Last Call (Last Call 1)

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?"