Last Call (Tim Powers) by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780575117822
Publisher: Orion
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

She had called the hospital an hour ago, and Dr. Bandholtz had told her that Scat’s condition was a little worse.

The boy had already been connected to a catheter that was inserted under his collarbone and somehow threaded through a vein and then through the “right heart” and lodged in the pulmonary artery—it was to make sure the blood pressure in the lungs didn’t rise, for the lungs would not be able to absorb oxygen if it did—but now he was breathing through an “endotracheal tube” taped into his mouth. If his breathing didn’t stabilize soon, they were going to put him on an IMV, which she gathered was some very serious kind of ventilator.

After getting off the phone with the hospital, she had called her own apartment number.

And she had sighed with relief and frustration when Hans had answered. At least he was still alive.

“Hans,” she’d told him, “you’ve got to get out of there; it’s not safe.”

“Diana,” he had said, “I trust the police.”

She had waited wearily for him to tell her that if she had let the police handle the kidnapping last night, Scat would not be dying in the hospital. He had told her that when she’d called last night, and she had hung up on him, and she knew she’d do the same if he said it again.

He didn’t. “Besides,” he said, “your foster-brother shot the guy, right?”

“No, don’t you listen? The man who shot Scat is somebody else, and he knows where I live, and he’s probably still in town. Get out of that apartment.”

“If you’re evicting me,” Hans said pompously, “I am entitled to at least thirty days’ notice.”

“These people won’t give you thirty seconds’ notice, you idiot!” She reflected that Hans was guilty of what Ozzie had used to call felony stupid. “I’ll call the cops and tell them about your dope plants, and—”

“Have you visited Scat today?” he interrupted angrily.

Quietly she said, “… No.”

“Hmm, somehow I had thought not. Are you going to tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“I see. Why don’t you consult a Ouija board,” he said, his voice quavering with the weight of his sarcasm, “to see if it would be safe?”

“Get out of there!” she yelled. She had hung up on him then.

If it would be safe.

Alfred Funo, she thought now as the rain clattered in the puddles around her bare feet. Someday I hope to be able to deal with Mr. Alfred Funo.

Funo had vacated the motel before the police arrived there last night, but his exit seemed to have been hasty, and they had found a couple of 9-millimeter bullets under the bed. Diana was in no doubt that Funo was the man who had shot her son.

And there were others out there: this Snayheever creature, and the fat man in the Jaguar, and, according to Ozzie, dozens of others.

Bathe in the fresh, wild water of this place, Ozzie had told her.

Her wet skirt, shoes, blouse, and underwear were draped over a taut cable on a big air-conditioning unit, and now she opened her robe and let it fall behind her and stood naked in the thrashing rain.

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