When Pigs Fly (24 page)

They weren’t
fools
, after all.

So they’d headed into the desert, thinking to circle back to the road after a while. After a half hour they stumbled along, no longer sure they were headed in the right direction. They came to a dry river bed where Ace discovered a snake skin that on closer inspection had a live snake inside. It had diamond shapes on its back and beads on its tail. Ace and Frosty stood there and debated whether it was a rattlesnake, but the creature wanted no part of the conversation. It slithered over to the nearest shady spot, which struck Ace as a very sensible idea. Then they both heard a blood-curdling scream that could only come from an animal being torn apart, chunks of bloody flesh dripping from the mouth of a vicious predator. Ace felt sick for the poor creature and decided then and there to become a vegetarian.

“I think it’s Elvis!” Frosty said. They headed in the direction of the cries.

Ace and Frosty couldn’t see Elvis yet, but they were within earshot, maybe three or four saguaros away. “Come on, baby,” Elvis said, his tone urgent. “Come on. That’s right, lick me. Oh. Oh, that’s good. Yes!”

At that, Ace and Frosty stopped and looked at each other. “He doesn’t need us anymore,” Ace said.

“We shouldn’t look,” Frosty said. “This is a private moment.”

“Yeah. Let’s check it out.” They advanced until they saw the pig and the head. Ace thought it looked like a broken bobble-head doll.

“Elvis lost his head!” Frosty said. Pig and head turned and looked at the same time, then the animal hooked Elvis’s jacket with its tusk from the cactus it was hanging on and disappeared quickly into the underbrush.

Out by the roadside, Diet Cola’s nose kept bleeding. He wiped it with his shirt while he tried to refocus his eyes. Carrick looked at him with folded arms and an eat-shit-and-die scowl. Brodie sat on a rock and talked to Zippy in a whisper you could hear all the way to Phoenix. She touched his arm, doing her Nurse Nightingale thing. Diet Cola pretended not to listen.

“Mister Zippy,” she said, “what’s your real name?”

“Zippy’s good enough,” he said.

“I’ll bet your parents gave you a nice name.”

“I’m kind of embarrassed. Just let it go.”

“When I was a child, I hated my name, Brodie McGee. But one’s name should be a source of pride.”

Zippy stared straight ahead. “Yeah.”

“Hey, lady,” Diet Cola said. “Help me clean up my face.”

“Take our son, Mackenzie. We gave him a name with great character.”

Zippy grunted.

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Did you hear me? I need some help here!” Diet Cola’s nose felt like he’d stuck it in boiling water. Drops of blood fell onto the sandy soil.

“I’ll bet you have a wonderful name.”

“Juanita thinks so, but she’s the only one.”

“Ah, you have a lady friend. I knew it. I just knew it!”

Diet Cola walked up to Brodie and let his blood drip on her orange pants. She stood up, startled. “Yes, young man?” He thought her voice was harsher than necessary, since he was the one in pain here.

“I’m bleeding. Make it stop.”

“We have a first aid kit in our car. Help yourself.”

“You go get it. You fix me up.”

“I’m afraid not. I have no desire to help you.”

Diet Cola pulled out his gun and waved it at her head. Her eyes widened at first, but then calmness seemed to fill her face. “I’ll spread your brains on the rock,” he said. She wouldn’t know he couldn’t follow through.

“Hades is filled with your kind. You must look forward to seeing them.”

“What did you just say? Repeat it in English.”

“I’m at peace. You can go to—”

“Here it is! Here it is!” Carrick ran toward them with the first-aid kit. “Mister Cola, let me clean that up for you.”

“No, your wife will do it.” The gun barrel pressed against Brodie’s forehead.

“I will not, you horrid man.”

“Brodie darling, please! Do as he asks.”

“I will do as
you
ask, Carrick. Put your weapon away, sir, and I will clean you up.”

Diet Cola tucked his gun back under his belt and sat cross-legged on the ground. Brodie held his nose gently but firmly. “Hold your nose like this,” she said.

“You do it for me.”

She took his left hand and guided it to his nose. “Hold your own nose. I need both hands.” He complied. She daubed his face with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol.

“How log?”

“As long as I say. Sit still.” She reached for a pair of tweezers and pulled thorns and stingers out of his arm. Then she turned her attention to the gash in his hand. “This is beyond my skill except to clean the wound and re-dress it. Then you need professional medical help, not the ministrations of some little old lady.”

“Shuddup.”

“How did you get this injury, anyway? Oh yes, I did it. My Carrick and I took square-dance lessons a few years ago. You know, it bored him silly, but he was such a gentleman about it. So we went out to Wyoming and I had the brilliant idea that we both might enjoy an activity with some snap to it. Well, besides our sex lives, which I’m certainly not going to talk about. Have you ever been to Cheyenne? The rodeos, my goodness!”

Brodie blabbered on like this while she carefully cleaned his hand, unrolled fresh gauze and applied new dressing. “—and so that’s how we both got to taking bullwhip lessons,” she said about a thousand years later. “You’re lucky Carrick didn’t whip you. He could separate your head from your shoulders.”

She gave him Tylenol and ordered him to rest. Zippy drove with Carrick in the front passenger seat, while Brodie sat behind Zippy and Diet Cola sat next to her, his hand feeling a bit better. He checked a map and found Sedona a few miles off the main highway. Zippy headed that way.

Mack’s cell phone chimed to the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which reminded him that he hadn’t sat down quietly and just listened to classical music since Mary died. He flipped the phone’s cover and heard commotion before he could say hello. Over the airways came familiar voices of Mom and Dad followed by Zippy and Diet Cola. Mack looked at Cal and put a finger to his lips. She nodded. He pulled his Dodge to the side of the road and turned off the ignition.

“Ford Mustang.” Zippy’s voice.

“That’s a very strong name. Very manly.” Mom’s voice.

“My Dad is a maniac. He named me after his favorite car.”

Laughter. Diet Cola’s.

“What happened to the Presley boy?”

“Dead and buried.” Diet Cola’s voice, low and threatening. Mack guessed that Dad had speed-dialed him from the cell phone in his pocket.

“Oh, dear God. How about—oh, their names. Mutt and Jeff? No—”

“Ace and Frosty, lady. My guess, they’re miles down the road, thumbing a ride back east.”

“You’re hurt, Mister Cola.” Dad’s voice. “We should find you a clinic.”

“No time for that. Where’s your son?”

“What do you want from him?”

“A hundred million bucks.”

“On his police department pension? You’re not serious.”

“Where is he?”

“I think he’ll be in Sedona.”

“Brodie! Why did you tell him!”

There were three quick beeps, like a low-battery warning on Carrick’s cell phone.

“What was that noise?”

“What noise? I didn’t hear anything.” Mack heard a scuffle and grunts. Was someone being punched?

“A cell phone. Did you call somebody, old man?”

Then the line went dead. Mack turned his car around, because the road to
Sedona was ten miles to the south. “I heard it all,” Cal said. “What do we plan to do?”

Diet Cola stared at Carrick’s cell phone and wondered if his instincts were right, that Carrick Durgin was calling his son. Mack must not have a clue about the value of the ticket, or he would have cashed it in long ago. Diet Cola found the call history and selected that number, but an computerized babe said to leave a message at the beep.

“Durgin? You there? Hey, I’m having tea with a lovely couple name of Carrick and Brodie Durgin. They say you’re going to Sedona, and I think that’s good for their health. We’ll meet there and do business, you and me. I’ll call with details later.”

He disconnected, thinking he hadn’t said enough. He re-dialed.

“Sedona. Don’t let your parents down.”

Mack went cold. Diet Cola had his parents? How was that possible? He wanted to pick up the telephone and call back, but he had to think this through first. Calling the police was not an option until he knew the danger—if they swooped in on Diet Cola, Mack’s parents might be hurt or even killed. How could Diet Cola have found them? He didn’t have Elvis’s GPS system anymore, and he hadn’t specified a time or an exact place. Mack decided not to wait for instructions. He called, and Diet Cola answered.

“You’re supposed to wait.”

“Let them go.”

“I’m in charge.
I
tell
you
.”

“Where do we meet?”

“I’ll let you know where and when.”

“Leave my parents out of this. They have nothing you want.”

“You do, though.”

“What is it?”

“
Muchos dineros.
”

“Let’s cut right to it. I don’t have any money to give you. If you hurt my parents, I will hunt you down and puree your brains. No Miranda warnings. Do you catch my drift?”

“I’m scared, man. Maybe I should just kill them now and run.”

There was silence on the line.

“Hello?”

Nothing. Mack switched off the phone and turned to Cal. “I think they’re a couple miles ahead of us on the road to Sedona,” he said. “Phone reception cuts off in some of these canyons.”

“If anything happens to your parents—” Cal left her sentence unfinished.

Mack accelerated through a curve, and Cal’s knuckles whitened as they gripped her knees. There was a wall of red sandstone on their right, the bottom of a cliff they could easily smash into; on their left were a narrow lane, a guard rail and a serious drop-off of several hundred feet. Mack stayed in his lane. Ahead of them a car held to the speed limit. Mack knew he couldn’t safely pass for a while. “Damn!” he said.

Cal exhaled audibly as Mack thumped the steering wheel. He waited for a car to pass the other way, caught a smidgen of straight road and stepped on the gas. “Oh no!” she said as he cut back into his lane just ahead of an oncoming car.

“Hang tight. We have a couple more miles to go.”

They rounded a bend, and Mack felt like he was regaining control. Nobody would harm his parents.
Nobody!
He was determined to catch up with Diet Cola here in the canyon, push him off to the side of the road and—

He slammed on his brakes. A car had pulled over as far to the right as it would go, but a family of tourists squatted right in the middle of the road looking at the pavement. A man with a camera stood up and beckoned to Mack. A woman and two young children pointed, flinched and smiled.

“
Spinne!
” the man shouted.

“German tourists,” Cal said. “There’s a tarantula in the road.”

Mack honked his horn, but the tourists didn’t budge. “They’ve never seen a spider before?”

“I speak a little German,” Cal said. “I’ll handle this.” She stepped out of the car and spoke with gestures that said we’ll drive right over it, we won’t hit it with our tires. The man must have misunderstood, because he shook his head angrily. His wife set up a tripod. Mack revved his engine. What would work better, he wondered. A palms-up supplication or his .38 Special?

Cal bent down very close to the spider, which Mack thought was about the size of a chipmunk. Slowly, she placed her hand on the ground, inches away. The children squealed with delight, and the woman pulled them away. Mack had seen Cal handle a spider rather calmly in Tucson She wouldn’t be so damn calm this time if it bit her. Meanwhile, he was losing Diet Cola.

Ace and Frosty stared at Elvis’s head sticking out of the ground.

At first didn’t know what to make of the situation. Quite possibly they were hallucinating in the heat, because Elvis was blubbering and carrying on incoherently. Ace, being a sensitive person, said, “Hi, Elvis. What’s the matter?”

“He’s got ants all over him.”

“Phew. And he stinks.”

“Get that pig! It stole my jacket! And get me out of here!”

Frosty brushed some ants from Elvis’s head, but then his hand got sticky and they were all over his hand, biting like buggers. Ace ran off to find the jacket, but left his water bottle lying on the ground. Frosty thought to empty the contents on Elvis’s head to wash away some of the sugar that attracted the ants. Then he started scraping with his fingers and uncovered a shoulder. After a few minutes, Ace came back without the jacket.