Last Call (Last Call 1)

He looked around. At the moment there wasn't anyone who could see them.

He curled his arm across her shoulders, and then with deliberate slowness lowered his mouth onto hers.

Her mouth opened—

—to cough out one harsh syllable of laughter: an awkward, embarrassed laugh, as if she had suddenly found herself in a profoundly distasteful situation and wasn't sure how to get out of it without giving offense, without making her revulsion evident. There had not been any slightest response in her lips or her body.

Funo felt as if he had tried to kiss an old man.

Then he was up and running, and by the time he burst out of one of the north doors onto the bright Strip sidewalk, he was crying.

He was long gone. Reculver walked back to the booth and sat down. In a few moments Trumbill came swinging and stamping back to the table. He looked at Betsy alone in the booth and raised his eyebrows.

"Gone to the head?" he asked.

"No, he—he ran away." She shook her head bewilderedly. "I … had him wrong, Vaughan. I thought he was just a, you know, small-time ambitious hood; Moynihan's guys get him out of here quiet, we shoot him up with sodium pentothal or something, and then we bury him in the desert when we've found out what he knows. But he … tried to kiss me! Sit down, will you? He tried to kiss me, and I guess I didn't react—properly."

Trumbill stared at her. His mouth kinked in a rare, ironic grin. "I guess you wouldn't."

"I wonder if we'll hear from him again."

He sat down. "If we do, you'd better tell him you were … on your period, but now you're okay again and you think he's sexy."

"I couldn't possibly do that."

Two men in shorts and flowered shirts hurried up to the table now, panting. "He got clean away, Mrs. Reculver. He was in a cab and gone by the time we got to the sidewalk. We were walking toward here, from by the kitchen, but then he just up and ran out."

"Yeah," said the other man nervously. "You didn't tell us to watch for him to just up and run out."

"I know," said Reculver, still distracted. "Get out of here, and next time be quicker."

"I better get back on the phone," said Trumbill, wearily getting up again, "and tell Moynihan we don't need his guys after all. Did you get a chance to order?"

"No. We should be heading back home."

Trumbill pursed his lips but didn't argue. There were the tropical fish at home.

CHAPTER 20: Isis, I Have Your Son

The sky was dark, but the white lights of the wedding chapels jumped and crawled in the cracks in Arky's windshield.

One beer, thought Crane as Arky gunned the old truck south on Las Vegas Boulevard and the full Coors cans bumped around in the ice chest. What conceivable harm could there be in having one beer? In this town people walk down the street with glasses of hard liquor; get a free drink in one casino, and you can take it right outside with you, leave the glass in the next place you go to and get another.

But it wouldn't be just one, he told himself. No matter how emphatically you swore and promised that it would. And if it's possible to save your life here, you've got to not let Dionysus get any better a grip on you than he's already got.

The World Series of Poker was due to start at the end of this month at Binion's Horseshoe, and if this was going to be like 1969, the Assumption games on the lake would take place before that, during Holy Week. Which was next week. Crane didn't have a plan, but if there was any way he could elude the death his real father had planned for him, he would have to stay sober.

But, he thought, Ozzie says I'm doomed—and if he's right, why should I die sober?

Okay, he told himself, maybe. But not tonight, okay? Just this one night you can do without a drink, can't you? If we find Diana, you want to be functioning at your best, don't you? Such as your best is.

"Watch for Charleston," said Ozzie from the back seat. "You're going to turn left."

"I know, Oz," said Mavranos wearily.

"Well," said the old man, "I don't want you missing it and then cutting capers in this traffic to get back."

"Cutting capers?" Mavranos said, sneaking a sip of his current beer. "Those fish eggs?"

Crane was laughing.

"What's so funny?" Mavranos demanded. "Oh—you mean those little birds people cook on New Year's. Capons."

"He means clowning around," Crane said.

"Why didn't he say so then. I don't know about cutting capers." He drove moodily for a while. "I know about cutting farts."

Even Ozzie was laughing now.

A neon sign over a liquor store read PHOTO IDS. Crane read it as one word, photoids. What would that be, he wondered, things like photons? False light? Faux light, as they'd say? Maybe the whole town was lit with such.