Last Call (Last Call 1)

Crane plodded down the slope and across the road, and he stopped at the lip of the gully a few yards away from Mavranos.

Trumbill lay sprawled on his back in the sandy bed of the wash a few yards below them. His coat was open, and the white shirt over his belly was reddening fast. The rifle he had been carrying lay on the roadside near Mavranos, and the automatic rested upright against a stone halfway down the slope of the gully.

"Good shootin', Pogo," said Mavranos.

Crane looked at him. His friend hadn't been shot, but he was weaving on his feet and looked pale and sick.

"Thanks," said Crane. He supposed he must look the same way.

"Camaro," said Trumbill loudly. "Take it to … telephone." Speaking the words seemed to cost him a lot, but his voice was strong. "Medevac."

No, thought Crane. "No," he said.

I've got to kill him, he thought in sick amazement, finish him off. I can't take prisoners here. Would the police jail him? For what? Ozzie's body is gone, and even if the fat man left enough evidence to be charged with Diana's murder—which isn't likely—he would certainly be freed on bail. Of course he'd be in a hospital for a long time, but couldn't he work for my father from a hospital? He wouldn't let Scat and Oliver slip through his fingers, as he did with the infant Diana.

And I'd be in jail, at least for a while. Maybe a long time. What the hell kind of story could I tell the police?

I've got to kill him. Right here. Right now.

"Mavranos," Trumbill called now. "I can cure your cancer. You can … go back to your family … a healthy man. Decades." He inhaled loudly enough for the men up on the bank to hear. "Trank darts—in rifle. Shoot Crane."

Crane turned and looked at the rifle that lay a yard from Mavranos's feet, and then he looked up and met Mavranos's gaze.

Crane didn't think Mavranos could get the rifle up before he could raise the revolver and shoot him—but he realized that he was physically incapable of shooting Arky. He slowly opened his hand and let the revolver clank to the dirt.

"Do what you gotta do, Arky," he said.

Mavranos nodded slowly. "I'm thinking of Wendy, and the girls," he said.

Slowly he stepped over to where the rifle lay on the ground, and then he kicked it away, toward the truck's front tire.

"Wendy saved you."

Crane exhaled and nodded, then turned back to Trumbill and swallowed hard as he crouched down to retrieve the revolver.

"Okay," moaned Trumbill. His face was pale and gleaming with sweat in the harsh sunlight, and his pudgy hands were fists. "Last request! Call this number … tell him where my … body is. Three-eight-two—"

"No," said Crane, shakily raising the mirror-bright gun. "I don't know what kind of magic he could do with your corpse." He blinked tears out of his eyes but spoke steadily. "Best you rot out here, feed the birds and the bugs."

"No-o-o-o-o!" Somehow in spite of his terrible wound, Trumbill was roaring down there, and the fearful, jarring noise seemed to fill the desert and shake the remote sky. "Not the skinny man, not the skinny man, not the—"

Crane thought of Ozzie and of Diana, both killed by this man.

And he pulled the trigger.

Bam.

"—Skinny ma-a-a-a-an—"

Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.

Click.

The hot air of the flat desert gave back no echoes from the shots. Crane lowered the emptied gun and stared, astonished, at the red-spattered body sprawled motionless in the sand of the dry stream bed.

Then the dirt surface of the road was under Crane's face, between his spread hands, and he was spasmodically vomiting up the dregs of the Coke he'd had for breakfast.

When he was able to roll away to the side, spitting and gasping, he saw through his tears that Mavranos had opened the back of the truck and was lugging the jack to the flat tire.

"I can do this, Pogo," Mavranos called. "Why don't you see if you can't push that Camaro into the wash. I've got a couple of tarps we can throw over it and weight down with rocks. No harm if this goes undetected for a while, and I don't think the boys in that van are gonna make any calls."

Crane nodded and got wearily to his feet.

Fifteen minutes later they were driving slowly back along the dirt road toward the highway, Mavranos absently cursing the damage that he imagined had been done to the truck's suspension. Crane rocked in the passenger seat and stared out at the broken stones of the desert, trying to feel a grim satisfaction at having avenged Ozzie, or to feel pride in having competently shot the fat man, or to feel anything besides the remembered horror of pulling that sweat-slick trigger again and again and again.