When Pigs Fly Read Online Free Page B

down for good. A couple of months ago he did that to some fish in the can, and the sucker flat-lined in the E.R.
     
    So the geezers FedExed the urn to their little boy in Arizona, did they? Well, Diet Cola had to go there and get the ticket. Meantime, though, he had to start repaying the entire Durgin family.
     
    As Carrick struggled to breathe, Diet Cola wondered where the geezer’s wife was; maybe he’d finally get his twofer. There was a squeak in the floorboard, but Diet Cola knew damn well he was alone. He had made sure of that. He laughed as he bounced his ass a couple of times on the old man’s face. Now that was a squeaky floor!
     
    He heard a cough, turned, saw— Whack! Diet went down, rolling off Carrick and onto the floor, grasping his face in a rage of purple pain. A noise like a cherry bomb exploded next to his ear and set off a half-dozen car alarms ricocheting across the inside of his skull. Between his fingers he saw a woman in a Sunday church dress, white hair and a string of pearls, face full of wrinkles, feet spread apart and her spindly right arm cocked back. There was the meanest-looking face that had ever worn lipstick, and the biddy had a bullwhip!
     
    “You leave my husband alone, you wicked creature!”
     
    That was a new one on Diet Cola, and he didn’t know how to react. If she’d called him a motherfucker, he would know to fly into a rage the way he’d always done in jail. Those twelve letters were like a warm, comfortable coat. But wicked creature ?
     
    “I’m killing you next, lady.” He stood up just as the leather was on its backswing.
     
    Old Brodie Durgin apparently wasn’t in a talkative mood, but she didn’t look like she had enough muscles in her arm to do any real damage. The first shot was her best one for sure, so he reached out to ward off the second blow. The end of the whip exploded in the palm of his right hand. Pain tore like a lightning bolt up his arm. Unfortunately, that was the hand he used to forge signatures and jerk off with. Now he had a handful of his own blood, and he was pissed. He charged at the old witch before she could get her full weight behind another snap. He grabbed her throat with his good hand, and as he squeezed, the fear of God bulged out of her eyes. The lipstick, the nice flowery dress, the sweet perfume—here was a woman all dressed up for her own wake. She shook so hard he thought he heard her bones rattle, or maybe it was her dentures. “What do you think? Have you lived long enough—bitch?”
     
    She spit in his face, as though he couldn’t get any madder. He smiled, though, and wiped blood from his palm to her face. “Lick it,” he said. When she bit his hand instead, he smeared blood down the front of her dress, got himself a handful of an ancient knocker, and squeezed it hard.
     
    Sudden pain shot through the back of his skull. First a bullwhip, now a hammer, maybe a brick. Jesus. Not fair! Holy shit, that hurts! Jesus Christ, Ma, make it stop! He let go of Brodie and fell to his knees. The world spun in front of his eyes just like when he’d knock off a fifth of Jim Beam. He wanted to turn and see who—or what—had hit him, but what if they did it again? His bladder let go in a warm, wet rush. He staggered forward, pushed on the door, and smacked into the door jamb because he forgot to turn sideways. Then he got the hell out of there.
     
    He squeezed into his GTO—technically, it wasn’t his, but it’s what he was driving at the moment—and gunned it out of the neighborhood and into an empty school parking lot. Half blind with pain, it was a miracle he could even drive. There, he stripped to his waist and wrapped his t-shirt around his wounded hand, but his head throbbed most of all.
     
    He headed toward home, hid the GTO in an old garage and re-closed the rusty padlock. Then he went upstairs to his rat-hole of a tenement, which was supposedly empty, its windows having been boarded up sometime during his stretch