When Pigs Fly (18 page)

“Whaddya do with that, Diet?” Frosty asked. “Pick your nose?”

Mack expected Frosty to pay heavily for the insult, but Diet Cola paid no attention. “Mister Truth here has a question for you, Durgin.” The pliers opened and closed in Diet Cola’s hands like the beak of a hungry mechanical bird. Mister Truth’s voice was B-movie robotic. “Where—is—the—urn?”

What was the harm in telling this psychotic thug that the urn was in his trunk? They’d find it soon enough anyway, and George wouldn’t know the difference when his ashes were unceremoniously dumped. But Mack would.

Diet Cola rapped Mack’s knuckles.

“You got a hearing problem? My friend asked you a question.”

“This urn, what’s it look like?”

“Don’t bullshit me, what’s it look like. You got thirty seconds before Mister Truth starts pulling out your fingernails.” Ace and Frosty’s eyes widened. Even Zippy and Elvis looked uncertain.

Mack waited.

Once he found the urn, Diet Cola would see for himself that it was a container of ashes and the odds and ends his mother might have dropped in there. Dad had told him about Mom’s quirk, one of many she’d begun to collect in her old age.

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One.” Mister Truth squawked. “Pain time!” Diet Cola clamped the pliers down hard on Mack’s left thumb. Pain rocketed through Mack’s arm, ricocheted off his brain and raced back out to where it came from. His body went rigid.

The metal tips gripped the thumbnail top and bottom. Blood was already dripping onto the floor. “The—truth—or—the—nail.”

“Don’t do this,” Mack said, keeping his voice steady. “I’m warning you.”

Diet Cola shrugged, his eyes full of malignant innocence. “Hey, don’t look at me. This is between you and Mister Truth.”

Diet Cola ripped out a chunk of thumbnail, making Mack’s entire body shake. “Stop!” he said. “Stop!”

“Kind of a messy job, Mister Truth. You tore that one in half.”

Diet Cola swung the pliers back toward his own face. Blood dripped from the torn nail as a deep guttural noise came from his throat, his sick imitation of talking pliers. “You—got—a—problem—with—my—work—Mister—Cola?”

“Hey, you know your business, Mister Truth. I’m sure the next nail will come out in one piece.”

Mack felt dizzy from the raging pain. Ace wobbled and collapsed in a heap on the floor. Elvis tried to light a cigarette, but his hands shook so badly that he dropped his lighter on Ace. Frosty ran toward the kitchen, looking like he was going to upchuck a hairball.

“Don’t you think—” Mack’s jaw trembled.

“I think I got three pussies on my team. I also think I gotta lay a loaf. Zippy, you hold onto Mister Truth for a minute while I hit the head. If Durgin talks before I get back, you get a bonus.”

“Don’t,” Mack whispered to Zippy. “Please don’t.”

“Half the pot. The pussy boys get nothing.”

“Sounds fair,” Zippy said, but did Mack detect a hopeful sliver of doubt? The pliers’ tips opened wide, and Mack flinched. “How come you’d hold onto that much money?”

“You’re smart, Zippy,” Mack said. “If I had ten grand, it would be in the bank. But I don’t.”

“You’re a liar,” Diet Cola called out from the bathroom. “Pull ‘em, Zippy. Earn your keep and we’ll keep the urn.”

Zippy clamped down on Mack’s thumb. Mack didn’t want George’s ashes dumped like so much garbage, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold out for long. “I could, you know. I’m not like those two kids Ace and Frosty.”

Mack and Zippy locked eyes. “Prison, Zippy. You ever been?”

“I pulled five in Kingman.”

Diet Cola clamped a large hand on Zippy’s shoulder. “You better pull five while I’m on the crapper,” he said, “or I don’t need you.”

Zippy gnashed his teeth like a wild dog. “Just shut up,” he yelled. “I’ll do it when I’m good and ready. Right now we’re talking.”

“Kingman,” Mack whispered, “Was it the most fun you ever had?” Zippy shook his head. Ace and Frosty looked as though they had lost their lunch and had no desire to find it. Elvis combed his hair.

“Your friend’s mistaken. Whatever you’ve already found, that’s all I have. If you torture me, you’ll all do hard time.”

“We don’t even want to do soft time,” Frosty whined. “We’re just thieves.”

Ace squirmed and cracked his knuckles. “I don’t want to do time.”

Elvis smoothed out his silk pants with his hands. “I can’t do time either. I have my music career to think of.”

Diet Cola came out of the bathroom, waving his arms in disgust. “You guys are pathetic. Let me show you my patented method for getting assholes to talk.”

Frosty’s voice squeaked. “Flush first, then take a shower. Your stink is rotting Elvis’s jacket.”

Mack expected Diet Cola to crush Frosty with his fist, but Diet Cola laughed instead. “I don’t need a shower.”

“Suit yourself,” Mack said. “There’s clean towels and plenty of soap.”

Zippy looked like he was going to be sick. “There’s not enough soap in the world,” he mumbled.

Diet Cola turned sharply and clamped his good hand on Zippy’s neck. Everyone stopped in mid-breath as though they were in a single frame in a movie where the reel had stuck. Zippy began shaking and dropped the pliers next to Mack. Frosty let out a faint yelp. “You calling me dirty?”

“No, man, I—”

“’cause if you’re calling me dirty, I’m calling you dead. Frosty can say what he wants ‘cause he’s funny. You can’t ‘cause you’re not. Now what did you say?”

Zippy’s face turned beet-red, and his eyes bulged. Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth. Diet Cola’s right arm dangled, and Mack calculated his survival odds if he were to grab that bad hand and twist. Without looking down, he nudged the pliers toward himself with his foot. “Hey, don’t hurt the guy. He said I was the biggest dope in the world.”

Diet Cola smiled. “Fuckin-A right about that one. Now I’ve gotta finish my meeting.” Zippy gasped for breath as Diet Cola released his grip and headed for the bathroom with Mack’s gun in his hand. The bathroom door stayed open. Rude noises followed.

Mack stood up quickly, pliers in hand.

“Get out of my way,” Mack said, walking to the front door. Zippy stepped back, looking in no mood to argue. Frosty looked relieved. Elvis looked ready for his casting call. “Ace, you come with me. Everybody else, stay where you are.”

Mack held the door for Ace, and they stepped out to the front walkway. “You’re the only one in there with a brain,” Mack said, exaggerating. “What the hell is going on here, anyway?”

“Frosty and me don’t want to pull your fingernails, honest to God. Diet Cola just told us you have something’ll make us rich.”

“You came all the way out here to rob me? What a waste of time. There’s no urn, no money, no girl.”

“We saw the girl, Mister Durgin. She’s a hot one.”

“Touch her and you’re toast, Ace. Pass the word.”

A roar erupted from inside the house. “What did you do with him, for chrissake?” Diet Cola bellowed inside the house. Elvis and Frosty watched out the window. “I’m going to hit you,” Mack said, “but not hard. Fall on the ground like you’re in agony.” Mack pulled his punch as promised, and Ace went down on cue. Mack jumped into his car. Ace moaned and writhed as everyone else stumbled out the front door. Mack’s tires crunched as he backed out of his gravel driveway.

“All right, dipshits.” Diet Cola drove the stolen van down the Interstate, heading east toward Tombstone, maintaining the speed limit to avoid notice by the police. Ace, Frosty, Zippy and Elvis all lay behind the back seat, holding various body parts. Diet had punched Ace in the nose and Frosty in the gut. He’d slammed Elvis against a wall and kicked Zippy in the nuts so hard they could have come out the top of his head. “Stop crying, dipshits. Listen up. You are the sorriest bunch of losers I’ve ever seen. I could kill you all for letting Mack Durgin go. I probably should. Why I don’t is you’re all so bad you’ve got nothing you can possibly do except improve. There’s money to be made, dipshits, and you’ve got two choices. You can stick with me and get rich, or you can leave with a bullet between the eyes. Sounds like a no-brainer, huh, Zippy?” Diet Cola laughed and fired a round through the van’s roof. “How you make a sunroof, man. You wet your pants again, Ace? No? Bladder’s finally empty?” The pliers sat between his legs on the front seat. “These guys think I stink, but I say I’m fine. What d’you think, Mister Truth?”

“You—smell—great. Let—me—sniff—your—pits.”

“I dunno, man. That’s an honor gotta be earned. You disappointed me back there.”

“Zippy’s—fault—not—mine.”

“No, man. Zippy’s crap, I didn’t expect much from him. You, you’re hand-crafted steel. You could poke through a heart, snap a rib, pick fingernails like they were grapes. So what did you do, you gave Durgin a fucking boo-boo and let him go.”

“Not—my—fault.”

“No excuses, dude. I think I may have to make an example of you, what happens when I’m disappointed.” Then to the passengers he said, “Job one is we avoid the cops Durgin must have called. Guy’s a pussy who can’t fight his own battles. I’ll get us some food first place I find open, then I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do.”

Mack’s bandaged thumb throbbed as he sat next to a police sergeant’s desk and filed his complaint. “These gentlemen shouldn’t be hard to spot,” the officer said. “Relax, we’ll get them for you.” Unless I get them myself, Mack thought.

The house felt unfit to stay in that night. Mack stopped at an all-night café and washed down two Tylenol with bitter black coffee, then headed east at two in the morning with windows rolled down, country music turned up, stars winking through breaks in the clouds. Warm desert air calmed his nerves. His headlights illuminated fleeting images of cactus and fencing along the roadside, and he wondered at the dangers of the nighttime desert. In the cup holder was a bottle of spring water; he reached for it and took a long sip. Maybe he could see Cal one more time before she left for the coast and disappeared from his life forever. He couldn’t wake her, not at this hour, but he knew where she was staying in Tombstone. By dawn he’d be dead tired, but if he parked his car behind hers, she would have to see him before she left. He could take her to breakfast and vent a little, and he could soak up her soothing smile.

Out in the desert, the naked humans seemed upset. Poindexter was beginning to feel uncomfortable and wished they would untie him and give him something to eat.

“You used our last match to light a joint?”

“Was that a problem, man? Oh, wow!”

“How can we prepare the sacred meal? We need a spark!”

Poindexter looked down to where some of the humans began rubbing sticks together. In a corner, other humans seemed to be rubbing themselves together. He didn’t know what a spark was or if it was important, but he knew he wanted to be back on his feet. He wriggled and fell. A hand reached out and grabbed one of his tusks. The hand’s owner screamed.

“In the name of Fred, what happened?”

“I’m bleeding like a stuck pig!”

“Oh, wow!”

“I am your leader. You must bind up my wound!”

“Soon as we finish this joint. This is primo stuff, man.”

Poindexter shook himself loose from his bindings and peed on the woodpile. He was famished. Did these people plan to feed him, or what? A lot of grappling and shouting ensued among the humans. No one even seemed to notice as he trotted out the door.

Mack awoke to a rap on his car window. It took a second to remember that he was in the parking lot where Cal was staying. “You’re in my way,” Cal said. “Are
you
stalking me too?”

He shook sleep out of his eyes and reached for the door handle. The sun was still low in the east, but today would be a scorcher.

“No, don’t get out of the car. Just back up and get out of my way.”

“Sure. I’m glad to see you too.” He turned the key in the ignition.

“I had a good time with you and your parents last night. You’re a nice man, and I enjoyed your company. Now leave me alone.”

“I saw your friend last night.”

“I don’t have any friends around here. I just know you. Let’s not elevate our acquaintance.”

Mack’s face burned at her rudeness. “Your stalker. Elvis.” He was out of his car now, face to face with Cal. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come in to see my etchings. Elvis was in my house with some animals from the zoo.”

“They’re inside the restaurant! I saw Elvis Hornacre two minutes ago in the dining room, sitting with the two idiots I saw shoplifting yesterday. They were sitting with a huge guy with a pony tail and earrings. And there was a crazy man with a tattoo on his head.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“Ace might have seen me. Not Elvis, I don’t think. What the hell is going on?”

“Get in your car and follow me. Please. Now.” His tires kicked up dust as he backed out of her way. For all he knew, she would fly past him and disappear in the western horizon—best of luck to her if she did. He’d just wish her well and hope he didn’t read about her in the newspaper.