When Pigs Fly (7 page)

Rosa Blackbird had been right about Zippy’s earrings and shaved head, but she’d skimped on the details. He had a bony face and a tattoo of a zipper that opened from front to back across the top of his cranium, with the blue outline of the frontal lobe he must have wished he had inside. The guy had scar tissue where his eyebrows belonged. Zippy poked the barrel of a .38 Special under Mack’s chin and pulled back the hammer.

“Take a flying what, Staunton?”

He pulled the trigger.

Back East

Ace and Frosty had a whistle-clean apartment due to Ace’s conscientious feather dustings, which wasn’t to say there wasn’t stuff sitting around, like the flat-screen TV they’d pinched for some jerk who canceled his order and paid too much for the same thing on eBay instead.

Ace tried to take his mind off their last housebreaking gig. They had just violated two of the guiding principles in their professional lives: First, never let the man or lady of the house see you work. Second, never
ever
hit anyone who’s big enough to turn your brains into tapioca. He and Frosty didn’t much like the idea of hitting people anyway. They were just property transfer engineers. Frosty liked to compare himself and Ace to Martin Luther Gandhi, a pacifist he’d heard about in a course he’d flunked. So nobody was more surprised than they were when Ace hauled off with a ceramic vase and cracked it on the head (the back of the head, of course) of some white pony-tailed porker who should have been wearing a Wide Load sign and was trying to break an old lady’s neck.

Ace folded a sheet of toilet paper so that it came to a perfectly centered point, then stood back to admire his work. It made for a fancy bookmark in his X-Men comic book, which he centered properly on the tank behind the bowl before heading into the kitchen for lunch. Frosty was cutting the crust off a pair of marshmallow fluff sandwiches when he said, “Why do you suppose somebody sent his urine to Officer Durgin?”

It was a difficult thing, not having the answer to a young understudy’s question, so Ace said, “It wasn’t his own urine, stupid.” Still, Ace knew that wasn’t a good enough answer. Fact was, Frosty had heard what the guy said, Ace didn’t. Soon they were gonna have to ditch their stolen Navigator, because that was a little conspicuous. You rode high in the saddle in those suckers, but a trip to the gas pump brought you down to earth. You paid cash at the pump if you were Ace, because credit cards left a trail he was too smart to leave. If he stole a credit card, he’d rather discount it to some real crook and turn it into ready cash.

“Whatever it is, is beside the point right now,” Ace explained. “What’s important is that Officer Durgin has it, and we know he’s in A-Z.”

“A-Z? Where’s that?”

Ace had hoped Frosty would know a little thing like that, having finished more school. They tried brainstorming. “Something complete?” Frosty suggested. “Everything from A to Z?” Then Ace scratched his head and loosened an inspiration along with his dandruff.

He asked a mailman.

“I knew it was Arizona,” Frosty said.

Pincushion

Across town in Juanita’s apartment, Mack heard the sweet music of an empty chamber.

Click.

His next breath surprised him—short and sharp—and muscles tightened from his gullet to his sphincter. Luckily, his bladder held. His heart pounded like a jackhammer, but at least it still moved. His head spun, but at least it was attached and not decorating the ceiling.

“Take a flying what?” Zippy repeated.

Mack grabbed Zippy’s wrist and twisted the gun away from everyone.

“Don’t worry,” Juanita said, trying to separate the men. “It’s unloaded.”

Bang!
The pistol fired into the floor between her feet, sending splinters flying. Mack forced Zippy to drop the weapon on the floor, then dropped him with an uppercut and twisted his arms behind his back as he caught a whiff of urine and cordite. He detested hitting people, but what else was he supposed to do here? Anyway, hadn’t he left this kind of nonsense behind in Lowell? All he wanted in life was to be left alone. Okay, he wouldn’t mind getting laid now and again, but mainly he didn’t want ugly freaks scaring years off his life.

Juanita picked up the pistol and trembled as she waved it in Mack’s general direction. “Zippy didn’t mean it,” she said. “So relax.”

A thump and a yell came through the floor, probably the barkeep banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. “Shut the hell up,” he said.

Zippy squirmed, and Mack knelt on the small of his back. A bra draped over the sink. “Hand me that,” Mack said. “It’s yours, isn’t it?” She gave him a funny look, but she tossed it to him. He tied Zippy’s hands as tightly as he could.

“Come on, man,” Zippy said. “Empty chamber. No harm, no foul.”

“He can get out of that easy,” Juanita said. “We play that game all the time.”

“Juanita, I want my money back.” She still held the gun with a wildly unsteady grip, but from this distance she could blow a pretty big hole in a barn door.

“I don’t know if this thing is still loaded,” she said, “so you’d better keep away from me.” Mack remembered the
Dirty Harry
line:
Do you feel lucky, punk?
He reached out and gently pushed the gun out of harm’s way, then pried it out of her fingers. He looked in the chamber and saw a .38-caliber slug ready to go.

He tried to speak, but his words stuck in his dry throat.

“I had three hundred in my wallet,” he finally said as he pulled out two rounds and put them in his pocket. Juanita shrugged and took a fistful of bills out of her purse.

“About half is all I got left. The rest you flushed down the drain.”

“Plus two credit cards, my license and my triple-A card. I want it all back.”

She pouted and handed them over.

“You were lovely last night.” He pocketed the cash, then touched Juanita’s face; her eyes softened a little at the compliment. “But then I was blinded by Tequila Sunrise.”

As Mack went out the front door, Zippy was still trying to get out of Juanita’s bra.

Mack drove through town, wondering aloud, “What am I supposed to do with you, George?” He’d asked the same question about five years ago as they sat on a bench along the Merrimack River back in Massachusetts. A paper bag with a jug of port wine had sat on the cinder path at George’s feet, and he’d smelled like potato peels left too long in the sun.

If he hadn’t saved Mack’s life back when they’d been partners—if that whole business had never happened—would their friendship have survived? Mack didn’t know. In fact, their tight bond loosened with George’s jail term and his nights sleeping under the stars.

“Let me come with you to Arizona,” George had begged. “I’ll dry out in the hot sun and get me a job.”

“I’ll stay in touch,” Mack had promised. He hadn’t meant to lie. His lies usually began as truths that stumbled on unforeseen events.

He stopped at a crossroad: A half hour to his left lay bustling Tucson, straight ahead a road into saguaro-dotted hills (an express route to nowhere, he guessed). He turned right, to the east, where the highway was awash in mirages. “You came all this way,” he told George, “I should show you around. Tombstone’s only an hour away.”

Back East

All Diet Cola wanted right now was enough money to get to Arizona and back. He considered driving there, robbing along the way, but who had the time? The anniversary of the drawing was coming up in just two weeks, on August first. Get back by then and life is sweet. Get back late, and the lottery ticket is like toilet paper for a mouse.

He kept his head down as he looked for redeemable cans and bottles in the gutter. A nickel each, what a waste of time. He’d do a lot better rolling drunks if only he didn’t feel like he’d shaken hands with a stump grinder. The Ace bandage he’d wrapped around his hand last night had gotten grimy, but would do for now. His plastic bag was half full—or half empty, if you saw it his way. A young broad drained a Coke bottle, dropped it into his bag and gave him a big smile. She had a pink plastic handbag, and he tried to guess how much money was inside. He walked her way for a couple of minutes, his bag slung over his left shoulder, hoping she would walk down a quiet side street. She wore low-rider jeans, and the elastic of her thong sported valentines below her smooth, bare waist.

I’m psychic, he thought as she turned left onto a narrow street with comfortable old houses where the roots of old oak trees pushed up through the asphalt sidewalk. He figured the girl for nineteen or twenty, a very grownup girl indeed, with a perfect swivel you didn’t see inside jail walls. Don’t think that way, he told himself. You get your money, you can buy all the pussy in the world. All he had to do, if no one was looking, was push her through that hedge flat on her face, dump her purse, tell her to count to a hundred before looking up.

On the other hand, if there really
was
time, maybe he’d tug on that elastic…

When he rounded the corner about fifty feet behind her, she screamed. Christ, was he that obvious?

A young man must have seen her from behind a hedge—so much for quiet neighborhoods—and had grabbed the woman by the wrist. He looked about twenty years old and had dirty long hair and a lanky, muscular build. He wore cutoff jeans and an oily t-shirt. She tried to hit him with her handbag, which was less effective than, say, hitting him with a bag of marshmallows. That thought made Diet Cola hungry. The punk pushed himself against her and started sliding his hand down the front of her jeans. She tried to scream, but he covered her mouth. Neither noticed Diet Cola as he approached.

“You’re gonna thank me for this, baby,” the punk said.

What the hell was this? All Diet Cola wanted was to score a quick few bucks, and here was some gravel-brained asshole ruining the whole thing. He drove his left fist into the creep’s spleen, and the guy screamed. His knees buckled, spit drooled from his mouth, and he dropped like a sack onto the sidewalk. Diet Cola kicked him with a heavy work boot, and the punk let out a pathetic wheeze like you get when you stab an inner tube. His eyes bulged and his tongue stuck out. Diet Cola looked down on his victim, feeling a rush for having caused such pain. He kicked him again.

The girl picked up her purse and straightened her clothes, but her eyes looked like she’d just missed a head-on car wreck and wound up in a ditch. “I’m lucky you came along,” she said.

“Some guys are fucking animals.” Diet Cola felt proud of himself.

She reached in her purse and took out her cell phone that had a fancy pink case with hearts and flowers on it. “I just don’t know how to thank you.”

Where to start?

“You could let me borrow the phone for a minute. I’ll call the cops for you.” She hesitated, but he took the phone anyway. Then he grabbed her purse and ran like a dump truck in low gear—not very fast, but unstoppable. She screamed and threw a rock or something, but it didn’t hit him hard.

He made it home with no trouble, cutting down a glass-strewn alley to enter by the back door, a mangy dog his only witness. What if he had been a good citizen, hung around and waited for the cops to come? He imagined the interview.
“Yes, officer. My name is Dieter Kohl, but I usually go by Diet Cola… Yes sir, I just got out of the big house two weeks ago. Auto theft, I’m ashamed to say... No sir, I don’t have a job yet… Yes sir, I’m collecting cans so I can buy my Mom something nice… Once again, sir, I came around the corner and saw that horrific assault on the poor girl. I had no weapon but the rage in my heart... Oh, the bandage? A kitchen accident. Doing the dishes for Mom. I turned around to give her a kiss and lost my concentration. Next thing I know, my hand is in the soapy water, holding the business end of a steak knife. Oh, it hurt wicked bad, but Mom patched me up, and now I’m fine… No need for E.R… No, really.

The cash from the cans was only enough for a couple of Whoppers and a Diet Coke. But the purse, now that was another piece of cheese altogether. There was a wallet with all kinds of plastic like Visa and Bank of America, plus a nice wad of twenties that stuck together like they were fresh from an ATM. He dumped out the contents on the bed and saw an assortment of coins, nail files, tissues, lipstick, nail polish, a pocket calendar, pens in all colors, a calculator, a romance novel, sugar-free gum, a couple of coupon books, a can of Mace, a pill container, an unopened package of Just My Size pink pantyhose (no receipt) and a tiny pistol with one bullet filling the chamber.

At this point he still wasn’t sure he had enough money for a trip to Arizona. You never knew what might come up, if the hookers were expensive or whatever. After dark, he hotwired a car and drove through Chelmsford and Billerica and into Burlington, three towns he never planned to see again once he was rich. He parked at the edge of the Burlington Mall parking lot and walked to the other end, standing behind an SUV until a car pulled into the next space. The engine stopped, the lights went out, and a man stepped out of the car. He was alone—except for Diet Cola.

Diet Cola unwrapped the pantyhose and pulled them over his head, wishing the girl had broken them in first. The legs hung down his chest like rabbit ears stretched by lead weights, so he flipped them over his shoulders. He hadn’t thought ahead of time how big an idiot he must seem, his face stuck inside pink pantyhose about one size too small. Next time he’d go with the ski mask.