Last Call (Last Call 1)

"Hey, Pogo," Mavranos said suddenly, holding his right hand out from the steering wheel, "like the Three Musketeers, let's form a partnership—one for all and all for one, you know? Birth to earth?"

Crane shook his hand. He remembered the movie West Side Story, too, so he added, "Womb to tomb."

"The thing that'll save me is statistics," said Mavranos, grinning as he put his hand back on the wheel. "I say I'm trying to find its castle, so I'm personifying it, right? I'm looking for the vizard of odds."

"That's mighty funny," said Crane. He yawned so widely that tears ran down his cheeks. "I'm crowding fifty years old. How come I'm not … what time is it? … I guess it's too dark to be playing basketball with a kid of mine. I should be turning the burgers on the hibachi, and … Christ, if I had a kid, he could be twenty or thirty. He'd be home playing ball with his kid. Well, I should be …"

Cooking spaghetti for Susan and me, he thought; she'd be in the spare room playing some Queen tapes, or some of her Styx or Cheap Trick, and I'd be sautéing onions and garlic and bell peppers, taking a swig every now and then from the cold Budweiser on the sill of the open window. There'd be no coffee cup in the stove …

Coffee in the morning, said the faint voice that seemed to come from the back of the truck, or combing your hair on the left. Ovaltine, Bazooka gum, crossword puzzles. Why do you run me down to your friends all the time?

Abruptly wide-awake, Crane turned around and looked past Ozzie's sleeping form to the piles of litter in the dimness of the back of the truck. His forehead was cold with a dew of sudden sweat.

"What's up?" asked Mavranos. "Hear something?"

Crane forced himself not to breathe fast. "No," he said levelly. "Nothing."

Nothing, echoed the voice. I'm good enough for a quickie in the truck while your friends are inside, but when they're around I'm nothing.

Ozzie's head came up. He looked around quickly, frowning and wiping drool from his chin. "Who are you and where are you taking me?" he demanded.

"Oz, it's me, Scott, remember?" Fright made Crane speak too loudly; in a quieter tone he went on, "We're going to Las Vegas to find Diana. She's—what was it?—flying in the grass."

The old man sagged, all his imperiousness gone. "Oh, yeah," he said faintly, and then he shivered and pulled his suit coat more tightly around his narrow shoulders. "Oh, yeah."

"Be across the border into Nevada soon," said Mavranos without taking his eyes off the highway.

Ozzie wiped his eyes and blinked out the window. "I'd like to have seen more of California," he mumbled. In a firmer voice he said, "Over the border we'll be on their turf, his turf. Play tight."

Mavranos lifted a fresh can of beer from the ice chest and swirled his hand in the water, bumping a few cans together. "How much longer?"

"To Vegas?" Crane said. "Another hour or so."

Ozzie shifted awkwardly on the seat. "I've heard that there's a casino just over the border now. Dirty Dick's or something. Let's stop there for a bit. I think I'm going to throw up my Baker cheeseburger, and then I should eat something like a—a tuna fish sandwich, maybe, or a bowl of soup." His knobby hands found the rubber grip of his aluminum cane and held it tightly.

"I wouldn't mind a bite myself," said Mavranos. "Something with some onions and salsa."

Ozzie shut his eyes and clenched his jaw.

Are you going to leave me in the car again? Why don't you take me inside with you? You used to love me. You used to—

"What was it," asked Crane loudly, "that you didn't like about the cards I threw down, when I was playing with the nut back there, I think it was the Ace and Queen of Hearts and the Ace of Spades?" The disembodied voice seemed to have stopped, so he let himself stop jabbering.

Both Ozzie and Mavranos were looking at him with expressions of puzzled uneasiness.

"Well," Crane went on in a more normal tone, "you didn't look as though they were good news, Ozzie. I thought of it just now and wanted to ask before I forgot." He knew his hands would shake if he gestured with them, so he clasped them in his lap.

"Oh," said Ozzie. "Huh. Well, it may not have counted for anything, playing for sugar and candy like that. And I didn't notice any funny business with smoke or drink levels."

"I read somewhere voodoo gods like candy," put in Mavranos.

"Or sea monkeys," said Crane impatiently. "But what was it?" he asked Ozzie.