"Like a crow," John said. "She sat there with her head bobbing up and down, like she was pecking on me."

John had parked the white BMW on the street outside the lawyer's office, where everybody might have a chance to look it over. In his time as an underground activist in Memphis, he'd picked up the language of municipal development; the three of them, John said, had an intense discussion of tax increment financing. When he left, Ballem was seeking references to TI financing in the state statutes.

They were excited, he said, but something else, too.

"This Dessusdelit woman, man, she looks fucked up. I mean, she looked a little crazy. Are you sure she's all right?"

"She always seemed wrapped a little too tight, if anything," I said.

"Not now," John said. "She looked frazzled."

John went to Memphis, more for show than anything, and returned to the Holiday Inn Friday morning, as Marvel was leaving for the capital. LuEllen sat in the Coffee Klatch Caf‚ across from the City Hall, watching the City Hall and prowling the adjacent stores. I was on the boat alone when Dessusdelit showed up. John was right: She seemed to be coming undone and asked if I was in the mind to do a reading.

"Guess I could," I said. "LuEllen's not here, she's up in town shopping-"

"I simply would like to see what the cards say." She was on the dock, and I was on top of the cabin, looking down. She was gray-faced, haggard. In the cabin I got out the deck, shuffled the cards, and pushed them across at her. She shuffled a dozen times, pushed them back.

"Cut?"

She hesitated, nibbling her lip, and finally cut.

The cards rolled out, and as happens in most tarot readings, there was no clear, dramatic direction. What the cards said was more subtle than that. The Five of Pentacles – sometimes interpreted as a poverty card – popped up, and her sharp intake of breath indicated that she knew what it was.

"Remember that everything is relative, and the cards have a hard time dealing with relativity," I told her. "I could roll the Five of Pentacles for a Rockefeller, and it might mean that he'd be cut back to his last billion."

"It's so much different from the last time," she said in a small voice, seeming almost lost.

The last card to come up was one of the major arcana, the High Priestess. I was startled but kept my face straight and started picking the spread apart.

"There's a secret," I concluded, tapping the High Priestess. "I don't know whether you have a secret or somebody has a secret they're hiding from you. But if the secret comes out, there'll be terrible problems. You can see how that influence in the High Priestess cuts right back to the Five of Pentacles, the loss card, the poverty card."

She was becoming increasingly agitated, clutching a wadded Kleenex in her fist, her knuckles white as marble.

"Is it going to come out?"

I shrugged. "I can't see that."

"Can we do another spread?"

I shook my head. "If you do too many, the influences tend to get mixed up. If you'd like a really good reading."

"Yes?"

"Focus on a question. You don't even have to tell me what it is. But focus, spend the day and the night thinking about it, and come back tomorrow morning. Then we'll take out the cards, and we'll see if we can do something more definitive."

Her head jerked in assent. "Tomorrow," she said, getting up.

"Sure. But focus. We need that psychic energy."

"And you think we'll get something definitive."

"Uh, wait a minute." I scratched my chin. "Look, you've been awful nice to us, and I'm sure LuEllen wouldn't mind."

I got the crystal ball in its velvet sleeve and handed it to her. "Spend some time tonight, staring into it. Use it to focus; remember what the cards did to the crystal the last time? That can work in reverse. Focus tonight, and tomorrow we'll read."

"If you think LuEllen wouldn't mind."

"Not at all," I said as I held the door for her, "and I'm sure it'll give us a much clearer look with the cards." As sure as a stacked deck could make it.

LuEllen was coming down the levee wall as Dessusdelit left, and they stopped and talked for a second before Dessusdelit went on.

"You loaned her the ball?" LuEllen asked as she stepped off the dock onto the boat.

"She's coming back tomorrow for a reading," I said. "I wanted an explanation for what the cards are going to do."

"She's shook up," LuEllen said. We both looked after the mayor. "Maybe she's got a conscience."

"I think she's mostly scared. The last time she was here, she had all this opportunity showing up. We just did a spread and got some very peculiar cards. Not nearly so happy."

"How'd you manage that?" LuEllen asked.

"I didn't. They just came up," I said uneasily. The cards sometimes make you nervous even if you don't believe in them. I changed the subject. "What'd you figure out?"

"We're in luck," LuEllen said. "That hardware store next to the City Hall has aluminum extension ladders."

"Say what?"

John called. When he returned from Memphis, he'd phoned Ballem and said he'd talked to the Man. The Man didn't mind some discreet, well-placed partners, but they wouldn't get in for free, even with the clout they could provide from City Hall.

The Man wanted a two-hundred-thousand-dollar investment, cash money: no checks, no stamps. And John had to see a piece of the money now. Half. A hundred thousand.

"I told them that my friend was used to dealing in cash, that it was a personal peculiarity," John drawled, still in character. "And I told them that he'd spent so many years dealing with bullshit artists he now insisted that one of his people actually see some cash up front, before any deals were made."

"They bought it?"

"Yeah. They think it's weird, but they figure I'm a dealer, which kind of explains some of it, in their eyes. We're meeting at the City Hall, quarter after nine. Ballem will be at the door to let me in."

"Why so late?"

"So it'll be dark. I asked, and they said they'd just as soon not have a lot of noticeable people getting together with me. And there was a hint there, you know, that I'd better stay in line. That there'd be a half dozen of them, and they wouldn't let in anybody but me."

"All right. Take a good look at whatever they're carrying the money in. Try to figure out if they'll leave it in the safe."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll do all that. Marvel called from the capital; she's all set. She's talked to the governor's man, and he'll see her anytime up to midnight. She'll go as soon as we call her."

"You be careful, man."

"Yeah. You, too."

At nine o'clock LuEllen went back to the sleeping cabin and clattered around. After a minute she made a low, groaning sound and I stepped back. She was leaning against the cabin way, her eyes closed, her head cocked back.

"Not a fuckin' word," she said.

She did two more hits in the next half hour, while we waited. She was flying when John called.

"They had it, and it's in the safe, just like we figured. The safe was already open a crack. The city clerk was there, Wells, with Ballem and Dessusdelit and Hill."

"St. Thomas wasn't there?"

"No. Just those four. I went up the block to the Mobil station to use the telephone, and all four of them came out together, so they're gone. The money's in a bank bag, and they weren't carrying it when they came out."

"We'll take it from here then," I said.

"Good luck."

LuEllen is a great burglar for a lot of reasons, but the most important reason is her will to act. LuEllen can do outrageous things because she has the will to do them.

"I wouldn't take you, except I don't know what I'll have to go through inside. I might need some muscle to handle a ladder or get up on the roof," she told me as she selected the tools she'd take along.