Last Call (Last Call 1)

Crane's body still felt as though it had been worked over with baseball bats. "How about one of those big white beetles? Ninos de la tierra?"

She laughed again as she made the left turn onto the Strip. "You can't still be mad at me about that. A woman scorned, you know? I'd been holding the DTs back from you, and then you asked for me, and I came, and you changed your mind and offered me to your friend." She turned her silvery eyes on him for a moment. "I could have given you much worse than a rat and a bug on the other side of the room."

Crane imagined having a few of the big, thick-legged children of the earth in the bed with him, for example, and he shuddered in the hot sun. "Bygones," he said with an airy wave. "Where are we going?"

"Your memory is nearly gone," noted Susan approvingly. "We're going for a walk in the desert. Visit a ruined chapel that will be there for us. Very spiritually beneficial, help you get ready to … become the King."

Or vice versa, thought Crane distantly. Help the King get ready to become me. The can in his hand was empty.

"We'll stop at a liquor store for provisions," said Susan, who of course had noted the problem. She giggled. "You know, when I told you to buy a hat, I think I meant something more …"

Crane cocked a lordly eyebrow at her. "You have some … criticism of my choice in gentlemen's headwear?"

"I guess it's a blackish canary," she conceded. Her sentence rocked him, even through the tranquilizing alcohol haze. It was a line from one of the books he and Susan—the real, dead Susan—had loved, Hope Mirlees's Lud in the Mist: the book's protagonist, reproved for absentmindedly putting on canary yellow clothing while in mourning, had protested weakly that it was a blackish canary.

Was this thing driving the car the real Susan, in some sense? And if she meant to imply that he should be in mourning, was it supposed to be for Diana? Or the dead Susan? Himself, conceivably?

South of the Aladdin, in sight of the garish multicolored towers of the Excalibur, she pulled in to the parking lot of a little liquor store; the 1950s-style sign above the door read LIQUOR HEAVEN.

"I'll wait out here," she said when she had switched off the engine.

Crane nodded and got out of the car. He blinked at the place's glass door, thinking that he had just glimpsed a bent little boy walking in—but the door was motionless, and might not have been opened for hours, or days. He shrugged and stepped forward.

The place was dim inside, after the brightness of the desert sun, and for him the shelves seemed to be full of canned vegetables with faded labels. Under a high shelf that was crowded with dusty ceramic Elvis collector decanters huddled the register and counter and, not visible at first glance, an ancient woman with a star tattooed right onto her face, from ear to ear and chin to forehead.

He nodded to her and walked to the back of the store. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the place.

There was a cooler in the back wall, but on the shelves inside were nothing but short dogs—twelve-ounce bottles of fortified wines like Thunderbird and Gallo white port and Night Train. Oh, well, he thought with a smile as he studied them—any port in a storm.

Posters were taped on the inside of the glass, advertising a wine called Bitin Dog. "Just Say Woof!" advised the ads.

The brand name reminded him of something—something that one hurt boy could apparently manage to lose, and another hurt boy could pick up and find comforting—but he could see no profit in chasing down any memories at this point. He opened the door, took two bottles by the neck in each hand, and started back toward the register.

Ozzie had driven Diana's tan Mustang right past the liquor store lot when the Camaro turned in to park, but he had seen the gray Jaguar stop at the Strip curb behind him, and he realized dully that it must be the fat man driving it. He had been forlornly hoping, while he followed the Camaro from the liquor store by the Flamingo, that it was just another Las Vegas Jaguar.

He drove Diana's car into the parking lot of a travel agency and turned it around, to be ready to drive out again when the other two cars got moving.

The old deck of cards with the naked women on the backs was scattered across the passenger side of the seat. It depressed him to look at them, even though they had eventually led him to Scott, and he gathered them up, tamped them square, and put them in his breast pocket.

Dirty cards in my pocket, he thought. He felt his chin and wished he had found an opportunity at least to shave.