Last Call (Last Call 1)

"Dreaming at last, my sweet little Asian sister," said Ray-Joe Pogue in his affectedly mellifluous voice. His lean face was twisted into a smile, and he walked slowly toward her. The pictures banged violently against the walls as he passed them. "And you've saved yourself for me."

"Not for you," she managed to say, loudly enough to be heard over all the racket. Wake up, she told herself urgently. Push your forehead into the horn ring, open the car door, listen for calls from the dispatcher.

"And right here in town, eh?" he said. "South of me, down by the Marina and the Tropicana. I'm on my way. You and I have got a lot of lost time to make up for. Without the female half of the magic, I've been running into obstacles. I had to kill Max, and then Lake Mead wouldn't take his head. I think the lake might take it from you, or from the two of us once we've coupled. Shall we go see?"

She stood up slowly, dragging her back against the wall, and even when she felt the shaking edge of the Fool's frame against her shoulders, she kept pushing.

The picture came loose from its nail and fell, and for an instant she saw her brother's mouth drop open in dismay—and when the picture hit the floor, the sound it made wasn't that of wood hitting carpet.

It was the sound of a car horn, and when she lifted her head from the steering wheel the blaring honk stopped, and she sat back, gasping in the driver's seat of her parked taxicab, and watched the windshield wipers sweep away the hard spattering of the rain. With a trembling hand she reached out and twisted the key in the ignition.

The engine started right up, and she put it in gear and carefully pulled out into the traffic.

Escaped it that time, she thought shakily, but now he knows I'm in town. I'll get on the 15 north right now, and get off somewhere up around Fremont Street.

Her face was chilly with sweat.

If I knew how to pray, she thought, I'd say a prayer for the soul of poor old Max, who once loved me, may he nevertheless burn in hell forever.

In the back seat of his newly bought '71 Dodge, parked on a dark side street, Al Funo stretched out and tried to get comfortable. The previous owners had apparently had a dog that liked to travel in the car but hated to take baths.

He had sold his Porsche to a car dealer on Charleston in order to buy classy gifts for Diana and Scott. The two long black jewelry boxes—two solid gold rope necklaces that had cost him nearly a thousand dollars each—were wrapped up in his jacket on the front seat.

He had had to buy gifts for his friends, to clear up any misunderstandings—but he was still angry at the car dealer, who had called the Porsche 924 "just a glorified Volkswagen," and had given Funo only thirty-five hundred dollars for it. This Dodge had cost him a thousand, leaving him at the end of the day with only about five hundred dollars. And he didn't want to use a credit card if he could help it; the police would almost certainly know who he was by now, and if he used a card, he'd be leaving a trail.

He would have to get out of town as soon as possible. In addition to the police, Vaughan Trumbill would be after him … and Funo could feel a tension in the air, as if someone were leaning harder and harder against a plate glass window, or as if a fever were rising somewhere, with convulsions and hallucinations. Something was going to happen here, and it would probably involve the fat man and Scott and Diana, and Funo wanted to be safely back in L.A. in one of his alternate identities when it broke.

He rolled over on the narrow seat and tried to ignore the drumming of the rain on the roof. Better get some sleep, he told himself, if you're going to go make up with Diana tomorrow.

CHAPTER 26: Thanks a Million, Diana!

At dawn Diana ordered up a pot of coffee from the Circus Circus's room service. Oliver was still asleep in the bed, but she carried her steaming cup to the phone and dialed the number of Ozzie's room.

"Mph. Hello?" His old voice was scratchy. "Diana?"

"Yes," she said. "I—"

"Where are you calling from? Did you go to the hospital yesterday? I told you to stay away—"

She pressed her lips together. "No, I didn't go. I chickened out. Scat wouldn't have known I was there anyway, of course, but I still feel like—like I'm deserting him. Oz, listen, I"—she laughed uncomfortably—"took a shower in the rain last night, and I believe I saw my mother. I got the idea that I couldn't approach her, couldn't talk to her, because I'm not a virgin."

Oliver was awake now, she noticed. The boy rolled his eyes and mimed gagging himself with his forefinger.