Last Call

by Tim Powers

  And only when her knuckles cracked hard into his nose and she fell back against the closing doors did she note that she did still have some willpower—in her spine, perhaps, if not in her brain.

  The old woman was screaming shrilly. Pogue had tumbled into the corner, and bright red blood was spilling out from between the fingers of the hand that was clasped to his face. His eyes were still blank with pain and surprise, and Nardie turned around, forced the doors open and hurried away down the hall.

  She would take the stairs up to the room where Diana Ryan’s son was. She patted her hidden gun again and wondered if she had broken her knuckles. Even if she hadn’t, the recoil was going to hurt. It was going to hurt badly.

  She wondered if she would ever recover from it.

  “You certainly don’t look like you’ve been too sick to visit him,” the nurse said coldly, standing in an almost protective posture beside Scat’s bed. “You look like you’ve been at some kind of health resort.” She looked Diana squarely in the eye then, and must have sensed her real agony, for after a moment her expression softened. “Well, he’s better. You can see he’s breathing on his own now. He’s being fed through the nasal gastric tube; the IV is mainly just for hydrating and antibiotics and to keep a line open for anything we want to get into his veins fast.” She waved toward the monitor over the bed. “His vital signs are stable. He’s”—she shrugged—“just very deeply asleep.”

  Diana nodded. “Could I be alone with him?” she said softly.

  “Sure.”

  The nurse had started toward the door, and Diana added, “I’m supposed to be meeting Dr. Bandholtz in the lobby in a few minutes. Could you not tell him I’m here yet? I’ll be down soon.”

  “Okay.”

  Diana looked down at her son in the tilted-up hospital bed, and she bit her knuckle. The green nasal gastric tube dented his blond curls on the right side of his head; the left side was bandaged, but she could see that his scalp had been shaved on that side. His eyes and mouth were closed, but he was breathing gently, and the monitor over him beeped regularly and showed a regularly bouncing green line on its black screen.

  Even if I’d been here every day, she told herself earnestly, he wouldn’t have known. He’s probably dreamed of me, and that’s been more immediate than my physical presence would have been.

  Until today. Today, with the full moon overhead, I might make a difference by being here.

  She reached out toward the little limp hand that was bound to the rail of the bed by a strip of plastic.

  And then she stopped, for she had heard the solid click-and-snap of an automatic pistol being chambered behind her.

  For three heartbeats she just stood there with her arm extended; then she lowered her arm and turned around.

  It was the young Asian woman she’d seen in the lobby downstairs. The barrel of the gun she held was lengthened with a fat metal cylinder—a silencer, Diana was sure.

  “Do you mean to kill me?” Diana asked. Her voice was calm, though her heart thudded and her fingertips were tingling. “Or him? Or both of us?”

  “You. My name is Bernardette Dinh.”

  “Diana Ryan. Uh—why?” Dinh was too far away across the carpet for Diana to be able to kick the gun, and there was nothing she could hope to grab and throw. She could dive behind the bed, but if Dinh shot at her the bullet would probably hit Scat.

  “To be Queen. Do you have any change in your pockets? Bring it out slow, and if you throw it, I’ll shoot.”

  Mystified but glad of any delay, Diana slid her hand into the pocket of her jeans, then took it out and held it forward in her palm.

  The quarters and dimes still shone silver, but the pennies were all black.

  With her free hand Dinh reached into her own pocket and took out a penny. It was shiny red-brown.

  “See?” she said. “And if you’ve tried to wear linen during the last few days, you’ll have noticed it goes black, too, just like the pennies.” She was talking fast, licking her lips nervously between phrases. “And purple cloth bleaches if you touch it. And if you should happen to approach a beehive, the bees will all leave the hive. All this year those things have happened to me at my time, at the full moon.”

  “You want to become the Queen,” said Diana. “Why?”

  “I didn’t really come here to talk. Why? To…for the power of it. For the family of it, to be a—a mother, in the profoundest way.”

  “I already am a mother.”

  Dinh glanced past Diana toward Scat. “Biologically, I guess. Maybe you sent a lot of get-well cards.”

  Diana felt her face reddening, but she made herself smile. “And you’d kill me to get that? You’d make a ten-year-old boy an orphan to get that?”

  “I’ll—I’ll adopt him. I’m going to have a very big family.”

  “But I’m the Queen’s daughter.”

  “Damn it, that’s why I’ve got to. With you gone, I’m the most natural successor.” Dinh sighed unsteadily. “There’s lots of deaths in this, you know that. Death waits in the desert and in the hot sky, for any of us. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought of suicide.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Suicide?”

  “No, how many times you’ve thought about it. Is this gonna hold us up? Couldn’t we say, like, a hundred, and be okay?”

  Dinh blinked, and her mouth worked and then kinked in a narrow smile.

  Diana reached slowly out to the side, bending her knees to lower herself, and touched Scat’s hand. Dinh gasped, looking at the boy, so Diana felt safe in looking, too.

  Scat’s eyes were open.

  His blue eyes swung blankly from his mother to Dinh and then back again, and then the irises shifted slightly as he focused.

  His mouth opened, and he started to speak, then coughed hoarsely. “Mom,” he croaked finally.

  “Hi, Scatto,” said Diana. “I think you’ll be coming home soon.” She looked hard back at Dinh, trying to convey through her gaze, Go ahead. Stake your claim to being the earthly Queen of the mother goddess by murdering a mother right in front of the eyes of her wounded son.

  Dinh’s face was white, and she lowered the gun.

  “But what can I do?” she whispered. She blinked at Diana. “Why am I asking you, eh?” Her gun arm bent up sharply at the elbow.

  And Diana lunged forward and knocked the blunt silencer out from under Dinh’s jaw in the instant before it jerked.

  The shot sounded like a bed sheet being instantaneously ripped in half. Dinh fell to her hands and knees on the carpet, but her head was up, and Diana could see no blood in the black hair. Diana looked up and saw the neat hole punched in the acoustic tile of the ceiling.

  Diana got down on her knees and lifted Dinh by the shoulders. “You’re asking me because I can answer you,” she said urgently. “I’m in danger, and I have two children who are in danger.” Dinh was staring into her face, and Diana bared her teeth in a cold smile. “I’m going to need help.”

  Dinh tucked the gun away in her belt, wincing. “You expect me to—”

  “No. No, I hope you will. Will help me. Don’t answer now, I won’t listen to you now with your ears still ringing. But if you will help me, help the Queen instead of be the Queen, if that’s something you can do, then meet me tomorrow at dawn, at the—at the Flamingo pool.”

  Dinh stood up. “I…won’t kill you,” she said quietly, “I guess. It looks like. But I won’t be there.”

  “I will,” said Diana, still on her knees and looking up.

  Dinh turned and strode out of the room. Diana got up and walked back to her son’s bed.

  Scat was weakly flexing his bound hands, and his feet were moving under the blanket. He was moaning weakly; the nasal tube seemed to bother him.

  Diana pushed the nurse-summon button and stepped toward the door, but a doctor was just hurrying in. Obviously Dinh had paused on the way out to tell the staff that the boy had awakened.

  CHAPTER 43

&
nbsp; Pot’s Not Right

  The dew that was misted and beaded on the pink plastic chaise lounges around the pool seemed brave and forlorn to Diana—fugitive moisture, briefly condensed by the cool dawn air but doomed to be evaporated again as soon as the morning sun cleared the low bulk of the Oregon Building. In the seat of the nearest recliner some of the drops had run down to combine and form a little puddle, but she knew that wouldn’t help them.

  The moon, hidden now behind the Flamingo’s south high rise, was already past full by the tiniest shaving, but her near-clairvoyance would last, she knew, through Easter, four days from now. She stared uneasily at the long, low bulk of the Oregon Building, aware that it was the Tower of the King, and that Scott Crane had been inside it recently.

  Nobody was in the pool yet, but the casino doors on the opposite side of the pool were swung open every few minutes to let a burst of the clatter and clang of the perpetual games come shaking out into the quiet dawn air. Though she was still looking up at the dark penthouse of the Oregon Building, Diana knew it when the doors opened to let out Nardie Dinh.

  Diana didn’t turn around. She heard Nardie’s footsteps scuff slowly down the steps and around the pool past the presently closed outdoor bar.

  Nardie stopped behind her.

  “You saved my life yesterday,” Nardie said quietly, her voice not seeming even to reach the dark shrubbery around the building. “I’ll try to see to it that it wasn’t a big mistake.”

  Diana turned around. Nardie was wearing a cabdriver’s uniform and cap. “How will you do that?”

  “By leaving. I’ve got money—maybe I’ll go back to Hanoi. If I stayed here, I’d probably try again to kill you, and that’d be lousy thanks.”

  “I want you to stay,” Diana said. “I’ve got a lot to do before Easter, and I’m going to need help.”

  Nardie shook her head. “I might not kill you,” she said, “I might let the—the queenhood go, but I’d never help you get it…for yourself.”

  Diana smiled. “Why not? You’ve worked hard in this. If you just take off, you’re abandoning everything. You won’t even know if there’ll be a Queen this time; there hasn’t been one since 1960—1947, really. At least if you work with me, you’re still working with what you hold valuable. Is the Queen thing only good and worth working for if it’s you that’s being it?”

  “You go be valuable without me.”

  “Huh.” Diana walked to the coping of the glassy-smooth pool and back. “Did you ever hear of Nick the Greek?” she asked. “A Poker player, my father knew him. He was in the first heavy Poker game at Binion’s, in 1949, and it was just him and Johnny Moss playing head-up, no limit. The game lasted five months, and the Greek lost about two million. Years later he was playing Five and Ten Draw in Gardena for a living, and somebody asked him if that wasn’t a big step down, and he said, ‘It’s action, ain’t it?’”

  For a few moments the pool area was completely silent. The blue pagoda roofs of the Imperial Palace towers next door shone in the descending morning sunlight.

  Then Nardie laughed harshly. “That’s—that’s the incentive you’re offering?” Her voice, though still quiet, was shrill and incredulous. “I can be Nick the Greek to your Johnny Moss? Christ, girl, you make a lousy recruiter. I wouldn’t—”

  “You want the same thing I want,” Diana overrode her. “To be a sister and daughter and mother, in a real family, not some fucked-up arrangement that looks like it was put together for…for cruel laughs. That family is still here, in potential at least, and wants you. Be a part of us.”

  Diana waited for an answer, wondering what her own answer would be if the situation were reversed.

  Nardie looked sideways up at the sky and exhaled. Then she pushed her cap back and rubbed her eyes. “For now,” she said, her voice muffled. “Provisionally.” She lowered her hands and stared at Diana. “But if I wind up killing you—”

  “Then I’ll have misjudged you.”

  “Your judgment’s been real good so far?”

  Diana smiled, and the sun touched the highest mirrored windows of the Flamingo high rises. “I’m happy to say I can’t remember.”

  This morning Crane saw the old man as soon as he carried his bagged six-packs out of the liquor store. Doctor Leaky was the only one of the players by the Dumpster who was wearing a hat—a wide straw thing with a yellow paper rose on it.

  “Beer man,” Crane said when he limped up to the ragged circle of players.

  His left leg was stiff and his side ached under the perpetually wet bandage, but he felt young and strong. Today it required no willpower to only fake sipping the open beer can he held.

  “All right,” said one of the young men eagerly. “Sit thee doon, dude.” He tugged one of the cans free of the top six-pack when Crane put the bag down. “What’s your name, anyway?” he asked after popping the can and taking a deep morning-restorative swig.

  Crane sat down and looked over at Doctor Leaky. “Scotto,” he said.

  The very old man frowned at him in huge puzzlement, his mouth of course hanging open. “Scotto?” he said.

  “Right. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m a little sick of Lowball, hmm? So I got a suggestion.” Crane was talking fast and cheerful, like a proposition bet hustler. “I’ve got a new game we can play, and since it’s my idea, I’ll fund all of you for the first few hands, how’s that? Here.” He pulled five rubber-banded bundles of one-dollar bills out of his jacket pocket and gave one to each of the players except his father’s body. “There’s fifty bucks for each of you. I figure nobody’ll mind if Doctor Leaky keeps on playing with trash.”

  As if choreographed, each of the ragged players tore the rubber band off his bundle and riffled incredulously through the bills.

  “On this basis,” said the young man who had spoken, “you can call any game at all, dude.” He stuck out a grimy hand. “I’m Dopey.”

  Crane decided that the young man meant it was his nickname. He shook his hand. “Glad to meet you.” Crane had kept one of the bundles for himself, and he now peeled off a dollar and tossed it onto the asphalt in the middle of the circle. “Everybody ante a buck.”

  Doctor Leaky was blinking and shaking his head. “No,” he said, on a rising note almost as if it were a question. “I’m not going to play with you.” His trembling right hand scratched aimlessly at the empty crotch of his lime green pants.

  All the others had tossed in their antes.

  “Pot’s not right,” said Crane softly, “Dad.”

  The last word visibly jarred Doctor Leaky. He gaped at the bills on the parking lot pavement, and then down at his pile of flattened pennies and holed chips. Then, slowly, he reached down and pushed one of the chips forward. “Pot’s right,” he muttered.

  “Okay,” said Crane. He was tense, but he put easy assurance into his voice. “This game is sort of Eight-Card Stud, but you gotta make your hand by buying someone else’s.”

  And as he took the fixed-up deck of Bicycle cards out of his pocket and shuffled them, he began, carefully and clearly, to explain the rules of Assumption.

  Tonight it starts.

  Tall and muscular and still genuinely dark-haired at the age of seventy-five, and immaculate now in a suit, the Art Hanari body stood in the sun by the curb in front of La Maison Dieu’s front doors, waiting impatiently for the ordered limousine.

  From behind the blue eyes in the unlined, sunlamp-tanned face, Georges Leon watched the big camouflage-painted trucks trundle past along Craig Road. La Maison Dieu, at the north end of North Las Vegas, was a discreet complex of green-lawned condominiums and medical facilities tucked between the Craig Ranch Golf Course and the Nellis Air Force Base Pumping Station, and most of the traffic out here was military vehicles.

  Tonight the game starts, he thought.

  Getting out of this glorified old folks’ home had proved to be more difficult than he had anticipated. When, as Betsy Reculver, he had put this perfect body away here for safe-kee
ping, he had made sure that the contract stipulated that Hanari was free to leave at any time he might choose—but when he had tried to exercise that clause yesterday morning, the staff had tried to block him, had got the security men to tie him to his bed and refused to fetch his clothes.

  In a way he couldn’t blame them. After dying on the linoleum floor of the hospital cafeteria yesterday morning, strangling on his own closed bronchial tubes and then feeling his heart agonizingly seize up and stop in his chest, he had awakened in his bed here—in his only remaining body. When his heartbeat had slowed down and his breathing was under control, he had pushed the button that summoned his caretaker—but when the man had arrived, and Leon had opened the Hanari mouth to ask to be released, it had been the voice of a querulous old woman that had come out of him.

  It had been the voice of Betsy Reculver, moaning about being abandoned in the desert and about to lose her body. And then he had heard Richard’s voice resonating out past his helpless vocal cords and chattering teeth, droning on about sitting on a bungalow roof in the rain; and of fcourse after that had come old Beany with Poker talk, chortling over rolled-up Trips that had become Aces-Full on Fifth Street.

  When Leon had finally got control of the body and, in measured tones, asked to be released, the caretaker had at first dismissed the request entirely. When Leon had insisted, threatening legal action, they had tried to call Betsy Reculver or Vaughan Trumbill, and of course they had not succeeded.

  Finally, this morning, they had decided to wash their hands of him, and had had him sign every sort of declaration and waiver. They had even videotaped him, to have evidence that he seemed to be in his right mind.

  And at last they had let him get dressed and call a limousine and walk out. They’d been very friendly then, patting him on the back—something he hated—and telling him to be sure to come back for a visit sometime. His physical therapist had made some remark about finally getting some use out of the penile implant, and had winked, but Leon hadn’t even wanted to stay long enough to file a complaint.