Last Call (Last Call 1)

"Booger," Spider Joe went on, "was a remora fish, doing errands for him in exchange for the elegantest sort of high life Vegas could provide, which even in the forties and fifties could be pretty elegant. There was a woman who was a threat to him, in 1960—Booger got close to her, became her friend, and … talked her into meeting her at the Sahara one night. Then Booger stayed away, and Vaughan Trumbill showed up instead, and he killed the woman. Her newborn baby daughter got away, but Booger had set it up for the baby to die, too."

Involuntarily Crane glanced at the old woman. Her face was expressionless.

"I made him a deck," said Spider Joe, "he had to have it for the spring of '69. He used it. And then one day Booger and I were having a meeting with him." Spider Joe's fists were clenched, but he kept his voice even. "He was in one of the bodies he had just assumed after the game, a woman called Betsy, and while we were listening to him, she—he'd only been in the body for like a day or two—she came back up to the surface for a few seconds, the Betsy woman did, and it was her looking out of the eyes."

Again Crane looked back at Booger. Her face still showed no emotion, but there were tears now on her wrinkled cheeks.

"She was crying," said Spider Joe softly, "and begging us to—to hold her up, to do something to keep her from sinking away forever back down into the dark pool where the Archetypes move and individual minds just dissolve, way down in the depths." He took a deep breath and let it out. "And then it was just him again. She was gone, back down into the darkness, and we—we found that we knew more about Death than we had before. Booger and I took our orders and walked out and walked right away from the world—away from our cars and houses and gourmet food and fine clothes, even our names—and never went back. Booger bit out her tongue, and I cut out my eyes."

Crane heard Mavranos mutter, "Jesus!" behind him.

For a couple of seconds Crane just didn't believe it. Then he stared at Spider Joe's deeply furrowed cheeks, and remembered the psychic trauma of viewing the Lombardy Zeroth cards—and he tried to imagine the horror of learning, firsthand, that dead people don't always just go away to oblivion but can come back, suffering, to confront you; and he thought that it might, after all, be true that this woman would choose to make herself mute rather than ever again be able to arrange a death with her lies, or that this man would make himself blind rather than ever again be able to paint another of those decks.

Spider Joe shrugged. "Your father's job," he said again. "Your father has almost got you, I have to tell you that. He's already had you perform a human sacrifice, and—"

"When?" Crane shook his head. "I've never killed anybody!"

Except Susan, he thought. One of the random illnesses. Caused by me. And did I kill Diana, too?

"You may not have known you were doing it," Spider Joe said, almost kindly, "but he handed you the knife, sonny, and you used it. Even in that brief reading it was as clear in your character profile as a birthmark. As I say, you might not have been aware. It would have been sometime this last week—certainly at night, and probably involving playing cards, and probably the victim was from someplace separated from here by untamed water—from over the sea."

"Aah, God," Crane wailed softly. "The Englishman." A lot of goons in this country, the man had said. He was right, Crane thought now. A lot of goons that don't even know they're goons. He blinked rapidly and forced away the memory of the man's weak, cheerful face.

"Your father's job," Spider Joe was saying yet again. "He is your father, so theoretically you could take it. I don't know how. You need to consult an old King."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"Where would I find him?"

"I don't know. A cemetery, probably—old Kings are nearly always dead Kings."

"But how do I—"

"That's it," Spider Joe said. "The reading is over. Get out of here. I probably should kill you—I could—and I certainly will if you ever come back here again."

The sparse, dry brush along the highway shoulder hissed in the breeze.

Mavranos had stood up and was walking toward the Suburban. "You have a nice day, too," he drawled. "Come on, Scott."

Crane blinked and shook his head, then found that he was plodding after his friend.

"Oh, there was one more thing," called Spider Joe.

Crane halted and turned.

"You met your father the other day—his old, discarded body, anyway. When the Fool was in possession of me, I saw it. The body was playing Lowball Poker, for trash." He turned back toward the trailer and walked toward Booger, his antennas cutting lines in the dirt.