up worry lines across her forehead. He had about a decade on her. “I figure you for early thirties,” Mack said. “If you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Thirty-five,” she said.

“And I’m forty-four.”

The restaurant was packed with diners who didn’t seem to care whether Mack and Cal lied to each other. Waiters bustled, marimbas played and ceiling fans washed warm air over everyone. Cal leaned toward Mack over her plate of half-eaten enchiladas. Mack guessed she had pulled her wrinkled blouse straight out of a suitcase, but he hardly cared. Her eyes darted from left to right like the eyes of a spy dropping off a film of secret missile sites. “I’ll add ten years if you will,” she whispered.

He grinned and shook her hand, then held it. Her skin was soft and warm. “Deal.”

They exchanged selected fragments of their backgrounds, which Cal called
curricula vitae
. He had majored in criminology, she in fine arts. He had two sons who were cops; she had a daughter at Harvard. He read Elroy Leonard; she read Toni Morrison. He followed the Red Sox and the Diamondbacks; she watched figure skating and C-Span. He loved running. She
was
running. “I couldn’t put enough miles between Elvis and me,” she said.

He waved away her offer to split the tab, and he paid in cash since his replacement credit card wouldn’t arrive for another day or so. A look of pleasant surprise crossed her face as though Dutch treat was her normal dinner fate with men. His hand touched her back as they walked out to the street and found their cars, apparently both happy that they had so much in common. “Thanks for dinner and your company,” she said. “I’ll be heading out tomorrow morning, maybe to California. And maybe not.”

“Tarry awhile,” Mack replied. “Pause a day or two. I’ll give you the tour I promised. The Sonora Desert. Anasazi ruins. Pineapple salsa.”

A smile spread across Cal’s face. “
I pray you, tarry,
” she said. “
Pause a day or two before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong, I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile.
”

“Help me out here. Which play is that?”

“
Merchant of Venice.
That’s Portia speaking to Bassiano. I learned her part for a summer theater.”

“Oh, yes.
The quality of mercy is not strained; it falleth like a gentle rain upon the place beneath.
Ninth-grade English. And um, my memory of the rest is a little hazy. The point is, you really add to the scenery, and I don’t want you to leave just yet.”

“Oh my gosh, a Shakespeare-quoting cop.” Cal’s face lit up.

“A retired cop, and that’s all I can quote from the Bard. Of course, if you
were
willing to tarry awhile, I could study up.”

“No need, really. I’ve left that Elvis bozo far behind, and I’ll take you up on your tour offer. Will you be bringing Mister Ashe?”

“Of course. You would have liked my friend George. Sometimes we’d sit on a bench along the Merrimack River and feed the odd duck while he quoted T. S. Eliot.”

“Strange to say, I can picture that. He’s saying,
‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’
”

“He had his own version, though.
This is the way my date ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’
”

“Oho, a card.”

“You have my address, right? Stop by my place in the morning, and we’ll go out for coffee and I’ll give you both the fifty-cent tour.”

“I could spring for up to a dollar each. What would that buy us?”

“Ah, the deluxe package, where I attend to the customer’s every whim.”

“You might regret it. I can be very demanding, you know.”

“That’s fine. George won’t ask for much, so I can concentrate on you.”

“You’re doing that already. Will I have to pay a premium for all this attention?”

“Nah, I’m getting rich on psychic income.” Mack grinned, and Cal responded with a beaming smile of her own.

Cal got into her car and headed across town. Mack followed partway but took a left toward Pincushion, thinking how much he wished she would stick around.

At home, Mack sat down at his computer and Googled
Merchant of Venice.
As he read Portia’s speech, he imagined Cal delivering the lines on the stage, a spotlight glancing off her lovely face.

Cal went back to her motel room—alone, she rued. Mack was tall and handsome, with an expressive face and rugged hands that had made her feel secure when they brushed her arm, alive when they touched her face. If he had done something stupid like kiss her, she might have done something stupid like kiss him back, and he would probably be here now, making his moves and making her move.

Which was a bad idea. Who was this guy who made her feel so good with so little apparent effort? He said he was widowed and retired, but was he really a serial killer? Maybe she should check the FBI wanted posters in the post office, because her ex-husband was living proof that men weren’t always who they seemed to be. Maybe he befriended younger women, then killed them and stored them like cutlets in freezers. Maybe he was a wife abuser, a deadbeat dad, a level-three sex offender, or Whitey Bulger’s bodyguard. None of those ugly thoughts seemed likely, but then she wouldn’t have guessed Cosmo Peters was gay when she married him.

Of course, she hadn’t been entirely wrong about Cosmo Peters, Esquire, LLD. He was a wonderful man who simply had a trait she couldn’t live with and he couldn’t live without. After their friendly divorce, there was still an energy between them that was no longer sexual but had mellowed and morphed into trust and affection. Maybe Cosmo could help her; it was never too late to call.

She speed-dialed his number on her cell phone.

“Hey Cosmo, it’s me.”

“My gal-pal Cal! Freddy and I were just heading out to paint the town.”

“Freddy? Oh, right, I remember him. Give him my love.”

“Oh, I will, dear. I most certainly will. You’ve been quiet for a few days. Is everything all right?”

Cal recapped her encounter with Elvis Hornacre, his threats, her trip westward and her meeting Mack Durgin in Tucson. “We can track down Elvis,” Cosmo said, “and make sure he never bothers you again.”

“Thanks. I’ve left him far behind, though. Right now, I have a big favor to ask. If you can’t do it or don’t want to, I’ll understand.”

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

“But I haven’t told you what the favor is.”

“It doesn’t matter, my answer is yes.”

“Even if I asked you to out yourself to the board of selectmen?”

“Where have you
been
? Didn’t you know Freddy’s
on
the board of selectmen? Anyway, that’s nothing you’d ever ask for. I know you much better than that.”

Cal laughed. “You’re right. I’m hoping you can check out Mack Durgin before I get in a car with him and gallivant around the state.”

“Sure thing. When are you seeing him?”

“In the morning.”

“Hoo boy.” Cosmo apparently covered the phone, because Cal heard muffled voices. “Well, it’s short notice, but I can find out tonight if he has a criminal record. I know a couple of the Lowell Police, so maybe they can vouch for this Durgin person. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try anything with you, of course.”

“Naturally. I think I’m attracted to him, but I don’t want to be a bozo again.”

“Like you were with me?”

“No! That isn’t what I meant at all. God, I feel like one now.”

“Relax, Cal. I was teasing you. Are you in love with him?”

“Are you kidding? We’ve just met, and I never fall in love that quickly.”

“You never fall in love at all, you bungee-jump. I’ll check around and call you back tonight.”

Cal hung up the phone and changed into shorts and a t-shirt, then sat on the carpeted floor and did fifty ab crunches. The motel had a small exercise room on the first floor, so she went downstairs and ran on a treadmill for an hour and worked up a pleasant sheen of sweat. She returned to her room, showered and dressed for bed, then lay down and fell asleep in front of a
Masterpiece Theater
re-run.

The cell phone rang, interrupting her REM sleep where she’d been dreaming that her bungee cord had snapped and she careened toward the notorious nun-slashing ex-cop whose extended arms offered the only hope that she wouldn’t crash onto the rocky shoals of love.

She yawned and answered, “Yes?”

“Cal, do I have news for you, dear. Everything that Durgin person told you seems to be true. He sounds like a catch, Cal. If you don’t want him, send him to me.”

“Thanks, Cosmo. You are amazing.”

“Yes, I know. Freddy says much the same thing.”

Mack lay on the desert floor among the prickly pears and the ocotillos and inexplicably smelled coffee. George’s urn sat beside him; was the Sonora Desert a good place to leave his friend? A hummingbird sipped nectar from a blossom on an ancient saguaro—odd, because he thought the giant had bloomed a couple of months ago. He listened for the rattle of a diamondback’s tail, but heard nothing. He really shouldn’t be resting here, where he was so vulnerable. A Tokyo-sized arachnid climbed onto his toes, his legs, paused to regard the pillar in his crotch, walked across his belly and his chest. Mack couldn’t move, couldn’t brush the fearsome creature away—was it going to rip out his larynx? The spider crawled up his neck and onto his face. It was going for his eyes!

Mack opened them at the sound of the doorbell. He slid on a pair of jeans and a shirt and answered the door. Cal stood there, impatience rapidly fading from her face. Sunglasses rested on top of her head, and their eyes met for a moment. He welcomed her inside and out of the heat.

“I overslept. What time is it, I’m embarrassed to ask?”

“It’s noon. Time to show me Arizona if you’re still willing.”

“Love to. Make yourself comfortable while I morph into a human being.”

Cal offered to make a pot of coffee while he showered and dressed, and he agreed that was a plan. He went into the bedroom and closed the door, thinking he should have gone out running while the sun still lay low in the sky. The smell of ground roast, the peace of the desert, the company of a fine-looking woman gave Mack a feeling of contentment. But it seemed too perfect, like those mass-produced feel-good oil paintings of woodsy cabins snuggled in cozy valleys ringed by snowy mountaintops and bisected by burbling streams that usually made Mack want to reach for his Pepto-Bismol.

When he came back into the kitchen, Cal handed him a cup of coffee and gave him a perfect smile. “So where are we going today?”

“There’s a great park in Tucson. How much time can you spend?”

“You’re penciled in for the whole day.” She followed his eyes out the front window. “What are you looking at?”

“There’s almost no traffic on this road, but the same car just drove by for the third time.”

“I thought you’d be looking at me.” Cal’s smile turned crooked, still pretty.

“Trust me, I’d rather look at you than this guy.”

“Oh-ho, do you know him?”

“Hardly at all, which is too much. His name is Zippy.” Mack went to his bedroom and retrieved the .38 from his nightstand. “Stay away from the door, please.” He walked out the back sliding door as Zippy banged on the front door with his fist.

“Open the door, you cod-sucking baked-bean-eating Boston bastard! I know you’re hiding in there!” Zippy’s car was parked diagonally in the driveway and had driven over the cactuses Mack had planted last winter. In May, they had rewarded Mack with dozens of stunning crimson blossoms, and now they looked like so much cactus jelly. “Get out here so I can kick your candy ass!”

Mack came up behind him, leaned against Cal’s car and casually examined the barrel of his .38 as he looked at the maniac’s back. “’sup, Zip?”