Last Call (Last Call 1)

Crane's thumb lowered the revolver's hammer as he scrambled into the passenger side of the cab; the young woman had already got in behind the wheel, and sudden acceleration pushed Crane hard into the seat as he pulled the door closed.

CHAPTER 29: Mr. Apollo Junior Himself

Crane tucked the revolver back into his belt. Lights out, the cab made a squealing left turn onto Bridger, gunned past the dark courthouse, and caught green lights right across the Strip and into the dark tracts beyond.

"Did I hit that guy," panted Crane as he gripped the armrest and stared ahead at the rushing asphalt, "the one … I shot at?"

"No," said the driver. "But the fat man following you did. Two shots, both hits—knocked Mr. Overalls right down. Who was the fat man?"

Crane frowned, drunkenly trying to imagine a reason for the fat man to save him.

He gave up on it. "I don't know, actually," he said. "Who are you?"

"Bernardette Dinh," she said. She had turned right on Maryland Parkway and was now driving at a normal speed through a neighborhood of trees and streetlights and old houses.

There were two baseball caps on the seat between them, and she picked one up and with a practiced motion pulled it on from the back of her head so that her long black hair was caught up under it. "Call me Nardie. And put on that other cap."

"What," Crane asked as he put on the hat, "are you, in all this?"

"In a minute. Open the glove box; the thing in there that looks like a mouse skin is a fake mustache, okay? Put it on."

Crane opened the glove box. The mustache looked more like a strip of horsehide, and when he stuck the adhesive side of it onto his unshaven upper lip, the bristles hung down over his mouth. He thought he must look like Mavranos.

He slouched down in the seat so that the cylinder of the .357 wouldn't poke him in the hip-bone.

A lot of guns on Fremont Street tonight, he thought.

The thought raised an echo in his head, and then he was laughing, softly and unhappily, for he realized that that must have been what the doomed Englishman had meant by a lot of goons.

"We'll circle the block around the Flamingo windshield," said Nardie, "to make sure they don't sense you."

Crane wiped his eyes on his shirt cuff. "The Flamingo windshield?"

"Circle the place windshieldwise," she said. "The old term is 'widdershins,' means counterclockwise. Opposite of 'diesel,' clockwise."

Crane remembered Ozzie's having used those terms when he'd had him and Arky reverse the tires on the Suburban. So that's what the old man had been talking about. Useless bullshit. He sighed and sat back in the rattily upholstered seat.

"You reek of liquor," said Nardie, sounding surprised. "Hard liquor! Are you drunk?"

He thought about it. "Soberer than I was in the casino," he said, "but yes, I'm definitely drunk."

"And the dice still led me to you," she said wonderingly. "You must be the biological son, all right. Any mere … ambitious contender, like my half brother, would be disqualified forever by just a sip of beer. I've never tasted alcohol."

"Don't start," said Crane. The streetlights swept past overhead in bright monotony, and he was getting sleepy. "It's not for amateurs." He saw the lights of Smith Food and Drug ahead, where Diana had worked, but mercifully Nardie turned right onto Sahara Avenue.

"I'm not an amateur, buddy," she said, and her voice was so fierce that he looked over at the lean profile against the passing lights. "Okay?"

"Okay," he said. "What are you?"

"I'm a contender. Look, I know you just met the front-runner Queen of Hearts. I … felt it when you and she touched for the first time, Monday night. And yet here you are tonight acting against your better interests—getting drunk, letting Neal Obstadt's guys nearly kill you."

"She's dead," Crane said remotely. "Somebody killed her, the Queen of Hearts, this morning."

Nardie Dinh gave him a sharp look. "This morning?"

"Early."

She blinked, and then opened her mouth and shut it again. "Okay," she said. "Okay, she's out of the picture, then, right? Now look, you're—" She looked over at him. "You do know what's going on, don't you? What you are?"

Crane was slumped down in the seat, and his eyes were nearly shut. "I'm the bad King's son," he recited. "Hey, could we stop for a drink somewhere?"

"No. Don't you know that alcohol weakens you, puts you at the mercy of the King and all the jacks? You've got a good shot at unseating your father, if you don't blow it." She rubbed one hand over her face and exhaled. "There's one thing, though, that you haven't got."

"A diploma," said Crane dreamily, thinking of The Wizard of Oz movie. "A medal. A testimonial."

"A Queen," said Nardie impatiently. "It's like Hold 'Em, okay? You gotta come in with a pair of cards. A King and a Queen, in this case."