by Douglas Bell
Mojo stared dumbfounded at the spot where the demon had been. He could hardly believe it. It didn’t make sense. The humpbacked demon was gone, but not before Mojo had gotten a good look at what his hump had concealed: a pair of bright shining wings. Golden wings. The same kind of wings you saw in stained-glass church windows.
A demon with angel wings?
19
Narn’s picture was in all the newspapers. In one picture Narn was squatting by a towering stack of white plastic Baggies. In another picture he was standing outside the federal courthouse in Albuquerque with a squad of DEA agents. In a third picture—and the only one Mojo ever saw—Narn was leading Raymundo Castillo down a gauntlet of reporters at the El Paso International Airport.
Mojo’s picture did not appear in any newspaper. Neither did Juanita’s. Juanita and Mojo were not invited to Washington to receive a commendation from the DEA as Narn was. But then, Juanita and Mojo were not arrested as Castillo and the Reverend Rutt were either, even though they could have been.
They were married instead.
* * *
Mojo and Juanita had a real Mexican wedding. The groomsmen wore ice-blue tuxedos with pink pinstripes and matching pink carnations. The bridesmaids wore pink ball gowns with ice-blue ribbons and matching blue carnations. Trumpets played when Mojo and Juanita walked down the aisle. Balloons were released. A chorus sang and a mariachi band played.
Narn came to the wedding and sat in a rear pew.
Chuy sat in a front pew with Lupe.
Grandmother sat between Chuy and Lupe and cried copiously and swore that she could feel the presence of the Dark Lady herself presiding over the ceremony.
Uncle Ort found a seat in the back near Narn and smiled contentedly as he fingered the crisp new check in his shirt pocket. The check was from Mojo. It covered the deductible on the Cadillac plus five hundred more for the damage to the store plus another five hundred for Uncle Ort’s trouble.
It wasn’t until after Mojo and Juanita left on their honeymoon that the check bounced.
* * *
Golden wings.
Mojo took a sip of champagne and considered it. It was too bad the Madonna had disappeared shortly after the devil. Maybe she could have explained it to him.
Mojo shook his head. A devil with golden wings made no sense to Mojo who knew what little he knew from watching cable TV. John Milton had never appeared on cable TV. Or, if he had, Mojo had missed him.
Not that Mojo was totally ignorant of the history of Western civilization. Some of the greatest figures of the past were on cable TV regularly: Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Jack the Ripper, Buddy Holly, even Hitler. Especially Hitler. Hitler was on cable TV so much that Mojo could have picked him out of a football crowd.
But not John Milton. Mojo had never heard of John Milton or of any paradises being lost. He did not know Milton even in the sense he knew Taiwan was a city in Europe and Aristotle and Plato were men’s colognes.
But why sweat the small stuff?
Mojo set his champagne goblet down and fluffed his pillows up and kicked back, sighing with contentment. Look on the bright side, he told himself. Things were going good. Things were going even better than he had imagined they might.
Mojo was lying on an opulent round bed in an opulent honeymoon suite in the opulent MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The suite had everything. The suite had red velvet curtains and a well-stocked bar with its own refrigerator and a bubbling hot tub and a wall safe filled with fifty thousand dollars in casino chips Mojo had won shooting craps the night before.
It was only the tip of the iceberg.
Mojo had a talent for craps.
* * *
Mojo sighed again. He had it made, all right. Made in the shade. He resolved he would send Uncle Ort another check first thing in the morning, a good one this time. And if his luck at the tables held out—and he had every reason to suspect it would since it wasn’t luck at all—he would buy Grandmother a real house with walls made of Sheetrock instead of scrap lumber. And an ivory statuette of the Virgin for Chuy. Maybe even a new Stetson for Narn. What the hell. Mojo was not the sort to let cash lie idle in his pocket, and the principles behind CDs and savings accounts had always eluded him.
Mojo turned and snuggled up to Juanita. Juanita stirred in her sleep: a slow, languorous stretch. Mojo bent down and kissed her throat. He bent further and kissed the tiny red rose that was tattooed above the nipple on her left breast.
Juanita smacked her lips softly. Opened her eyes and lifted her hand to admire the glittering diamond ring Mojo had bought her the night before. The diamond was huge. Brilliant. It shimmered like a salt flat at high noon. She smiled up at the dazzling ring. Then at Mojo. She rolled over and pressed the length of her body to his.
* * *
The refrigerator hummed.
The hot tub gurgled.
The sheets whispered: a snap, a cinch, a piece of cake.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
MOJO AND THE PICKLE JAR
Copyright © 1991 by Douglas Bell
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
49 West 24th St.
New York, NY 10010
ISBN: 0-812-50880-7
First edition: May 1991
eISBN 9781466865129
First eBook edition: January 2014