Last Call (Last Call 1)

"Okay," Crane whispered. "Ozzie and Arky are parked back there; you can just see the car with its headlights out, see it? If you hear another shot, run back and get them. They'll have some ideas."

"But you're not this guy's father! Won't he see that right away?"

"It's dark," Crane said, "and he's crazy. If I can get close to him and he's not actually pointing his gun at your kid, I'll kill him. I imagine he'll have the gun pointed at me."

"So you'll be killed."

"Maybe not. Anyway, I'm dead already, ask Ozzie."

He stood up and limped slowly around the car. Diana had turned off the Mustang's headlights, so the moon was the only light, but its radiance was bright enough to show the dilapidated station and the lot and the dirt road that curled away behind it to the top of the hill.

"Scott."

He looked back. Diana was standing up behind the car, and now she hurried to him and hugged him tightly. "I love you," she said. "Come back safe."

"Two little lovebirds," sang Snayheever up on the hill, "sittin' in a tree, kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee."

"Christ," Diana whispered, "get my son away from that man."

"I will," Crane told her as he started forward again. "Get back behind the car and stay there."

Crane was sweating as he limped up the dusty, hummocky road, and the breeze not only chilled him but seemed to sting, as if he'd rubbed Ben-Gay all over himself. His bad leg stung and ached. Why hadn't he got a beer from Mavranos as well as the gun?

He wondered how much he might happen to resemble Snayheever's father. Would the crazy young man simply shoot him from a distance when he saw that Crane was the wrong man?

Was Snayheever's finger tightening on the trigger right now?

Crane flinched, but kept limping up the hill.

He tried to imagine being shot, in the frail hope that picturing it would enable him to face it and not stop right where he was and turn around and go hopping and sliding and whimpering back down to the car.

A punch like a hammer, and then you're down, he thought, and the place where you've been hit feels numb and hot and loose.

It didn't help. Each second was a hard choice between going on and running back to the precious penumbra of the car body.

If he kills you, he told himself, you'll just be joining Susan. But the only image of Susan that he could conjure up right now was of the thing that had been convulsing in his closet as he had climbed out of his broken bedroom window on Friday night.

You're going to die anyway, he thought desperately, for having stupidly played in that Assumption game. This way you die trying to save Diana's son's life. Purposeful instead of pointless.

But the death by Assumption won't happen tonight. If you run away, you can have breakfast tomorrow, a good breakfast with a big Bloody Mary in a nice place, with Ozzie. Would the old man hold it against me that I turned back here?

Yes, thought Crane, despairingly and almost angrily, he would.

He began taking longer strides, snarling at the pain in his stabbed thigh.

"Dad!" called Snayheever.

Crane rocked to a halt and looked up through sweat-stung eyes, but couldn't see him. "Yes, son?"

"You changed. You did the trick they're all excited about; you got the cards to get you a new body!" The young man's laugh was shrill with excitement. "Are you a brother of mine now, too?"

Crane couldn't apply logic to it, so he just called, "That's right!" and kept limping up the road.

"That was a gunshot," said Mavranos, staring ahead through a rubbed-clean spot of the Suburban's windshield.

"Yes," agreed Ozzie, "but Scott walked up the hill openly enough. Is Diana still by the car?"

"Yeah, crouched behind it. How long you want to wait before we drive up?"

"I don't know."

From the back seat came the sneezy puff of a beer can being opened.

Mavranos glanced back, then leaned back over the seat and took the can from young Oliver. "Thanks, kid—but from now on I'm the only one to touch the beers, okay?"

"I drink beer," said Oliver defensively. "Give me a gun—I'm small, I can sneak around and waste this motherfucker."

"Watch your mouth, Oliver," said Ozzie sternly without looking away from the Mustang.

"Call me Bitin Dog." The boy seemed feverishly excited by the night's events. "Really, I got the kid into this, ditching him, and I can get him out."

"Just sit, Oliver," said Mavranos impatiently. "And if you get out of this car, I'll catch you and whup your butt like I would a little kid, okay? Right here beside the road where everybody'll see."

A white sports car had driven past them, and now its brake lights glowed as it pulled in behind the Mustang.

"Who the hell's that?" asked Ozzie.

"Stranger, probably, thinks Diana needs help. I hope she can get rid of him."

"Be ready to get over there fast."

Diana half hoped this new car was police, but when she saw the well-dressed young stranger get out and start walking toward her, she bit her lip and pretended to be looking at the lug nuts on her wheel.