Last Call (Last Call 1)

Richard was looking at him with raised eyebrows.

"We're not the only ones that sensed him playing," Trumbill said. "Three guys, gotta be working for one of the jacks, coming this way. Can you work the fish yet?" Trumbill asked.

"No, not till day before Easter."

"Why don't you try? If we've got to run, it would help if he was cooperating."

Richard hesitated, then nodded and stared hard at Crane.

Crane was lifting his glass to his mouth—and suddenly his arm jerked and the rim of the glass hit him in the nose and bourbon stung his eyes. His mouth sprang open, and he made a loud, prolonged hooting sound.

Then he blinked rapidly, feeling his face reddening with drunken embarrassment, and he carefully lowered the emptied glass to the paper napkin on the green felt.

"Uh," he said to the house dealer, who was staring at him in some surprise, "just waking myself up."

"Maybe it's bedtime," the dealer suggested.

Crane pictured a motel bed, dimly and whitely lit by a streetlight beyond a curtained window, and he imagined a figure in the bed, reaching out white arms for him. "No, not yet. I've still got some money!"

"Sure, le' 'im ply," said the well-dressed businessman, apparently English, who had won the pot Crane had opened. His graying hairline was damp, and his play so far had been very tight, very conservative; Crane guessed he was uncomfortable in a high-stakes game and appreciated having a moronic drunk at the table. The man now grinned nervously at Crane. "Iss a free country, roit?"

Crane nodded carefully. "Sure is."

"Grite country, too, I my sigh," the man went on eagerly, "though you have goat a lot of goons."

The dealer shrugged and began skimming cards across the table to the players. The button that indicated the token dealer was in front of Crane now, so the first card was dealt to the man on Crane's left, the Englishman.

"Got a lot of what?" asked Crane.

"Goons," the man told him. "Goons everywha you look."

The dealer was quick; each of the eight players now had five cards face down in front of him.

Crane nodded, mystified. "I suppose."

"No use," said Richard Leroy, resting his elbows on his slot machine. Absently he thumbed a quarter into the slot and pushed the deal button, and the front of his suit coat flickered with color as the cards appeared on the screen.

"Not unless you want to have him throw a fit," Trumbill agreed.

Crane mopped his chin with his shirt sleeve, and when the cocktail waitress walked by, he waved his empty glass at her.

Twitches and animal noises now, he thought blurrily. Well, at least I'm developing a terrific table image. I just hope I don't vomit or lose control of my bowels or anything.

The Englishman had opened under the gun, in first position, and Crane knew the man must have a pair of Aces at the very least. None of the other players called the fifty-dollar opening bet, and when it came around to Crane, he belatedly remembered to curl up the edges of his cards and peer down at them with his right eye closed. He had the Kings of Spades and Clubs and the Deuces of Spades and Diamonds and the Seven of Hearts. A very nice Two Pair. He let the cards fall back flat and slid forward one black hundred-dollar chip.

"I raise," he said clearly.

The Englishman called the bet and then asked for one card. Crane didn't think the man had the nerve to be chasing a Flush or a Straight against a raise; probably he was drawing to a Two Pair, which was unlikely to be better than Crane's Kings Up.

Crane considered rapping pat to scare him off, then decided that the man would assume he was bluffing, or even so drunk that he saw a Flush where there wasn't one. He decided instead to toss the Seven and try for the eleven-to-one chance of getting another King or Two and having a Full Boat.

But when he tugged at the Seven, the Two of Diamonds came with it, as if the two cards were glued together.

Surprised, he lifted the cards off the table and opened his right eye. Then he closed his left one.

Viewed through Crane's false eye, the King of Clubs was a King holding a metal rod and sitting on a lion-carved throne; the King of Spades was a weird King of Swords—just a crowned head poking up out of the surface of a body of water and an arm raised out of the water holding a sword; and the Two of Clubs was the by-now-familiar Two of Staves—the severed cherub head transfixed with two metal rods.

All three faces were toward him, and their painted eyes seemed to be looking into his false one with urgency.

Dully Crane wished this would all end. Where the hell was his new drink?

But, obediently, he threw the other two cards away, keeping the Kings and the cherub.

He closed his right eye and opened his real, left eye. All this squinting and winking, right after the splash of bourbon, was making his eyes leak tears. "Two," he told the house dealer. In spite of the tears running down his cheeks, he was perfectly calm, and his voice was level.