Last Call (Last Call 1)

Crane paid for two adjoining rooms in the Flamingo, and he bought two souvenir decks of playing cards in the gift shop before leading the way upstairs.

On one of the beds in the room that was to be his and Mavranos's, Crane broke the seals on the decks and scattered the cards face up across the bedspread.

Mavranos had carried the ice chest up, and Dinh called room service for six Cokes.

"What are you doing?" she asked Crane when she had hung up.

Crane was tentatively arranging the cards. "Trying to figure out how to stack a cold deck for a very complicated Poker game." He had separated out the eight cards that had been Doctor Leaky's hand: the Six and Eight of Hearts, the Knight of Clubs, and the Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, and King of Spades. "I wish my—my father's body had drawn a better hand. Consisted of a better hand. This has to win, and in thirteen-handed Assumption a King-high Flush isn't that great."

"Somebody's going to play with Flamingo cards?" Mavranos asked, sipping a Coors. Diana stood by the window, looking down at the pool.

"No," Crane said, "but I want to use these to set it up. Less wear and tear on my head. The actual game is going to be played with"—he sighed—"a Lombardy Zeroth deck."

Nardie glanced at him sharply. "My half-brother has a card from that deck," she said. "The Tower. He wants to use it to become King."

"Swell," said Crane. "I hope he looks at it cross-eyed and goes crazy."

"He already did," she said. "Are you … talking about the game on the lake?"

"Yes."

"You're not going to play in it, are you? Again?"

"Yes."

She shivered visibly. "You couldn't get me out on that boat."

Diana turned around. "When are you going to do this, Scott?"

He didn't look up from the cards. "The game's going to be played tonight and tomorrow night and during the day on Good Friday. I'll start tonight, and keep on playing until I get the trick done."

"Is that guy you conked gonna be there?" asked Mavranos.

"Yeah," said Crane. "In that body, if it's not dead or in a hospital. He's the host."

"He'll recognize you."

"He would, but I'll be disguised."

"How?"

There was a knock at the door then, and Diana walked across the room and let in the bellboy, who set the tray of Cokes on the table, and gave him some money.

"How are you going to disguise yourself?" Mavranos asked again when the bellboy had left.

Crane grinned worriedly at his friend and shook his head. "I don't know. Shave my head? Wear glasses? Dye my face and hands black?"

"None of those sound very good," said Diana.

"You could go in full clown makeup," Nardie said. "I think they do it for free at Circus Circus."

"Or you could go in an ape suit," said Mavranos. "There's gotta be a place in town that rents ape suits."

" 'Each one volunteered his own suggestions,' " quoted Crane with a forced smile. " 'His invaluable suggestions.' "

"That's Lewis Carroll," said Nardie.

Crane looked at her, and his smile became genuine. "Right." She and Diana had told him what her connection was to all this, but now he really paid attention to her for the first time, and he noticed her fine black hair and porcelain face. "I love that poem," he said. " 'Neither did he leave them slowly, with the—' "

"A woman," Diana interrupted harshly.

Mavranos raised his beer as if in a toast. "A woman!"

Crane frowned at her. "What?"

"Go as a woman. It's the only disguise that will work."

Crane laughed shortly—but saw that Mavranos and Nardie had raised their eyebrows as if considering the idea.

"No," he said. "This is going to be tough enough without showing up in drag, for Christ's sake. I'll shave my head and wear glasses. That'll—"

"No," said Nardie thoughtfully, "your face is too distinctive. I haven't seen you very often, but I'd recognize you bald and with glasses. I think drag is it—lots of makeup, lipstick, a striking wig—"

"Makes me hot," allowed Mavranos.

"It wouldn't work," said Crane in a confident, dismissing tone. "What about my voice?" He pitched his voice falsetto and said, "Do you want me to talk like this?"

"Just talk normally," said Diana. "They'll all just write you off as a brassy transvestite."

"Nobody's gonna look hard at a queer," Mavranos agreed. "If anybody starts to, just wink at 'em."

Somehow, dwarfing his fear that he would fail, and that Diana would be killed, and that he himself would lose his body on Holy Saturday when his father assumed the bodies he had bought during the 1969 games, Crane felt light-headed with panic at this new suggestion. I will not do it, he assured himself. Don't even worry about it.