Last Call (Last Call 1)

But suddenly Crane's heart was thumping and his palms were chilly. I should have done something, he found himself thinking. I've got to get home. His hands were on the upholstery of the seat, but for a moment he could feel a telephone; his right hand seemed to be hanging it up.

This isn't me, he realized; these aren't my thoughts and sensations.

"Diana's worried," he said tightly, "scared. Something she heard on the telephone just now. She's going home."

"Here's Charleston," Ozzie said, leaning forward over the seat and pointing.

Mavranos nodded. He angled into the left-turn lane and stopped in the middle of the intersection, waiting for a gap in the oncoming northbound traffic. The only sounds in the car were Crane's panting and the click-click, click-click of the turn indicator.

Crane could feel Diana walking quickly, stopping, talking urgently to someone. He stared at the headlights ahead of them moving slowly forward, and he wanted to get out of the car and run east, toward the next place on their list of supermarkets—what was it, Smith's.

"We'd better find her tonight," he said. "I think she's losing her job. If you could catch all the green lights between here and there …"

"I get it," Mavranos told him.

At last the light turned yellow and Mavranos was able to make the turn. He drove fast to Maryland Parkway and passed it, then turned right, into the expansive parking lot that was streaked and puddled with the white light spilling out from the wide open entrance of Smith's Food and Drug. Ozzie pushed open his door as soon as Mavranos had parked, but Crane turned around and grabbed the old man's shoulder. "Wait," Crane said. "I feel pavement under my shoes, her shoes. And warmer air. She's outside." The old man nodded and hastily pulled the door shut.

Mavranos started the car and backed out of the space, drawing an angry honk from a Volkswagen.

"Drive around," Ozzie said. "I'll know her." He was peering at a woman walking a child across the asphalt, then looking past her at another woman unlocking a car. "Is this the right place, the right store?"

"I … don't know," Crane said.

"She might be at some other store."

"—Yes."

Crane was staring around too, and Mavranos drove the car past the glaringly bright store entrance, past a closed GOLD BUYERS store, then turned right to loop around again.

"Is she still walking?" Mavranos's voice was harsh. "Is she in a car yet?"

Crane reached out with his mind, but couldn't sense anything now. "I don't know. Keep moving."

Lost her job, he thought. If we miss her now, we've missed her for good.

"Worthless windshield," he hissed, rolling down his window and sticking his head out. Everywhere cars seemed to be starting up, driving out of the lot, disappearing up or down the dark street.

"That's—" squeaked Ozzie. "No. Goddammit, my eyes aren't good enough for this! What the hell good am I?"

Crane squinted forward and around and back, trying to make his eyes focus better and still desperately trying to pick up mental impressions.

"Around by the front of the store again?" asked Mavranos.

"Uh," said Ozzie unhappily, "yes. No. Circle out here."

"Been already probably half a dozen women drive away," Mavranos said.

"Do as I say." The old man had already rolled down his window, and now he put his head outside, too. "Diana!" he yelled, his parroty old voice not carrying at all. Crane thought of how the old man had, though exhausted, tried to catch up with him in the Mint Hotel stairwell in '69, when Crane had left to play in the Assumption game, and now his eyes blurred with tears.

"Goddammit," Crane whispered, blinking them away. He made himself calm down and look carefully at each person in the lot.

Away from the store, closer to the Jack in the Box restaurant on the Maryland Parkway side of the lot, Crane saw a woman opening the door of a tan Mustang. She tossed back her blond hair and got in. An instant later the car's lights came on, and smoke blew out of the exhaust.

"That's her," he shouted at Mavranos, pointing, "that Mustang."

Mavranos spun the wheel and stepped on the gas, but the Mustang was already in the exit driveway, signaling for a right turn.

"You sensed it, did you?" panted Ozzie, pulling his head in.

"No, I—I recognized her."

"All the way over there? You haven't seen her since she was nine! That's probably not her at all! Arky, go back around—"

"I know it's her," Crane interrupted.

The Mustang had turned right onto the street, and as Mavranos sped to the exit, Crane wondered how sure he really was. At least I'm sober, he thought. If it's a mistake, it's a sober mistake.

Mavranos had turned right onto Maryland Parkway and accelerated after the Mustang, and in the next several seconds he changed lanes twice.

"I think Scott's right," he growled. "She's going like a scalded cat."