The Devil's Code

things I don’t know about, that he’d hide from me. He got along very well with a certain kind of ditzy chick. Maybe he’d say pussy— he just didn’t say it to me. But with the guns, we’re talking basic, rock-bottom personality. He didn’t shoot anybody.”
    “Okay.” Then I noticed something a little odd. “You say he was killed on Friday?”
    “Yes. Friday night.” She caught the puzzled look as I read the letter again. “Why?”
    “Because the letter was time-stamped on Sunday—the Sunday before he was killed. He said he was going in then . . .”
    “What have I been telling you? There’s something seriously wrong with the whole thing.”
    W e talked about the possibilities; and in the back of my head, there was that “k” floating around out there. The feds were looking for k . . .
    S o are you going back to Dallas with me?” she asked, eventually.
    “You’re going back?”
    “I’ve got to. I’ve got to sign papers and everything, when they’re done with him.” Another tear popped out and I turned away: I don’t deal well with weeping women. I tend to babble. “So are you going? I made a reservation for you. I could really use somebody to lean on . . .”
    “Yeah, yeah, okay,” I said. “But don’t cry, huh? Please?”
    She’d made a reservation for that same night, on the last plane out. I took a moment to go downstairs to tell Alice to watch after the cat, and then I went back out on the Net and read everything I could find on Firewall: there was a ton of stuff, but mostly bullshit. Then I went to my box at Bobby’s, and found a picture and a note. The picture was of Lane Ward, looking nice in a professorial business suit, a wall of books in the background. The note said, Her only brother was JM.
    Finally, I called the Wee Blue Inn in Duluth, on a voice line, and got Weenie, the owner-bartender. He’s a toothpick-chewing fat man with a steel-gray butch; an apron that he laundered every month, whether it needed it or not; and who always smells like greasy hamburgers and barbequed onion rings. I said, “This is the guy from St. Paul. I need to talk to LuEllen.”
    “She’s off right now,” he said. “I can take a message.”
    LuEllen was always off. Weenie theoretically paid her $28,000 a year as a waitress, and she paid taxes on the $28,000 plus $6,000 in tips. In reality, Weenie stuck the tax-free $28,000 in his pocket and sent LuEllen the W-2 form. Weenie was her answering service. The W-2 form explained to the government how she paid for her house, wherever that was.
    “Tell her that Stanford was killed,” I said. “The funeral’s set for Santa Cruz next Wednesday. I’m going to Dallas, but I’ll be in Santa Cruz for the funeral.”
    “I’ll tell her,” Weenie said. “That’s Stanford, like in the university.”
    On the way out the door, on the way to the airport, I stopped, Lane already in the hall, went back to the workroom and got a small wooden box made in Poland. I stuck it in my jacket pocket. Just in case.
    A t the airport, I picked up the major papers, and as soon as we were off the ground, began looking for Firewall stories. They all carried at least one, but nothing on the front page. Firewall appeared to be suffering media death.
    While I read, Lane kicked back and slept. She was not a large woman and could snuggle into the seat like a squirrel on a pillow. I stared at the seat in front of me for a while, and when she was asleep, took the wooden box out of my pocket. Inside, I kept a Ryder-Waite tarot deck wrapped in a silk cloth.
    I’m not superstitious. More than that: I refuse superstition. Ghosts and goblins and astrology andnumerology and phrenology and all the New Age bullshit of mother goddesses and wicca; the world would be a happier place if it’d die quietly.
    Tarot is different. Tarot is—can be—a kind of gaming system that forces you out of a particular mind-set. Let’s say you’re trying to . . . oh, say, steal something. Your mind-set says X is a danger and Y is a danger, but the tarot says, “Think about Z.” So you start thinking about things outside of the mind-set, and when you finally do the entry, you’ve considered a whole spread of possibilities that otherwise would have gone unsuspected.
    Nothing magic about it; and it will definitely save your ass.
    So I did one quick spread, of my own invention, working toward a key card. The card came up.
    The Devil. Interesting . . .
    I sat looking at the evil