Last Call (Last Call 1)

Dr. Bandholtz had called at dawn, his voice both resentful and scared, and told Leon that Diana Ryan had called the hospital once again and that this time she had asked what time today she could meet with Bandholtz and actually visit her son in person.

Bandholtz was to meet her in the lobby sometime between ten and noon and, after Leon had reasoned with him, had reluctantly agreed to stop in the cafeteria first and then bring one very old man along with him when he went to see her.

Leon stared at Doctor Leaky now and thought, Vaughan, where are you when I need you?

Vaughan Trumbill had simply never come back from his last trip to go fetch Scott Crane. Leon had called Moynihan late Sunday night, but the piping voice of the Benet body had not been authoritative enough to get any information out of that damned Irish hoodlum. Moynihan had denied even ever having spoken to Benet before, and had just laughed and hung up the telephone when asked about Trumbill's whereabouts. Subsequent calls to Moynihan had gone unanswered or unreturned.

If only that Funo person had not killed the Betsy Reculver body!

Leon lifted his styrofoam cup and puckered his lips at the coffee, but it was still too hot. He put it down and sucked in a deep breath through his tension-narrowed bronchial tubes. He tugged his inhaler out of his vest pocket and took two puffs of Ventolin. It seemed to help.

The time was nearly 11:00 A.M. by the cafeteria clock. Dr. Bandholtz should be arriving before too long.

Leon hoped the police would somehow kill Doctor Leaky when they arrested him. The old body had a lot of sorcerous protections, but a hot .38 round would probably get through them.

Newt had finished his own coffee and was shakily tearing shreds of styrofoam from the edge of the cup. "He won't be able to do it," he whispered, "any more than I can fly. I'll bet you he's forgotten again. And I ain't gonna do it, Beany."

"Call me Leon, damn you." Leon leaned toward the horrible old, emasculated body that was sitting and drooling next to him. "What is it that you're going to do?" he asked once again, speaking very quietly.

This time Doctor Leaky remembered. "Kill her!" he yelled shrilly, fumbling at the high waistband of his lime green pants for the little Walther .380 automatic.

Leon jabbed his elbow into the belly of the old body that had once been his own. "Shut up, you imbecile." Then, for the benefit of anyone who might have been looking over at them, he smiled and patted Doctor Leaky's bald head.

"It's them!" Doctor Leaky choked, blinking around tearfully at the nurses and visitors. "The people in Doom Town!"

Leon gave up any hope of being inconspicuous and began to play to the audience, shape what the eventual testimonies might be. "Stop it!" he said, speaking loudly. "Your wife shot you in 1948—it's all over, she's dead—you've got to stop brooding on it!"

"My—my dingus!" Doctor Leaky exclaimed. "She shot my cock off!"

From somewhere deep in Benet's brain, not from Leon's mind at all, came the thought that these people listening would assume she had shot some man of Scottish-Russian ancestry: Dingus McCockov.

"Yes, yes," Leon said, angrily suppressing the accompanying smile and hoping that his tone sounded soothing. "It was a long time ago."

"That was real enough," Doctor Leaky went on, finally speaking at just a conversational volume. "But the cards aren't fooled by any of the rest of it. The people in Doom Town, and all the human-sacrifice statues around town. All your Fijis that died, too, they haven't changed anything." He smiled sadly. "It's still just me."

Newt's wrinkled old eyes were closed. "Beam me up, Scotty," he said softly.

The innocent cliché angered Leon. "Shut up," he said through clenched teeth. "Just shut up."

Ray-Joe Pogue carefully backed his camper-laden pickup truck into one of the spaces in the hospital parking lot, then shoved the gearshift into park, turned the engine off and tapped an inch of ash off his cigar.

The ash didn't hit the upholstery. As before, it shattered to dust in midair and swirled into the three-dimensional outline of a small fat person sitting on the passenger side of the seat.

Bloated and black and fermented, came the voice in Pogue's head, ripped to bits by coyotes and covered with sand flies. What's left of my belly looks like cooked bacon. The tattoos are a wreck, like a vandalized painting.

"You already told me your body's screwed up," said Pogue nervously.

He lied to me; he broke his promise.

"A real bastard," Pogue agreed.