Last Call (Last Call 1)

"You don't want to take a chance on your work following you home," he'd said. To make that even less likely, he had always bought new tires and had his Studebaker tuned up before setting out, and he never went to a game without a full tank of gas. And there was always a twelve-gauge pump shotgun under a blanket on the back seat to supplement the pistol in his belt.

And he had made sure Scott understood when it was that you had to fold out of a game.

That had been the advice Scott had ignored in the game on the lake in '69.

"If the drink in your glass starts to sit at an angle that ain't quite level, or if the cigarette smoke starts to crowd in over the cards and fall there, or if plants in the room suddenly start to wilt, or if the air is suddenly dry and hot in your throat, smelling like sun-hot rock, fold out. You don't know what you might be buying or selling come the showdown."

By the end of the spring of 1969 Ozzie had been sixty or so, and Scott had been twenty-six.

Both of them had been wanting to get back home to Santa Ana—Scott had a girl friend whom he hadn't seen in three months, and Ozzie missed his other foster child, Diana, who was nine years old and staying with a neighbor woman—but they had decided to hit Las Vegas before once again burning on home across the Mojave to southern California.

They had got in on a Five-Stud game that started in the Horseshoe on Fremont Street in the evening, and at dawn they had moved it upstairs to one of the rooms, and in the middle of the afternoon, when all but Ozzie and Scott and a pudgy businessman called Newt had been eliminated, they had declared a sleep-and-food break.

"You know," Newt had said slowly, almost reluctantly, as he finally unknotted his tie, "there's a game on a houseboat on Lake Mead tonight." Newt had lost more than ten thousand dollars.

Ozzie had shaken his head. "I never gamble on water." He tucked a wad of bills into his jacket pocket. He had increased his roll from about twelve to about twenty-four thousand in the past twenty hours. "Even when they had the boats out there in the ocean, three miles off Santa Monica, I never went."

Scott Crane was down. He had had ten thousand when they'd driven into Las Vegas, and he had about seven and a half now, and he knew Ozzie was ready to declare the season finished and start for home.

"What kind of game?" Scott had asked.

"Well, it's odd." Newt stood up and walked to the window. "This guy's name is Ricky Leroy, and ordinarily he's one of the best Poker players in town." The stout young businessman kept his back to them as he talked. "But for the last two or three days he's been playing this game he calls Assumption—weird game with a weird deck, all pictures—and he's losing. And he doesn't seem to mind."

"Assumption," said Ozzie thoughtfully. "Twenty years ago a guy was hosting a game of that out on a boat on Lake Mead. Different guy—George something. He lost a lot, too, I heard."

"My luck's gone here," Newt said, turning around to face them. "I'm going to drive out there tonight. If you want to come, I'll be standing under the million-dollar-display Horseshoe at eight."

"You may as well just go," Ozzie told him. "This was our last game of the season; we're going to sleep twelve hours and then drive home."

Newt had shrugged. "Well, I'll be there just in case."

Back in their own room at the Mint Hotel, Ozzie had at first been unable to believe that Scott wasn't kidding when he said he wanted to go meet Newt and get into the game on the lake.

The old man had kicked off his polished black shoes and lay down on one of the beds, and he was laughing with his eyes closed. "Sure, Scott—on water, tamed water, with a guy that always pays for hands, and playing with what obviously is a Tarot deck, for God's sake. Shit, you'd win a few signifying hands, and a month later you'd find out you've got cancer and you're getting arrested for crimes you never heard of and you can't get it up anymore. And then one day you'd walk out to the mailbox and find your goddamn head in there."

Scott was holding a glass of beer he'd picked up on the way to the elevator, and now he took a long sip of it.

Most Poker players had superstitions, and he had always conformed to Ozzie's, out of respect for the old man, even when it had meant folding a cinch hand just because some cigarette smoke was moving in ways the old man didn't like or someone had kicked the table and the drinks were wobbling.

Ozzie had folded some good hands, too, of course—hundreds, probably, in his forty years of professional play. But Ozzie could afford to: He had made a lot of money over the years, and though he rarely played the very-high-stakes games, he was regarded as an equal by the best players in the country.

And right now he had twenty-four thousand dollars rolled up tight in the hollow handles of his shaving brush and shoehorn and coffeepot.