Last Call (Last Call 1)

Pogue was getting back up on his feet, though, and his hand was a splintered white and red ruin, jetting arterial blood; clearly Mavranos's shot had gone as aimed. The sight of the ruined hand drove a column of hot vomit up Mavranos's throat, and he resolutely clenched his jaw and swallowed … but for a moment he wondered if his gun had somehow shot several bullets, or rather several likelihoods of bullets.

Pogue was howling now in the green seaweed-tasting rain, and he lunged at Snayheever's ankles.

Mavranos raised his .38 again, but the two figures were together, and the pavement was shaking over the laboring heart of the dam, and he didn't dare shoot. Pogue had climbed up on the coping and was sitting straddling it beside Snayheever, and he had clasped his one good arm around Snayheever's legs. His hat had come off and gone spinning away down the afterbay wall, and his pompadour was broken into wet strands plastered across his forehead.

Snayheever was just standing there on the coping surface now, but still smiling into the dark sky and waving his arms. "Blind as a bat!" he roared, with Pogue and Mavranos moaning it in synchronization.

"Is there anyone that can hear me?" Pogue shouted over the hiss of the hot rain. His darkly swollen eyes were screwed shut, and the bandage taped over his nose was blotting with blood.

Mavranos waved his gun helplessly. "I can hear you, man," he called.

"Help me, please," Pogue sobbed. "I'm turned around, and I'm blind, but I've got to sink my head right now. I can't wait for the blood to behave! Am I on the lake side of the highway? Is it the lake below us here?"

If I say yes, Mavranos thought, he'll let go of Snayheever and jump, and I can yank Snayheever down from there.

But I'll be killing Pogue, as surely as if I'd shot him through the face.

If I say no, he'll throw Snayheever off and then cross the highway unimpeded. I won't be able to reach him, stop him, with his optical illusion magic going full strength again. He'll jump off the lake-side edge, and Diana will be doomed.

And if I say nothing at all …?

Okay then, he thought despairingly, I'll go to hell.

"That's the lake below you," he said loudly, feeling the words brand burns into his soul. "You're on the railing at the north side."

Pogue's lean face split into a white grin under the straggling wet hair and the bandage—

—And he snapped his head forward, buried his teeth in Snayheever's calf and swung his highway-side leg up and kicked Snayheever's knee.

Then Snayheever had tipped, and Mavranos swore and started forward in horror. He couldn't tell whether the flailing of Snayheever's arms was a useless attempt to keep his balance or still part of the crazy dance; Snayheever disappeared over the side, and Pogue, his arm still around his legs and his teeth still in his flesh, rolled off the coping after him.

Mavranos slammed into the cement wall and peered over the edge.

For several seconds the locked-together figure that was Snayheever and Pogue spun free in the mist above the dizzying abyss, rapidly diminishing in apparent size. Then they touched the steep slope and bounced and tumbled away apart, arms and legs flailing horribly loose, and they cartwheeled and sprang all the way down to the cement power station roof, where they briefly shook in what must have been prodigious bounces, and were two tiny, still forms.

Then the resounding air was stilled, like a struck piano wire when the foot pedal is tromped on, and the dam under Mavranos's feet became again as solid as the mountains, and the flow of water through the mighty penstocks and giant turbines must abruptly have been restored to a full, even flow, for the face of the river below the dam quickly became as smooth as a plate of glass.

The rain of lake water stopped, and the wind was steady, and the bats and fish were gone. Clouds blocked the sun intermittently, and the edges of cloud shadow on the pavement were as sharp as if they had been razored out of black cardboard.

And Mavranos stood away from the gradual geometric curve of the coping, which stretched in an unrippled arc from one mountain to the other. He uncocked his revolver and put it back in his belt and pulled his shirttail over it. He took a deep breath, then swallowed, and swallowed again.

He tapped his jacket pocket, then fished out the Baggie. It had burst at some point during the last several minutes, but the little goldfish was still flopping in the wet plastic bag.

He walked quickly out onto the highway, between the cars and across to the lake-facing railing. He held the Baggie out over the abyss and the lake water below, and he shook the fish out, then leaned over and watched it tumble away until he couldn't see it anymore.

His exhaustion was gone. He sprinted away over the drying pavement, down the center of the long, curving highway, running with his knees well up, swerving effortlessly around the abandoned cars, toward the parking lot where he had left the truck.