Last Call (Last Call 1)

They drove around, and found a new casino called the Moulin Rouge in the colored neighborhood west of the 91. Leon had not even heard that such a place was being built, and he didn't like colored people, but Scotty had been hungry and Leon had been impatient, so they had gone in. After Scotty had been told that his flattened pennies wouldn't spin the wheels of the slot machines, they went to the restaurant and ordered plates of what turned out to be a surprisingly good lobster stew.

After Scotty had eaten as much as he could of his, he shoved the sauce out to the rim of the plate; through the mess at the center peeked the harlequin figure that was apparently the Moulin Rouge's trademark.

The boy had stared at the white face for a moment, then looked up at his father and said, "The Joker."

Georges Leon had shown no expression as he followed his son's gaze to the face on the plate. The androgynous harlequin figure did resemble the standard Joker in a deck of cards, and of course he knew that the Joker was the only member of the Major Arcana figures to survive the truncation of the seventy-eight-card Tarot deck to the modern fifty-three-card playing card deck.

In previous centuries the figure had been called the Fool, and was portrayed dancing on a cliff edge, holding a stick and pursued by a dog, but the Joker and the Fool were unarguably the same Person.

A piece of lobster obscured one of the grinning figure's eyes.

"A one-eyed Joker," Scotty had added cheerfully.

Leon had hastily paid the bill and dragged his son out into the rainstorm that had swept into town while they'd been eating. They'd driven back as far as the Las Vegas Club, and then, feeling conspicuous in the big car, Leon had insisted on leaving it there and putting on their hats and walking the few blocks back through the dwindling rain to the bungalow on Bridger Avenue that was their home.

Scott's eighteen-year-old brother, Richard, was on the roof, scanning the nearby streets and housefronts when they walked up, and he didn't glance down when they unlocked the front door and went inside.

Leon's wife was standing in the kitchen doorway, and the smile on her thin, worn face seemed forced. "You two are home early."

Georges Leon walked past her and sat down at the kitchen table. He drummed his fingers on the Formica surface—his fingertips seemed to vibrate, as if he'd been drinking too much coffee. "It started raining," he said. "Could you get me a Coke?" He stared at his drumming hand, noting the gray hairs on the knuckles.

Donna obediently opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle and levered off the cap in the opener on the wall.

Perhaps encouraged by the drumming, or trying to dispel the tension that seemed to cramp the air in the room, Scotty ran over to where his father sat.

"Sonny Boy," Scotty said.

Georges Leon looked at his son and considered simply not doing this thing that he had planned.

For nearly twenty years Leon had worked toward the position he now held, and during all that time he had managed to see people as no more a part of himself than the numbers and statistics that he had used to get there. Only today, with this boy, had he begun to suspect the existence of cracks in his resolve.

He should have suspected the cracks earlier.

The boat trips on Lake Mead had been strategy, for instance, but he could see now that he had enjoyed the boy's enthusiasm for baiting hooks and rowing; and sharing some of his hard-learned advice about cards and dice had become, as he should have noticed, more a father sharing his skills with his son than mere cold precautions.

Donna clanked the bottle down in front of him, and he took a thoughtful sip of Coke.

Then, imitating the voice of the singer they'd seen in the lounge at the Las Vegas Club one night, he said, " 'Climb up on my knee, Sonny Boy.' "

Scotty complied happily.

" 'When there are gray skies …' " Leon sang.

" 'What don't you mind in the least?' " recited Scotty.

" 'I don't mind the gray skies …' "

" 'What do I do to them?' "

" 'You make them blue …' "

" 'What's my name?' "

" 'Sonny Boy.' "

" 'What will friends do to you?' "

Leon wondered what friends that was supposed to refer to. He paused before singing the next line.

He could stop. Move back to the coast, go into hiding from the jacks, who would surely come looking for him; live out the remainder of his life—twenty-one more years, if he got the standard threescore and ten—as a normal man. His other son, Richard, might even still recover.

" 'What will friends do to you?' " Scotty repeated.

Leon looked at the boy and realized with a dull despair that he had come, in the last five years, to love him. The lyrics seemed for a moment to hold a promise—maybe Scotty could make these gray skies blue. Had the Fool been holding out a last-chance offer of that?

It could have been.

But …