When Pigs Fly (19 page)

He was relieved that she pulled in beside him at a gasoline station. They had traveled less than two miles. She stayed in her car with her purse on the passenger seat beside her. The can of mace inside the purse was easy enough to spot. Was it meant for him?

“How did Elvis track me down?”

“It might be just bad luck. Last night he didn’t look like he was in charge of the home-invasion crew, so they might have just decided to put some miles between them and Pincushion.”

“Just bad luck he’s out here in Arizona? And Ace and Frosty too? Come on.”

“You’re right about that. Who’d you tell that you were driving out west?”

“My sister and brother, but even they don’t know where I’m going 'til I call them. Oh, and my ex-husband Cosmo, whom I trust with my life. But how could Elvis be here? I don’t even know how he found where I lived back East.”

“That wouldn’t have been a problem,” Mack said. “Five minutes on the Internet is all he’d have needed. Five more, and he probably has your social security number.”

“Which doesn’t answer how he knows I’m here.”

“Pop the hood for me, will you?” She complied, then got out of the car to watch what he was doing. “Wiper fluid’s down,” he said casually. “And when was your last oil change?”

“Who are you, the Jiffy Lube manager? Will you rotate my tires while you’re at it?”

“Not a bad idea, now that you mention it.” Mack went to his car and took a screwdriver from the glove compartment, then stuck his head back under Cal’s hood.

“What are you doing?”

Mack said nothing for a minute. He pulled out a black plastic box and held it in the bright sunlight for Cal to see. His fingertips were black.

“Global positioning device,” he said. “I’d say the King’s been tracking you across the country.”

“Don’t call him that. He’s Elvis Hornacre. He’s not king of
anything
.”

Mack shrugged and tossed the GPS locator onto the back seat of his own car. “Elvis, then. Look, you’re safe to leave for L.A. or wherever it is you’re going. He won’t find you now, if he’s even looking anymore. Be sure to check out Big Sur and Monterey, and for goodness’ sake, say hello to Jiffy Lube in L.A.”

“What do you mean, even if he’s looking anymore?”

“Diet Cola—if you can believe that name—is in charge now.”

“The big man?”

“He has his own agenda, and I’m pretty sure you’re not it. Somehow he knows my folks FedExed that urn to me. He wants it.”

“That makes no sense. Is anything in the urn besides the ashes? Stolen diamonds, maybe?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want anything that’s inside—George Ashe deserves that much respect.” Mack held out his hand, and Cal took it. He shook, she didn’t. “So have a safe trip.
Gute fahrt,
as the Germans say.”

Cal looked thoughtful. “For a minute I thought you were chasing me too.”

“No, I just don’t want you to get caught.”

“What happened to your thumb?”

“Nothing much. Just part of last night’s adventure.”

“Did they damage your house?”

“Not that bad,” he said. When he finished giving her the details, he pointed to the GPS locator sitting next to the urn on the passenger-side floor. “If those guys try to find you, they’ll get George and me instead. Enjoy the Golden State, my friend.”

“This state has some gorgeous broads,” Ace said at the breakfast table in the motel’s dining room. Diet Cola was wolfing down his third helping of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and French toast from the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar. Zippy wiped his greasy hand on his pate as though smoothing invisible hair. Elvis looked like he’d spent the night in hell. Frosty sat pensively, staring at a bowl of fruit. Ace had just snitched a pocket comb—an Ace, in fact—and was combing his hair. “One of ‘em looked this way a minute ago, she had these great jugulars. I thought I’d climax a thousand times.”

“Go right ahead,” Diet said. He had syrup on his chin. “You’re among friends.” Which wasn’t exactly how Ace thought of Diet Cola, but naturally Ace was too smart to rile the guy.

“What did she look like?” Elvis said.

The question puzzled Ace. “I just described her. Fact, Frosty and me saw this same one in a store someplace.”

“My brother’s a sexist pig,” Frosty said. “He doesn’t see women, he just sees knockers.”

“More to women than that,” Elvis said.

Diet Cola stopped eating and looked at Elvis. Zippy cocked his head skeptically. “I’ve gotta hear this.”

“There’s the color of her hair, how it glints in the sunlight. How her skin glows, the shape of her face, does she have makeup and nice clothes. The way she walks, the way she smiles. Does the whole room light up when she walks in? Does she have soft, elegant fingers when she picks up the check? Does she laugh at your jokes, show respect, bring you cigarettes and beer when you’re too stoned to get out of bed?”

“Does she spread her legs?” Zippy clarified. A waitress led a young couple and two children to an empty table next to Diet Cola. The man grimaced, shook his head and pointed to an empty table at the far corner of the room.

“I can’t tell all that stuff from seeing her on the other side of the restaurant,” Frosty said. “She has a beautiful face and a nice ass is all I know.”

“That narrows it down,” Diet Cola said. “You just eliminated ten percent of the women in Arizona. So look, here’s what we do. We’ll ditch the van where nobody will find it, requisition a nice dignified sedan for a coupla days. We’ll take our GPS out of Elvis’ car and put it in the new one. I’m guessing Durgin and the broad are together. We’ll track ‘em both down.”

“We tracked him down before,” Zippy said. “All the good it did.”

“Your fault. Don’t remind me how angry that made me.”

“We should go back to his place, look again.”

“I looked again. His dump has only so many places to look—what we want just isn’t there. Besides, the cops will be watching his house. We can’t go back. My guess, the ashes are in the car, maybe in the trunk.”

Diet Cola snapped his fingers. “Hey. Girl. Check.”

Cal followed Mack to a wide spot in the road on the edge of Tombstone. They both pulled onto the soft shoulder, then he stepped out and mopped his brow as he hurried over to speak with her. She rolled her window down, letting in a blast of heat. “I’m sorry I was rude,” she said. He touched the back of her hand and smiled. “What are we planning?”

“You and me? Nothing. These knuckleheads will follow me now, and you can be on your way.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“These people are too crazy. I don’t want you hurt.”

“How gallant. I don’t want you hurt either.”

“Cal, once you’re safely on your way, my first stop is a gun shop.”

“Oh, wonderful. You’re fixin’ for a shootout, podner? Why don’t you smash the GPS and let the police handle the rest? Or hide the damn thing under a rock with rattlesnakes?”

“I want to see that Dieter Kohl is stopped, and rattlesnakes are best left undisturbed.”

“What about George? Where will we put him?”

“I don’t know yet. There’s such beauty in this state, and I owe him the perfect resting place. I know just where that is.” Mack thought about the majesty of the Grand Canyon. “You said ‘we’ again.”

“Yep. I remember.”

“No. If Elvis is hanging out with Dieter Kohl, you’re in trouble. You’d better leave while you can.”

Cal looked furious. “Don’t patronize me, Mack. I’ll go where I please and leave when I please.”

Mack felt relieved. He didn’t really want her to go, because then he’d probably never see her again. “Well, follow me, then,” he said. “If you please.”

Mack’s parents returned arm in arm from the motel’s putting green, where Carrick had tried to sink a Spalding for an hour before the sun turned fierce (which was mighty early, if you asked Carrick). Brodie had sat in a folding chair next to a palo verde and watched him curl the ball around the hole again and again. “Our son found a beautiful girl,” she said.

“Lovely,” he agreed. He carried the chair and the club in one arm while he wrapped the other arm around her shoulder. “It’s too bad she’s going to California without him.”

“No-o-o-o.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s what he said three times at dinner last night. She confirmed it.”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about. Those two are made for each other.”

Carrick knew better than to argue a point of love with Brodie. Her mind was slipping, though, and Carrick could do nothing except to love her as she was. Then they went back to their motel and checked out. Arizona beckoned.

Elvis and his breakfast companions walked out of the restaurant. Diet Cola kindly sprung for the tab, a gesture made easier because his Visa card was in the name of a Presbyterian minister in Topeka. They got out to the parking lot, and Elvis wondered where Cal Vrattos was. The foolish, foolish woman had missed her golden opportunity to be Mrs. Elvis Hornacre, but she had broken his jaw and now she had to be brought to her senses. Only problem was, where was she?

Diet Cola hitched up his pants and looked around the parking lot. There were slim pickings indeed until a Caddy pulled into a space on the other side of the lot. The old couple doddered out, two fogies in straw hats and short pants walking toward the restaurant where they’d probably order Caltrate and Metamucil. The windows were down, Tombstone not having been a hotbed of crime for a century now, and the hot-wiring was a sixty-second job for Ace.

“Move the van,” Diet told Zippy, “so nobody links it to the Caddy.” They would, of course, but it would take a little longer, by which time the Caddy would have been recovered and Diet and his crew would have found something else, either another car or the Holy Nine-Figure Grail. He had only a week left to claim his prize, which meant a lot of details: Kill his loser pals one by one and bury them deep enough so the coyotes don’t dig them up. Putting a bullet through Mack’s brain would be a special pleasure. Cops sucked, retired or not. Did they give special treatment to cop killers out here? Yeah? What about ex-cop killers? And who was going to catch him, anyway? He’d take Mack’s body to some Indian reservation—burn it, bury it, done. That broad—what was her name again, Cal Vrattos? She’d be in pieces, in several graves miles apart.

With those details out of the way, Diet Cola could fly back to Boston, maybe through a couple of different cities and a couple of different airlines. Just under the wire, he’d present himself and his winning ticket to the Lottery Commission. Why did you wait so long, they’d ask. Well gosh, I did this jail time and plumb forgot I’d ever bought a ticket. Then I’m cleaning out my stuff, like you know, I’m cleaning up my act, and I come across this ticket. I think gosh, I should check the numbers, maybe the ticket’s worth five bucks or something I can slip into the basket in church.

Zippy parked the van in the dusty lot at Boot Hill and didn’t wait for Diet Cola to catch up. His crotch still ached from the kick he’d gotten the night before, and that was one hundred and ten percent Mack Durgin’s fault for stealing whatever it was belonged to Diet Cola. Come to think of it, Zippy wasn’t too happy with this Cola person for not trusting him with the secret.

Then he saw them. The cop and the girl talking and then getting into different cars together. They both headed west, but Zippy cared only about Mack. He backed up the van quickly and followed, wondering how fast this bucket of bolts would go.

Patsy Kline sang a plaintive love song on the radio as Mack noticed the van in his rear-view mirror. Nothing remarkable about that, since there weren’t exactly dozens of ways out of Tombstone. But he was closing fast. Cal was right ahead, close enough that the van might try to pass both cars at once. The image in the mirror kept getting larger, and with no oncoming traffic in sight, the van had plenty of room to pass. It kept closing in, giving no sign of changing lanes. Mack waved and edged a little to the right, urging him to pass. Cal edged over as well.

Just before impact, Mack recognized Zippy’s face in his mirror. The van crunched the left side of Mack’s car and pushed it through an old fence and into a patch of mesquite, churning up a cloud of sand and dust. His body slammed forward while the airbag slammed back and the seatbelt held him tightly.

Cal stopped safely in the breakdown lane and watched in terror as the van rolled over twice and came to rest on its roof. The hood of Mack’s car had folded into an inverted V, and a cloud of steam hissed from the engine. There was no movement from either vehicle. Cal ran toward Mack, who opened his door and staggered out, looking dazed.

“He tried to kill you,” she said.

“Zippy’s completely nuts.” Mack wished he had his damn gun as he picked up a broken mesquite branch and walked toward the upended vehicle. Zippy crawled out through the opening where the van’s windshield had shattered. Blood streamed from a cut on his scalp. He held a large knife as he stared at Mack, who whacked him in the wrist with the stick and knocked the knife to the ground. Zippy turned and ran. Mack only limped after him, so Zippy had an advantage in speed.