She thrust the memories away, fleetingly resentful that they had followed her from the old body.
It doesn't matter who this jack may be, she told herself. Whoever it is, I've defeated better men before this, and women, too: Siegel, Lady Issit, and dozens more. I can do it again.
Suddenly in her mind she tasted liquor—and then a flood of cold beer. She was still facing west, and she could tell that the impression was coming from that direction.
And there's one of the fish, she thought with cautious satisfaction. Probably a male one since he's drinking boilermakers. Across the border now, driving into Nevada, onto my turf, following the irresistible impulse to flee the ocean and seek the desert, to abandon everything and make his way here—or maybe tied up in the trunk of Trumbill's Jaguar, if it was that particular fish and if we're lucky.
If he's not with Trumbill, I hope that jack out there doesn't find him. I can't afford to be losing my future vehicles, my customized garments—the selves I'm going to have to rely on for the next twenty years.
It didn't occur to her that the jack and the fish might be the same person.
She smiled when the walk signal at Flamingo Road turned green just as she reached the curb. And, ignoring the curious stares of the tourists crowding past in their colorful shorts and printed T-shirts and foolish hats, she quoted aloud four lines from Eliot's The Waste Land:
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea …
She turned her smile on the purple western sky. Come home, she thought.
Come home.
Crane drank off the last inch of his second Budweiser and tucked his last quarter into the slot in the bar. He tapped the deal button and watched as his cards appeared. A pair of Twos, a Four, a Queen, and the one-eyed Jack of Hearts.
He pushed the hold buttons under the Twos, then hit the draw button. The other cards blinked away and were replaced by a Four and a King and a Two. Three of a Kind. Three quarters clattered into the well.
He stood up and scooped out the coins. They were warm, almost hot; and for a moment he remembered shiny copper ovals that had been pennies before the L.A. train thundered over them, and he remembered his real father juggling the hot, defaced coins into his hat to cool off.
He limped back onto the gaming floor, and as he was passing the slot machine that had paid for his drinks and the video Poker, he noticed a cellophane-wrapped peppermint in the payout well.
"Thanks," he told the machine as he took the mint and unwrapped it. "One-armed bandit," he said thoughtfully, popping the mint into his mouth, "but on my side, right? One-armed. You're … maimed, aren't you, like so many of these people? I'm maimed, too." He touched the surface of his right eye. "Fake, see?"
A man who seemed to have had his entire lower jaw taken out shambled up to the machine and managed to convey a question.
"No, I'm not playing this machine," said Crane. "I was just conversing with it."
Come home.
It was time to be moving on, eastward. He walked back to the restaurant, where Mavranos and Ozzie were sitting over their empty plates and still talking about the imaginary fat man.
Ozzie squinted up at Crane with exhausted eyes. "What kept you?"
"That Baker cheeseburger didn't sit right with me either," Crane said cheerfully. "Between us you and I must have grossed out half the guys here tonight."
Ozzie didn't seem to have heard. "From what you remembered of Diana's statements to you on the phone last night, I believe she works at a supermarket, a late-evening shift. When we get to Las Vegas, we can start checking all the markets."
Back on the highway, Ozzie fell asleep in the back seat again, and Mavranos was whistling tunelessly as he frowned at the pavement rushing by under the glow of the headlights.
Crane had stretched out his bad leg and was drifting in and out of a doze, lulled by exhaustion and roused by Arky's occasional random high notes.
He kept promising himself that he would complain soon, and had finally reached the point of keeping himself awake, waiting for the next high note—when Mavranos stopped whistling.
"Speeder behind us," Mavranos said.
Crane hunched himself around and looked out through the dusty back window. A pair of bright headlights was coming up on them quickly.
"How fast are we going?"
"Seventy."
A red light came on above the approaching headlights, making a pink field of the Suburban's back window.
"Wake up the old man," said Mavranos, "and get in the back and unlock the gun case. Do it," he added as Crane opened his mouth to protest.
"But it's cops!" Crane protested as he nevertheless scrambled over the top of the front seat, accidentally hitting Ozzie's arm with his knee.
"It looked like a pickup truck before the red light came on," said Mavranos.
Ozzie was awake, blinking forward and to the sides and then twisting his head around to look back. "You're not slowing down," he said.
"I think it's a truck," Mavranos said. "Would people want to stop us bad enough to fake being cops?"
"Sure," said the old man harshly. "I've still got my gun in my pocket. Where's yours?"
"In the box. Got it open?"
"Yeah," quavered Crane, "you want yours?"
"Pass it over subtle."
Crane knelt on the litter of books and clothes to block the view as he passed the gun to Mavranos's upheld hand.
Ozzie was panting. "I think you've got to pull over. If they're not cops, don't get out of the car. And—and if they've got guns … I don't know. If they raise the guns, point them at us, I think we've got to kill them. God help us. God help us."
The Suburban shifted when Mavranos hit the brakes, and Crane braced himself as he lifted out the short black shotgun and with trembling fingers tucked five shells into the magazine tube. Then he clicked off the safety and racked the slide back and forward, chambering the first shell, and tucked one more shell into the tube.
He slid the gun under Ozzie's seat, then picked up his .357, loaded it, and shoved it down inside the waist of his jeans and pulled his jacket closed and zipped it an inch.
"They're right behind us," he heard Mavranos say. Crane had his hand on the shotgun's plastic pistol-grip, and though his breath was fast and his heart was pounding, in his mind he was rehearsing how he would pull the gun out from under the seat and swing the barrel in line and fire it with his trigger hand down by the point of his hip-bone. All six as fast as you can pump them out, he told himself tensely, right through the windows, and then grab the revolver in both hands for accurate aiming. Christ.
The Suburban grated to a stop on the sandy shoulder, and a moment later Crane could hear a car door open and close, and then he could see flashlight beams highlight the dust on the side windows and gleam on Ozzie's scalp.
"Shit," came a voice from outside, "there's only three people in it."
"Two of 'em," said Mavranos softly. "One right here and one hanging back."
There was a rap on the driver's side window, and Crane heard the crank squeak six times, and a moment later he smelled the dry, cooling desert.
"Step out of the car," said the voice outside, clearer now.
"No," said Mavranos.