The Empress File

afraid I don’t have anything smaller.”
    “That’s OK. I’ll just be a minute.”
    She walked back to Wells’s office and said something. Wells nodded, stood up, came out, and walked to the safe. LuEllen put her hand in her purse. Mary Wells turned the combinationdial on the safe, pausing briefly to align each combination number, and took out a cashbox. We got the change for the fifty, and two minutes later we were back on the street.
    “OK?” I asked.
    LuEllen shrugged. “Seemed to be. I’ll have to look at the film. She turned the dial slowly enough, though. If the camera worked, we should be clear.”
    We were back aboard the
Fanny
before ten. John called a few minutes later.
    “It worked. If the camera was aimed right, we got it because the film advanced four frames.”
    “Good,” I said. “We’ve got to talk to Dessusdelit, and then we’re going out on the river. I’ll see you tonight at the Holiday Inn.”
    W HEN D ESSUSDELIT came over the levee wall, I turned to LuEllen and said, “We’re on,” and fled toward the head.
    “OK. So after she cuts the deck, as soon as you pick it up, I say, ‘What’d you do to this ball?’” LuEllen said, following me.
    “Yeah.
Right
after I pick it up. And you’ve got to put something extra in your voice—like awe. Like gee whiz. Don’t overdo it, but I’m not good at this, so you’ve got to turn her around. Just glancing your way won’t be enough.… Maybe you could hold the ball in that light beam,” Isaid, nodding at a shaft of sunlight coming in the bow windows.
    “OK… here she is.”
    I went on back to the head, stripped off my tennis shirt, and turned on the water, while LuEllen went to the door.
    “Come on in,” I heard LuEllen say cheerfully. Dessusdelit twittered a few words, and LuEllen led her to the same chair she’d sat in the day before.
    While I splashed water on my face and neck, LuEllen got down the crystal ball and passed it to Dessusdelit, “just to warm it up.” I wandered out of the head a minute later and posed in the galley, rubbing my wet face with a towel, yawning. Dessusdelit was wearing a bright print summer dress and beige low-heeled shoes. Even with the color, she still looked like a venomous sparrow, spooky, nervously glancing this way and that, as though a predator were about to jump out of a bush. She had the crystal ball cupped in her hands, rolling it, staring into it.
    “You in a mood for a reading?” LuEllen asked me.
    “Sure, I guess,” I said lazily.
    Dessusdelit knew something about tarot, so we couldn’t fool her with a fake spread. LuEllen kept her working with the crystal ball while I got my deck from the cupboard. It was a common deck, the Waite-Rider. There are hundreds of tarots incirculation, but you can buy a Waite-Rider anyplace that handles occult stuff. It’s a standard, which is a good thing, because when I needed the second identical deck, I had no trouble finding one. The second deck was in a little cardboard box we’d taped under the edge of the table.
    “It’s amazing,” LuEllen said as I sat down across from Dessusdelit. My knee touched the box under the table. “We must have caught Miz Dessusdelit at a critical juncture. When she handles the ball, it lights up like a Christmas tree: money and adventure.…”
    She paused, artlessly, and let a wrinkle crease her forehead, as if a new thought had just occurred to her. “And romance?” LuEllen looked down at Dessusdelit. “Do you think that peculiar flux and intensity could have something to do with romance?”
    Dessusdelit blushed. “Well, I wouldn’t be… there isn’t anything—”
    “Could be something wicked this way comes,” LuEllen said. I jumped; LuEllen surprises me sometimes. She’d just quoted a piece of Macbeth, which later became a Ray Bradbury title. Dessusdelit obviously recognized at least the sound of it, and I wondered if it were the Shakespeare or the Bradbury.
    While Dessusdelit was mumbling over LuEllen’s suggestion, I thumbed through the deck and put the Queen of Cups on the table, faceup.
    “Significator,” I said. I glanced at LuEllen. “Would you pull the blinds just a little and kill the lights? I’d like it a little dimmer to help focus the concentration.…”
    LuEllen started pulling blinds, and I put the deck, less the single card, in front of the mayor. “I want you to shuffle. At least seven times, and after that, as long as you want,” I told her. She took the deck and