When Pigs Fly (22 page)

“Get to the point, young man,” Brodie snapped. “I want to listen to the radio.”

“And you’re thinking if you ever get out of this alive, you’ll make Butt-Face pay. And you finally make it out to the road where somebody can help you, and what to your wondering eyes do appear—”

Brodie reached to turn up the volume, but Zippy grabbed her arm. “But his
family
. Father Butt-Face and Mother Butt-Face!”

Mack felt annoyed at Cal’s presumption.
I won’t sleep with you, Mack.
Since when had he asked? Had he given off that message, filling the air with pheromones? Sure, he had kissed her once, a measly peck on the cheek that hardly counted. But had he dropped hints? Puffed out his chest and strutted like a peacock? Maybe she thought he was a lonely man, trudging toward old age, willing to toss overboard any sense of propriety.

Going to bed with Cal had in fact crossed his mind a lot. It would be lovely, but the odds were long and he didn’t want to play the game.

Mack asked her to drop him off at the Tucson Public Library, and she agreed to pick him up in an hour. He walked inside, the GPS locator in his pocket. He smiled at familiar faces behind the circulation desk and exchanged pleasantries with Mrs. Gomez, the reference librarian. Then he sat down at a computer and opened a Web browser. He Googled “Massachusetts lottery” and scanned the results. The state’s lottery website was at the top of the list. He selected the link and followed a trail.
Click, click, click.
Get this menu, pick that date, and go. God love the Web.

Results displayed for the date on the ticket that Mack held in his hand. The total pot for that drawing had reached $750,000. There were no winners, although the ticket had one of the six numbers drawn. Mack was pretty sure that a single number wasn’t worth anything, because the odds were too good. Thirty-six to one for the first number times 36 to 1 for the second number…Mack scribbled rough calculations on a scrap of paper. About fifty million to one. He thought to rip the ticket in half, but it wasn’t his to throw away. He backed out to the Google listing and clicked on another of the 2397 results.

Mega Jackpot Unclaimed,
a news article began.

Then a loud conversation broke the library’s quietude. “The hell is this?”

“Shut up, it’s a library.”

“All these books! People read this shit?”

“Shhhh.”

Mack looked up to see Mrs. Gomez shushing Diet Cola and his accomplices. Elvis looked awed, as though he had never seen so many books in his life. Frosty looked self-important, ready to give the gang a guided tour. The woman leaned over a table, and Ace tried to look down her blouse. Diet Cola scanned the room like a hawk scanning the ground for prey.

He’s here, Diet Cola thought. The perfect hiding place. Mack and the woman must have taken the GPS locator out of the car and carried it with them. That or they could have a different car sitting in the lot, one he wouldn’t recognize. One thing for sure, Mack was onto him and was probably waiting to ambush him in the book stacks.

God, am I a jerk, Cal told herself.
I’m not sleeping with you.
You really know how to attract the men, Ms. Vrattos! Meanwhile, Mack hadn’t touched her except to brush the back of her hand and give her an innocent kiss. That had been rather sweet.

She drove around Tucson until she found a gun shop. If Mack couldn’t help her, she would have to help herself. She purchased a small .22-caliber handgun that fit easily inside her purse. God help her if she ever had to shoot anybody—could she do it? If it came down to shooting Elvis, where would a bullet cause the least pain but still stop him? There were so many considerations—arteries, vital organs, blood loss, lawyers. It would be much better to play Dodge ‘em if possible, then if cornered, close your eyes, pull the trigger, and sort out the consequences later. She headed back to the library to pick up Mack.

He beckoned frantically to her as he stood by a station wagon that had four flat tires and occupied a handicapped parking space. Coming around the corner were Diet Cola, Elvis, Frosty, and Ace. Diet Cola swore as his weight slowed him down. Elvis caught up with Mack, who sidestepped him and sent him sprawling into a flower bed.

Cal slid over to the passenger side so Mack could drive.

“I bought a gun,” she said.

“Most likely you won’t need it. Not for Elvis and his pals. I let the air out of their tires to slow them down.”

“What about the GPS locator?”

“I gave it back. It’s under their front seat, so from now on they’ll be tracking themselves.”

Ace ran out of the library with a stapler from the reference desk. You never knew when you’d need one, and events hadn’t exactly given him time to find better loot. He had a vague feeling that he ought to spend more time in libraries; wisdom of the ages and all that. Books intimidated him, though. At least the stapler gave him something to remember Mrs. Gomez, the way-hot reference lady.

Diet Cola screamed at Elvis and Frosty. His face was red, his pony tail bobbed as he pounded the trunk of the car, and his mouth dripped spittle the way the bad guys sometimes did in the comic books.

“Get in the car!” Diet yelled. “All of you!”

“It’s got flat tires,” Elvis said, walking around the car. “All of them.”

Diet opened the back door and threw Elvis inside. Frosty shrugged and joined him, which left Ace happy to ride shotgun for a change. Diet backed out of the handicapped space. “I’m going to kill you all,” he said, not for the first time. Ace used to hear that all the time from his mother’s boyfriends, and it never came to anything. “I’d be rich if I wasn’t with the biggest bunch of losers on the planet.” The car thumped along, probably not doing the rims and the tires a big favor, Ace guessed, though who really cared? He squeezed the stapler, amused by the way the bits of metal came out bent flat. Diet ranted on with empty threats having to do with fricasseed testicles.

From the back seat, Elvis pointed to the GPS locator. “Look! They’re still here!”

“They’re long gone,” Diet said. “I don’t care what your green thingy says.”

“You gotta believe in this technology stuff. This is the twenty-first century.”

“I can hike another car,” Ace said.

Diet pulled into a gas station and stopped next to the air pump. “Who’s got a quarter?”

“I’ve got five bucks out of the librarian’s purse,” Ace said. “I’ll get change.”

Diet pumped up the tires, which apparently Mack Durgin had not damaged. In fact, Diet probably damaged them by driving three quarters of a mile. Too bad tires were so hard to shoplift, or Ace could pick up some nice radials. Stealing tires was always possible, but it was tough getting them installed too.

Plump tires didn’t seem to make Diet Cola any happier. He stopped at an Ace Hardware and told Elvis to go inside and buy a shovel. Ace entertained himself by re-bending the staples and putting them back into the stapler. “What’s the shovel for,” Frosty asked, but Diet Cola became very quiet.

Carrick Durgin agonized over how wrong this trip had gone. All he’d wanted to do was provide the love of his life with what might be their final ride before Valhalla. Brodie seemed to see it differently, through an altered prism of her consciousness, simply enjoying each moment as though it were one of an endless supply. Even these moments with this awful, tattoo-skulled Zippy creature seemed to bring her life.

“So you’ve got a kid named Mack,” Zippy said. He turned to the back seat and showed his stained teeth in what could have been a smile.

“Watch the traffic, young man,” Brodie said. “Our son is Mackenzie to you.”

“Mackenzie’s a pussy name. Mack is a real name, like a truck.”

“You needn’t be insulting him. Our boy has a black belt in karate.”

“Okay, let me see. Your son has a Ph.D., he was the finest crime-stopper in the city of Lowell, he was a Golden Gloves boxing champion, he has a heart of gold or maybe of a lion, he was an Army paratrooper and a championship marksman, and now he has a black belt in karate. So how come he’s running away?”

“Mackenzie Durgin doesn’t run,” Carrick said. “He’s just going about his business.”

“And what might that business be? He’s got a hot chick and a hot temper, and I think they’re on the trail of something big.”

“You’re wasting your time,” she said. “My son is only showing a young lady the sights before she leaves.”

“Stop,” Carrick urged Brodie.

“Oh, I wouldn’t tell them about Sedona,” she said.

Highway I-17 rises north of Phoenix and lifts travelers out of the blistering heat of the valley. The saguaros, everywhere in Phoenix and Tucson, thin out dramatically as the elevation increases. Mack and Cal stopped briefly at a restaurant that had hitching posts at the parking spaces. They bought water and sandwiches, and headed toward the red rocks of Sedona, a few hours to the north. Mack had never ventured north of Phoenix, but he’d heard of its beauty and wondered if George might like Sedona as a final resting place. The Grand Canyon would add at least a couple of hours to the trip each way, and then what was he supposed to do? Dump the ashes over a railing?

Mary stood in the breakdown lane, shaking her head.
Really, Mack.

“You’re quiet,” Cal finally said, which was true. Mack nodded.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said, and he held out his right hand while he steered with his left. She rummaged in her purse, found a penny, and placed it in his palm.

“They’re following us,” he said.

Cal looked over her shoulder. “No, they’re not.” After a pause, she said, “Is that all a penny buys? You ripped me off.”

“It snowed up here last winter. A school bus was stranded overnight, and it made the evening news. The kids had a blast.” Mack sipped his bottle of water. “I don’t know why I know we’re being followed, because there’s all of Phoenix we could lose them in. It’s not rational, but I’m sure those goons are going to show up again. Hmm, let’s see. A penny’s worth of brain dump. They nearly caught me in the library. The ticket’s apparently a loser, but there was no time to double check.”

This time, Cal was silent. He held out the penny, and she grabbed it back. “Without the GPS locator, I don’t see what they can do. After we get your friend George settled, I can bring you back home and be on my way. What you’re doing for him is sweet, by the way. He was a lonely man, wasn’t he?”

“Divorced, jobless, and disgraced. His last act on duty was to crash his cruiser into a fire hydrant. Water, water everywhere. Anyway. He wanted to get his life back, or some small part of it, which was impossible. We had long talks sitting along the Merrimack River, drinking coffee from Dunkin Donuts. I told him he was slowly killing himself with booze, but that didn’t stop him. ‘Look,’ he told me one night, ‘Life is good. I sleep rent-free under a canopy of stars.’ On cold nights he’d sleep indoors, but he seemed closest to contentment when he could sleep with the stars. Many times he told me he wanted to visit the southwest. In the last year of George’s life, my dad became friendly with him. Eventually, Dad was saddled with George’s ashes.”

“Now you are.”

“Nah. George is good company. Though a living, breathing, beautiful woman is even better.”

“Thank you, I think. For company I’m better than a dead person?”

“Hands down.” Mack smiled, unsure whether his kidding had offended Cal. She looked away at the passing scenery. Cactus had given way to scrub pine, and the flat desert had become rugged hills. The air felt thinner. He swallowed to equalize the pressure in his ears. They passed a sign for Flagstaff.

Soon the terrain took on a spectacular twist, with massive red rock formations rising up to the sky. Cal held out the penny. “Sedona was a woman,” Mack said.

“Is this an Indian legend?”

“No, she was the wife of the town’s founding father.”

“Such a beautiful name.”

“Such a beautiful place. Some people think the rocks have special powers.”

“I’ve heard of them. Vortices, aren’t they?”

“Vortexes, they’re called locally. They’re supposed to be funnels of energy emanating from the rocks and commingling with the Inner Self. If my watercolor friend is right, the energies can be masculine, feminine, or balanced. Junipers living in a vortex grow in a helical form.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“I think she’s expecting a lot from a bunch of pretty rocks.”

A doe stepped onto the highway. Mack slowed. The beautiful animal sauntered back to safety.

“Maybe these vortexes have the power to make your friend happy,” Cal said.

“Maybe,” Mack said. “I’ll listen to what he tells me.”

Diet Cola drove north of Phoenix with a cherry slush, the three losers and a shovel to bury them with. Ace and Frosty chattered like the mindless twits they were, while Elvis picked at a couple of loose sequins on his jacket. Diet would get them to dig a hole, and then he’d shoot them one by one. There was a hundred million dollars just within his reach, and these two-bit, nitwit clowns had pulled the string just as he was ready to grab. He thought about killing them right now, because he just hated them so bad. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel horn, which responded each time with a pained honk. Finally he gave it one wicked punch and got himself a long, plaintive
ho-o-o-o-o-nk
that wouldn’t stop. He also splashed cherry slush on his shirt.