Pipsqueak Read Online Free PDF Page B

hospital stay? You can’t pay the hospital with butterflies.” Little did Nicholas know the old man was having lung trouble.
    Dad was sucked into the scheme and became an eager, willing participant. Anyway, he took the loss hard, and even though I offered to kick in what little I had, Dad insisted on an absurd quest to earn back his lost nest egg. Any idea how many butterflies he’d have to sell to make a couple hundred grand? That’s how he died, a septuagenarian run amok with a butterfly net.
    Well, I was contemptuous of my brother for bedeviling Dad. And while Nicholas acted like he was devastated, I was too jaded by that time, as I think Mom was, to believe he was upset about anything but his own financial calamity. In a bizarre bid to prove his sincerity, he enacted his own redemption by way of the Peace Corps. (The Foreign Legion had turned him down.) That was the last we heard of Nicholas. Well, almost. Mom and I each got a postcard from him that first year, strictly factual stuff with no indication he’d had any moral or ethical awakening. Nicholas sounded bored out of his mind. After that, we got several inquiries from Peace Corps officials wanting to know if we’d heard from him. Apparently, he’d gone AWOL in New Guinea. I rather fancied cannibals had made Nicholas Stew, though I imagined he’d have wangled a pretty fair price per pound for himself before climbing into the pot.
    I’d never told Angie much about Nicholas, except to say he was a black sheep. Angie’s the inquisitive type (to say the least), and for a time she urged me to track down my lost brother. “He’ll show up one day, Angie,” I said. “Then you may be sorry.”
     
    “Garth, you look good behind the wheel of Dad’s Lincoln, you really do. It’s right where you belong, like a captain behind the wheel of his ship. And still with that rockabilly blond hair the girls like so much. Little cool for the top down, don’t you think?”
    I didn’t say anything as I made a sweeping left onto the highway. Then I looked him up and down, his left elbow over the seat back, the other over the door. “Palihnic?”
    He winced and shrugged in one motion. “I like anonymity. Besides, I like the sound of Nicholas Palihnic. It’s a name people remember.”
    “And New Guinea?”
    “Some parts were okay, others were hard.” Nicholas surveyed the Hudson River and the distant lights of Jersey City, his voice tightening. “I survived.”
    “Redeemed?”
    He laughed like he’d rolled craps twice in a row, his eyes sharp. “Hard-ass, that’s what we always liked about you, Garth.” Nicholas would substitute
we
for
I
to give his sarcasm a royal sting. “Let’s you and me play nice. We’re big boys now. I don’t call you a chump, and you don’t call me a scoundrel. Role-playing is dull stuff.”
    Ha. That was good, coming from him. “I’ll take that as a no, then. What brings you to town?”
    Nicholas threw his arms out. “This is my town, Garth. I live here, I hang my shingle here. I have for—what? Six years or more?”
    The Lincoln slid into the Battery underpass. “So, what’s written on your shingle, Nicholas?”
    “Professional Killer. International Jewel Thief. Food Stamps Accepted.” He snorted at my pained expression. “Lighten up, Garth. I’m not here to borrow money or steal your wife. But then, Angie’s
not
your wife, is she? What do they call it? She’s your ‘Cohab,’ your ‘SigOt,’ your ‘DomPart,’ your—”
    “Companion will do.” I didn’t like Nicholas talking about her.
    “And I haven’t come looking for any pointers on taxidermy either. Christ! You know, you may not be very proud of your little brother, but it isn’t easy telling people your big brother deals taxidermy.” Nicholas raised an eyebrow at the animals in the backseat. “To think you could turn that hobby into a buck. A lot of people find that dead stuff just a little creepy, Garth.”
    We pulled up to the tollbooth, and I handed