Last Call (Last Call 1)

They filled the Suburban's gas tank and radiator and checked the tires, and then spent two hundred dollars at the Grant Boys on Newport Boulevard for a Mossberg shotgun and a box of number six shells. The shotgun was a pump-action twelve-gauge with a seventeen-inch barrel and no shoulder stock, just a hard black-plastic pistol-grip, and Crane winced at the thought of all that recoil slamming into the palm of his hand; Ozzie would probably shatter his old wrist if he were ever to shoot it. They also bought a four-foot-long gun-carrying case with an orange plastic finish molded to look like alligator hide; it had a piano-hinge down the long side away from the handle, and when it was opened out flat, the interior was two sheets of gray foam rubber knobbed with patterns of rounded pyramids. Mavranos said it looked like an electron microscope view of atoms in a crystal, and Ozzie said shortly that he had already gathered that Mavranos was smart, and didn't need to be reminded all the time.

Ozzie let the two younger men carry the purchases out to the truck—Scott moving slowly and favoring his bad leg—and then the old man climbed carefully into the back seat and got himself settled before Mavranos started the engine and turned right onto the boulevard.

The interior of the truck was steamy, and Crane cranked down his window to get relief from the smells of motor oil and old socks and crumpled takeout bags from Taco Bell.

Newport Boulevard had just broadened out into the Newport Freeway when Ozzie leaned forward from the back seat and tapped Mavranos on the shoulder. "Take the 405 north there, like you were going to the LAX airport."

Crane looked back over his shoulder at the old man. "I thought we were going to Vegas—straight up the 55 here to the 91 east."

"Do as I said, please, Archimedes," said Ozzie.

Mavranos shrugged and made the long turn northward onto the 405. He took a sip from a fresh can of Coors.

"Uh," said Crane. "Isn't this … the long way to Las Vegas?"

"You think your old man's nuts," said Ozzie tiredly, rocking on the back seat next to a battered tin Coleman stove. He sighed. "Listen, you wouldn't sail to … Catalina, even, would you, without checking reports on the weather and currents and tides? And there's nothing between here and Catalina that would particularly love to see you dead, and anyway, it's only twenty-six miles. Well, boy, right now you're aiming to drive more than two hundred miles, through all sorts of weather and tides you never even heard of, with a lot of bad guys watching for you." He shook his head. "You gotta clock the tides first, boy." He bared his yellow teeth in what might have been a grin. "We gotta check the weather, lick a finger and hold it up in the breeze, so we'll know what kind of rigging to use. We gotta go to Gardena."

Mavranos squinted into the rearview mirror. "Gardena?"

"There's legal Poker clubs in Gardena," Crane said, "and in a lot of the other areas of L. A. around there." He shifted around on the front seat. "But you always said not to play in those places."

"Not for money, no," said Ozzie, "paying for your seat and playing with people whose betting habits you don't know. But we're not after money today, are we? And the worst thing about trying to make money at these big Poker emporiums, with like fifty or a hundred tables working, is that the fortune-telling effect naturally happens that much more often, and when it starts at one table, a lot of times it'll spread."

"Like a seed crystal again," said Mavranos.

"Right. You'll find the savvy players always have cigarettes burning even if they don't smoke, so they can watch how the smoke behaves—it starts puddling above the middle of the table, they get out—and they'll have some drink, mostly just Coke or water, so they can keep an eye on the level of it, same reason. But I'm gonna want to see the … tides of fortune. And I'll get into some smoke-puddling games, and if the hands I get apply to us, I'll try to buy us good luck, or sell bad luck to somebody else."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Mavranos.

"You got cigarettes?" Ozzie asked.

"Half carton of desert dogs back there. Camels."

"Well, you two can play if you'll keep cigarettes lit and watch the smoke—and fold out when it acts funny. Now I think of it, Scott, it might be a good idea for you to play some; if they sense you, they'll put you in L. A., which you're not gonna be for much longer. Otherwise be railbirds—watch, have a sandwich, whatever." Ozzie was peering out ahead through the cracked windshield. "North on the 605 here—catch the 5 and take it north, that should take us into the middle of it, and being close to the L.A. River won't hurt, though it's always dry."