Killers of a Certain Age(37)

On the same trip to the junk store, Natalie had scored several crappy canvases of depressing landscapes and even more depressing portraits. Nat had popped them out of the frames, overpainting a series of rough pictures that suggested New Orleans scenes without really committing themselves. They were exactly the sort of thing street artists hung all over the railings in Jackson Square, and Natalie finished off her disguise with a grey bobbed wig and a tie-dyed fanny pack, a hippy granny in touch with her creative side.

For my disguise, I bought a deck of tarot cards from Esoterica and spent two days shuffling to rough them up, then crayoned a posterboard sign with an evil eye to stick onto a card table. A couple of folding chairs and I was in business. I wore leggings and boots under my long, bright cotton peasant skirt—it was chilly with the wind blowing off the river—and a pair of cheap, gaudy earrings. I finished with a heavy application of kohl and a cascading wig of dark red curls tied with a scarf. Between the riot of hair and the eyeliner, I was unrecognizable.

I’d expected the crowds to be thin on a weekday so early in January, but the post-holiday tourists were still partying off their hangovers. I set up shop in front of the Presbytére, the narrow building separated from the cathedral by a tiny passageway called Père Antoine Alley. I could see Helen if I glanced up to my right and Mary Alice if I looked down to my left. Natalie was around the corner, watching pedestrians approaching from the river as she hawked her ugly paintings. We had debated using comms, but in the end decided to keep it simple, working out a series of signals we could each give that would alert the others to danger. Once an hour, just as the cathedral clock struck quarter past, we did a quick visual to check in, but everything was good.

I saw Sweeney before he saw me. Charles Ellison McSween. He looked like an old man, I thought sadly, watching him lope into the square, his shoulders hunched into his jacket against the cold. The river breeze ruffled the hair just below his baseball cap. The red was faded to the color of rust with a layer of frost on it. I let him walk past me before I called out to him, fortune-teller patter. He half turned back and I gestured theatrically to the empty seat across from me.

“Wouldn’t you like to know what the cards have to say about you?” I asked as he approached.

He gave me a narrow look. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered as he took the chair, testing it a little to see if it would take his weight.

“Shut up, I’m communicating with the other side,” I said, smiling as I shuffled.

He grinned back. “God, it’s good to see you.” The smile faded almost as soon as it came. “Billie, what the hell is going on?”

I shuffled the cards slowly. “Don’t use my name. And you should have worn a disguise.”

He touched the brim of his Yankees cap. “I am in disguise. Everybody knows I’m a Cards fan.” He narrowed his gaze at the deck in my hand. “What’s this mumbo jumbo all about?”

“This is a traditional Rider-Waite deck, recognizable to fortune-tellers and emo teenage girls the world over.” I pulled the top card off the deck and showed it to him. It was the Star, a naked woman bending over a brook with pitchers while stars hung just over her head.

“Ooh, I like her,” he said, pulling a stick of chewing gum out of his pocket. “She’s hot.”

“She represents hope, opportunity. Maybe you’ll choose her,” I said, shuffling the card back into the deck. “There are seventy-eight cards, divided into major and minor arcana.”

“Say what now?” He unwrapped the gum and stuffed it into his mouth.

“Major arcana—they represent big life lessons. Minor arcana are numbers and court cards like queens and kings. Four suits, wands, cups, coins, and pentacles.”

“Pentacles? Like Satan stuff?”

“No, not like Satan stuff. That’s pentagrams.” I spread the cards into a fan. “Pick three using your left hand. Leave them facedown.”

“Why three cards?” He chewed as he considered the cards.

“The first is your past, the second represents the present. The third card is what is yet to come.”

“And why does it have to be my left hand?” he asked.

“It’s the hand of destiny,” I said solemnly.

He laughed and tugged three cards free of the fan. I gathered up the rest. The notes of Mary Alice’s cello drifted over the square. She was playing Fleetwood Mac—“Rhiannon”—and Sweeney started tapping a finger in time with it.

I turned over the first card.

“Hey! I thought you said it wasn’t Satan stuff,” he protested. The card was the Devil, complete with horns and goat legs and a dramatic set of bat wings.

“It doesn’t mean what you think,” I told him. The Devil was sitting on a high throne, looming over a naked couple who were bound together by chains. I pointed to them. “They represent something that started out as a pleasure for you but became something that chained you up—like an addiction. But it’s in the past.”

He pointed to the wad of gum in his cheek. “Nicotine gum. I gave up smoking last month. I’m down to two sticks a day.”

“Well, there you go,” I said. I moved towards the second card. “What have you heard, Sweeney?”

“There were rumors,” he said. He shifted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable.