Last Call (Last Call 1)

He looks a hundred years old, thought Crane anxiously as he stared at his foster father. The old man's eyes were down, looking at his cards.

"Time," said Ozzie, so quietly that Crane could deduce what he said only from the motion of his wrinkled lips. "Time … time … time …"

The smoke was a funnel over the table, and the constant undertone of clicking chips suddenly sounded shriller to Crane, like the whirling of a rattlesnake's tail. The air-conditioned breeze was as dry as the breath of the desert.

Ozzie was shaking his head. "Time!" he said again, loud enough this time now for even Mavranos to hear him and look up from his beer.

Ozzie's lip was curled now in something like defiance or resentment, and he looked up. "And ten," he said clearly, pushing forward three tan chips.

Crane saw the other players look curiously at this old contender, whose best hand could only be Two Pair, Nines and Fives. From their point of view he could only be hoping to fill a Full Boat, and the Kings and Tens looked like being a better one.

The man with the Kings and Tens raised, and so did the man with the probable Flush.

Ozzie pushed more chips out.

He sighed. "Call," he said.

The dealer spun another, face down, to each of the players.

The Kings and Tens bet, and the Flush raised.

"Call," said Ozzie clearly, pushing more chips forward.

It was the showdown now, and the players flipped their down cards face up.

The Kings were a Full Boat, Kings over Tens, which beat the Heart Flush Crane had expected. Ozzie's hand, which he exposed almost ceremonially, was the showing Two, Three, Five, and Nine, and, down, the Eight of Diamonds, the Ace of Spades, and the Four of Hearts.

Nothing at all. The other players must have thought he'd been trying to fill a Straight—which would have been beaten by either a Flush or a Boat, which the other hands had been, and had looked to be all along.

Ozzie pushed his remaining chips toward the dealer as a tip, then stood up and walked across the burgundy carpet toward the far stairs. Crane looked back to Mavranos and cocked his head after the old man. Mavranos nodded and stood up, bringing his beer with him as they walked around the sunken playing floor.

Ozzie was standing by an awning with PLAYERS CORNER scripted above it in neon. "I'm having a drink or two," he announced. "You," he said to Scott, "are sticking to coffee or Coke or something, right?"

Crane nodded, a little jerkily.

Slowly, but with his bony chin well up, the old man led Crane and Mavranos into the bar and to a tartan-patterned booth against the back wall.

The bar was nearly empty, though a wide oval of parquet in the middle of the floor and a mirrored disco ball turning unilluminated under the ceiling implied times of festivity here in the past. In spite of the Victorian flourishes on the dark wood pillars of the bar and the sporty prints framed on the walls and the heavy use of tartan, the band of mirror under the ceiling and the vertical mirrors that divided the walls every few yards made the walls look like free standing panels, subject to disassembly at any moment. A wide-screen television was mounted on the wall, showing some news program in black and white with no sound.

"What did you buy, in that last hand?" Crane asked.

"Luck," said Ozzie. "It's not too hard to speed-read the hands, get the gist of them, as they go by, like identifying creatures in an agitated tide pool—but if you're gonna reach in and grab one, you've gotta be sure you know exactly what it is. I had to wait for a hand that was—that would further us. That we could—that was acceptable. And it's hard to calculate seven cards and all their interactions when you've got a tableful of gamblers joggling your elbow." He rubbed his face with gnarled, spotty hands. "Took a long time for a—an acceptable hand to show up."

Mavranos slouched low in the seat and peered around at the decor with an air of disapproval. " 'Where fishmen lounge at noon,' " he said sarcastically, " 'where the walls/ Of Magnus Martyr hold/ Inexplicable splendor of Ionian white and gold.' "

"More Eliot?" asked Crane.

Mavranos nodded. He waved at the nearest cocktail waitress and then turned to Ozzie. "So how's the weather?"

The old man shook his head. "Stormy. A lot of Spades, which is the modern version of the Swords suit in the old Tarot deck. Just about any Spade is bad news, and the Nine's the worst—I saw it a lot. A double Ballantine scotch on the rocks," he added to the cocktail waitress, who was now standing beside the table with her pad ready.

Coke, thought Crane. Soda water—maybe with bitters. Goddammit. V-eight. Seven-Up.

"Hi, darlin'," said Mavranos. " You've got to excuse our friend here—he doesn't like pretty girls. I'll have a Coors."

"Maybe he doesn't think I'm pretty," said the waitress.

Crane blinked up at her. She was slim, with dark hair and brown eyes, and she was smiling. "I think you're pretty," he said. "I'll have a soda water with a shake of Angostura."