Last Call (Last Call 1)

Headlights were approaching on the highway from the south, and they slowed as they approached the two vehicles parked on the west shoulder. Crane made his eye focus on it; he hoped it wasn't police.

No, it was just a white sports car, a Porsche.

A white Porsche.

No, he thought even as his heart began pounding, no, you see white Porsches everywhere—hell, there was one parked in the slot next to ours at the motel.

There was one parked in the slot next to ours at the motel.

"Get down!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, ignoring the pain in his side. "Everybody get down on the ground! Oz! Get 'em down!"

He shook off Mavranos's arm and drew the .357 and tried to aim it at the white car, which had stopped on the far shoulder.

Mavranos had pulled his own revolver out of his belt. "What?" he asked sharply. "That white car?"

"Yes!"

Can't shoot, Crane thought. What if it's just some Good Samaritan? And at this range with this two-inch barrel you'd be as likely to hit Ozzie or Diana.

"Everybody get down!" he screamed again.

Nobody was obeying him. Scat was still running down the sloping dirt road, and Diana was still running up to meet him, and Ozzie was hunching along at what must have been his top speed, far behind her. The fat kid had got out of the Suburban and was standing beside it.

A hollow pop rang across the highway in the same instant that the Porsche's driver's side window flared with a wink of yellow light.

Halfway down the hill road, Scat dived forward into the dirt and slid for a yard, face down. Then he didn't move.

Diana's scream filled the desert, and almost seemed to drown the roars of Crane's .357 and Mavranos's .38 as they emptied their guns at the receding white car, which didn't even wobble as it gathered speed.

CHAPTER 22: Alligator Blood

Diana was the first to reach Scat—but when she got to where her son lay she paused, then just knelt beside him with her hands half raised.

As Crane hopped and scrambled and sweated down the hill, Mavranos ran on ahead, and Crane saw him look down at the boy and reel back.

When Crane finally made his way down to where the boy lay, he saw why.

Scat's head seemed to have been shot straight through. His right temple was toward the night sky, and it was an exploded bloody ruin—the right eye was far too exposed, and the ear seemed half torn off. The boy was breathing in gasps that sprayed blood out across the moonlit dirt.

Diana looked up at Crane. "Hospital, quick—in the back of the truck. How are we going to carry him?"

Crane's heart was thumping hugely in his chest. "Arky, get a blanket—we can carry him in a blanket."

Mavranos's face was stiff as he stared down at the boy, and Crane remembered that the man had children of his own.

"Arky!" Crane said sharply. "A blanket!"

Mavranos blinked and nodded, and then sprinted down the road toward his truck.

Diana was panting and blinking around. "Who shot him?"

Crane was dreading this. "A guy across the road, in a white Porsche. I think he—"

"Jesus Christ, he was talking to me!" Diana was sobbing now, nearly hysterical. "The guy in the white car, when I was waiting down there! I told him to fuck off, and he came back and shot at me!"

"Diana, he—"

"He was aiming at me, this is my fault!" Her trembling hand hovered over the boy's blood-glittering head, and then tentatively stroked his shoulder, "I did this."

The boy's right arm began jerking, and Crane thought the harsh, wet breathing must be just about to stop forever.

"No, Diana," Crane said, knowing that he was buying her sanity at the high price of having her hate him forever. A minute ago, he thought bleakly, I was a hero. She loved me. She still does right now, and will for another second and a half. "Listen to me. No. The man was shooting at me. He shot at me in L.A. last Thursday. I … guess he … followed us out here."

When she looked up at him, her eyes were wide, with white showing all around the irises. "Yeah," she said softly, "he knew our names, yours and mine." She bared her teeth in a big smile. "Your friends don't aim so good, do they?"

Crane could think of nothing to say, and after a moment she looked back down at her son.

Mavranos came puffing up with a blanket then, and they spread it out on the dirt and began the tense job of gently lifting the boy onto it.

In the emergency room at Desert Springs Hospital on Flamingo Road, the doctors quickly got the boy onto a gurney and rolled him away into the surgery. Crane's wound was bandaged and taped, and then he and Diana filled out forms on the counter of the glassed-in cashier's office.

They were standing side by side, but they didn't speak to each other. When the paper work was done, Diana went to a pay phone to call Hans, and Crane walked over to where Ozzie sat on one of the waiting-room couches.