Last Call (Last Call 1)

When they'd got to Las Vegas at about midnight, Ozzie had made Scott shake the box and peek into it continuously as Ozzie steered the car through the brightly lit streets. The flashlight's battery was getting weak when they rounded a corner and saw the whirling red lights of police cars by one of the side entrances of the Stardust.

They parked and joined the crowd on the sidewalk around the police cars. The night air was hot, with a dry wind from the stony mountains to the west.

"Somebody shot some lady," said a man in answer to Ozzie's What's up?

"It was that Lady Issit, the one who's been kicking everybody's ass at the Poker tables," another man added. "I heard tell a big fat guy shot her right in the face, two or three shots."

Ozzie had walked away, shaking the coins in the vanilla wafers box. Scott followed him.

"She ditched the baby, or Venus would have been behind the moon," Ozzie said. "And the moon's still up and Venus is down, so the kid's still around somewhere, alive."

For an hour, while Scott grew more and more impatient and embarrassed, the two of them walked up and down Las Vegas Boulevard as Ozzie kept shaking the box and looking into it.

And to his own chagrin Scott was not surprised when they heard an infant's sobbing from behind a row of bushes on the south side of the Sands.

"Careful," Ozzie said instantly. The old man's hand was inside his jacket, and Scott knew he was holding the butt of the Smith & Wesson .38.

"Here." Ozzie turned to Scott and passed the gun to him. "Keep it out of sight unless you see somebody coming at me."

It was only a few steps to the bushes, and Ozzie came back with a baby, wrapped in a light-colored blanket, in his arms.

"Back to the car," Ozzie said tensely, "and don't watch us, look around."

The baby had stopped crying and was sucking on one of the old man's fingers. Scott walked behind Ozzie, swinging his head from side to side and occasionally walking backward to monitor all 360 degrees. He wasn't doubting his foster father now.

It took only five minutes to get back to the car. Ozzie opened the passenger-side door and took the gun, and then Scott got in and Ozzie handed him the baby—

—and for a moment Scott not only could feel the baby in his arms but could also feel the pale blanket surrounding him, and could feel protective arms sheltering him. Something in his mind or his soul had for years been unconnected, flapping loose in the psychic breezes, and was now finally connected, and Scott was sharing the baby's sensations—and he knew she was sharing his.

In his mind he could feel a personality that consisted of nothing but fright and bewilderment. You're all right now, he thought. We'll take care of you now; we're taking you home.

The link he shared with the infant was fading, but he did catch a faint surge of relief and hope and gratitude.

Ozzie was behind the wheel, starting the car. "You okay?" he asked, glancing at Scott.

"Uh," Scott said dizzily. The link was gone now, or had receded below the level at which he could sense it, but he was still so shaken by it that he wasn't sure he would not start crying, or laughing, or trembling uncontrollably. "Sure," he managed to say. "I just … never held a newborn baby before."

The old man stared at him for another moment before clanking the car into gear and steering out onto the street. "I hadn't thought of that," he said, alternately looking ahead and peering at the rearview mirror. "That's … something I hadn't … considered." He gave Scott a brief, worried glance. "You going to be okay?"

Ask her, Scott thought. "Sure," he said.

On the long drive home Ozzie had alternately driven very fast and very slow, all the while asking Scott what headlights he could see behind them. When they got back to the familiar streets of Santa Ana, the old man wasted a full hour driving around in circles, lights off and lights on, before at last pulling up to the curb in front of the house.

Diana had been passed off as another illegitimate child of Ozzie's cousin's. The nonexistent cousin was getting quite a reputation.

Now Scott Crane parked the Torino in front of Chick Hurzer's bungalow on Washington Street, and after he turned off the engine and lights, he just sat in the dark car for a few minutes. For the first time in thirteen weeks he was thinking about a different loss than the loss of his wife.

Ozzie and Diana and Scott.

They'd been a family, his family, in that old house. Scott had fed Diana, had helped teach her to read, had admired the crayon drawings she had brought home from first and second grades. She had done a drawing of him as a Christmas present in 1968. Once she had broken her arm falling off the jungle gym on the playground, and once some neighborhood kid had thrown a rock at her forehead, and she'd got a concussion; both times he had been miles away but had known about it, and had gone looking for her.