When Pigs Fly by Bob Sanchez Read Free Book Online

seemed to have tried. At least the family pictures were intact: Mary and the boys; Mary and the grandkids; Mack and the tuna he’d caught off the Gloucester coast, a fish big enough to feed a thousand cats. Mack had looked behind the bookcase for his hidden .38, but Juanita had even found that. Then from the church parking lot he drove into the outskirts of town and stopped in front of the Pincushion Pawn Shop, a shabby place with bars on the windows and a painted sign with the three gold balls that signified the Medicis’ gift to the world of finance. Inside was a jumble of treasures, the usual stuff like a war bonnet, a stuffed rattlesnake, a chair autographed by Jerry Springer, a coffee table with a top made of petrified wood, and a copy of Dickens’ Bleak House (gilt-edged, which Mack thought ironic).
     
    “I’ll give you one-fifty,” the pawnbroker said, nodding at the urn that was cradled in Mack’s arm. The sign behind the counter said Zeke Mertin, Prop.
     
    “It’s not for sale. Are you Zeke?”
     
    “That’s right. You can’t go over my head for a better price.” The top of Zeke’s head was gray and wild, like Einstein’s on a bad hair day.
     
    “Has anyone tried to pawn a .38 today?”
     
    “Yours?”
     
    Mack nodded.
     
    “Clean as a whistle, just been oiled, nice grip? A guy came in here when I opened, asked what I’d give him for it. I’m thinking stolen goods, so I tell him flat-out no. His eyes bulge and his scalp goes red like it’s an old pressure cooker about to blow, but I show him Sadie and he calms right down.
     
    “Sadie?”
     
    “My double-barreled twelve gauge. I told him I haven’t shot a customer in the new millennium yet, and I offered to make him the first.” The proprietor showed a wide smile with crooked teeth. “He respectfully declined.”
     
    “Describe him for me.”
     
    “Ugly, like somebody pissed in the gene pool.”
     
    “Help me out here. Height? Weight? Hair color? Eye color? Scars? Bad teeth? Clothes? Nervous tics?”
     
    “You don’t want much. Do I look like four-one-one?”
     
    “I just want my property back.”
     
    “You thinking on killing him?”
     
    “No. Of course not.”
     
    “Too bad. We ain’t had a good killing around here in a while now. Last time was a guy running around on his wife. At her trial the gal testified she only meant to Bobbitt him, but then she got carried away and cut out his—”
     
    “Interesting. What’s the guy look like?”
     
    “After the wife and the coroner got done with him, probably not so good.”
     
    “Zeke, I’m asking about the guy who stole my .38.”
     
    “Wide-brimmed hat, wraparound shades, weighs a buck and a half, I’d say. Denim jeans, denim shirt. He was shaking like his dealer had stood him up.”
     
    A couple of minutes later, Mack thanked Zeke and walked across the street to the Sunrise Diner, where he occasionally stopped. It had a neon sign with a smiling yellow sun peeking over a long-armed saguaro topped with a cowboy hat. He slid into a booth with green vinyl seats and an orange Formica table still dirty from the last customer. A tired-looking waitress wiped a spot big enough for a clean cup.
     
    “What’s that thing, Mack?” she asked, nodding quizzically at the urn.
     
    “Ashes.”
     
    “You mean ‘ashes’ as in ‘ashes to ashes’?”
     
    He described Juanita and the guy with the pistol, but the waitress shook her head. “Might could’ve seen ‘em, but not today. Hey, you look like hell. Have some high-test.” She filled his cup, and he drank the coffee black. If it had brewed any longer, he would have asked for a knife and fork.
     
    “Good,” he said.
     
    “I mean, not that you usually look like Brad Pitt.”
     
    “Heaven forefend. Brendan Behan, perhaps.”
     
    “Sorry, I don’t know him, honey. Well, you’re normally a good-looking old dog even if you’re not silver-screen handsome.”
     
    “Thank you. I know you mean that only