by Bob Sanchez
An hour later, Ace began to wonder what happened to Frosty. Maybe he got caught.
“Frosty’s never been busted,” Ace confided to Leena. “But if he doesn’t come back soon, you and me are both pork roast.” Leena seemed unconcerned. She was cleaned up but still smelly.
Eventually Frosty came back loaded down with two armloads of bags, and some old lady carried a couple more to the car for him. The nosy lady looked at Ace and Leena cockeyed but didn’t say anything much.
Inside the bags Ace noticed a plastic food dish, a bottle of scented bath oil, a pair of sunglasses, a light blue vest, a pair of scissors, a bag of sequins, a bag of Doritos, two six-packs of Bud Lite and a wallet that must have jumped out of the old lady’s purse.
“I’ll say this for you, Frosty,” Ace said. “You sure know how to shop.”
“Shop is a half a word, my man. The correct term is shoplift.”
Ace was awestruck at how well Frosty had developed professionally. He whistled under his breath. He was so damned proud of Frosty, he hoped they were blood relatives.
“The trick isn’t the stealing. The trick is getting people to help you with your bags. Now we’ve gotta find a motel.” Frosty turned the key in the ignition, and soon they were on their way across town.
Leena stuck his snout out the half-opened back window, leaving pig slobber smeared on the glass. Ace thought he ought to clean it later, so they could eventually return the car the way they found it. They stopped at the first motel they found. Frosty registered for a first-floor room in the back.
“Elvis and what’s-her-face are going to love this wedding present,” Frosty said, turning the key in the door. Ace followed with Leena on a leash, and Frosty carried in the stuff. The room was air-conditioned and had a couple of beds that weren’t going to get any use, as Ace and Frosty didn’t need the place for sleeping. There was some nice homey artwork on the wall showing a snow-covered log cabin, smoke rising out of its chimney, cozy lights showing through a window, a stream with dancing trout, the sun going down over a plum-colored mountaintop all aspangle with clouds the color of raspberries and lemons. Ace thought he might lift the painting on his way out—it was that good.
Leena sniffed around. He bent his front legs and stuck his snout under the edge of the bed, raising his butt in the air and snorting a dust bunny, which caused an explosive sneeze that made Ace’s heart skip a beat.
Frosty looked startled. “Sounded like a gas main explosion.”
“Man, that could’ve woke the Pope,” Ace said. “Come on, Leena. We’ve gotta get you clean.”
Leena grunted happily as Ace led him into the bathroom, but stopped at the sight of the ceramic tub. Frosty watched at the door. “Help me lift him,” Ace said. He lifted Leena’s front feet as Frosty lifted the haunches. Leena apparently didn’t think too highly of whatever was going on, as he shook his head violently and kicked his hooves in all directions. The shower curtain came down on top of him, and he looked like he was wearing a blue plastic toga with mermaids and clamshells. A tusk caught Ace’s shirt and ripped it, popping three buttons.
Ace’s eyes also popped. “Lift him up, Frosty!”
“How can I? You let go!”
“Those tusks will cut me in half! We gotta calm this guy down!” Ace was screaming, which didn’t do much for Leena’s agitated mood. Frosty ran into the bedroom and tore the blanket off one of the twin beds. He brought it into the tiny bathroom just as Leena charged out of it like a raging bull.
“Olé,” Frosty said.
“This is no time to talk about potato chips,” Ace said, even though Lay’s was his favorite brand. “We’ll have supper later.”
Frosty tossed the blanket over Leena. “This will calm him down. As long as he can’t see, he’ll be all right.” The pig in the blanket reminded Ace of pancakes and sausage, though he couldn’t think exactly why.
But Leena charged blindly, knocking over a lamp and hitting a chair before getting its feet tangled in the blanket. He squealed like a baby getting shots at the doctor, and he thrashed every which way. Ace grabbed the pig, which popped out of the blanket and climbed onto a bed, taking the high ground. Ace grabbed a pillow. Leena tore through it with a tusk.
The television slid to the edge of the table and tottered on the edge. Frosty’s eyes widened and his hands stretched out as he dove to catch it but missed. The set crashed on the floor with a loud crack. Ace had always wondered what the inside of a TV tube looked like. It wasn’t pretty. Leena squealed like—Ace struggled to find a comparison—like a pig, he decided.
Meanwhile, the painting fell off the wall, and the frame cracked on the headboard of one of the beds and fell on Leena’s head. Suddenly he stopped and peed on the bed.
There was a knock on the door. Ace and Frosty tried to ignore it. Then the knuckle-rapping turned to fist-pounding. “This is the manager. What’s going on in there?”
Ace stood next to the door. Luckily, the din was lessening. “Sorry,” he said. “The TV was up way to loud.”
“Turn it down!”
“We just did. I apologize. My brother is deaf as a stone and he accidentally flushed his hearing aid down the toilet, so we had the TV volume way up.”
“That moron’s not deaf! I just spoke with him an hour ago!”
“He lip synchs—I mean, he lip reads.”
“I thought his problem was Tourette’s.”
“Fuck a duck,” Frosty chimed in.
“That too,” Ace said. “We’ll be quiet from here on. I promise.”
“One more peep out of you guys and you’re gone,” the manager said. Ace did try one more peep through the peephole and saw him walking away, literally bent out of shape by the little circle of glass. Cool, he thought as he saw cars in the parking lot all twisted upwards. How did they get the glass to do that?
Then he turned and looked at the room. A blanket and pillow were ripped, a sheet had a big yellow stain with a nasty smell, a mirror lay in a thousand pieces, and wall hangings and glass and electronic guts were scattered on the floor. Clothes lay all over the place with Leena’s footprints on them. Hurricane Piggy had struck hard, but now he lay down on a torn bed sheet and shreds of the shower curtain, just as calm as ham on rye.
Ace sat down next to Leena, feeling frustrated. This was something good he and Frosty wanted to do for someone, for gosh sake. The only silver lining was that they had no intention of paying for this room, otherwise they’d have to ante up serious cash for damages. He patted the bristles on Leena’s head, and the pig responded with a contented grunt.
“Oh my God, gross! You’ve got wicked pig breath!”
“Don’t get him excited, Ace. Maybe we can give him some kind of anesthetic. Maybe I can get some codeine at the drug store.”
“Good idea. Meanwhile, this dude is getting mouthwash. Get the bottle from the bathroom, will you?”
Frosty came back with a plastic glass of minty green liquid. “Good luck getting this into him,” he said. Ace nodded. This was going to be tough. Frosty grabbed his car keys and headed for the door.
The pig sniffed the cup and stuck his tongue in it, then pushed with his snout and splashed the liquid all over Ace’s lap. “Damn,” Ace said, but the pig started licking his pants. Ace tried to stand, but the pig hooked his belt buckle with a tusk and made him sit still.
“That’s some serious perversion you two have there,” Frosty said.
“He likes it! Piggy likes it!”
“So do you, apparently.”
Ace undid his belt and released himself, then picked up a plastic cereal bowl that had fallen onto the floor. He poured in some mouthwash and placed it on the floor. The pig slurped it up and pushed the bowl toward Ace. More please, it was saying. Ace filled the bowl and Leena drank up.
A hundred watts lit up in Ace’s brain. He looked at Frosty. “Go out and get the biggest bottle of this stuff you can find. Pay for it if you have to.”
Frosty wrinkled his pink forehead, clearly not g
rasping the significance of Ace’s discovery. “What?”
“Twenty-one point six percent alcohol is what. We’ll get him drunk, then we’ll bathe him.”
“You make me proud sometimes,” Frosty said. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
By the time Frosty arrived back in the room with two liters of Scope, Ace had Piggy wrapped in the blanket again, desperately trying to keep it still. “He’s turned mean,” Ace said. “Just give him some more, quick.”
A few minutes later, Piggy had emptied one of the new bottles, burped and struggled to stand. Then he collapsed. Ace lifted him by his front legs and carried him to the bathroom. “We’re gonna take care of you, Leena,” Ace said. “You’ll be the prettiest pig on the planet.” The pig’s eyes opened halfway, and then he barfed a gutful of Scope onto Ace’s shirt. It was actually a nice color.
No one could doubt Ace’s genius now. Leena was a very quiet drunk as he lay under the warm shower and let Ace lather up his body with spice-scented bath oils. “You can wash behind his tail,” Ace told Frosty. “I’ll borrow your electric shaver. He has wicked bristles on his chin.”
“That’s possibly not a good idea. It’s electric, and all the stuff is wet in the tub.” Frosty pulled back Leena’s tail and grimaced.
“Well, duh. Your electric shaver’s electric. Nice deduction, Sherlock.”
“I mean it’s not safe.”
“It’s only not safe if you’re not careful.” Ace picked the shaver up from the bedroom floor where it must have fallen for some odd reason. The casing was cracked, but otherwise it looked fine. Maybe Frosty just stepped on it.
In the bathroom he plugged the shaver into the wall socket and kneeled down at the side of the tub. He lifted Leena’s slack jaw and began to shave around the tusks. “See,” Ace said as the shaver hummed, “he’ll turn out good. How’re things going on your end?”
Leena let out a long, slow fart that reminded Ace of rotten eggs and banana peels aging in the sun. “Ohmigod, that’s so bogus,” he said as he covered his nose with his arm. The shaver fell into the water. The jolt opened Leena’s eyes and made his entire body go rigid. Ace figured the pig must have gone airborne; otherwise how did his ass hit Frosty in the face?
But it was over in an instant, because the plug fell out of the wall socket.
“I told you,” Frosty said.
“Crappy workmanship,” Ace said, looking at the shaver. He wondered if there was a warranty on the thing.
“I think the pig’s dead!” Leena wasn’t moving, his legs were straight as two-by-fours, and his eyes were gazing at the pink ceramic tiles on the wall. Frosty looked frantic. “You killed him, you stupid jerk!”
“No, he can’t be dead! We have to bring him back!” Ace lifted Leena and carried him to the bedroom where there was more space. He started pushing hard on the pig’s chest to get him breathing. “Come on, Piggy! Come on, damn it! Live!”
“You gotta do mouth-to-mouth,” Frosty said. “It’s the only way.”
Ace hesitated, but what could he do? This was all his fault. He knew it, and he knew he’d always deny it, but above all, he didn’t want a dead pig on his conscience. So he kneeled down again, opened Leena’s mouth—carefully, to avoid the tusks—and breathed into it. Frosty tried pinching the snout while Ace cupped his hands around the pig’s jaw to keep the air from leaking out. After a few minutes it just felt like a tragic waste of time. Ace began to cry, and his tears spilled onto the pig’s face.
Leena’s eyelashes flickered once, then stopped. Was there hope? Hope that Ace wasn’t a pig killer after all? He breathed in with new energy. Suddenly, he gagged on Leena’s awful, wonderful, minty-bile breath. The pig’s eyes came alive, he grunted, and he pushed Ace back with his snout.
“Hah!” Frosty said. “Reee-jected!”
If Diet Cola had known it would be so easy to escape from his hospital room, he wouldn’t have waited this long. The cop who had been guarding him lay unconscious on the floor with the king of all concussions if he was lucky. Diet stripped him of his Glock, his keys and his radio, and would have worn the guy’s uniform if the scrawny cop hadn’t been about four sizes too small. Nurses who saw him walk out with nothing but a hospital johnny, slippers, and a loaded pistol probably thought something was fishy, but he didn’t care.
“Stop right there!” A cop accosted him as he went out through the revolving door. Diet Cola wheeled and fired two slugs point-blank into the cop’s chest. The impact knocked the cop into a flower bed. There were two cruisers visible in the lot, and Diet ran to the second one, guessing it was the one he had the keys for.
He’d heard all about the stupid wedding plans at the Grand Canyon, and that’s where he expected to find the bastard who had given him the bogus ticket. Mack Durgin had the real lottery ticket, he was absolutely sure of that. Diet Cola turned on the siren and ran a red light as he raced northward. First order of business, Mack Durgin was going give him the ticket, and then he was going to suck lead. Then all the witnesses had to die. Diet would find some fat slob and take his clothes and his car. By then the cops would be chasing him down, but he would either get away or die in a ball of flame, which was pretty much all the same to him anymore.
Chapter 53
Mack wasn’t happy that his parents were joining Zippy and Elvis and their girlfriends in a matrimonial mish-mash, but who was he to stand in their way? They all agreed that Williams was a fine place to stay the night before the wedding. Mack and Cal decided to stay in the same motel but with his-and-hers rooms.
Williams is a quiet town known for its proximity to the Grand Canyon and for old Route 66 that cuts through the downtown on its way from Chicago to Santa Monica. A few decades back, highway I-40 barreled through town, and the local economy hit the road. Route 66 had suffered indignities like that along its entire length, with some sections closing for good and others—like the stretch Mack strolled on—kept alive by the force of nostalgia.
He stopped in a souvenir shop that sold books, t-shirts, photographs, road signs, music, and assorted trinkets that had the Route 66 theme. What could he buy for Cal? The choices were certainly limited, and her tastes probably couldn’t be satisfied here. But he liked her—a lot, he realized—and he wanted some small way to say so. He settled on a charm bracelet with tiny images of Chicago, the Grand Canyon, an old ten-cent hamburger joint, the famous highway sign and the phrase “get your kicks on Route 66.” Of course she was too old and sophisticated for charm bracelets that might turn her wrist green, but the gift might bring out a smile, and she might aim that smile at him.
The motel was a half mile down the main drag, which was the famous old road. Down a side street, an old passenger train idled with smoke puffing from the smokestack on its engine as it waited for passengers to board for the scenic ride to the Grand Canyon. They would all take that train tomorrow: Mom and Dad, Elvis and Ursula, Juanita and Zippy, Mack and Cal. Ace and Frosty promised to get to the South Rim on their own, although Mack would have been happier if they did the nearly impossible and got lost.
At least Dieter Kohl was history. Authorities were still sorting out which charges they planned to throw at him, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts wanted him for questioning in several assaults. Meanwhile, he was recuperating in a hospital until he was well enough to sit behind bars.
That evening, Mack and Cal ate burgers together at a smoky diner that had an old jukebox playing mostly Johnny Cash and June Carter. The waitresses had sheriff’s badges pinned to their blouses and wore holsters and fake six-guns on their hips. “I have something for you,” Mack said as he took a small white box out of his pocket.
“Oh, my God. No. I’m not ready for this.”
“Take it,” Mack said. “Open it up. Come on, it won’t bite.”