Gary Brandner - Walkers

Joana looked at him quickly, remembering the chilly exchange she'd had with Glen this morning. She tried to recall if she had made some reference to that when she'd met Peter in the parking lot this morning. That was probably it. He was a perceptive man.

He pointed to the card at the right side of the cross-a stalwart young man in a winged helmet, a cup held firmly in his outstretched hand. "But now the good news. Here, in your very near future, we find a new romantic interest. A young man, sensitive, artistic. He will have a message for you. An invitation, perhaps."

"Or a proposition?" Joana suggested.

"Possibly, possibly." He went on in more general terms, telling her what each card represented-the forces opposing her, an influence just passing away, and so on. The things he read, or said he read, in the cards could generally fit her situation, but a clever man like Peter Landau could have deduced enough from what he already knew of her to build a fairly convincing story.

Still, as he talked on, telling about the cards that made up the cross, Joana could detect a faltering in his patter. She watched his eyes and saw they kept straying to the top card in the row of four, the Death card.

"Is anything the matter?" she asked.

"Matter?" he said too quickly. "No. Well, maybe. I don't seem to be getting strong vibes from you. Maybe the Tarot wasn't a good choice. What sign did you say you were? Libra, I'll bet."

"I'm an Aries, but don't change the subject." She pointed down at the skeletal figure on horseback. "I want to know what this means."

"Without reading all the other positions and relating them to each other, it's impossible to-"

"Cut out the bullshit, Peter," she said. "Tell me what it means."

Peter cleared his throat again. "Well, this position, number ten in the Keltic layout, tells us what the final outcome will be. It is the sum of the information contained in all the other cards, and the ultimate answer to your question/'

"Death?"

He tried a smile that did not come off. "When you come right down to it, isn't that the final outcome of everything, for all of us?"

Joana did not answer his wobbly smile. Her eyes returned to the card showing the deadly figure in the black armor.

Peter reached out suddenly and swept the cards into a pile. "Sometimes you just don't get a true reading," he said. "It happens all the time. Why don't we start over again?"

"No, thank you," Joana said.

"Well, look, how about another glass of wine? I'll put on another tape, something upbeat, and we can relax and rap for a while."

"I've really got to go," she said. "I haven't even been home yet to change my clothes."

She stood up, and Peter immediately got to his feet. "Can I see you again?" he said.

"What for?"

"What does a guy usually want to see a girl for? A date. You know.".

"I'm pretty involved right now, Peter."

"With Glen Early?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You're not engaged or anything?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, then?"

"Call me if you want to," Joana said. "I'm in the book. J. Raitt on Beachwood Drive."

"I'll find you," Peter said. He walked with her out onto the porch and watched as she descended the steps to the street.

Joana climbed into the Datsun and sat for a long minute behind the wheel before starting the engine. Coming here had been foolishness, she told herself. Tarot cards! That was for people who believed in tea leaves and crystal balls and all that supernatural crap. And Peter Landau was no seer, he was just another guy on the make. Joana was a hard-headed, intelligent young woman, not some superstitious dingbat.

And yet, she could not put out of her mind the picture of Death in black armor astride the white horse with the blazing eyes. The skull face under the upraised helm glared at her with empty eyes. The skull swam in Joana's mind, and blurred into the face of the woman behind the wheel of the station wagon.

Joana shook her head vigorously to clear away the troubling thoughts and cranked the little car's engine to life.

Up on the porch Peter Landau watched the Datsun turn around and head down the hill and out of sight. Then he went back inside the house. The late clouds had begun to drift inland from the ocean, and it was growing cold.

Peter walked over and sat down on the love seat. He stared at the table where he had laid out the Tarot cards for Joana. It was the first time anything like this had happened to him, the first time he had lost control of a reading.

It had been his plan to give her one of his standard flattering readings, with the subtle suggestion that the time was ripe for a new romantic adventure in her life. That approach had worked many times, leading him into more beds than he could remember. With Joana, though, it was different. He had been uncomfortable from the start with the familiar routine. For the first time he could remember, the cards seemed to be actually telling him something. Something he did not want to know.

Years ago Peter had memorized the standard interpretations for each of the seventy-eight cards. He could weave them together glibly into any kind of a story he wanted to tell. For some reason, today he could not seem to talk his way around the portents of bad news, violence, and disaster. And then there was that damned Death card in the crucial number-ten position. Jesus, was he starting to believe in this crap?

Idly he scooped up the deck, shuffled, and cut it to his left into three piles. He chose the Magician, as usual, to represent himself, and began laying out the Keltic cross. It always relaxed him to weave brilliant futures for himself by giving his own special interpretations to the meanings of the cards.

He laid out the six cards of the cross and frowned. Many swords, a sign of strife. Especially bad, the Nine, Ten, and Page of swords. Sorrow, desolation, misfortune, pain, and an impostor exposed. How the hell could he make anything good out of that?

Peter was tempted to sweep up the cards and put them away, but some compulsion made him continue. Deliberately he put down the seventh, eighth, and ninth cards in the vertical row.

First came The Fool, that unheeding young man about to step over the brink of a precipice. Folly, indescretion, thoughtless action. Then The Tower with its fearsome lightning bolt and falling bodies. And The Hanged Man, bound and suspended from a T-cross of living wood. The most ambiguous of the Tarot deck, but with a dark and sinister look. Bad news, all of them.

What the hell was he doing? This was only a game, wasn't it? He could make the cards say anything he wanted, couldn't he?

One more to go. The tenth card, the final outcome. Peter hesitated a long time. His fingers rubbed the crisscross design on the back of the card, and seemed to sense what it would be.

Don't turn that card, he told himself silently. If he did not actually see it, then it wouldn't exist.

His fingers moved without his willing them and slid the next card from the top of the deck. He flipped it face up in the tenth position. It was no surprise. It was Death.

The air in the elevator grew rapidly cooler as Dr. Hovde rode down to the basement of the West Los Angeles Receiving Hospital. The car came to a stop, the doors slid noiselessly open on oiled rollers. The doctor shivered when he stepped out into the tiled hallway. Powerful fluorescent lights gave the scene a harsh, blue-white clarity.

Dr. Hovde walked quickly past a row of heavy drawers set into the wall. One of the drawers was rolled out. The outlines of a body could be seen under a green sheet. One naked black foot protruded from under the sheet. A cardboard tag was attached to the big toe.

Hovde continued to the end of the hall and through a door with Pathology Lab lettered on frosted glass. Inside, the smell of disinfectant was sharp in his nostrils. There were four tables spaced across the room. The tops of the tables were metal grillwork with troughs underneath to catch the spilled body fluids. At one end of each table was a stainless-steel sink, at the other a hanging scale for weighing organs as they were removed from the cadaver. Three of the tables were empty. On the fourth lay the naked body of Mrs. Yvonne Carlson.