When Pigs Fly

by Bob Sanchez

  It was a no-brainer. He jumped.

  But he landed on his feet and skidded down the hill, his arms outstretched like a surfer, afraid he would die and afraid he wouldn’t, finally tumbling onto his face next to a pair of pretty legs. There was a family gawking down at him. A car and a road. Civilization! He stood up, dusted himself off and saw Frosty and Elvis working their way to the bottom of the hill. “I beat you guys down,” he said. “Suckers!”

  The family jabbered among themselves in some language that might have been Russian or Irish. They all looked up the hill, apparently wondering what the hell was coming down next.

  Ace thought to be polite, because you had to give a good impression to foreigners. “Hi! My name’s Ace. Where you folks headed?”

  “Germany,” the man said, already backing away. “As soon as possible.”

  “Well, do you think you could drop us off at the next town?”

  The man turned to his family and said some kind of gibberish that sounded urgent. They got in their car, locked their doors and drove away.

  After twenty minutes with their thumbs hanging out, Ace, Frosty and Elvis rode a few miles into town in the back of a pickup truck while Ace thought of all the neat shopping possibilities. Then he had some depressing thoughts: he could steal this town blind, but where would he put all the stuff? Another thought was how grubby his companions were. He understood Elvis’s being kind of dirty, having been buried up to his chin and losing his jacket, but he didn’t get why Frosty looked such a mess. Dirt didn’t much stick to Ace, and he figured that Frosty’s sweat stains were one of his few personal failings.

  The last thing that bugged him was the cop car right behind them. He waved at the cop and felt relieved when the cop gave a quick wave back.

  His spirits lifted when he saw the Burger King sign. He rapped on the back window of the pickup. “Hey! Hey, mister! You can let us off here.”

  Chapter 47

  Cal finished her lunch and made a phone call to her sister back East. “I’m having a great time, Sis.—No, no troubles at all, I just had to get away for a bit.—Where? Oh, Arizona.—With a gentleman, yes.—No, not him. A real gentleman.—No, I’m not telling you whether we did or not.—Yes, they’re in my purse, and I’ll use them if I have to.—Oh, all right, I’ll use them.—Sure, wait a minute.” The cell phone had a camera that she held up for Mack to look at. On the screen, the image of a distressed-looking woman bore a striking resemblance to Cal.

  “Mack, this is my sister Grace. She wants to see what you look like in case you’re a serial killer.” She pointed a tiny lens at Mack, who smiled and waved. Then Cal spoke to Grace again. “Yeah, I think he is, too.—Yes, he has brothers.—No, they’re married. So are you.—How should I know if they’re happy?—No, I won’t ask him!—Yes, yes, I know you’re joking.—Look, I’m really busy now.—No. No, I’ve gotta hang up. Call you later.—Is he doing what to me? None of your beeswax! Bye.”

  “What?” Cal said to Mack. She was holding the phone like a projectile she planned to hurl through the windshield.

  “I’d forgotten that my parents have a picture phone. I don’t think they ever use the picture feature, but it’s there. Sooner or later, their phone will be recharged. Do you mind if we use yours? We may learn something by trading pictures.”

  The steam seemed to dissipate from Cal’s ears. “Absolutely. Maybe we can catch an important detail in the background. You can try it now.”

  Mack entered his parents’ cell phone number, but he had to leave a voice mail message. “Hey Cola, Mack Durgin. My parents had better be all right. Call me or I can’t help you.” He left Cal’s number and disconnected.

  Mack rubbed his forehead. What the heck would he do if he didn’t get a call back? He started the engine and drove down Route 89A. All they could do now was go on patrol. “We don’t know what their car looks like,” he said. “Could be Mom and Dad’s rental or whatever Diet Cola is driving, so we have to look at the people inside.”

  “Do you think it’s just the three of them, or could he have an accomplice?”

  “He probably does. There’s that freak Zippy with the tattooed skull and the two fine laddies from Lowell.”

  “And my bud Elvis Hornacre, don’t forget him.”

  They drove to the edge of town, looking for evidence of Diet Cola and where he might have taken Mack’s parents. Mack stopped twice to ask people if they had seen a heavy-set man with a salt-and-pepper ponytail, perhaps accompanied by an elderly couple. They hadn’t. He turned around and tried any dirt side roads that showed recent tire tracks, but only found people taking photographs who knew nothing.

  They drove back into town. Mack felt scared and depressed and must have shown it because Cal squeezed his shoulder. He missed Mary’s company, but she was gone. “Let’s make a pact,” she had once said when their health seemed unquestioned and mortality a distant abstraction. “If one of us dies, the other has to start fresh. We shed our gallon of tears, and then we stand up straight and face the world with a smile.”

  “Me, I’m calling Cheryl Tiegs,” Mack said.

  “Robert Redford here, though I do wish he’d leave me alone in the meantime.”

  “What are you thinking about?” Cal asked.

  “Let me borrow your phone.” Mack took a picture of himself and then called.

  This time, success. “Cola, this is Mack Durgin. Are my parents all right?”

  “Depends. Do you have my ticket?”

  “Let me talk to my Dad.”

  “Afraid not.”

  “You have a picture phone. Take a photo and send it to me. I want to see them both.”

  “I don’t have time for Kodak moments. You have two hours to get me the ticket.”

  “How do I know they’re alive? Prove it to me.”

  “I don’t have to prove nothing. You need to have more faith in humanity, Durgin.”

  Mack thought to beg, but Dad would never forgive him for that. “I’m waiting. It should take you two seconds, so just do it.”

  The picture showed his Mom looking worried and confused, apparently in the back seat of a car, probably with Dad sitting in front so they couldn’t easily communicate. Judging from the look on her face, Mack guessed that no harm had come to Dad yet, but that it might. There was a fuzzy image of a Burger King sign in the background, a flash of red rock in the distance. It looked familiar, and then the screen went blank.

  “It was that rock,” Cal said, pointing down the street. “I think. Give me the phone so I can call the police.” She grabbed it from his hand and started punching keys.

  Mack asked a couple of passersby where the local Burger King was, earning him only shrugs. He drove in the direction Cal had pointed as quickly as gaggles of jaywalking tourists would allow, since he had no better ideas and the women in his life were usually right anyway.

  Five minutes later, Mack and Cal stood in the Burger King parking lot and spoke with the young police officer who sat with one arm draped over the steering wheel of his cruiser. “No sign of these people in the parking lot,” he said, “but I’ll check inside.”

  The only thing Ace hated about Burger King was it was so hard to get food without paying. Despite that serious flaw, the establishment was cool and pleasant, much like the ones he knew so well back home in Massachusetts. Moms brought their little kids, teenagers hung out and scarfed up huge orders of fries, and old people blew the steam off their coffees.

  Elvis and Frosty ate like they hadn’t seen food for a week, but Ace settled for some of their fries. Then he got up and walked around until he saw a pretty young woman and her child just finishing their afternoon pick-me-up. The kid looked to be about three years old. “Hi ma’am!” Ace said. “That’s a beautiful young girl you have. What’s her name?”

  “Roger,” the woman said.

  What a strange world it was where girls got boys’ names. This one probably had a brother named Britney. Anyway, Ace smiled at the crazy woman and began cleaning her tab
le.

  “Don’t do that,” she said. “I’m not helpless.”

  “Please, ma’am. The court requires me to do thirty more hours of community service.”

  “You’re serving out a sentence at Burger King? I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Please, ma’am. The whole place can hear us.”

  The woman shook her head, and Ace cleaned the table. She had a big drink she’d just finished, and he tossed out all the trash but the cup. He rinsed it out and refilled it, then got a new straw and sat down with Frosty and Elvis.

  “That was a lot of trouble for a free drink,” Elvis said through clenched teeth. “I’d have shared mine.”

  “Ace has got to keep his skills sharp,” Frosty said. “It’s a matter of pride.”

  The lady stopped at their table and looked silently at Ace, and then walked away with her child in her arms. “A girl named Roger,” Ace said. “Society’s falling apart.”

  Then a cop walked in, and his eyes went right to them before scanning the rest of the place. It creeped Ace out, this guy with his muscles and all that hardware on his belt and looking like he could see inside Ace’s brain. Then the cop strode over to their table and stood with his feet apart and his arms crossed. He focused on Elvis. “What happened to you, sir?”

  “My girlfriend ditched me.”

  “Literally? She threw you in a ditch?”

  “Oh, this.” Elvis proceeded to tell his story—his version of it, anyway, minus a lot of incriminating details, so the story was brief. He got to the part about chasing the horny pig in the Elvis suit, and the cop held up his hand. He asked for names and where they all were headed, how they were traveling, yadda yadda.

  “Hiking across the country,” Ace said, “raising money for Tourist Syndrome.”

  “Asshole!” Frosty said.

  “See what I mean? I apologize for my brother’s outburst, officer. Doctors are looking for a cure.”

  The cop asked several questions about some old couple nobody ever heard of, at least not Ace and Frosty. Elvis said he didn’t know any old people.

  “If you need a place to stay tonight,” the cop said, “I know where you can find a cheap room. In the morning, though, I expect you to be out of town.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Frosty said, and Elvis cringed. The cop scribbled an address on a napkin and then sketched out a quick map.

  “Bless you, officer,” Ace said.

  “Some of your boys are inside,” the officer told Mack. “Apparently not the dangerous ones. One looks like Elvis returned from the dead, another one thinks he’s faking mental illness, and the third one claims to be his brother even though they don’t look remotely alike. They’re staying at my sister’s place tonight.”

  Cal looked worried. “Is that wise?”

  “You mean is my sister in jeopardy? Ursula? Yeah, she might laugh herself to death.” He turned to Mack. “The only ones I’m concerned about are your parents. We’re still on the lookout, believe me. The State Police will be watching the roads in case the perpetrators head north.”

  “I expect Dieter Kohl to stay in Sedona until he gets the ticket,” Mack said. “That’s what this is all about.”

  Mack and Cal drove away as the officer went back inside to deal with Ace, Frosty and the cross-country stalker. Mack dropped Cal off at a motel. “I need to take a deep breath,” she said, reaching over and hugging him. “Too much excitement, but you and George can borrow my car and carry on. Just pick me up for dinner whenever you’re ready. I’ll let you treat.” She kissed him on the cheek.

  Mack propped George up on the front seat and set out for another check of the area. “See that, George? I still drive women wild.”

  Mack’s cheer faded quickly. Dieter Kohl had to be somewhere. He dialed his parents’ number and heard Kohl’s gravelly voice.

  “You got the ticket?” Dieter Kohl said.

  “It’s still in the urn on the front seat of my car. Do you have my parents?”

  “There’s a complication.”

  “Are my parents all right?”

  “What’s with you, Durgin, always obsessing about your parents?”

  “Explain the problem.”

  “We’re out by the base of one of these big pink rocks.”

  “That narrows it down. Are my parents all right?”

  “For the time being. Here’s the deal. One, we have a broken axle. It’s hotter than a frog’s ass in a frying pan out here, and we’re out of water and I’m running out of time. Bring the ticket to me now. If I don’t have the ticket in my hand in thirty minutes, I’ll blow your Mom’s head off.”

  “I’ll be right there. Tell me how to find you.”

  “That’s the complication, Zippy got us lost.”

  “And I have a half hour to find you?”

  “Without the cops. I see a cop, your parents die. Catch my drift?”

  “Yes. I haven’t spoken to the police. This is between two gentlemen. Now help me out here. Did you go north out of town on 89A?”

  “Let’s not bullshit each other, Durgin. I’m no gentleman, and you’re lying to me about not telling the cops. You’ve got twenty-eight minutes.”

  “That’s not enough time, Kohl.”

  “Don’t call me that! I’m Diet Cola, you got that? Next time you call me anything else, somebody dies.”

  “Okay, Diet—”

  “I want an apology. Right now.”

  “I apologize. How’s that?”

  “Now beg for forgiveness. Tell me you’ll kiss my ass.”

  “Cut the crap, Cola. If you really want to be rich, let’s get on with it. You have to say exactly where you are and give me time to get there.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll put your Mom’s orange slacks by the side of the road. You can’t miss ‘em.”

  “You bastard. Give her some dignity, won’t you?”

  “Hurry up, or her dignity’s the least of your worries. Now here’s what you do. You find the slacks and park right there. Leave the engine running and the urn with the ticket on the front seat. Then get out, pick up the slacks, and walk down that road. Your folks and Zippy will be in there.”

  “What? What do you mean I’ll be in here?” Mack heard Zippy’s voice in the background. “I’m coming with you!”

  “Cola, listen to me. This is a gentleman’s agreement between us. If anyone is hurt—my parents, Zippy, anyone—the whole deal is off. You understand, Cola?” No answer. Dieter Kohl had disconnected.

  Mack drove north with his loaded .38 and George Ashe riding shotgun in the urn. “I’m sorry it’s turning out like this, old friend. I had better plans for you.” He scanned the left side of the road for his mother’s orange clothing and saw nothing but red rocks and scrub brush. If he even made it that far, Kohl was going to look like an idiot showing up at Lottery Headquarters with a forged ticket for a prize long since claimed—and paid. He couldn’t very well take a hostage with him to lottery headquarters, either. Mack imagined Kohl’s planned news conference—My name is Diet Cola, and this is my hostage. What am I doing with my winnings? I was thinking about a nude beach in Argentina.

  There was one other possibility—that Dieter Kohl planned to leave no witnesses alive.

  Mack drove north for ten miles without seeing the slacks, so he turned around and headed south for another look. Maybe he’d just arrived too soon. He wanted to step on the gas, but speeding wasn’t going to help his parents now. He needed patience and he needed time, and those two needs conflicted.