Last Call (Last Call 1)

He clawed his way in, crawling across the seat with his legs still kicking outside. "Out the back!" he yelled.

But Mavranos had pulled the steering wheel around the other way now, as if trying to make a figure-8. "Gotta pick up the girls," he said loudly over the battering racket of the engine.

Centrifugal force was pulling Crane out of the truck, and the playing cards crumpled in his hand as he dug his fingers into the upholstery. "Girls?" he shouted as his feet banged the swinging door, trying to get a purchase on anything.

Then, though the truck had not even slowed down, the back door was yanked open and a couple of people piled in back. Crane heard the gas pedal whomp down onto the floorboard, and the four-barrel carburetor kicked the truck hard forward.

As Crane's right foot finally found the door frame and pushed him inside, he was aware that Mavranos had made an abrupt U-turn into some kind of roofed entrance. When he sat up and pulled the door closed, he saw that they were in the Flamingo parking structure, driving slowly up the first ramp, hardly a hundred yards from where they had left the crashed police car.

"Oh, Arky," Crane whispered breathlessly, "this is a dangerous move."

Mavranos was frowning, and his face gleamed with sweat. "Shit, Pogo, tell me something I don't know. But if we tried to drive away on the Strip, they'd have radioed ahead and caught us within a block."

Mavranos swung the truck around the first bend, onto the second-floor ramp of the parking structure. Crane could hear sirens, but none of them were echoing as if they were in here too.

"Jesus, make it work," he whispered, clutching the dashboard with one sweaty hand. "Make them not think about looking in here."

"Turning in here was the best move," came a woman's voice from the back seat, and Crane turned around.

It was a young Asian woman in a cabdriver's uniform who had spoken; there was a branching pattern of blood running down her face from her forehead, but Crane was staring now at her companion.

And his heart was thumping harder now than it had when he'd been running. "Diana?"

Her nose was bleeding, and she was pinching it shut. "Yeah," she said thickly. "Hi, Scott. It's good to see you, Arky."

"Well, I'm lovin' life now," growled Mavranos.

To his own surprise, Crane felt even more frightened than he had a few moments ago. He had once played in a $500 buy-in Hold 'Em tournament—he had been too drunk to get all the rules straight before he started playing, and so he had not been expecting the option of being able to buy in again after going broke; and when he did go broke, and the re-buy was offered to him, he took it eagerly, happily paying out another $500. But the blinds and limits had been steadily increasing, and the minimum bet was now $150, and he realized belatedly that the expense of making the full investment again had only enabled him to play one more hand.

He couldn't remember now whether or not he had won that next hand.

"You two were in the cab that hit the cop car," Crane said.

"Right," said the Asian woman. "And I guess I'm surely committed to this," she said to Diana. "I left my cab there, and they saw us run. I can't claim you were holding a gun on me."

Mavranos had turned onto the third uphill ramp now. Still, there were no parking stalls empty, and the rumble of the exhaust filled the low-ceilinged space.

"Ozzie said you were dead," said Crane to Diana. "He said they blew you up."

"They nearly did. They did kill my poor boyfriend." Diana gave Crane a hard stare. "How is Ozzie?"

"I'm sorry. He's dead."

"Your fault?"

Crane thought about it bleakly. "Yes."

"Ah."

Her face was blank, but tears were running down her cheeks now to mix with the blood on her chin. Nobody spoke while Mavranos slowly turned the truck up onto the fourth level.

At last Crane recognized the young woman who had apparently been driving the cab. "I know you, don't I?" he said. "You drove me away from that shooting by Binion's. Your name was …?"

"Nardie Dinh." She was blotting her forehead with a handkerchief. "Incidentally I take back my advice that you kill yourself. You're everybody's best hope now, such as you are, and I find myself on your side."

Crane looked around at the three people who were in the laboring truck with him. "We're a side?" His voice sounded brittle and hollowly cheerful in his ears. "And I'm the leader, am I? What's your opinion of your leader, Diana?"

Her face was still blank. "I'm in a state of suspended admiration."

Mavranos turned the wheel and swung the truck into an empty stall, the tires echoingly squeaking on the glossy cement floor. "We're gonna have to get some paint up here," he said, "and paint this thing some other color." He turned off the engine. "What you got there, Scott? Something worth all that … furor?"

"Yeah." Crane opened his fist and straightened out the eight crumpled cards. "My father's real body."

CHAPTER 45: No Use Taking Half a Dose