The Empress File

spread?”
    I shook my head. “If you do too many, the influences tend to get mixed up. If you’d like a really good reading…”
    “Yes?”
    “Focus on a question. You don’t even have to tell me what it is. But focus, spend the day and the night thinking about it, and come back tomorrow morning. Then we’ll take out the cards, and we’ll see if we can do something more definitive.”
    Her head jerked in assent. “Tomorrow,” she said, getting up.
    “Sure. But focus. We need that psychic energy.”
    “And you think we’ll get something definitive.”
    “Uh, wait a minute.” I scratched my chin. “Look, you’ve been awful nice to us, and I’m sure LuEllen wouldn’t mind.…”
    I got the crystal ball in its velvet sleeve and handed it to her. “Spend some time tonight, staring into it. Use it to focus; remember what the cards did to the crystal the last time? That canwork in reverse. Focus tonight, and tomorrow we’ll read.”
    “If you think LuEllen wouldn’t mind…”
    “Not at all,” I said as I held the door for her, “and I’m sure it’ll give us a much clearer look with the cards.” As sure as a stacked deck could make it.
    LuEllen was coming down the levee wall as Dessusdelit left, and they stopped and talked for a second before Dessusdelit went on.
    “You loaned her the ball?” LuEllen asked as she stepped off the dock onto the boat.
    “She’s coming back tomorrow for a reading,” I said. “I wanted an explanation for what the cards are going to do.”
    “She’s shook up,” LuEllen said. We both looked after the mayor. “Maybe she’s got a conscience.”
    “I think she’s mostly scared. The last time she was here, she had all this opportunity showing up. We just did a spread and got some very peculiar cards. Not nearly so happy.”
    “How’d you manage that?” LuEllen asked.
    “I didn’t. They just came up,” I said uneasily. The cards sometimes make you nervous even if you don’t believe in them. I changed the subject. “What’d you figure out?”
    “We’re in luck,” LuEllen said. “That hardware store next to the City Hall has aluminum extension ladders.”
    “Say what?”
    J OHN CALLED . When he returned from Memphis, he’d phoned Ballem and said he’d talked to the Man. The Man didn’t mind some discreet, well-placed partners, but they wouldn’t get in for free, even with the clout they could provide from City Hall.
    The Man wanted a two-hundred-thousand-dollar investment, cash money: no checks, no stamps. And John had to see a piece of the money now. Half. A hundred thousand.
    “I told them that my friend was used to dealing in cash, that it was a personal peculiarity,” John drawled, still in character. “And I told them that he’d spent so many years dealing with bullshit artists he now insisted that one of his people actually see some cash up front, before any deals were made.”
    “They bought it?”
    “Yeah. They think it’s weird, but they figure I’m a dealer, which kind of explains some of it, in their eyes. We’re meeting at the City Hall, quarter after nine. Ballem will be at the door to let me in.”
    “Why so late?”
    “So it’ll be dark. I asked, and they said they’d just as soon not have a lot of noticeable people getting together with me. And there was a hint there, you know, that I’d better stay in line. Thatthere’d be a half dozen of them, and they wouldn’t let in anybody but me.”
    “All right. Take a good look at whatever they’re carrying the money in. Try to figure out if they’ll leave it in the safe.”
    “Yeah, yeah. I’ll do all that. Marvel called from the capital; she’s all set. She’s talked to the governor’s man, and he’ll see her anytime up to midnight. She’ll go as soon as we call her.”
    “You be careful, man.”
    “Yeah. You, too.”
    A T NINE O ’ CLOCK LuEllen went back to the sleeping cabin and clattered around. After a minute she made a low, groaning sound and I stepped back. She was leaning against the cabin way, her eyes closed, her head cocked back.
    “Not a fuckin’ word,” she said.
    She did two more hits in the next half hour, while we waited. She was flying when John called.
    “They had it, and it’s in the safe, just like we figured. The safe was already open a crack. The city clerk was there, Wells, with Ballem and Dessusdelit and Hill.”
    “St. Thomas wasn’t there?”
    “No. Just those four. I went up the block to the Mobil station to use the