Megan Abbott - Detroit Noir

“She’s upside down,” I said. “Immobilized. Her sword is useless in this position.”

He tilted his head. “I see,” he said, absently running his fingers along the belt of the trench coat beside us before downing his remaining tea. What did he see? I wondered, and I had to stop myself from asking.

I then turned the King of Swords, handsome, troubled, the least wealthy of the four kings.

“This is you,” I said. Who else could it be?

“And?”

And I was blank. Nothing. “And you’re in some kind of trouble.” It was an idiotic thing to say — you didn’t need a tarot pack to figure that out — but it was also safe. Was I in over my head? Should I have summoned Mrs. O’Leary out of what I thought was her liquor-induced complacency, admitted to having nothing more than a good memory for the cards, ended the reading right there? Certainly, but there’s no use in posing those questions now (though on the blackest nights I often do).

I turned the six of Pentacles, prosperity, followed by the Knight of Pentacles, more prosperity, and then I sat there staring at the cards as if the characters on them would speak, waiting for something to happen. Then it did.

“This Knight of Pentacles,” Mrs. O’Leary murmured from across the room, “is your queen’s husband. A dangerous man.”

“But he’s not a king,” the man argued.

I stared at the cards, the King of Swords lying beside the Queen of Swords on the table. “You’re her king,” she answered, “without a kingdom.”

I remained silent and next turned the ten of Swords. Let me make it clear that no one told me to do that. No one told me to turn another card, but I did.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“He’s on the ground with swords in his back. That doesn’t look like nothing.”

Mrs. O’Leary put her head down then. At the time it meant little to me, but now, before I take my sleeping pills, before I ask myself why I didn’t walk out of the tearoom and not look back, before I blame the closing of the stadium for what transpired, the vision of Mrs. O’Leary folding her head forward, as if in prayer, haunts me. The man knew, even if he didn’t know for certain, what even I could see: This was the card of horrific death.

“Tell me,” he said.

“It’s bad.” I stared at him. “I see the raven-haired woman.” And I did. Was it the night? Was it the sudden appearance of this troubled man in this troubled neighborhood with his questions of death that triggered a vision more clear than if she’d been standing before me in the flesh? I saw her, or I called her up from some deep place of knowing: a thick bowl of black hair sprouting from a sharp widow’s peak, blunt red talons, a smile like a blade in her teeth. “It’s bad,” I repeated.

“Yes,” he said, leaning back in his chair and setting his chin like a man about to take a punch. He stared at the cards intently, almost as if he could read them, and said, “It’s bad.”

My heart constricted, and I understood for the first time the true depth of Mrs. O’Leary’s burden: How could she channel all this pain and heartache? No wonder she drank Ballantine’s, no wonder her tooth had rotted from the toxic news that had washed over it each time she read a tarot. My head was pounding, and I had to remind myself to breathe. “Maybe this is enough for now,” I said.

The man nodded at the deck in my hand, and as I slowly turned the next card, an upside-down knight wielding a large gray sword, Mrs. O’Leary said, “The reversed Knight of Swords spells doom. Do you want another card?”

The man nodded again, and it was then that I realized how little he’d spoken.

“Are you certain you want another card?” Mrs. O’Leary was staring at the plaque above the door looking like misery propped up in a chair. She could not have seen the cards from where she sat, even with her glasses on, but as I turned the most feared card in the tarot, the skeleton coming to claim on his white horse, she said, “Death may not be imminent, but it is present.”

“I know,” he sighed. “I know.”

Next came the six of Swords, the symbol of painful journey, and I dared not recite the definition of the card as it appeared in this sequence: “Your death will be violent.” But I didn’t have to, because Mrs. O’Leary did.

Mrs. O’Leary was never comfortable telling clients that tarot readings are for entertainment purposes only, that they are not to be considered financial, legal, or psychological counseling, but we always did. And that’s what she told the detectives who showed up at O’Leary’s three days after the skeleton slipped the tape into the pocket of his trench coat and threw a fifty on the table.

“I heard on the news,” she said. “But I can’t help you.”

“Well, you can’t claim client privilege,” said the elderly detective in a cheap suit as he pulled the tape from his briefcase and slid it across the table. “Who’s the other voice on the tape? Doesn’t sound like you.”

“It’s mine,” she said, “there’s no one else here does tarot. It’s a cheap tape, bad quality.”

Through a crack in the saloon doors that opened onto the kitchen I watched the detectives exchange looks.

“It was just a wee bit of fun,” said Mrs. O’Leary with badly played nonchalance. “He came in to get out of the weather.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound very funny to me,” said the detective with the acid trip necktie. “Does it sound funny to you?” he asked Cheap Suit, who shook his head.

“See that? Neither of us finds it funny. Maybe we lack a sense of humor, but for some reason we just don’t find murder funny.”

When I saw Mrs. O’Leary crumple to the chair before enlisting the exaggerated brogue she engaged only under the most stressful circumstances, I wanted to rush out of the kitchen and take the blame for something horrible, something I didn’t yet fully understand, for a death I could have prevented. But I didn’t.

“Sounds to me like Mr. Donegan felt he was going to be killed,” said Necktie. “Now, how do you suppose he came to that conclusion?”

“Aye, he knew it when he walked in.”

“You sure didn’t help matters.”

“I’m not here to change the course of fate,” said Mrs. O’Leary.

“Did you discuss anything you didn’t get on this tape?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“As me great-grandmother used to say, ‘He wasn’t the talkin’ sort.’”

“Well his trap’s sure zipped now,” said Cheap Suit.

“We found this in his coat pocket,” said Necktie as he held up a small white business card. “Where do you suppose he got it?”

“Me cards are there on the table,” said Mrs. O’Leary, nodding. “Who’s to say?”

Necktie then unfolded the front-page Free Press article describing the murder of Victoria Lanni, the wife of MGM casino CEO Terrance Lanni, with a tiny corner photograph of her very handsome killer, Bruce Donegan.

“Maybe,” he said, “this will jar your memory.”

She stared at the photograph, then touched it. “Nothing,” she said.

“So he thought Mrs. Lanni was gonna kill him,” said Cheap Suit as he wiped his eye with a yellowed handkerchief. “Why do ya think she’d do a thing like that?”

Mrs. O’Leary shrugged.

The detectives glanced at each other. “You never saw him killing her?” said Necktie, and I felt Mrs. O’Leary staring at me through the thick wooden door, her voice softening to a whisper.

“I just saw death,” she said.

“Strangulation?” said Necktie. “Trench coat belt?”

“No. Dirtier, nastier. I don’t know what. And I saw it on him. All over him.”

“Well, you’re good then,” said Cheap Suit. “’Cause Lanni’s got some dark pals in prison.”