Last Call (Last Call 1)

After they had got back onto the highway and were again rolling south toward the lake, he looked at his right hand, and for a moment he hoped that his father would succeed in taking this body away from him.

CHAPTER 39: Combination of the Two

"This don't look much like Vegas," Mavranos said as he steered the shaky, dusty truck through the quiet streets of Boulder City. Somehow the radio was playing what Crane thought was the best rock song ever recorded, Big Brother and the Holding Company's "Combination of the Two."

Today Crane felt as though he'd lost the right, the ability, to participate in it.

He blinked and looked around at the complacent Spanish-style houses and the green lawns. "Hmm? Oh—no, it's not anything like it." His voice sounded oddly flat in his head. He was making an effort to talk normally, to talk as he would have if he had not just … killed a man. "This is the only place in Nevada where gambling's not legal," he went on doggedly. "In fact, hard liquor only became legal here in '69."

"No gambling at all?"

"Nope." He grinned stiffly and shook his head. " 'Cept for a—a certain Poker game on a houseboat once every twenty years or so."

And that starts up tomorrow night, he thought. And when this latest series of games is done, come Holy Saturday, he'll assume this old body of mine, unless I've stopped him somehow.

On the radio Janis Joplin was wailing, but not for him.

"Huh," said Mavranos. "Nothing to do me any good. Maybe I can get in a game of penny-lagging."

Crane glanced at Mavranos, feeling oppressed now about him, too. Mavranos was definitely thinner and paler than he had been when they'd driven out from Los Angeles, and now he was never without the bandanna tied up tight around his throat. I wonder, Crane thought, if Trumbill could, possibly, have cured Arky's cancer. Surely that was just a desperate bluff.

"Left up ahead there, on Lakeshore Road," Crane said.

"We're not going to the dam?"

"No. The nearest marinas and beaches are up the west shore of the lake. That's where we can rent scuba gear and a boat. At the dam all you can do is look."

"I wanted to see the dam."

"We'll go see it later, okay?" said Crane shortly. "Later in the week. You can buy a T-shirt and everything."

"It's one of the seven man-made wonders of the world."

"Yeah? What are the others?"

"I don't know. Montezooma's Revenge at Knott's Berry Farm's one, I think."

"We'll get you a T-shirt there, too, on the way home."

Their laughter was brief and tense. Mavranos finished his beer and popped another. Poor dead Janis Joplin howled on out of the speakers that were hung on adhesive tape from the roof struts behind the front seat.

At a dive shop near the Government Dock Crane rented a new outfit of U.S. Divers scuba gear and a full wet suit with hood and boots and a gear bag to carry it all in. They rented a speedboat at the Lake Mead Resort Circle, and by noon they were gunning out across the blue face of the lake under the empty blue sky.

After a few minutes they had left behind the water-skiers and had got out to where the wind was raising random choppy waves, and Crane pulled back on the Morris throttle, reversing the engine and bringing the boat to an uneven, rocking halt. Mavranos had been hanging on to the dashboard bar during the bouncy, spray-flinging ride, and now he took off his Greek fisherman's cap, whacked it against his knee, and put it on again.

"You through shakin' us up?" he asked in the sudden quiet. "I'm gonna step back to the ice chest, but not if you're gonna bounce me right out."

"Yeah, I'll take it easy."

They were alone out on the water under the arching, cloudless sky, but Crane had to focus his eye to stop seeing the fat man's body jumping and bursting as the bullets hit, and he yawned so that his ears would pop and he would blessedly hear only the wind and the idling engine.

Well, he thought, here I am. What do I do now, just jump in?

A little red fishing boat rocked on the water a hundred yards away, and the man in it seemed to be looking at them. Crane wondered if their crashing arrival out here had scared off all the fish.

Mavranos came back and sat down in the bucket seat, a fresh beer foaming in his fist. "Ride did the beer a lot of good," he growled, wiping foam off his mustache. "Where's the head?"

"You gotta just piss over the side, man," said Crane. "No, I know what you meant." He brushed the wind-disordered hair back from his forehead and looked around at the vast face of the lake. "I, uh, don't know, exactly. It's probably in this section of the lake, the Boulder Basin; there's also the Overton Arm and the Temple Basin and Gregg Basin, miles away over those mountains, but this is certainly the most accessible part."

There should be a hand holding a sword, he thought helplessly, sticking up out of the water.