Last Call (Last Call 1)

Crane let out his breath and straightened up, hearing the cards continue to rattle on the carpet behind him. He carefully hiked around in his chair. The cards were shaking back and forth across the carpet as though the building were in the grip of a big earthquake.

Outside, the rain was thrashing down.

Joshua had pushed his own chair back and got to his feet. "Get out of here," he whispered to Crane. His face was white. "I don't want to know who you are. Just … get out of here right now."

Crane was breathing fast, and his hands were nearly clawed with craving for a drink, but he shook his head.

"I," he said carefully, "still need an answer to my question."

The old man made an unhappy, keening sound. "Isn't it obvious I can't help you? My God—" He paused.

Crane was suddenly sure the man had been about to say something like, Even so-and-so couldn't help you!

"Who?" Crane demanded. "Who is it that can?"

"Go see the Pope, I don't know. I'm calling the police if you don't—"

"You do know someone who can handle a no-limit game of this. Tell me who it is."

"I swear to you, I don't, and I'm calling the police—"

"Fine," said Crane, grinning broadly and standing up. "If you don't tell me who it is, I'll come back here—no, I'll find out where you live and go there—and I'll"—What would scare the old man?—"I'll play Solitaire stark naked on your front porch with a deck of these goddamn things, I'll"—he was shouting now—"I'll bring a dozen dead bodies and play Assumption with them, and we'll use Communion hosts as chips. I'll be the goddamn one-eyed Jack and play for my eye!"

He reached up to his face and popped out his false eye and held it out toward the old man in a trembling fist.

Joshua had collapsed back into his chair during Crane's outburst and was now crying. For a few moments neither man spoke.

"It doesn't matter anyway," Joshua sobbed finally. "There isn't any way I could dare stay in Las Vegas now, after doing that reading, that partial reading." His blue robe was twisted around his torso, ridiculous and pathetic. "Damn you, and I'll have to get some other job. I can't possibly ever read cards again. They know my face now. Why in God's name did you come to me?"

"Luck of the draw," said Crane, forcing himself not to care about this old man right now. He popped his false eye back into the socket and walked to the window. "Who is it?"

Joshua sniffed and stood up. "Please, if there's any humanity in you … what was your name?"

"Crane, Scott Crane."

"If there's any human compassion in you, Scott, don't tell him who sent you." He wiped his eyes on a baggy sleeve. "I don't know his real name; he's called Spider Joe. He apparently lives in a trailer out on Rancho, the Tonopah Highway. It's on the right side of the road, two hours outside of town: a trailer and some shacks, with a big Two of Spades sign out front."

The cards had stopped spinning on the carpet now, and Joshua knelt and was gingerly picking them up with the silk cloth, being careful not to touch them. "Would you do me one other favor, Scott?" he asked querulously. When Crane nodded, the old man went on, "Take these cards, my cards, out of here with you—and take your hundred-dollar bill back, too. No, I couldn't possibly use it, and even if I burned it, it might call some more psychic attention to me."

Crane had pulled back the curtain to watch the rainy street, and now he shrugged and nodded. "Okay."

Joshua wearily unzipped his blue satin robe and took it off. Under it he was wearing shorts and a Lacoste polo shirt; he looked fit, as though he exercised conscientiously, and Crane was suddenly sure that his real name was something more mundane than Joshua.

"I've heard that you've got to cross his palm with silver," the old man said tiredly. "Get two silver dollars, real silver. He claims it keeps things from seeing him, blinds the eyes of the dead; it's related to the old practice of putting coins on a dead man's eyes." He threw Crane's bill onto the table next to the bundle of cards, and Crane leaned over to pick it all up.

He stuffed the bill and the cards into the pockets of his jacket. "I'll see him today," he said.

"No." Joshua had walked behind a cash register by the bookshelves, and with a series of muted clicks the fluorescent lights began to go out. "He wouldn't do anything while this same sun is up. It's got to be a new day. Everything is too … waked up today."

Crane saw that tears were still running down the old man's cheeks. "How about a—a different hundred-dollar bill?" Crane asked awkwardly.

"I couldn't touch any of your money." The old man was pulling bills out of the cash register and seemed to be shielding them from Crane's very sight. "Could you leave now? Don't you think you've done enough?"