Last Call

by Tim Powers

  He had to find Doctor Leaky and then prepare for the game. He would have to call Newt and remind him to have thirteen players ready at the Lake Mead marina dock at sunset.

  But he had to find Doctor Leaky first of all.

  All day yesterday, when he was not arguing with the staff, Leon had been brooding, and then nearly panicking, about something old Doctor Leaky had said in the hospital cafeteria.

  The cards aren’t fooled by any of the rest of it, the wrecked old body had said at first. The people in Doom Town, and all the human-sacrifice statues around town.

  Leon had suspected for years that the mannequins in the built-to-be-bombed houses out at Yucca Flats in the 1950s had been, unknown even to the technicians who had set them up, sacrifices to the gods of chaos that were about to be invoked by the detonation of the atomic bomb, and it had seemed to him, too, that the multitude of statues around Las Vegas, from the stone Arabs in front of the Sahara on the Strip to the towering figure of Vegas Vic over the Pioneer Club on Fremont Street, exposed constantly to the sun and the rain, were offerings to the random patterns of the weather, another manifestation of the chaos gods. Chaos and randomness, after all, in the form of gambling, were the patron saints of this city and had to be appeased.

  If the cards, the personifications of randomness and chaos, weren’t fooled by those tokens of human sacrifice, it didn’t really bother Leon.

  But the old body, his old body, had gone on to say, All your Fijis that died, too, they haven’t changed anything. It’s still just me.

  Belatedly it had occurred to Leon that this might refer to the bodies he had inhabited that had died, Reculver and all the rest of them; perhaps Doctor Leaky had meant effigies, and that these token deaths that Leon had suffered were not fooling the cards.

  It’s still just me.

  Maybe, in spite of all his body switching, Leon was still fated to die when the senile, emasculated Doctor Leaky body died.

  The Hanari body shuddered, and Leon snapped its fingers in a passion of impatience.

  He had taken such shabby, contemptuous care of the broken-brained old thing all these years! He had avoided death only by chance many times, if this guess was true. Yesterday he had even hoped that the police would kill it!

  He had to assume that what it had said was true, and take measures. A week and a half ago, on the same night when he had sensed the big jack and the big fish crossing the Nevada border, a thought had come from nowhere into his head: the notion of a chicken heart, cut out of the chicken and kept artificially alive for many many times the normal lifetime of a chicken. Grown now to the size of a couch.

  Right now, before starting the preparations for this new game on the lake, he had to find the Doctor Leaky body and put it somewhere safe. Afterward Leon would bribe or terrorize some doctor into cutting out the heart and keeping it pumping for decades, and then passing it on to other doctors so that it would keep beating for centuries, and grow no doubt to the size of a house.

  The mind that was Georges Leon would still be immortal, still be King.

  He could see the limousine sedately approaching up Craig Road now, moving past the grassy hills of the golf course.

  Your next stop, Leon thought at the driver, who was invisible behind the tinted windshield, is that parking lot behind the liquor store where the old fool always plays cards with bums.

  And you’re going to move a good deal faster.

  CHAPTER 44

  The Hand Under the Gun

  The sun was nearly overhead now, and Crane had twice had to give one of the players money to run back to the liquor store for more beer.

  Now the deal had finally come back around to Crane—he was grateful that by common consent Doctor Leaky was not expected to deal—and he shuffled rapidly and thoroughly and spun the cards out to the players. Two each down, and then one up to bet on.

  At first the players had objected to the four extra cards Crane had put into the deck, four Kings with the letters KN laundry-markered across the faces, but Crane had finally got them to agree to accept the cards as Knights, ranking between Jacks and Queens, and it had taken several hands before they caught on to the way the bidding worked and how a player could often make more money by selling the unconceived four-card hand than by buying somebody else’s four and staying in for the showdown; but for the last several hands the game had gone smoothly. A couple of the players, including Dopey, had substantially increased their stacks, and Crane had had to give additional cash-rolls to two players and agree to do the same for the rest of them.

  But Doctor Leaky had still not bought a hand, and seemed to be getting restless. He had wet his pants, and the smell of urine evaporating on the hot pavement seemed to bother him.

  Crane had been hesitant to interfere with whatever natural processes might be at work here, but the game on the lake was supposed to start tonight, and Doctor Leaky looked as if he were ready to leave.

  “You know,” he said to the body of his father, “you can buy a hand from somebody.”

  From under the rose-decked straw hat Doctor Leaky gave him a glance behind which Crane almost imagined he could perceive a spark of intelligence. “You think I don’t know the rules, Scotto?”

  Staring into those well-remembered eyes, even though now they were pouched in dry, wrinkled skin, made Crane feel small and futile, and he found that his own gaze had dropped.

  For relief he looked around the parking lot as the bet went around the circle. Mavranos’s blue truck was parked at the far end of the lot, and a taxicab was idling not far away from it, and now a shiny black limousine was turning in from Flamingo Road.

  “Your bet, Scotto,” said one of the players.

  Crane saw that Doctor Leaky had pushed three copper ovals into the pot, wincing as though they were painfully hot. Crane threw in three dollar bills and dealt everybody a second up card.

  “Ace bets,” he said, nodding to the player on his left.

  Then he heard heavy tires grind to a halt close behind him, and he turned around in alarm.

  The limousine had stopped a couple of yards away from where he sat, and a back door opened, and a man stepped out. He was tall and tanned and dark-haired—Crane had never seen him before, but he recognized the gold sun-disk on a chain around the man’s neck. It was identical to the one Ricky Leroy had worn when he had hosted the game on the lake in ’69.

  This, Crane thought with a sudden hollowness in his chest, is really my father.

  The front of the man’s pants bulged, and Crane wondered bewilderedly what there might be about this scene to give him such a rampaging hardon.

  Crane got slowly to his feet, aware of the stiffness in his leg and the pain in his side but aware, too, of the bulk of the revolver in his jacket pocket.

  His fingertips were ringing like struck tuning forks. I could shoot him right now, he thought. But what good would that do if he’s got another couple of bodies he can switch into? And look at all these witnesses; even that taxi is moving forward.

  “We’re in the middle of a hand right now,” Crane said, trying with some success not to let tension drive his voice up into the falsetto range. “But we can deal you in on the next one.”

  The tall man turned his calm, unlined face on the cards that lay on the pavement. “It’s Razz you’re playing now, no doubt,” he said. “Always low end for you people. Well, Doctor Leaky is going to have to forfeit his hand, I’m afraid. I’ll fade his investment in the pot.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a leather billfold.

  “The doctor will finish playing the hand,” Crane said.

  The eyes in the smooth brown face focused on Crane. “You’re Scott Crane, aren’t you?” The face didn’t smile. “You do get around. Go play high-end for big money somewhere; you’ll do better, take my word for it.” He looked down at the old man in the wet pants. “Come along, Doctor,” he said, “we’ve got to get you cleaned up.”

  Crane put his left hand on Doctor Leaky’s bony shoulder, holding the
old man down. “He’s going to finish the hand.”

  Crane heard Dopey’s voice from behind him: “Jesus, who cares? Let the old man go.”

  “Why don’t you wait for him over there?” Crane said to the tall stranger who was his father. “This should only last another couple of minutes.”

  The man’s eyebrows rose just enough to express puzzlement. “I said I’d cover his bets with cash.” He shook his head. “Oh, very well, I’ll wait.” He started to turn back toward the limousine.

  But then one of the players said, “Good, I want to buy the old guy’s King and Knight.”

  And when the tall man turned back from the limousine, there was a snub-nosed revolver in his hand. “No,” he shouted, “he is not to play Assumption!”

  For a moment the man’s eyes were on Doctor Leaky, and in one smooth motion Crane drew his own revolver and with all his strength cracked the butt of it into the tall man’s face.

  The tall body fell heavily against the side of the limousine and then clopped and thudded in a limp heap to the pavement, bright red blood already masking the face and spotting the gray asphalt.

  Several of the players had started to get to their feet, but Crane turned the gun on them.

  “Sit down. We’re going to finish this hand.”

  The limousine was clanked into gear and drove away, the back door still open and swinging. Slowly and tensely the players sat back down.

  “Ace bets,” Crane said again. “Hurry.” God, he thought, how long before the limo driver calls the police on the car phone he undoubtedly has?

  The man with the Ace showing shakily put a dollar bill into the middle of the circle, staring at Crane’s gun. All the players still in line to bet just folded except for Doctor Leaky, who smiled vacuously and rolled a punctured chip into the pot. Crane threw a dollar bill in.

  He grinned with clenched teeth. “The hand, uh, under the gun is up for bid,” he said.

  Nobody moved or said anything.

  Mavranos had the truck’s engine running now. The taxi was still in the parking lot, stopped closer to the Flamingo Road entrance, its motor idling.

  Crane could hear sirens—not out front yet, but not too many blocks away. He glanced at the body on the pavement. Dizzy with nausea, he wondered if it was dying, and what Lieutenant Frits would have to say to him about this.

  “The hand is up for bid,” he said, hearing the pleading tone in his voice.

  Doctor Leaky blinked around. “I’ll go two, Scotto,” he said, laboriously pushing forward two flat pennies.

  “And I don’t bid,” Crane yelled, “so it’s yours!” He tucked the gun into his pocket and snatched up Doctor Leaky’s hand and the four cards the old man had bought. Then he had scrambled to his feet, broad-jumped over the unconscious body, and was sprinting across the expanse of hot asphalt toward Mavranos’s blue truck.

  The police were right out front; he could hear the change in the echoes of the sirens and even the wheeze of the shock absorbers and thump of tires as they turned into the driveway.

  The blue truck was rolling, turning to be able to leave through the side of the parking lot away from Flamingo Road, and Mavranos had opened the passenger side door.

  Crane was running flat-out, his legs pumping furiously to stay under his full-tilt torso, but he knew the police cars would turn into the lot before he would reach the truck.

  He heard a squeal of tires, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the taxi lunge forward and crash head-on into the first police car. He was aware that the taxi’s doors were immediately flung open, but now he was level with the truck and had to scuff around, flailingly keeping his balance, to get to the open door.

  He clawed his way in, crawling across the seat with his legs still kicking outside. “Out the back!” he yelled.

  But Mavranos had pulled the steering wheel around the other way now, as if trying to make a figure-8. “Gotta pick up the girls,” he said loudly over the battering racket of the engine.

  Centrifugal force was pulling Crane out of the truck, and the playing cards crumpled in his hand as he dug his fingers into the upholstery. “Girls?” he shouted as his feet banged the swinging door, trying to get a purchase on anything.

  Then, though the truck had not even slowed down, the back door was yanked open and a couple of people piled in back. Crane heard the gas pedal whomp down onto the floorboard, and the four-barrel carburetor kicked the truck hard forward.

  As Crane’s right foot finally found the door frame and pushed him inside, he was aware that Mavranos had made an abrupt U-turn into some kind of roofed entrance. When he sat up and pulled the door closed, he saw that they were in the Flamingo parking structure, driving slowly up the first ramp, hardly a hundred yards from where they had left the crashed police car.

  “Oh, Arky,” Crane whispered breathlessly, “this is a dangerous move.”

  Mavranos was frowning, and his face gleamed with sweat. “Shit, Pogo, tell me something I don’t know. But if we tried to drive away on the Strip, they’d have radioed ahead and caught us within a block.”

  Mavranos swung the truck around the first bend, onto the second-floor ramp of the parking structure. Crane could hear sirens, but none of them were echoing as if they were in here too.

  “Jesus, make it work,” he whispered, clutching the dashboard with one sweaty hand. “Make them not think about looking in here.”

  “Turning in here was the best move,” came a woman’s voice from the back seat, and Crane turned around.

  It was a young Asian woman in a cabdriver’s uniform who had spoken; there was a branching pattern of blood running down her face from her forehead, but Crane was staring now at her companion.

  And his heart was thumping harder now than it had when he’d been running. “Diana?”

  Her nose was bleeding, and she was pinching it shut. “Yeah,” she said thickly. “Hi, Scott. It’s good to see you, Arky.”

  “Well, I’m lovin’ life now,” growled Mavranos.

  To his own surprise, Crane felt even more frightened than he had a few moments ago. He had once played in a $500 buy-in Hold ’Em tournament—he had been too drunk to get all the rules straight before he started playing, and so he had not been expecting the option of being able to buy in again after going broke; and when he did go broke, and the re-buy was offered to him, he took it eagerly, happily paying out another $500. But the blinds and limits had been steadily increasing, and the minimum bet was now $150, and he realized belatedly that the expense of making the full investment again had only enabled him to play one more hand.

  He couldn’t remember now whether or not he had won that next hand.

  “You two were in the cab that hit the cop car,” Crane said.

  “Right,” said the Asian woman. “And I guess I’m surely committed to this,” she said to Diana. “I left my cab there, and they saw us run. I can’t claim you were holding a gun on me.”

  Mavranos had turned onto the third uphill ramp now. Still, there were no parking stalls empty, and the rumble of the exhaust filled the low-ceilinged space.

  “Ozzie said you were dead,” said Crane to Diana. “He said they blew you up.”

  “They nearly did. They did kill my poor boyfriend.” Diana gave Crane a hard stare. “How is Ozzie?”

  “I’m sorry. He’s dead.”

  “Your fault?”

  Crane thought about it bleakly. “Yes.”

  “Ah.”

  Her face was blank, but tears were running down her cheeks now to mix with the blood on her chin. Nobody spoke while Mavranos slowly turned the truck up onto the fourth level.

  At last Crane recognized the young woman who had apparently been driving the cab. “I know you, don’t I?” he said. “You drove me away from that shooting by Binion’s. Your name was…?”

  “Nardie Dinh.” She was blotting her forehead with a handkerchief. “Incidentally I take back my advice that you kill yourself. You’re everybody’s best hope now, such as you are, and
I find myself on your side.”

  Crane looked around at the three people who were in the laboring truck with him. “We’re a side?” His voice sounded brittle and hollowly cheerful in his ears. “And I’m the leader, am I’m What’s your opinion of your leader, Diana?”

  Her face was still blank. “I’m in a state of suspended admiration.”

  Mavranos turned the wheel and swung the truck into an empty stall, the tires echoingly squeaking on the glossy cement floor. “We’re gonna have to get some paint up here,” he said, “and paint this thing some other color.” He turned off the engine. “What you got there, Scott? Something worth all that…furor?”

  “Yeah.” Crane opened his fist and straightened out the eight crumpled cards. “My father’s real body.”

  CHAPTER 45

  No Use Taking Half a Dose

  Crane paid for two adjoining rooms in the Flamingo, and he bought two souvenir decks of playing cards in the gift shop before leading the way upstairs.

  On one of the beds in the room that was to be his and Mavranos’s, Crane broke the seals on the decks and scattered the cards face up across the bedspread.

  Mavranos had carried the ice chest up, and Dinh called room service for six Cokes.

  “What are you doing?” she asked Crane when she had hung up.

  Crane was tentatively arranging the cards. “Trying to figure out how to stack a cold deck for a very complicated Poker game.” He had separated out the eight cards that had been Doctor Leaky’s hand: the Six and Eight of Hearts, the Knight of Clubs, and the Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, and King of Spades. “I wish my—my father’s body had drawn a better hand. Consisted of a better hand. This has to win, and in thirteen-handed Assumption a King-high Flush isn’t that great.”

  “Somebody’s going to play with Flamingo cards?” Mavranos asked, sipping a Coors. Diana stood by the window, looking down at the pool.

  “No,” Crane said, “but I want to use these to set it up. Less wear and tear on my head. The actual game is going to be played with”—he sighed—“a Lombardy Zeroth deck.”