Last Call (Last Call 1)

"Sure," said the old woman. "Crane. Fortyish guy, with two buddies, one with a mustache and the other real old. They're in six, but they just a little bit ago drove off."

"In his red pickup?"

"No, it was a big blue thing, like a cross between a station wagon and a Jeep." She yawned. "I could put you next to them, in five or seven."

"Hey, that'd be great, thanks. Heh-heh, listen, don't tell them I'm here, okay? I want to surprise them."

She shrugged.

Funo gave her his MasterCard rather than his American Express because he knew she would call it in; that's how he had found Crane after all. This was becoming expensive, in both money spent and work time lost. He wondered if there was some way to make it pay, to get it out of the category of auto-assignment. He thought about the gray Jag, and the telephone number that he had got with the registration data on the Jag's Nevada license plate number. That fat man driving it had been after something. And he had seemed to have money—but what did he want?

When Funo signed the draft, he noticed the date: 4/1/90. April Fool's Day.

It upset him. It seemed to mock what he was doing, make him seem insignificant.

He gazed at the old woman until she looked up, and then he gave her a wink and his best boyish smile.

She just stared at him, as if he were a stain on the wall, a stain that might resemble a person if you squinted at it in a certain way.

He was glad he had already signed the voucher, for his hands were trembling now.

Mavranos drove out of the multilevel parking structure behind the Flamingo and steered the big Suburban along the broad driveway, past the taxi stand and the loading zone toward the Strip. He took it slow over the wide speed bumps, but still the car rattled as it crested the lines of raised asphalt, and the ice shook and swashed in the ice chest. The Strip was clear either way for a hundred yards when he got to the street, and he made his left turn as easily as he would have in some quiet Midwest suburb.

"What are the odds of that?" he asked Ozzie, forcing himself to squint intently and not smile. "Making a left so easy in front of the Flamingo?"

"Christ," wailed the old man, "you're looking for big statistical waves, okay? If you start watching for, I don't know, numbers on license plates, or two fat ladies wearing the same flowered shorts, you're—"

Mavranos laughed. "I'm kidding you, Oz! But I swear a couple of things back there signified."

They had watched a Craps table at the Flamingo for a while, had walked across the street to listen for patterns in the ringing and clattering of the slots at Caesars Palace, and then had written down a hundred consecutive numbers that came up on a Roulette wheel at the Mirage. Twice, once crossing the street west and once east, Mavranos had simultaneously heard a car horn honk and a dog bark and had looked up to catch hard sun glare off a windshield, so that for half a minute afterward he'd seen a dark red ball everywhere he looked, and at Caesars, three different strangers had whispered, "Seven," as they shouldered past him. He had eagerly asked Ozzie if he thought these coincidences might mean anything, and the old man had dismissed them all impatiently.

Now, stopped for a red light in the right-turn lane at the Flamingo Road traffic signal, Mavranos dug out of his pocket the penciled list of Roulette numbers and scanned them.

"Light's green," said Ozzie after a few moments.

"How I need a drink …" said Mavranos thoughtfully, taking his foot off the brake and turning the wheel but still staring at the list.

"Watch the road!" said Ozzie sharply. "You've got a beer between your knees, as usual, and frankly I think you drink way too much."

"No," said Mavranos, "I mean pi, you know, pi?

Ozzie was staring at him. "You want a pie? Instead of a drink? What the hell kind of pie? Can't you—"

Mavranos passed the list to the old man, eyed the traffic, and stepped on the gas pedal. "Here. Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, you know? Radius times pi squared, you've heard that kind of talk. Pi's what they call an irrational number, three and an infinitely long string of numbers after the decimal point. Well, there's a sentence you memorize, a mnemonic thing, to remember the numbers that are pi, out to something like a dozen places. I read it in a Rudy Rucker book. It starts, 'How I need a drink …'—that's three, one, four, one, five, get it? Number of letters in each word. But I can't remember the rest of the mnemonic sentence."

They had crossed over I-15. Ozzie squinted through the dusty windshield and pointed. "That's our motel on the right, don't miss the driveway. Archimedes, I really am not following—"

"See where the Roulette numbers were three, one, four, fifteen in the middle there? Look at the paper, I can see where I'm going. What numbers come after that?"

"Uh … nine, twenty-six, five, thirty-five, eight …"

Mavranos turned into the lot, parked near their room, and turned off the engine.