The Hanged Man's Song

said. “I never gave a shit before. We were covered.”
    “So what’s going to happen?” she asked.
    “Well, in the next three minutes, I’m going back to sleep. Unless you stick a finger in my ribs again. Christ, I almost pulled a muscle.”
    “Why do you think Carp cracked Bobby’s computer?”
    “Because I haven’t seen anything, anywhere, about the Norwalk virus. That’s the biggest thing he’s done so far, and I can’t find any trace of it in the DDC files.”
    >>> WHEN we finally got up the next morning, LuEllen insisted that we get out the tarot cards. I dug out the card box and did a spread called the Celtic Cross, which I like because it combines simplicity and flexibility. The Hanged Man came up again, but this time, as the basis of the problem rather than the outcome. The outcome spot was taken by a card from the minor arcana, the King of Cups, in the reversed position.
    “Is that bad?” she asked. She became very quiet and focused when I was doing a reading.
    “It’s ambiguous, just like the readings with the Hanged Man,” I said, as I rewrapped the deck in the silk rag. “It can mean treachery, but that doesn’t tell us a hell of a lot. Everything in this deal is treacherous.”
    “So are we stuck?”
    “I think . . . I may have a really bad idea. Either that, or I’m a genius.”
    She looked at me skeptically. “What idea?”
    “Remember when I went to see Rosalind Welsh? That moved some people around. I’m thinking . . . what if we go after Senator Krause? Face to face. Figure out where he lives, hit him sometime when he’s alone, or maybe with only another guy or his wife.”
    A few minutes earlier, she’d run down the hall to get a bottle of orange juice, and now she stood drinking it, draining it, looking at me. She licked the last of the juice off her upper lip, and she said, “That sounds like a last resort.”
    “We don’t have that many resorts left. And this DDC business scares the shit out of me. I can’t believe that they’re running a test on public officials—somebody in there is goofy. It’s already out of control.”
    “So let’s keep it as a last resort and figure out a couple of other resorts that we can go to first.”
    One thing we did, right away, was drive over to our wi-fi site and go online looking for Lemon. He wasn’t around—Bobby had always been around, but then, Bobby was crippled—so we left a message telling him that Carp had killed two people, and that we were going to have to give up his name.
Carp is undergoing psychotic collapse, may kill more people. We will wait until we hear from you.
    We had breakfast, and then went back online. Lemon had strayed, but not far. He was there when we went back:
Don’t give up Carp name yet. Must get laptop. Can’t let feds get laptop. If they get laptop, we could be done. I have been doing research on Carp and find he has girlfriend Mary Griggs lives in Arlington. Suggest check before giving up name. Also searching possibility that he has been in contact with old employer. Nothing yet. Check Arlington and get back.
    —Lemon
    He appended a note with Griggs’s address and phone number.
    “Man, this Lemon guy has to understand that we’re not cops,” LuEllen said. “We can’t kick down the door and bust somebody.”
    “He might not understand that,” I said. “Half of these guys live on video games and never get out of their folks’ basement.”
    “Carp got out.”
    “Yeah. But he’s nuts. I think Lemon’s right: we ought to see if we can spot him. He can’t carry the laptop everywhere. If we can spot him, and we see him going out with Griggs, we can hit the apartment, or hit the car, grab the laptop, and call the feds in.”
    “I don’t know,” she said moodily. She shifted around in the car seat, looking over her shoulder. She was spooked by all the DDC stuff. “The whole feel of the thing is changing.”
    “Want out?”
    “I want to see what you’re gonna do. But this time, we take the gun.”
    >>> I DIALED Griggs’s number. That seemed like an easy enough first step. The phone rang and I handed it to LuEllen, wholistened for what seemed like a long time, and then said, “Hi, is, uh, Terry there?”
    She asked with the voice women use when an unknown male answers the telephone of a female friend, a voice that seems to ask, rapist? lover? plumber? Then she listened for a moment and said, “Gee, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did, I’m just silly.”
    She got