Last Call (Last Call 1)

Crane was frowning, and he wondered why he was uneasy … He realized that he wasn't looking forward to being that close to, that surrounded by, the ocean; and going so far west seemed … mildly difficult, like pressing the positive poles of two magnets together. Why couldn't they have moved the game east?

"You still there, Scarecrow?"

"Yeah. What stakes are they playing these days?"

"Ten and twenty, last I heard."

Perfect. "Well, I gotta run, Jube. Thanks."

Crane hung up and walked slowly into the bedroom. The cool evening wind sighed in at the window, and he saw no ghost.

He relaxed and let out an unwittingly held breath, not sure whether he was disappointed or not.

He was still damp from the shower, but he got dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and old sneakers and another flannel shirt. He tucked a lighter and three unopened packs of Marlboros into his pockets and picked up the Versatel card; he could draw three hundred with it, and he had another forty or so on the bookshelf. Not lavish, but he ought to be able to make it do. Play the first hand noticeably loose, then tighten up for a while.

And the car keys are in the living room, he thought as he started out the bedroom door—and then he paused.

If you bring a machine, you'll never need it, Ozzie had always told him. Like a fire extinguisher in a car. The day you don't bring it is the day you'll need it.

Not, Crane thought now, not in a ten and twenty game at Chick's! He laughed self-consciously and stepped into the hall, then stopped again.

He shrugged and went back to the dresser by the bed. This isn't the time to ignore the old man's advice, he thought. He pulled open the top drawer and dug behind the socks and old envelopes full of photographs until he found the blocky stainless steel Smith & Wesson .357 revolver.

What the hell, he thought, at least you're fairly sober.

He flipped out the cylinder. All six chambers were still loaded, and he pushed up the ejection-rod to get one out. One hundred twenty-five-grain hollow-point cartridges, as he remembered. He let it fall back in and snapped the gun shut again and tucked it into his belt, hearing the cartridges rattle faintly in the chambers.

When he opened the front door, he paused.

"I might be a little late," he called to the empty house.

He stopped at a nearby 7-Eleven store for hero sandwiches, a couple of twelve-packs of beer, a box of No Doz and a dozen decks of cards, and then he got on the freeway.

Back to chasing the white line, he thought as the lane markings of the 5 Freeway flew past like fireflies under the tires of his old Ford. I can remember a hundred, a thousand nights like this, driving with Ozzie along the 66 and the 20 and the 40, through Arizona and New Mexico and Texas and Oklahoma. Always a game behind us and a game ahead of us.

It had been what Ozzie called a semi-retired life. They traveled and played during the three months of spring, and then lived off their winnings in the Santa Ana house during the other three seasons.

Scott had been five years old when Ozzie had found him, in the back of a boat on a trailer in a Los Angeles parking lot. Apparently he had been a messed-up little kid—one eye split open and dried blood all over his face. Ozzie had talked to him for a few minutes and had then driven him in his old truck to a doctor who owed Ozzie a lot of money.

Old Dr. Malk had fitted up young Scott with his first glass eye. The eyes were still real glass in the forties, and for kids they were round, like big marbles, to fill the orbit and make sure the skull grew correctly. The next day Ozzie had taken the boy home to the house in Santa Ana, and had told the neighbors that Scott was his cousin's illegitimate child and that he was adopting him.

Ozzie had been about forty then, in '48. He had quickly begun teaching Scott all about Poker, but he had never let the boy play with anyone else, and never for real money, until the summer of '59, when Scott was sixteen, and they went off on one of the annual trips together.

"You never play for money at home," Ozzie had said. "You don't want the cards to know where you live."

Scott had become known as Scarecrow Smith, because before about 1980 doctors couldn't effectively attach glass eyes to eye muscles, and so it was more natural-looking for him to turn his whole head to look at something than to have only one eye move to the side; to some players this had made his eyes seem painted on and his neck appear unnaturally loose. And "Scarecrow" had fitted with his adopted father's nickname: whenever Oliver Crane was asked where he lived, he had always just said, "Oz."

In fact, Ozzie had not let anyone in the Poker world know where he lived. He used the name Smith when he played and insisted that Scott do the same, and he always kept his car registered to a post office box.