Crane scribbled, HUSBAND. Above it he wrote, BRINGING YOUR.
Diana nodded. "I—I don't—I have to bring my husband. If he can't come, he won't let me see you ever."
There was a long pause, and Crane wondered if he'd ruined everything, if the young man would now simply hang up. Then, "My father's with you?" said the voice on the phone.
Crane bared his teeth in indecision, then shrugged and nodded.
"Yes."
"Sure. You both leave right now. The clock has begun to tick." There was a distant rattle, then the dial tone.
Diana hung up. "Let's go, Scott," she said.
"Right," said Crane, tense with an excitement that was almost joy, in spite of the evident fear that had bleached and leaned Diana's face. To Mavranos he said, "You guys can follow us, but way back. We're going to take a dirt road by a boarded-up gas station out of town on Boulder Highway, past something called Sunset Road, on the right. I'll have the .357 under my shirt."
"You're crazy," yelled Hans, "I'm calling the police! You always call the police with a kidnapping; they're trained—"
Ozzie's lined old face was twisted, as if he faced a painfully bright light. "This guy knew who Scott was, Diana, and he knows who you are: the Queen of Hearts, Isis, her daughter at least. He might just be able to know it, too, if you called the cops. Anyway, the police would make you stay in town for a while. And I really think you'll be killed if you stay. Your sons, too."
"What's this, supernatural?" Hans squalled. "You think she's Isis, the Egyptian goddess? Give me that phone."
"I'm the parent," Diana said forcefully to him. "It's my decision. I'm going, and the police won't be called. And we've got to go now."
Hans was shaking his head and taking deep, whooping breaths. "Okay! Okay! You're the parent, it's your decision. But I'll go with you, then, at least. I am your husband, practically, and I can certainly speak more effectively than this bum."
At the door Diana turned. "No. You're nothing like a husband."
Ozzie pointed at the fat little boy. "Oliver there should come along with Archimedes and me."
Hans forced a shout of laughter. "Archimedes? Have you got Plato out in the car, too? Let him do the talking."
"Wait here," Diana told him. "I'll call you when I know anything."
Ignoring Hans's continuing protests, the five of them hurried out to the cars.
Al Funo's teeth were chattering, and his face was puffy and streaked with tears, but he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his silk shirt when he saw people hurry out of the duplex down the block.
There's Scott Crane, he thought, with a woman who must be the famous Diana. Mr. Mustache is giving Crane something from the other vehicle, and now Crane and Diana are in the Mustang. And Mr. Mustache and Ozzie and some kid are getting into the other vehicle. What a ridiculous, Jeepy-looking thing!
It sure does scoot, though, he admitted to himself. I doubt that anyone less than a professional driver could have kept up with them the way I did, from that supermarket. I'm glad I noticed that they were chasing the Mustang and not trying to shake me, before I got a chance to pull alongside and shoot them. If I had, I'd never have got a chance to meet Diana.
And she's an attractive woman. I have no problem with that. I'm not one of these guys who feel threatened by attractive women.
He started his engine and patted the wheel. And I can keep up with them this time, too, he thought. This Porsche can outperform anything. You don't find unimportant people driving Porsches.
Diana was driving, her blond hair fluttering in the night wind coming in through the driver's side window. "Nut," she said expressionlessly. "Baker. Maps. Go Fish." She glanced at him. "Who is this guy, and how did he find my son?"
"Well, his name's"—Crane impatiently snapped his fingers twice—"Snayheever, Dondi Snayheever. I think he's crazy. We met him in Baker, and he talks like—like a nut. He's one of the people who've been … waked up, motivated, galvanized, by all the stuff that's going on here right now, with the heavy Easter about to come 'round again, the game on the lake probably due to start up again next week, for the first time in twenty-one years. He's not the only one we met, coming across the desert, and they're probably coming in from other directions, too. In Baker he was talking about you—that is, the Queen of Hearts. He had a bunch of maps that he thought would lead him to you. We stole a couple, but I guess one of them did the trick for him."
"You didn't lead him to me?"
"No. We just arrived in time to help answer the phone. We've been looking for you in every supermarket in town since Saturday night. Barely found you tonight. I recognized you."
A rushing streetlight highlighted the planes of her face for a moment. "So is this all actually true?" she demanded angrily. "All this supernatural shit?"
Crane thought of the thing that seemed to be the ghost of his dead wife. "I think it must be."
"God." She took a deep breath and let it out. "I guess I didn't ever really believe all of Ozzie's warnings."
"Don't feel bad. I didn't either."
"What do you mean, don't feel bad? You sound like that crazy man on the phone: 'I know this must bother you.' My son's life is in danger because I didn't do exactly what that old man said."
"Diana, my wife died because I didn't listen to him. I didn't mean to sound flip."
She glanced at him for a moment. "I know. I'm sorry. I sensed it, when she died. I meant to call you, but I didn't know what to say, and then it was—it seemed too late."
"I would have pretended she was fine. I fooled everybody, even myself eventually."
"So what are we going to do here?"
"Jesus, I don't know. I think he does just want to talk to you, but he might just as likely want to kill you. I don't think he's got anything against your kid—Scat?"
"Nickname for Scott. He's named after you."
He remembered the way she'd written Scott on the crayon portrait of him she'd done when she was eight years old—with one bar through the T's, which she had thought was very sporty—and there were tears in his eyes. "Diana, I swear to you we'll get you and your kids out of this."
She didn't answer, just kept her eyes on the cars ahead. She did reach over and squeeze his hand.
It was the first time they'd touched in two decades.
Waiting for a fare in front of the Four Queens on Fremont, Nardie Dinh fainted at the wheel of her cab. She was unconscious for only a moment, fortunately not long enough for any dreams to illuminate her unconscious mind and pinpoint her location for her brother, but her cab had rolled forward and clanked the bumper of the cab ahead.
She opened the car door and stepped dizzily out onto the noisy, crowded, ripplingly lit pavement, hoping that if she fainted again, the pain of the fall might wake her up, and she fumbled a little plastic bottle out of her shirt pocket and chewed up two crosstops, amphetamine capsules.
The driver of the other cab was standing by her front bumper. He had been cursing until he saw that the negligent driver was a pretty young Asian woman, and now he was just gruff.
"Just a minute," she told him. "I'll be back in a minute."
She hurried in through the open doors of the casino and blundered through the chilly tobacco-scented dimness until she found a Blackjack table. The dealer was using a multiple deck, and two of the hands on the red felt table showed a Jack of Hearts next to a Queen of Hearts.