Last Call

by Tim Powers

  Without looking away from the window, Trumbill held out the tube of Ban. “Do my back?”

  “Forget it.” He could hear the revulsion in her voice.

  Trumbill shrugged and resumed rubbing it over his densely illustrated flesh, still looking out through the half-opened curtains at the white duplex across the street.

  He wished he were at home doing the chores or raking his gravel garden, or driving the old Leon body somewhere in the air-conditioned Jaguar, but he could see that this had to be done. This was clearly the Diana they’d been trying to find. The police report had linked the Diana who lived at the duplex’s address with Scott and Ozzie Crane, and, as Betsy had been quick to notice, the address was Isis on Venus.

  “You didn’t use it all?” said Betsy.

  For a moment he thought she had reconsidered doing his back, but she was standing by the table and had picked up a fist-size blob of the pink Semtex.

  “All of it would take out half the street,” he told her. “The two golf ball-size ones I stuck in the basement grates will do fine—even with them, I won’t be sitting by this window when I do it; I’ll be around the corner in the hall.”

  “It looks like—like marzipan candy.”

  “Go ahead and shape it into a pig; it can’t go off without a blasting cap. You could probably safely eat it.”

  She shivered and put it down. A moment later she said, “I suppose you like this decor.”

  Trumbill spared a glance around at the bare yellow walls and the flocked ceiling. “Painted white, and a lot cooler, it’d be all right.”

  “What have you got against…livelier things?”

  I love them, Betsy, he thought. I just want them all to be within the boundaries of my skin. “Don’t you have to go meet Newt?”

  “Not till this afternoon—but very well, I’ll leave you alone.” He heard her footsteps scuff across the carpet toward the door. “But I’ll call you every fifteen minutes or so,” she added.

  “You don’t have to,” he said, but she was already out the door and closing it behind her.

  That meant she’d be on the phone with him more often than not throughout the day—unless Diana were to show. He sighed and stared at the duplex and reached into the ice chest for one of the strips of raw lamb.

  The noon sun through the window glowed hot red in a prism paperweight on Detective Frits’s disordered desk, but of course the office was chilly. Crane, perched in a swiveling office chair across from Frits, wished he had worn a jacket. His cup of coffee still steamed on the edge of the desk, but it was nearly gone, and he didn’t want to finish it yet.

  Crane had told Frits the same story he’d told the Metro officer last night, and now the detective was leafing through a notebook, apparently at random. His curly brown hair was disordered and receding from his high forehead, and when Crane first shook hands with him he had thought the tall, skinny detective had probably been a rock musician in his not-long-ago youth.

  Crane’s thoughts were far away from the little office and the gangly detective.

  Move all-in.

  Crane wasn’t sure whether his hallucination last night, the vision of the rat eating the beetle, had been mild delirium tremens or not—but either way, he had decided to stay sober.

  This morning, as he and Mavranos had been walking to the Circus Circus coffee shop to get some breakfast, a middle-aged woman had pushed a baby stroller into their path and asked Crane to heal her little boy by touching him. To get rid of her, Crane had sheepishly touched the boy’s forehead—whatever was the matter with the child, he didn’t improve visibly—but later, over his fried eggs and bacon, it occurred to Crane that she might not simply have been crazy. She might have sensed what sort of…crown prince he was.

  And it occurred to him that in spite of the fact that he had taken the money for the Assumption hand in ’69, Diana might not be the only one who could become the target that shoots back—who, in Ozzie’s phrase, could move all-in. Maybe the way to survive was to challenge his real father on the old man’s own terms.

  Frits had stopped now at one page in his notebook and looked up. “So the three of you just decided to come visit your foster-sister.”

  Crane blinked and forced himself to pay attention to this. “Right.”

  “And Mavranos is your next-door neighbor, back in Santa Ana.”

  “Right. He’s got cancer, and he hadn’t ever been to Vegas.”

  “Your foster-father lives where?”

  “I don’t know,” Crane said, shaking his head and smiling apologetically. “We happened to run into him on Balboa Island.” He shrugged. “It was all very spur of the moment.”

  “Most trips here are.” Frits sighed and flipped back through his notebook.

  Crane nodded and reached for his coffee now with a steady hand, and he didn’t let his relief show in his face or his breathing or any visible pulse.

  Frits looked up, and from his smile Crane thought he was going to make another remark about spontaneous trips to Las Vegas.

  “Why did you yell, ‘Everybody down,’ when the Porsche stopped?”

  “It was obvious to me,” said Crane instantly, buying the virtue of an apparently unconsidered reply at the expense of committing himself to a random beginning, “that he wasn’t just a Good Samaritan, pulling over to help. There were two vehicles parked on our side, after all, head-to-head like we had jumper cables, and four adults and a couple of kids visible.” He had it now. “Clearly we didn’t need help. I figured he had to be a partner of the kidnapper, a lookout who’d been watching from a distance and came up fast when Arky drove up in the Suburban and got out with a gun.”

  “And then, in fact, he did shoot the boy.”

  “Right,” Crane agreed. He remembered what he had told the officer last night, so he added, “But after Diana told us about the Porsche guy trying to pick up on her, and him sounding like the guy Ozzie had called a zombie the day before, it didn’t seem like he was a partner of the kidnapper after all.” He shook his head. “Might as well have been, the way it worked out.”

  Frits stared at him. Crane stared back, at first blankly and then with a faint quizzical smile, as he would have at someone taking a long time to fold or call a bluff.

  “I could have you arrested,” Frits said.

  “For what?” Crane asked quickly, not having to fake alarm. “Shooting at the crazy kidnapper? Or after the Porsche?”

  “After the Porsche, say.” For a moment Frits continued to stare at him. Crane just stared back, a little more wide-eyed than before. “Where do you know Alfred Funo from?” Frits asked.

  Crane exhaled. “I suppose that’s the name of the guy registered next to us at the motel? I’ve never heard the name before. How would I know him? Does he live in Orange County?”

  “L.A. County.”

  “I’ve never heard the man’s name. I never saw the car before yesterday, unless it passed me on the freeway sometime.”

  After three more long seconds Frits looked back down at his papers. “You’re staying at the Circus Circus?”

  “Right. The room’s under Mavranos’s name.”

  “Okay.” Frits sat back and smiled. “We’ll be in touch. Thanks for coming in.”

  Crane leaned forward with a concerned frown on his face. “Look, maybe this is standard procedure, this…threatening attitude, these insinuations, but if you really think I’m involved in this thing, I wish you’d just say so, so I could explain whatever it is you’ve got wrong. I don’t—”

  Frits had been nodding sympathetically, and now he held up his hand, and Crane stopped talking. “Thanks for coming in,” Frits said.

  Crane hesitated, then put the coffee cup down on the desk. “Uh…thank you.” He got up out of the chair and let himself out of the office.

  Mavranos was waiting in the truck. “Didn’t take long,” he said as Crane climbed in and pulled the door closed. “Were Diana and Ozzie in there?”

  “No,” Crane said, “I guess he
talked to them earlier. I wish Ozzie hadn’t swooped everybody away before we got a chance to discuss the story a little. ‘Happened to meet Ozzie in Balboa and then just dropped everything and drove straight to Vegas!’ How did that detective act with you?”

  “Like it was a—a formality.” The Suburban shook as he started the engine. “Just had me recite it all. Why, did he lean on you?”

  “Yeah, some.”

  “Huh. Well, at least you’re still at large.”

  Mavranos swung the blue truck across the parking lot toward the exit onto the Strip. “Listen, I’m gonna try the Sports Book at Caesars—they’ve got one airplane-hangar-size room that must have a hundred TV screens on the wall, and the effects of what’s on the screens go rippling across the people that’re watching, like wind over a wheatfield. I might find a clue there. You want to come along, or should I drop you somewhere?”

  “Yeah, you can drop me off—at the next card-reading parlor you see.”

  Mavranos glanced at him curiously. “I thought Ozzie said you were supposed to stay away from that kind of thing.”

  Crane rubbed his face, wondering if he looked as exhausted as he felt. “That’s if I’m just going to run and hope to hide. If I want to…do anything, I think I’ve got to turn and face…it them. whatever it is.”

  Mavranos sighed and touched the bandanna under his jaw. “‘Because there were no graves in Egypt,’” he said quietly, almost to himself, “‘hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?’”

  “Your man Eliot?”

  “Exodus. Lots of good stuff in the Bible, Pogo.”

  Crane shook his head. “Ozzie told me not to start any long books.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Fragments of the Book of Thoth

  By early afternoon Betsy Reculver had called Trumbill a dozen times, asking if Diana had shown up yet, or if Crane had, and complaining about everything from pains in her joints to the bad card readings she was getting in her solitaire games.

  During this latest call, after cautioning him yet again not to let Diana Ryan get away from him, he heard over the phone the bong of her doorbell, followed by LaShane’s barking.

  “Is that Newt already?” asked Trumbill.

  “Let me haul my weary old bones to where I can see the screens.” He heard her breathe harder, and the reception on the portable telephone faded as she walked through a doorway.

  Trumbill reflected that it would be a relief when the new game was over and done with and the soul of Georges Leon had a batch of fresh bodies to animate, all the ones that had been conceived and paid for in 1969.

  The guy must miss his balls, Trumbill thought. Twenty years is a long gestation period if you need the kids, especially when you’ve got to conceive more before you can get at the original lot.

  It’s a weird way to be this king, he thought.

  Trumbill gathered that in the past the Fisher Kings would just have children, not kill their children’s minds and steal their bodies—and that such a King would reign over a fertile green land and not a sterile desert—and that he would share his power with a Queen—and that he would deal face-to-face with the vast old entities that were known as Archetypes or gods, not through the formal, at-a-distance mediation of the terrible cards.

  He heard Reculver grunt in surprise.

  “My God, Vaughan,” she said, “it’s that guy, Al Funo! And he’s a mess—all unshaven and shaky-looking.” Over the line Trumbill heard the click of Reculver’s intercom. “Yes?”

  Then he heard Funo’s voice, tinnily filtered to him through two speakers. “Mrs. Reculver, I need to talk to you.”

  “Make an appointment,” said Trumbill. “Figure a place where we can meet him.”

  “Uh,” said Reculver, speaking loudly into the intercom, “we can meet you…at Lindy’s again, at the Flamingo—”

  “I need to talk to you now!” came Funo’s voice.

  “No,” said Trumbill instantly.

  The intercom clicked off. “Vaughan, he’ll leave if I don’t talk to him! And he’s the only lead we’ve got to Diana! She won’t go back to the apartment you’re watching; she’s not that stupid; it’s a waste of time you sitting there like a damn toad! I’ve got to do everything, don’t I?”

  “Betsy, get into Hanari, will you? This Funo guy is a nut—”

  “He’s starting to leave—” Trumbill heard a clunk, and realized that she had put the phone down on the table by the front door. Again there was the click of the intercom. “Very well,” Trumbill heard her say, “come in then.” He heard the snap of the dead bolt being switched back.

  In the bare apartment overlooking Venus Avenue, Trumbill had stood up, his multicolored belly swinging in front of the window. “Get a gun, at least!” He shouted into the telephone. “Damn you, Betsy, get a gun!”

  Then over the telephone line he heard LaShane barking, followed by the unmistakable bam of a close gunshot. A moment later he heard a second shot. The dog stopped barking.

  “Shit,” Trumbill muttered, staring impatiently out at the duplex across the street and holding the telephone receiver tight. “Betsy?” he yelled. “Betsy, are you all right? Answer me quick or I’m calling 911!” He knew that if she could hear him, she’d get on the line and order him not to do that.

  All he could hear over the phone was the vague background sigh of an open line.

  “Betsy!” he shouted again. Outside the window glass the empty street yawned at him. “Betsy, what’s happened?”

  He threw down the tube of Ban and switched off the two fans so that he could better hear any sounds from Betsy’s end of the line.

  Finally there was a click as though someone had picked up an extension, and then a young woman’s voice said, “Five-five-five three-eight-one-zero, this is the Operator with an emergency interrupt from Richard Leroy at five-five-five three-five-nine-three. Will you release the line?”

  “Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.

  There came another click, and then a man’s shrill voice: “Vaughan, this is me, I’m in Richard.” Richard was panting. “J-Jesus, he shot me!” He paused to cough, and Trumbill was glad he hadn’t called from the asthmatic Beany body. “Funo did. I bled to death right on the doorstep, no more than ten seconds after he shot me and ran off.” For a moment Trumbill just heard him panting; then Richard went on, “Merde, Vaughan, the Reculver body’s lying half in and half out of the front door over there!”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Richard here? I don’t know, some hallway with a telephone—the college library, I suppose, I only saw it for a second, long enough to get to a phone. I’m seeing only through Beany right now. In Beany I’m hailing a cab in front of the Flamingo; that’ll get me home quicker than walking to my car here on campus. Damn, I hope nobody called in a shots-fired report, or notices the poor body!”

  “Will old Newt have the sense to drag it in?”

  “Newt. Good thought. He might; he’s owed me his soul for thirty years; he wouldn’t want to be associated with any police stuff. Of course, if he sees it from the street, he might just drive on.”

  Trumbill sighed heavily. “I think I should stay here.”

  “Yes, of course, I was babbling when I said Diana wouldn’t show up there. Stay there and kill her; I can’t have any Queen of Hearts running around while I’m down to three bodies. I’ll work through Richard and Beany.”

  Trumbill knew that the old man wouldn’t want to take the Art Hanari body out yet; it was his showpiece, just as the Richard one had been, the last time. He would want to have the Hanari perfectly rested and beautiful to host this series of Assumption games.

  Abruptly Richard’s voice shouted, “Renaissance Drive, corner of Tropicana and Eastern!” The line went dead.

  Trumbill realized that the last shout had been an involuntary echo of old Beany’s, hollering directions at a cabdriver out in front of the Flamingo, relayed to Trumbill through Richard at the university library.

  Figured curt
ains were drawn across the windows of the room, and though there were some fluorescent tubes glowing around the bookshelves and display cases along the back wall, a black iron lamp on the big round table cast most of the light after Crane had stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

  A slim white-bearded man put a book aside and stood up, and Crane saw that he was wearing a satiny blue robe. He’s going hard for the atmosphere at least, thought Crane nervously.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the man asked.

  “Uh, I hope so,” said Crane. “I need to have a card reading done.” The chilly air smelled faintly of carpet freshener and incense, and reminded him that his breath probably smelled of onions. Mavranos had insisted on stopping for cheeseburgers, though once they’d arrived, Mavranos had eaten only a few bites of his.

  “Very well.” If the man smelled the onions, he was at least not remarking on it. “Do sit down at the table here, please. My name is Joshua.”

  “Scott Crane.” Joshua’s hand was limp and cold, and after two shakes Crane let go of it.

  The old man opened the office door to hang a plastic Do Not Disturb sign on the knob, then resumed his seat on the north side of the table as Crane sat down in the comfortable leather armchair across from him. The glass-topped table was wide enough so that if they’d been playing chess, he’d have had to get half out of his chair to move the farther pieces.

  “A standard reading,” said the old man, “that is, a TenCard Spread with the twenty-two Major Arcana cards, is fifty dollars.”

  “Is there a—a more thorough reading?”

  “Yes, Mr. Crane. I could do a full Seventy-eight Card Horseshoe Spread. That takes a good deal longer, but it is more insightful. I ask a hundred dollars for that.”

  “Let’s go with the Horseshoe.” Crane dug a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and laid it on the glass. Crane reflected that anyone watching would probably expect the old man to lay down a bill of his own and then deal out a hand of Head-Up Poker, but Joshua’s long-white fingers whisked the hundred away.