"OK. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Let me talk to Marvel."

She must have been standing next to him because she was on the line a second later.

"Everything OK?" she asked.

"Bobby says there's a computer out at the animal control building. Ballem calls it with his computer and apparently does some work with it. You got anybody out there?"

"There's a girl I could talk to. but I don't know. She's not the most trustworthy."

"I'll try to raid it from here, but if I can't, we might have to go into the place. We could use another key."

"Oh, man, I don't know," she said doubtfully. "My friend's pretty shaky."

"Is she a secretary? What?"

"She's fuckin' Duane, is what she's doing."

"Ah, shit."

"It's no big love affair; she thinks she needs the money."

"Well, talk to her. But don't give her any hint of what's happening."

"I'll think of something," she said. "A story."

"Be careful, for Christ's sakes. Hill's goofy. If there's any question, back off. We'll try to go in without her help."

LuEllen didn't like it. The worst thing, she said, was that too many people knew that we'd be hitting a particular place.

"Our security," she said, "is fucked. You know what the state women's prison is like here? I don't need some two-hundred-pound baby-killer sitting on my face for three to five."

"If it looks bad, we won't do it," I said. "Let's check it out tomorrow. Right after our session with Dessusdelit."

"It's kind of remote. We'll be noticed if we hang around."

"Nah. I looked at the map, and the place is right on the river. We'll chug down the river, look it over with the glasses, chug back, and look it over some more."

We were off the boat early the next morning, walking through town to the Coffee Klatch Cafe. The morning was warm and humid: pleasant but with the thick, hazy feel that foretold an insufferably hot day. It'd be good to be on the river. We got the window seat we needed at the Coffee Klatch and lingered over coffee and cheese Danishes.

"John," LuEllen said, and I turned my head to the street. John was climbing the City Hall steps, carrying the briefcase. He was wearing the dark pin-striped suit we'd seen in the motel. He looked hot.

Ten minutes later LuEllen said, "There she is. Let's go."

We slid out of the booth, left a dollar tip, paid the rest of the bill at the counter, and hurried outside. We'd been in the cafe only fifteen minutes, but you could feel that the day had gotten hotter and closer. Across the street Mary Wells was climbing out of her car. We walked down to the corner, waited for a car to pass, and strolled across the street toward the City Hall.

"Radio on?"

"Just looked," LuEllen said. The hand-size transmitter was in her shoulder bag. We were ten feet behind Wells as she climbed the steps into the City Hall. We paused for a moment at the directory inside, then followed her up the second flight to the clerk's office.

"It's going to be a scorcher today." Wells was saying as we walked in. She was talking to a woman behind the service counter. John was standing at a table to one side, poring over a book of plat maps. Wells's eyebrow went up as she looked from John to the assistant; the assistant caught it and shrugged. John's briefcase, its mouth opened toward the safe on the back wall, was sitting on a flat-file cabinet.

"Could I help you folks?" the assistant asked, looking past Wells.

"Yes, I was told you sell Corps of Engineers navigation maps for the Mississippi."

"The map book? Sure."

Wells walked through a wooden gate on the public counter to a glass-enclosed private office at the back. The clerk dug in a drawer, found a map book, and said, "That'll be twelve dollars. There's no sales tax on government publications."

I dug out my billfold and handed her a fifty. "I'm afraid I don't have anything smaller."

"That's OK. I'll just be a minute."

She walked back to Wells's office and said something. Wells nodded, stood up, came out, and walked to the safe. LuEllen put her hand in her purse. Mary Wells turned the combination dial on the safe, pausing briefly to align each combination number, and took out a cashbox. We got the change for the fifty, and two minutes later we were back on the street.

"OK?" I asked.

LuEllen shrugged. "Seemed to be. I'll have to look at the film. She turned the dial slowly enough, though. If the camera worked, we should be clear."

We were back aboard the Fanny before ten. John called a few minutes later.

"It worked. If the camera was aimed right, we got it because the film advanced four frames."

"Good," I said. "We've got to talk to Dessusdelit, and then we're going out on the river. I'll see you tonight at the Holiday Inn."

When Dessusdelit came over the levee wall, I turned to LuEllen and said, "We're on," and fled toward the head.

"OK. So after she cuts the deck, as soon as you pick it up, I say, 'What'd you do to this ball?' " LuEllen said, following me.

"Yeah. Right after I pick it up. And you've got to put something extra in your voice – like awe. Like gee whiz. Don't overdo it, but I'm not good at this, so you've got to turn her around. Just glancing your way won't be enough. Maybe you could hold the ball in that light beam," I said, nodding at a shaft of sunlight coming in the bow windows.

"OK. here she is."

I went on back to the head, stripped off my tennis shirt, and turned on the water, while LuEllen went to the door.

"Come on in," I heard LuEllen say cheerfully. Dessusdelit twittered a few words, and LuEllen led her to the same chair she'd sat in the day before.

While I splashed water on my face and neck, LuEllen got down the crystal ball and passed it to Dessusdelit, "just to warm it up." I wandered out of the head a minute later and posed in the galley, rubbing my wet face with a towel, yawning. Dessusdelit was wearing a bright print summer dress and beige low-heeled shoes. Even with the color, she still looked like a venomous sparrow, spooky, nervously glancing this way and that, as though a predator were about to jump out of a bush. She had the crystal ball cupped in her hands, rolling it, staring into it.

"You in a mood for a reading?" LuEllen asked me.

"Sure, I guess," I said lazily.

Dessusdelit knew something about tarot, so we couldn't fool her with a fake spread. LuEllen kept her working with the crystal ball while I got my deck from the cupboard. It was a common deck, the Waite-Rider. There are hundreds of tarots in circulation, but you can buy a Waite-Rider anyplace that handles occult stuff. It's a standard, which is a good thing, because when I needed the second identical deck, I had no trouble finding one. The second deck was in a little cardboard box we'd taped under the edge of the table.

"It's amazing," LuEllen said as I sat down across from Dessusdelit. My knee touched the box under the table. "We must have caught Miz Dessusdelit at a critical juncture. When she handles the ball, it lights up like a Christmas tree: money and adventure."

She paused, artlessly, and let a wrinkle crease her forehead, as if a new thought had just occurred to her. "And romance?" LuEllen looked down at Dessusdelit. "Do you think that peculiar flux and intensity could have something to do with romance?"

Dessusdelit blushed. "Well, I wouldn't be. there isn't anything-"

"Could be something wicked this way comes," LuEllen said. I jumped; LuEllen surprises me sometimes. She'd just quoted a piece of Macbeth, which later became a Ray Bradbury title. Dessusdelit obviously recognized at least the sound of it, and I wondered if it were the Shakespeare or the Bradbury.

While Dessusdelit was mumbling over LuEllen's suggestion, I thumbed through the deck and put the Queen of Cups on the table, faceup.

"Significator," I said. I glanced at LuEllen. "Would you pull the blinds just a little and kill the lights? I'd like it a little dimmer to help focus the concentration."