Last Call (Last Call 1)

Git along, little dogie, he thought. It's all your misfortune and none of my own.

The telephone buzzed, and he picked it up and wrote down the data the voice gave him: Scott Crane, born 2/28/43, address 106 East Second Street, Santa Ana. That was the old house at the corner.

He turned on the dome light and shuffled through the six manila envelopes. It was probably the young man who had used the name Scott "Scarecrow" Smith in the '69 game.

Trumbill opened the envelope and looked at the photographs of Scott Smith. In the twenty-one-year-old pictures he was a dark-haired, lean-faced young man, often in the company of an old man identified in ink on the margins as Ozzie Smith, evidently Scott's father. Paper-clipped to the photographs was a copy of a bill from the Mint Hotel in Las Vegas; the bill had a Montebello, California, address for both Scott and Ozzie, and someone had written across it "Phony."

Montebello was one of those cities that were part of Los Angeles—close enough to Santa Ana. This Smith person had to be the fish Trumbill was looking for. The nearest of the other five lived in Sacramento.

Also in the envelope was a photograph of a pregnant blond woman stepping out of a car; her face, caught turning toward someone out of the scene, was taut and strong.

"Issit," read the note taped to the back of the picture. "Born c. '35. Folded 6/20/60. Daughter, born 6/19(?)/60, believed to be alive—'Diana Smith'—possibly living with Ozzie Smith—address unknown—urgently FOLD.

Trumbill looked at the woman's face, absently remembering how the face had changed as he had fired three bullets through it, thirty years ago.

Diana Smith. Trumbill looked at the dark bulk of 106 and wondered if she might be living there, too. That would be all right.

He put the photographs back into the envelope and then pulled out his wallet and looked at his laminated FBI identification tag. It was the most recent version, with the gold band across the top, and nobody would believe that the obese Trumbill was a newly hired agent, but this Crane fellow wasn't likely to know anything about FBI IDs.

Better to leave the car here, he thought, in case any jacks are in the area who might be watching the place. Better to be a pedestrian.

He opened the door, pocketed his wallet, patted the holstered SIG 9-millimeter automatic under his coat, and began ambling in an aimless fashion toward 106.

Crane was breathing fast and shallow as he peered over the hood of one of Mavranos's impound-yard cars. Goddammit, he thought, it's not the guy in the Porsche, but it's got to be somebody with him.

Crane was shivering. Shit, he thought miserably.

The sky was graying behind him in the east. Crane had walked around a dozen blocks, and finally the cold and his weariness and the thought of his bed had convinced him that he must have been wrong about the man in the Porsche. It must have been one of those random freeway shootings, he'd told himself; probably I cut him off without knowing it, and he got mad and decided to kill me … A guy that would drive around with no rear window would probably do that kind of thing.

But here was a serious-looking man checking out Crane's car and talking on a cellular telephone and now walking toward his house. This was as true and horribly undeniable as a broken tooth or a hernia. Even if the man was a plainclothes policeman, something was going on, something that Crane didn't want.

He thought about the beers in his refrigerator. He'd been an idiot not to bring them along in a bag.

The fat man must nearly be up to his porch; impulsively Crane sprinted across the street to the parked Jaguar. By the streetlight's glow he could see some manila envelopes on the seat.

He looked at his house. The man was up the steps and onto the porch now, and if he walked up to the door, he wouldn't be able to see the Jaguar.

The man went to the door and disappeared from view.

Crane turned his back to the Jaguar and then drove his elbow hard at the driver's window; it shattered inward with no more noise than a bottle breaking inside a paper bag, and he spun around, leaned in and snatched the envelopes, and then ran back across the street to the dark, recessed door of Mavranos's half of the duplex. He banged on the door with his free fist.

After a few seconds he banged on it again. Come on, Arky, he thought. I'll tell you what seeems to be the problem.

He could hear footsteps inside the house.

"Let me in, Arky," he said in an urgent, low voice. "It's me, it's Scott!"

He heard a chain slide through its channel and rattlingly fall, and then the door was pulled open and Crane had pushed his way inside. "Close it and lock it and don't turn on the lights," he gasped.

"Okay," Mavranos said. "What're you, delivering mail now?" Mavranos was wearing a shirt and undershorts and socks.

"Jesus, I hope you've got a beer."