Tim Powers - Last Call (37 page)

"No," Crane said, "I guess he talked to them earlier. I wish Ozzie hadn't swooped everybody away before we got a chance to discuss the story a little. 'Happened to meet Ozzie in Balboa and then just dropped everything and drove straight to Vegas!' How did that detective act with you?"

"Like it was a—a formality." The Suburban shook as he started the engine. "Just had me recite it all. Why, did he lean on you?"

"Yeah, some."

"Huh. Well, at least you're still at large."

Mavranos swung the blue truck across the parking lot toward the exit onto the Strip. "Listen, I'm gonna try the Sports Book at Caesars—they've got one airplane-hangar-size room that must have a hundred TV screens on the wall, and the effects of what's on the screens go rippling across the people that're watching, like wind over a wheatfield. I might find a clue there. You want to come along, or should I drop you somewhere?"

"Yeah, you can drop me off—at the next card-reading parlor you see."

Mavranos glanced at him curiously. "I thought Ozzie said you were supposed to stay away from that kind of thing."

Crane rubbed his face, wondering if he looked as exhausted as he felt. "That's if I'm just going to run and hope to hide. If I want to …
do
anything, I think I've got to turn and face … it, them, whatever it is."

Mavranos sighed and touched the bandanna under his jaw. " 'Because there were no graves in Egypt,' " he said quietly, almost to himself, " 'hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?' "

"Your man Eliot?"

"
Exodus.
Lots of good stuff in the Bible, Pogo."

Crane shook his head, "Ozzie told me not to start any long books."

By early afternoon Betsy Reculver had called Trumbill a dozen times, asking if Diana had shown up yet, or if Crane had, and complaining about everything from pains in her joints to the bad card readings she was getting in her solitaire games.

During this latest call, after cautioning him yet again not to let Diana Ryan get away from him, he heard over the phone the bong of her doorbell, followed by LaShane's barking.

"Is that Newt already?" asked Trumbill.

"Let me haul my weary old bones to where I can see the screens." He heard her breathe harder, and the reception on the portable telephone faded as she walked through a doorway.

Trumbill reflected that it would be a relief when the new game was over and done with and the soul of Georges Leon had a batch of fresh bodies to animate, all the ones that had been conceived and paid for in 1969.

The guy must miss his balls, Trumbill thought. Twenty years is a long gestation period if you need the kids, especially when you've got to conceive more before you can get at the original lot.

It's a weird way to be this king, he thought.

Trumbill gathered that in the past the Fisher Kings would just
have
children, not kill their children's minds and steal their bodies—and that such a King would reign over a fertile green land and not a sterile desert—and that he would share his power with a Queen—and that he would deal face-to-face with the vast old entities that were known as Archetypes or gods, not through the formal, at-a-distance mediation of the terrible cards.

He heard Reculver grunt in surprise.

"My God, Vaughan," she said, "it's that guy, Al Funo! And he's a mess—all unshaven and shaky-looking." Over the line Trumbill heard the click of Reculver's intercom. "Yes?"

Then he heard Funo's voice, tinnily filtered to him through two speakers. "Mrs. Reculver, I need to talk to you."

"Make an appointment," said Trumbill. "Figure a place where we can meet him."

"Uh," said Reculver, speaking loudly into the intercom, "we can meet you … at Lindy's again, at the Flamingo—"

"I need to talk to you now!" came Funo's voice.

"No," said Trumbill instantly.

The intercom clicked off. "Vaughan, he'll leave if I don't talk to him! And he's the only lead we've got to Diana! She won't go back to the apartment you're watching; she's not that stupid; it's a waste of time you sitting there like a damn toad!
I've
got to do
everything
, don't I?"

"Betsy, get into Hanari, will you? This Funo guy is a nut—"

"He's starting to leave—" Trumbill heard a clunk, and realized that she had put the phone down on the table by the front door. Again there was the click of the intercom. "Very well," Trumbill heard her say, "come in then." He heard the snap of the dead bolt being switched back.

In the bare apartment overlooking Venus Avenue, Trumbill had stood up, his multicolored belly swinging in front of the window. "
Get a gun, at least
!" He shouted into the telephone. "Damn you, Betsy,
get a gun
!"

Then over the telephone line he heard LaShane barking, followed by the unmistakable
bam
of a close gunshot. A moment later he heard a second shot. The dog stopped barking.

"Shit," Trumbill muttered, staring impatiently out at the duplex across the street and holding the telephone receiver tight. "Betsy?" he yelled. "Betsy, are you all right? Answer me quick or I'm calling 911!" He knew that if she could hear him, she'd get on the line and order him not to do that.

All he could hear over the phone was the vague background sigh of an open line.

"Betsy!" he shouted again. Outside the window glass the empty street yawned at him. "Betsy, what's happened?"

He threw down the tube of Ban and switched off the two fans so that he could better hear any sounds from Betsy's end of the line.

Finally there was a click as though someone had picked up an extension, and then a young woman's voice said, "Five-five-five three-eight-one-zero, this is the Operator with an emergency interrupt from Richard Leroy at five-five-five three-five-nine-three. Will you release the line?"

"Yes," he said through clenched teeth.

There came another click, and then a man's shrill voice: "Vaughan, this is me, I'm in Richard." Richard was panting. "J-Jesus, he
shot
me!" He paused to cough, and Trumbill was glad he hadn't called from the asthmatic Beany body. "Funo did. I
bled
to death right on the doorstep, no more than ten seconds after he shot me and ran off." For a moment Trumbill just heard him panting; then Richard went on, "
Merde
, Vaughan, the Reculver body's lying half in and half out of the front door over there!"

"Where are you?"

"In Richard here? I don't know, some hallway with a telephone—the college library, I suppose, I only saw it for a second, long enough to get to a phone. I'm seeing only through Beany right now. In Beany I'm hailing a cab in front of the Flamingo; that'll get me home quicker than walking to my car here on campus. Damn, I hope nobody called in a shots-fired report, or notices the poor body!"

"Will old Newt have the sense to drag it in?"

"Newt. Good thought. He might; he's owed me his soul for thirty years; he wouldn't want to be associated with any police stuff. Of course, if he sees it from the street, he might just drive on."

Trumbill sighed heavily. "I think I should stay here."

"Yes, of course, I was babbling when I said Diana wouldn't show up there. Stay there and kill her; I can't have any Queen of Hearts running around while I'm down to three bodies. I'll work through Richard and Beany."

Trumbill knew that the old man wouldn't want to take the Art Hanari body out yet; it was his showpiece, just as the Richard one had been, the last time. He would want to have the Hanari perfectly rested and beautiful to host this series of Assumption games.

Abruptly Richard's voice shouted, "Renaissance Drive, corner of Tropicana and Eastern!" The line went dead.

Trumbill realized that the last shout had been an involuntary echo of old Beany's, hollering directions at a cabdriver out in front of the Flamingo, relayed to Trumbill through Richard at the university library.

Figured curtains were drawn across the windows of the room, and though there were some fluorescent tubes glowing around the bookshelves and display cases along the back wall, a black iron lamp on the big round table cast most of the light after Crane had stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

A slim white-bearded man put a book aside and stood up, and Crane saw that he was wearing a satiny blue robe. He's going hard for the atmosphere at least, thought Crane nervously.

"Can I help you, sir?" the man asked.

"Uh, I hope so," said Crane. "I need to have a card reading done." The chilly air smelled faintly of carpet freshener and incense, and reminded him that his breath probably smelled of onions. Mavranos had insisted on stopping for cheeseburgers, though once they'd arrived, Mavranos had eaten only a few bites of his.

"Very well." If the man smelled the onions, he was at least not remarking on it. "Do sit down at the table here, please. My name is Joshua."

"Scott Crane." Joshua's hand was limp and cold, and after two shakes Crane let go of it.

The old man opened the office door to hang a plastic Do Not Disturb sign on the knob, then resumed his seat on the north side of the table as Crane sat down in the comfortable leather armchair across from him. The glass-topped table was wide enough so that if they'd been playing chess, he'd have had to get half out of his chair to move the farther pieces.

"A standard reading," said the old man, "that is, a Ten-Card Spread with the twenty-two Major Arcana cards, is fifty dollars."

"Is there a—a more thorough reading?"

"Yes, Mr. Crane. I could do a full Seventy-eight Card Horseshoe Spread. That takes a good deal longer, but it is more insightful. I ask a hundred dollars for that."

"Let's go with the Horseshoe." Crane dug a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and laid it on the glass. Crane reflected that anyone watching would probably expect the old man to lay down a bill of his own and then deal out a hand of Head-Up Poker, but Joshua's long-white fingers whisked the hundred away.

Joshua was now unfolding a large square of purple silk from around what proved to be a polished wooden box. "Have you had Tarot readings before?"

"I … don't think so. Not really. Can't you do the—the procedure with regular playing cards?"

"In a crude way, yes." Joshua smiled as he opened the box and lifted out a deck of oversize cards with plaid-pattern backs. "But it's so imprecise that I wouldn't take money for it or recommend it for any serious questions. The Tarot is the original instrument, of which playing cards are a simplified, truncated form made for games." He wasn't smiling as he looked at Crane and added, "This isn't a game."

"I wouldn't be here if I thought it was." Crane leaned back in the chair, concealing his nervousness. This would be only the third time he'd been exposed to the Tarot deck, and the first time the cards would be speaking to him, responding to a question from him, and he wasn't looking forward to it. "How does it work? I mean, how do the cards …
know
about me?"

"I'd be lying if I told you I knew for sure." Joshua had spread the cards out face down across the unfolded silk and was gently scattering them around with both hands. "Some people think it's out-and-out magic, and I've got a foolish little booklet that will tell you that vibration rays from your fingers somehow combine with the oxygen in the room to direct which cards you touch." He had gathered them up into a deck again and tapped the edges flush. "The fact is, they do work."

He steepled his fingers under his chin, leaving the squared-up deck in front of him. "They may be the surviving fragments of the Book of Thoth," Joshua said, "supposedly composed by the god Thoth, handed down fugitively from the earliest Egyptian kingdoms. Iamblichus, the fourth-century Syrian, claimed that the mystery cults of Osiris locked initiates into a room on the walls of which were painted twenty-two powerfully affecting symbolic pictures—and there are twenty-two cards in the Major Arcana, the suitless picture cards that have been dropped from your modern playing deck. Whatever it is that the cards represent, they …
resonate
, strongly, with elements in the human psyche, the way a struck tuning fork can make a glass across the room vibrate.
I
think that, in some micro or macro way, there's sentience behind them; they're aware of us."

Then they'll probably recognize me,
thought Crane.
Climb up on my knee, Sonny Boy.

He wiped his palms down the sides of his pants.

"Now," said Joshua, "I want you to empty your mind of everything except the question you've come to ask. This is serious, so take it seriously."

Clear your mind for the cards, Crane thought. He nodded and breathed deeply.

"What is your question?" asked Joshua.

Crane suppressed a hopeless smile, and when he spoke, his voice was level. "How do I take over my father's job?"

Joshua nodded acknowledgment. "Can you shuffle cards?" he asked, pushing the deck toward Crane.

"Yes."

Crane cut the deck and gave the cards seven fast riffle shuffles, instinctively squaring the cards flat against the table so as not to flash a glimpse of the bottom one. He pushed the deck back to Joshua. "Cut?"

"No."

The old man quickly dealt the cards out into two piles, one twice as big as the other; the bigger pile was then dealt out the same way, and then the bigger of these piles was divvied up in the same two for one ratio …

Eventually he had six uneven stacks, and he picked up the westernmost stack and began laying it out on the table in a vertical pattern.

The first card was the Page of Cups, a picture of a young man in Renaissance-looking clothes standing in front of a stylized ocean and holding a chalice from which a fish head was peeking out.

Crane relaxed with relief and disappointment. The drawing was a nineteenth-century-style line drawing, and was not one of the vividly colored quattrocento paintings that his father had used. Probably nothing will happen with this deck, he thought.

The faint snap the card made as it touched the silk was followed by the patter of raindrops on the window beyond the curtains.