The faint snap the card made as it touched the silk was followed by the patter of raindrops on the window beyond the curtains.
When there are gray skies, thought Crane.
The next card was the Emperor, an old king on a throne, with his legs awkwardly crossed as if because of some injury.
Close thunder shook the window, and from out on the street came the screech and slam of a car accident. The rain was heavier, hissing on the pavement outside.
Joshua looked up, startled, but dealt the third card.
It was the Fool, a young man dancing at the edge of a precipice while a dog snapped at his heels.
The rest of the cards abruptly flew out of Joshua's hand and sprayed at Crane, who ducked as they whistled and clattered past him. One had ticked against the surface of his plastic eye, and for one shocked moment Crane was a little boy again, stunned with injury and unbearable betrayal.
But he forced himself to think, to remember who he was and why he was here.
The cards, he told himself harshly, remember? Don't cry, you're not five years old now. You came to consult the cards.
I guess any Tarot deck will work after all, he thought.
His heart was pounding.
He thought, But I don't like, or understand, the answer.
Crane let out his breath and straightened up, hearing the cards continue to rattle on the carpet behind him. He carefully hiked around in his chair. The cards were shaking back and forth across the carpet as though the building were in the grip of a big earthquake.
Outside, the rain was thrashing down.
Joshua had pushed his own chair back and got to his feet. "Get out of here," he whispered to Crane. His face was white. "I don't want to know who you are. Just … get out of here right now."
Crane was breathing fast, and his hands were nearly clawed with craving for a drink, but he shook his head.
"I," he said carefully, "still need an answer to my question."
The old man made an unhappy, keening sound. "Isn't it obvious I can't help you? My God—" He paused.
Crane was suddenly sure the man had been about to say something like, Even so-and-so couldn't help you!
"Who?" Crane demanded. "Who is it that can?"
"Go see the Pope, I don't know. I'm calling the police if you don't—"
"You do know someone who can handle a no-limit game of this. Tell me who it is."
"I swear to you, I don't, and I'm calling the police—"
"Fine," said Crane, grinning broadly and standing up. "If you don't tell me who it is, I'll come back here—no, I'll find out where you live and go there—and I'll"—What would scare the old man?—"I'll play Solitaire stark naked on your front porch with a deck of these goddamn things, I'll"—he was shouting now—"I'll bring a dozen dead bodies and play Assumption with them, and we'll use Communion hosts as chips. I'll be the goddamn one-eyed Jack and play for my eye!"
He reached up to his face and popped out his false eye and held it out toward the old man in a trembling fist.
Joshua had collapsed back into his chair during Crane's outburst and was now crying. For a few moments neither man spoke.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Joshua sobbed finally. "There isn't any way I could dare stay in Las Vegas now, after doing that reading, that partial reading." His blue robe was twisted around his torso, ridiculous and pathetic. "Damn you, and I'll have to get some other job. I can't possibly ever read cards again. They know my face now. Why in God's name did you come to me?"
"Luck of the draw," said Crane, forcing himself not to care about this old man right now. He popped his false eye back into the socket and walked to the window. "Who is it?"
Joshua sniffed and stood up. "Please, if there's any humanity in you … what was your name?"
"Crane, Scott Crane."
"If there's any human compassion in you, Scott, don't tell him who sent you." He wiped his eyes on a baggy sleeve. "I don't know his real name; he's called Spider Joe. He apparently lives in a trailer out on Rancho, the Tonopah Highway. It's on the right side of the road, two hours outside of town: a trailer and some shacks, with a big Two of Spades sign out front."
The cards had stopped spinning on the carpet now, and Joshua knelt and was gingerly picking them up with the silk cloth, being careful not to touch them. "Would you do me one other favor, Scott?" he asked querulously. When Crane nodded, the old man went on, "Take these cards, my cards, out of here with you—and take your hundred-dollar bill back, too. No, I couldn't possibly use it, and even if I burned it, it might call some more psychic attention to me."
Crane had pulled back the curtain to watch the rainy street, and now he shrugged and nodded. "Okay."
Joshua wearily unzipped his blue satin robe and took it off. Under it he was wearing shorts and a Lacoste polo shirt; he looked fit, as though he exercised conscientiously, and Crane was suddenly sure that his real name was something more mundane than Joshua.
"I've heard that you've got to cross his palm with silver," the old man said tiredly. "Get two silver dollars, real silver. He claims it keeps things from seeing him, blinds the eyes of the dead; it's related to the old practice of putting coins on a dead man's eyes." He threw Crane's bill onto the table next to the bundle of cards, and Crane leaned over to pick it all up.
He stuffed the bill and the cards into the pockets of his jacket. "I'll see him today," he said.
"No." Joshua had walked behind a cash register by the bookshelves, and with a series of muted clicks the fluorescent lights began to go out. "He wouldn't do anything while this same sun is up. It's got to be a new day. Everything is too … waked up today."
Crane saw that tears were still running down the old man's cheeks. "How about a—a different hundred-dollar bill?" Crane asked awkwardly.
"I couldn't touch any of your money." The old man was pulling bills out of the cash register and seemed to be shielding them from Crane's very sight. "Could you leave now? Don't you think you've done enough?"
Crane's eye fixed on a shelf displaying "Floral Remedies" and unhappily he wondered what maladies flowers might need remedies for. He nodded, abashed, and started toward the door, but after a couple of steps he paused and then turned around. "Look," he said harshly, "did you think there was no … teeth to this stuff? I mean, you do this for a living. Did it for a living. Was it all just a tea party for old ladies and college girls? Didn't you know there's monsters out there?"
"I certainly do now," the old man said. "And I think you're one of them."
Crane looked around in the dimness at the innocuous paintings and books and jars of herbs. "I sure hope," he said, and he walked out of the spoiled card-reading parlor and into the hammering rain.
Though his day was two days gone, Snayheever was wearing his feathered Indian headdress again. The feathers were drooping in the rain.
He was sitting on the wet grass of the narrow parklike area along the Strip side of the Mirage—in front of him, beyond the railing where even in the rain the dark silhouettes of tourists jostled each other and hefted video cameras, the choppy water of the lagoon stretched to the foot of the volcano—and though the night wind was laden with the smells of car exhaust and damp clothing, he felt as if he were far underwater. When the wind blew the wet feathers across his vision, they looked like fronds and sea fans.
It kept back the pain of his ruined hand. When he had regained consciousness last night, lying on the plywood floor of the Boulder Highway box, he had looked at his right hand and just wept. The bullet had simply blown it apart, and one finger was gone, lost. He had tried to drive the old Morris back to Las Vegas, but it was too difficult to reach across with his left hand to work the stick shift, and anyway, he couldn't see clearly—every approaching pair of headlights was doubled, and two moons hung in the sky. Eventually he abandoned the car on the shoulder and walked back to town.