When Pigs Fly Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the can. In the bathroom, he dumped a bunch of Tylenol right from the bottle to his mouth, then washed them down with a diet cola.
     
    Diet Cola felt like somebody’d chipped through his skull with an ice pick. Who knew a simple robbery was so freaking hard? Who had hit him? And why, for chrissake? All he wanted was the ticket that was rightfully his. Now would the cops track him down and hit him with a pair of murder ones? Carrick Durgin was dead. Nobody got Diet Cola’s ass in their face and lived to tell about it. The woman, what was her name? Yeah, Brodie. He couldn’t remember clearly whether he’d finished her off or not, his head was such a mess. Maybe he had killed her. Yeah. He must have.
     
    Anyway, could the ticket really be in Arizona? The whole year he’d thought about the winning lottery ticket he’d stashed inside the urn at the Durgins’ house. You’re dead, you’re dead, right? Nobody expects your ashes’ll ever move again, right? And nobody’s going to move you, right? All that’s supposed to happen is they feather dust around you on the freaking mantel.
     
    He checked his wall calendar—wrong year, but that didn’t really matter. The drawing date on the ticket was August 1 of last year, and here he was on July 7 of this year, with only three weeks left to find the ticket and stake his claim.
     
    Right now, he needed money damn quick. He went over to the fridge and found most of a steak and cheese sub that was wrapped in white paper, everything warmish since there was no electricity in the dump. The food was left over from breakfast, and the shredded beef was coated with congealed grease. No wonder he was so famished. He’d been so excited about getting his ticket that he’d forgotten to finish his meal. So he washed it down with the rest of the six-pack and let out a single, massive belch.
     
    A roach scurried across the floor. He stomped at it three times with his work boot and missed. That rattled the kitchen table enough that a glass slid off the edge. At the same time, the insect stopped and turned around and raised one of its tiny legs—flipping Diet Cola the bird was what it looked like. Then the glass crashed squarely on the roach, just like the sky on Chicken Little. He walked over to the shattered glass where the injured roach wriggled for mercy, and he closed his eyes and imagined himself holding that hundred-million-dollar ticket while he stomped Mack Durgin’s brain into pea soup. His heel ground the glass into the linoleum—die, you son of a bitch, die, Mack Durgin, you stupid roach. There, he felt a little better.
     
    He sat down on his beaten-up couch, avoiding the coil that stuck through a cushion like a steel enema. The couch groaned under his weight; it was a piece of junk he’d picked up from the sidewalk on trash day. Crappy foreign workmanship, he figured. The roach scurried out from under the broken glass like an earthquake survivor but ran in the wrong direction, right up Diet Cola’s pant leg. This time he caught it between folds of his jeans and took it out between his thumb and forefinger on his good hand. “Gotcha, Durgin,” he said. “I’m gonna pick you clean.” One by one, he pulled off the roach’s legs and realized what he would do when he caught up with Mack Durgin and got the ticket. Picture this: Mack Durgin with his hands tied behind his back as I empty a jar of roaches into his mouth and duct tape it shut. Arizona was going to be fun.
     
    No way was Diet Cola going on a plane, though, because those goddamn things were death traps when they crashed and shit like that. Plus he couldn’t bring a gun on board. Driving the GTO all the way to Arizona, out of the question—he’d be stopped before he got out of the state.
     
    Taking a bus seemed like a good idea. Leave the driving to Gus. It was brilliant, in fact. Once it got dark, he’d hustle his ass into the Greyhound terminal in Boston. A few days traveling would give him time to