Last Call (Last Call 1)

Gould had been talking on his portable radio, and now he tucked it back into his belt. "Frits says the old man is eighty-two years old and didn't seem real clear about anything, even why he's in town. And the 911 operator said it almost sounded like he'd dreamed up this emergency. I think he's just upset and disoriented about his grandson." He looked at Diana. "I think we can leave. But be careful about things like answering the door, Mrs. Ryan, and call us if you get any odd phone calls or visitors."

"I will," Diana said, smiling. She shook hands with the cop. "Thanks for the help, even if it was a false alarm."

When the police finally left, and the door closed and Hans heard the engines start up and drive away, he picked up his coffee mug and threw it against the wall.

Hot coffee splashed all over the kitchen, and ceramic fragments rattled and spun on the floor.

"This is your goddamned family's fault!" he shouted.

Diana had hurried into the bedroom, and he stomped after her.

"What'll I do with those plants?" he demanded. "Bury them? I can't carry them out to the trash; they're waiting for me to do something like that!" She had thrown open the chest in which she kept old things like her high school annuals, and was tossing dolls and music boxes out onto the floor. "And they'll be watching me now," he went on, "anytime I drive down the street! How can I possibly go see Mike?" He punched the wall, leaving a dent in the dry wall. "Thanks a million, Diana! I thought you were gone!"

She stood up, holding some kind of little old ratty yellow blanket. "I am now," she said.

The telephone in the kitchen rang.

"Don't answer it!" she said urgently, so he ran back to the kitchen and triumphantly picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

She was right behind him, still holding the foolish little blanket. He was pleased to see that her I've-got-more-important-things-on-my-mind-than-you look was gone. She was just scared now. Good.

"You say you want to talk to Diana?" he said, drawing out the pleasure of this moment.

She was white, shaking her head at him with the most imploring look he'd ever seen on a human face. "No," she whispered, "Hans, please!"

For a moment he almost relented, almost said, No, she hasn't been home since yesterday; her sister's here if you want to talk to her. Diana had suffered enough in this last twenty-four hours—leaving behind all her possessions, her son near dead in the hospital …

Through her own fault, and in the face of his sound advice. And now his dope plants were as good as gone, and he was a marked man in the eyes of the police.

His smile was crooked with sweet malice. "Su-u-re," he said, "she's right here."

At the first word she had taken off running for the back door, shouting at him to follow her.

He had even put the phone down and taken one step after her before he remembered his pride. I don't need some damned hysterical woman, he told himself. I'm a writer—a creator all by myself.

CHAPTER 27: I Don't Mind the Car, but Could We Go Now?

With a last glance at the duplex across the street Trumbill laid the telephone receiver down on the table, picked up the little radio transmitter, and stood up. He had put on his pants and shirt and shoes when the police had arrived, and now he carried the transmitter around the corner into the hall, away from the glass of the front window.

Diana sprinted between the trash cans and the gas barbecue and pounded across the scruffy grass toward the redwood fence at the back of the lot, and even as she wondered if she was just making a fool of herself, she leaped, caught the splintery tops of the boards, and vaulted over the fence into the next yard.

A startled dog looked up at her, but before it could even bark she had crossed the yard and scrambled over a chain-link gate and dashed down somebody's driveway and was running across the empty expanse of Sun Avenue, the old yellow blanket flailing from her pumping fist.

Ozzie had opened the cab door and swung his feet out onto the curb and had started to stand up—

—when the hard bam punched the air and slammed the car door against him, knocking him over onto the curbside grass.

The front of Diana's apartment had exploded out across the street in a million spinning boards and chunks of masonry, and as Ozzie sat, stunned, on the grass, he watched a cloud of dirty smoke mushroom up into the blue sky. All he could hear was the loud ringing in his ears, but he could see pieces of brick and roof tile thudding into the lawn at his right and shattering on the suddenly smoke-fogged sidewalk, and his nose stung with a sharp chemical tang like ozone.

Oliver was out of the back of the cab and running toward the destroyed apartment. The cabdriver was pulling Ozzie to his feet; the man was shouting something, but Ozzie shook him off and started after the boy.