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.The cigarette smoke was a narrow, upright funnel in the middle of the table now, like a tinyslow-motion tornado.Still grinning, Scott slid his fingers halfway down the card-edges and lifted off the top half and showedthe exposed card to the company getting in return some looks of sympathy and then he looked at ithimself.It was the Three of Cups.There were only four cards in the deck lower than that, the Deuces, andonly three that would tie it.Seven cards out of fifty-five.One chance in about eight and a half.Still holding the card up, Scott finished his beer, proud that his hand didn't shake in this almost certaindefeat.He didn't have to tip the glass back very far at all.He laid the top half back down on the deck and pushed it across to the dealer, who reshuffled andpassed it for the cut and then slid it to the place where Leroy had been sitting.Leroy leaned forward and curled his brown hand down over the cards; for a moment he seemed tobe kneading them gently, and Scott was dully sure that the man was cheating, feeling for a crimp or anunshaved edge.Ozzie had taught him long ago that cheaters were to be either used or avoided, but neverchallenged, especially in a game with strangers.Then Leroy had raised a segment of the deck, and the exposed card was the Deuce of Sticks.There were sighs and low whistles from the other players, but Scott's ears were buzzing with therealization that he had won after all.He reached out and began raking in and stacking the bills, glad of the revolver pressing against hiship-bone under his sweater.Leroy sat down in the chair beside him.Scott glanced at the man and said, "Thanks."Leroy's pupils were wider than normal, and the pulse in his neck was fast."Yeah," he said levelly,shaking his head, "I don't know when I'm going to learn that that's not a smart bet."Scott paused in his gathering and stacking.Those are tells, he thought; Leroy is faking dismay."You're taking the money for the hand," Leroy observed."Uh & yes." Again Scott was aware of the bulk of metal against his hip."You sold the hand.""I guess you could put it that way.""And I've bought it," Leroy said."I've assumed it." He held out his right hand.Puzzled, Scott put down some bills and reached across and shook hands with the big brown man inthe white suit."It's all yours," Scott said. It's all yours.Now, twenty-one years later, driving his old Ford Torino north up the dark 5 Freeway toward the 10and Venice, Scott Crane remembered Ozzie's advice about games in which the smoke and the drinklevels behaved strangely: Fold out.You don't know what you might be buying or selling come theshowdown.He had not ever seen Ozzie again after the game on the lake.The old man had checked out of the Mint by the time Scott got back, and after Scott had rented acar and driven west across the desert to Orange County and Santa Ana, he had found the houseunoccupied, with an envelope tacked to the front door frame.It had contained a conformed copy of a quit-claim deed giving the house to Scott.He had talked to his foster sister Diana on the telephone a few times in the years since, most recentlyin '75, after spearing his own ankle, but he had not seen her again either.And he had not any idea whereshe or Ozzie might now be living.Crane missed Diana even more than he missed old Ozzie.Crane had been seventeen when he and Ozzie had driven out to Las Vegas to pick up Diana in 1960.The game on the lake had still been nine years in the future.He and Ozzie had been driving home from a movie Psycho, as Scott recalled and the radio wasplaying Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight," when Ozzie had pulled the Studebaker over to theHarbor Boulevard curb."What's the moon look like to you?" Ozzie had asked.Scott had looked at the old man, wondering if this was a riddle."The moon?""Look at it."Scott leaned down over the dashboard to look up at the sky; and after a few seconds he had openedthe door and stepped out onto the sidewalk to see more clearly.The spots and gray patches on the moon made it look like a groaning skull.The bright dot of Venuswas very close to it about where the moon's collar-bone would be.He heard dogs howling & and though there were no clouds that he could see, rain began patteringdown and making dark dots on the sidewalk.He got back in the car and pulled the door closed."Well, it looks like a skull," he admitted.He was already wary of Ozzie's tendency to read portentsinto mundane occurrences, and he hoped the old man wouldn't insist that they go swimming in the oceannow, or drive to the peak of Mount Wilson, as he had occasionally done at times like this in the past."A suffering one," Ozzie agreed."Is there a deck of cards in the car?""It's November!" Scott protested.Ozzie's policy was to have nothing to do with cards except in thespring."Yeah, better not to look through that window anyway," the old man mused."Something might lookback at you.How about silver coins? Uh & three of them.With women on them."The glove compartment was full of old auto registrations and broken cigarettes and dollar chips froma dozen casinos, and among this litter Scott found three silver dollars."And there's a roll of Scotch tape in there," Ozzie said."Tape pennies onto the tails side of thecartwheels.Copper is Venus's metal, I heard from a witchy woman one time."Envying his friends in high school who didn't have fathers who made them do this kind of thing, Scottfound the tape and attached pennies to the silver dollars. "And we need a box to put 'em in," Ozzie went on."There's an unopened box of vanilla wafers in thebackseat.Dump the cookies out in the street not now.Do it when we're crossing Chapman; it'll bebetter in an intersection, a crossroads." Ozzie clanked the car back into gear and drove forward.Scott opened the box and dumped the cookies out as the car surged through the intersection, andthen he dropped the silver dollars into the box."Shake 'em around, like dice," Ozzie said, "and tell me what they say, heads and tails."Scott shook the box, then had to dig in the glove compartment again for a flashlight."Uh & two tailsand a heads," he said, holding the flashlight beside his ear and peering into the box."And we're going south," said Ozzie."I'm going to make some turns.Keep shaking them and readingthem and let me know when they come up all heads."It was when Ozzie turned east onto Westminster Boulevard that Scott looked into the box and sawthree heads three profiles of a woman in silver bas-relief.In spite of himself, he shivered."Now they're all heads," he said."East it is," said Ozzie, speeding up.The coins had led them out of the Los Angeles area, through San Bernardino and Victorville, beforeScott worked up the nerve to ask Ozzie where they were going.Scott had hoped to spend the eveningfinishing the Edgar Rice Burroughs book he'd been reading."I'm not certain," the old man replied tensely, "but it sure looks like Las Vegas."So much for The Monster Men, Scott thought."Why are we going there?" he asked, keeping most ofthe impatience out of his voice."You saw the moon," Ozzie said.Scott made himself count to ten slowly before speaking again."What's going to be different about themoon when we're in Vegas than it was when we were home?""Somebody's killing the moon, the goddess; some woman has apparently taken on the what wouldthe word be goddess-hood and somebody's killing her.I think it's too late for her, and I don't know thecircumstances, but she's got a child, a little girl.An infant, in fact, to judge by how close Venus was to themoon when we saw it
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