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Letty glanced at Hawkins, who winked at her. Rice was busy shuffling the cards, which had an intricate gray-and-white design on their backs. She began flipping the cards over and arranging them on the table, twenty cards in all, in a five-sided figure. The cards were done in shades of black, white and gray, and the faces showed crows of all sizes, threatening in some cases, portentous or witnessing in others.
When Rice was done with the arrangement, she peered at them,then said, “Well, he’s definitely alive, but…I’ve never seen a spread like this one. It’s absolutely calamitous. Look at the key cards…”
Her hand flashed across the spread of cards, touching five of them. “Three cards of the major arcana on just five points—the Tower, the Devil, the Hanged Man. That’s astonishing, both for the simple fact that there are so many of them, and they are so threatening. And two minor arcana cards, the Ten of Swords and the Ten of Wands. All five key cards suggest something terrible will happen…or is happening already. The Tower brings destruction, the Devil brings evil, or bondage to evil ideas and deeds. The Hanged Man suggests depression in some readings…”
The Ten of Swords card showed a dying man lying face up on the ground with crows picking at his entrails; the Ten of Wands showed a strange stork-like man or animal with a huge crow on its back. “The Ten of Swords means the end of the line; the Ten of Wands is a person suffering under an intolerable burden. Because of the question I asked, that person is Lionel,” Rice said.
She had suddenly gone stone-faced, her formerly transparent and pink features congealing into something witchlike. Letty felt an involuntary chill run up her spine, and when she looked at Hawkins, he was staring at the cards and no longer winking.
Then Rice sighed and pulled the cards together in a pile, and with a practiced turn of her hands, stacked them and wrapped them in the silk cloth. Looking between Letty and Hawkins, she said, “Lionel is alive. That’s the best news.”
That was all they got from her, other than some reminiscences about her history with Scott that pointed in no particular direction.
After the tarot reading, back out on the street, Hawkins said,“Well, that scared the shit out of me. Complete bollocks, of course, but she did it well.”
“The smartest man I know—a computer wizard and a semi-famous painter—does the tarot. He says he uses them as a gaming device, to suggest ways of thinking out of the box. But my dad, who is not superstitious aboutanything, says that the guy’s cards sometimes tell the future.”
“More bollocks,” Hawkins said, and he walked a few steps ahead of her. “She’s just a ginger witch.”
Letty smiled at his back. He’d told the truth about one thing: the reading had unnerved him. She said to his back, “You’re really a great big pussy.”
Over his shoulder: “Quiet, you.”
3
Letty trailed Hawkins for a block or two, amused; he was really quite attractive, she decided. He eventually turned and said, “Snit over. Let’s get a glass of tea somewhere.”
“I’m tea’d out,” Letty said. “How about coffee?”
The found a near-empty café down a narrow alley, got tea and coffee, and what Hawkins called biscuits but turned out to be cookies. When they were seated, Hawkins said, “My parents are high churchy and, mmm, somewhat conservative and superstitious. Some of it stuck with me. I don’t like walking past cemeteries in the dark. There may be no such thing as ghosts, but why take the chance?”
“I’ll admit that tarot reading was the tiniest bit creepy,” Letty said.
“The tiniest bit,” Hawkins confirmed. “Now, I’ve told you about my superstitions, so tell me something about yourself that you don’t like other people talking about. Or knowing about.”
Letty pursed her lips and looked out toward the street, then said, “My natural mother was a terrible alcoholic. Drinking would have killed her, if she hadn’t been murdered first. Anyway, working in D.C., I’d go out for drinks with girlfriends, after work. One drink. A year ago, it was getting to be three drinks. One night last winter, with a special friend, we were really rolling along and it got to be six drinks and I was drunk on my butt; but it felt too good. Like anything was possible. You get stupid ideas and think you can pull them off.”
“A few steps over the line, then,” Hawkins ventured.
“Exactly. I now will have two drinks in one night, and no more. Never. For the rest of my life. I’m afraid there might be something genetic in the whole alcohol thing. I believe I have the discipline to pull off the two-drinks limit.”
“I believe you,” Hawkins said. “It’s a pity in a way. I was planning to pour alcohol into you tonight and attempt to take advantage.”
“Not gonna happen,” Letty said.
“The drinks, or taking advantage?” Hawkins asked.
“Let me think about that,” Letty said, shrugging. “Right now, I want to finish the coffee and take a nap. The travel is starting to get to me.”
Hawkins looked at his watch and said, “Why don’t you go take your nap, and I’ll book a table somewhere close-by for…7:30?”
“That should work.”
—
Letty didn’t getmuch of a nap, because when her head hit the pillow, her body clock was telling her that it was eleven o’clock in the morning, and she’d had a cup of ill-considered coffee. At 5:30 she finally went away, to be jolted awake when Hawkins called: “Time,” he said.
“Ten minutes.”
