Last Call (Last Call 1)

Joshua did know something about all this card stuff, Crane reminded himself as he shrugged and stepped forward, and his fright that day was genuine. "Come on, Arky," he said.

Spider Joe waved one lean arm toward the door. "I'll follow you."

Mavranos was still snickering, though it sounded a little forced now as he and Crane stepped back up onto the porch and pulled open the screen door. The place smelled like old book paper and cumin seed.

The person sitting in the chair was a little old woman who smiled and bobbed her head at them, and she nodded toward a couch against the far wall. Crane and Mavranos shuffled around a low wooden table to it, Crane wobbling as he felt the carpeted floor sag under them, and they sat down.

Spider Joe's silhouette appeared in the doorway, and, with a loud scraping and scratching and flexing of the stiff wires, he forced his way inside. Crane saw that the faded wallpaper of the little room was scored and torn, and the couch cover was burry with snags, and the shelves were all hung up high to be out of the way of Spider Joe's antennas.

"Booger," said Spider Joe.

Crane stared at him.

"Maybe," Spider Joe went on, "you could fix some coffee for these two fellas."

The old woman nodded, got up, and, still smiling, hurried out of the room. Crane realized that her name must be Booger; and, in spite of everything, he didn't dare glance at Mavranos for fear that they'd both succumb to nervous hysteria and fall off the couch laughing.

"Uh," he said, forcing his voice to stay level, "Mr …?"

"Spider Joe's what I'm called," said the gray-bearded man, standing in the middle of the room with his arms folded. "Why, did you want to write me a check? I don't take checks. I hope you brought two silver dollars."

"Sure, I just—"

"She and I used to have different names. We ditched them a long time ago. These names we have now are only what the people in Indian Springs call us, when we go there to shop."

"Funny sort of names," observed Mavranos.

"They're a humiliation," said Spider Joe. He seemed to be just stating a fact, not complaining.

"I was wondering," Crane pressed on, "if you're blind, how you read cards."

"Nobody who isn't blind should ever read Tarot cards," said Spider Joe. "A surgeon doesn't use a scalpel with two blades on it, one for the handle, does he? Shit."

He turned noisily and reached one brown hand up to a shelf. A number of wooden boxes were ranked on it like books, and he ran his fingers over the facing edges of them and selected one.

He sat down cross-legged in front of the table, his antennas bobbing and twanging as they snagged the nap of the worn carpet, and set the box on the table.

"This is the deck I mostly use," he said, lifting off the lid and unfolding the cloth that wrapped the cards. "There is some danger involved in using any Tarot deck, and this is a particularly potent configuration. But I can sense that you fellas are already pretty much fucked, so what the hell."

Crane glanced around at the room, noting the food stains on the carpet and the stack of battered issues of Woman's World on a far table, and he remembered Joshua's tastefully mood-conducive parlor. Maybe, Crane thought, if you've got the real high-octane stuff, you don't need to dress it up.

The blind man spilled the cards out of the box face down and put the box aside. With a practiced one-two sweep of his hands he flopped the cards face up and spread them.

Crane relaxed when he saw that it was not the deck his real father had used. But even in this dim light Crane recognized the morbid, fleshy style of the finely crosshatched engravings.

"I've seen this deck," he said. "Or parts of it."

Spider Joe sat back, and two of his antennas sprang loose from the carpet and waved in the air. "Really? Where?"

"Well—" Crane laughed uneasily. Most recently in a Five-Draw game at the Horseshoe, he thought. "The Two of Cups is a cherub's face with two metal rods stuck through it, right?"

Spider Joe exhaled sharply. "Are you a … some kind of Catholic priest?"

Mavranos attempted a laugh, but stopped quickly.

"No," Crane said. "If I'm any thing, I'm a Poker player. We're dealing with weird crap here, so I'll tell you the truth—I've only hallucinated these cards, and seen them in dreams."

"What you're talking about," said Spider Joe thoughtfully, "is a variation of the Sola Busca deck, one that even I've barely heard about. I've never seen it; the only known example is supposed to be in a locked vault in the Vatican. Not even qualified scholars can get permission to see it, and it's only known of at all because of a letter from one Paulinus da Castelletto, written in 1512."

With a clanking of cups and spoons, the old woman known as Booger came back into the room carrying a tray. She crouched and carefully set it down on the carpet next to the table.

"Milk or sugar?" asked Spider Joe.