When Pigs Fly by Bob Sanchez

brains out.”
     
    Juanita pursed her lips and let out a soft breath. “Mack Durgin. Yeah-h-h-h. A jalapeño, that one.”
     
    “Tell me where I can find him. I’m gonna kick his ass.”

Chapter 15
     
    Tombstone, Arizona
    Mack stepped into a shop in Tombstone, grateful to be out of the brutal heat for a few minutes. He bought himself a brightly colored tote bag, thinking of the ribbing his fellow cops would have given him for walking around with an item like that. It did feel silly, so he bought a Stetson hat just to balance that feeling. “I’ve always wanted one of these hats,” he told George, whose urn he’d slipped into the canvas bag. That was a lot easier than carrying it under his arm or in a cumbersome box. Later they watched a pay-per-view fake shootout staged for the tourists, but Mack was underwhelmed. “We’ve seen the real thing, George, haven’t we? Hell, we’ve been in them.” His thoughts turned melancholy.
     
    The drug bust had been almost ten years ago. Mack and George had burst in through the front door, more cavalry in the back way. A glassy-eyed woman stretched out on a ratty couch while a toilet flushed the evidence, an infant crawled on a filthy carpet in front of a blaring television, older kids screaming, smells of tobacco, stale garbage, burnt pork chops, urine, the place one big bacteria factory. Three cops collared the perp while Mack scooped up the baby, chalk up another one for the good guys. Then a closet door flew open and the thug named el Diablo aimed directly at Mack and the child in his arms. Apparently from nowhere, George Ashe conjured himself into the line of fire and took two in his Kevlar vest and one in the shoulder. At the same time, Mack sheltered the baby with his body and leveled his .38. A dozen rounds silenced the closet shooter, and the wall behind him looked like it had a sloppy paint job. The woman looked at Mack through dilated pupils. Whass happenin’? she wanted to know.
     
    Mack drove over to Boot Hill, an old cemetery where they’d buried the second-place finishers in gunfights of yore. It was an odd place, not quite a honky-tonk cemetery, but the only place Mack knew of where women in straw hats posed for pictures among the dead. One of the tombstones stood out like an ancient tongue depressor. It said:
     
    Here lies Swifty Durgin
    One lead slug beats four of a kind
     
    “My dad used to say that his grandpa was buried here, shot in the heart over a game of five-card stud.”
     
    A woman looked directly at him, an uncommon enough occasion that Mack straightened his back a little. She was a tall woman with a lovely face and black hair, a most agreeable figure and no wedding ring. “This is your great grand-dad?” she said, apparently thinking he was talking to her. “That’s such a shame.”
     
    His heart skipped a beat, if hearts really did such things, and he tipped his hat the way he’d seen in John Wayne movies. “Oh, I don’t know. Old Swifty left his wife and six little Durgins to fend for themselves. He died cheating at cards, and she died working at a bobbin. Worked sixteen hours a day, six days a week until she wore out.”
     
    “You have an accent,” she said. “Boston?”
     
    “Lowell. Your accent’s a little harder to place—mid-Atlantic, I’d guess.”
     
    “Concord, Massachusetts, actually. Just a few miles from you.” She gave Mack a radiant smile and extended her hand. “My name’s Cal, and that’s where I’m going. Is it hot out here, or is it me?”
     
    “Mack Durgin. It’s a hundred and five degrees, but it could be you.”
     
    They chatted for a few minutes about Lowell and Concord, the textile mills turned to condos and small businesses, the “rude bridge that arched the flood,” and the Concord River that joined the two towns—well, Lowell was a city and Concord was a town , if you wanted to get technical about it, Mack said, but Cal didn’t. Lowell was hardscrabble and known for its resilience,