AndrEs execution hour arrived. The police chief and three of his men held the animal in place for the veterinarians hot shot. The needle was centimeters away from shaved haunch when there was an explosion of breaking glass, and Brigitte Bardot herself leapt through the vets window, followed by a dozen fellow activists. While the two sides scuffled, a judge in a hearing room a few blocks away granted a stay to Bardots lawyer. The attorney raced to the vets, pulled the chief off his client, and presented the document. When his tour group arrived in Saint-Tropez, Belford learned that the little rascal, as he had begun to refer to the macaque, had been temporarily spared. Belford shouted, Hallelujah! Right there on the French Riviera. He could not help himself.
Ive always loved animals, officer. Somebody mistreat a dog, itd really get my dander up. This French monkey was so cute, and its life had been so unfair. Well, right away I got me an interpreter and went down to city hall, to the police station, and to the court, and offered to take AndrE off their hands. To bring him to America. Land of the free and home of the brave. (Good grief! you think. When will the corn stop, and the ball begin?) At first, they wouldnt even listen to me, but I was persistent. You learn that in salesmanship. Persistent and polite. My tour went on to Spain, but I stayed behind, and nearly every day I stopped by the office of some official or other in Saint-Tropez and made my pitch. I dont know which the chief got the most tired of, the controversy in the media or me on his doorstep, but one day, after about a month of hard lobbying, he called me in and said in perfect English, If you can get this damnable brute out of France by tomorrow night, it is yours. Those were his very words. And with great joy, I complied.
The detective scowls. The Frenchman didnt file a report with U.S. authorities? Nor you neither?
No, officer, he did not and I did not. Maybe I was in the wrong, but I wanted to give this poor monkey a new lease on life. Why bring his past with him to Seattle? You see, I was convinced I could reform him. And I did. As Miss Mati is my witness, I did.
The glance the detective gives you is like a coin tossed to a leper. To Belford he asks, Now, how do you know that, sir?
Cause after six, seven months or so-these things take time-I could leave baubles and beads and imitation jewels lying around all over the place, and AndrE wouldnt even touch em. Why, if I dangled a rhinestone bracelet in front of his face, hed screech and run out of the room. (Maybe, you think, he was screeching at your bad taste. You believe that monkey cant tell rhinestones from diamonds?) How did I accomplish this? Well, part of it was conditioning, simple rules of animal training, although it isnt always real simple, it requires a heap of patience. And part was my faith. Im talking about prayer now. Lord, how I prayed and prayed over that monkey! And I taught AndrE to pray, too. Okay, you can look at me funny, but for the last year and a half, AndrE has been kneeling down beside me every night at bedtime and bowing his head, and folks may say, Monkey see, monkey do, but I believe sincerely theres more to it than that. AndrE is devout. He is. You should see the way the little rascal reacts to pictures of Jesus Christ. I know, I know, its only a dumb animal, but whos to say AndrE does not have a soul, a little monkey soul? Sure, hes been retrained, but Im prepared to go further than that. AndrEs been reborn.
The detective clears his throat. Scarcely looking up, he asks Belford about the circumstances of the monkeys disappearance-Yesterday morning while I was at work. He unlocked the apartment door and just took off. No warning, no nothing-and then assures him that the police would not, could not, hold AndrE, once apprehended, unless he has committed an offense. In fact, in the absence of a crime, the only action the detective can take at all is to issue an information report. A non-emergency (read low-priority) bulletin would be broadcast to patrol cars advising them to be on the lookout for an unrestrained monkey. At this point, appearing a trifle stunned, like a priest whos heard the confessions of a dormitory of hormone-laden schoolgirls, the detective excuses himself and scurries away to the safety of his office.
Gee, says Belford. That wasnt real satisfying, was it?
Well, didnt I tell you to mention the bribes? Might have given him some inspiration.
ELEVEN-THIRTY A.M.
Outside, it has gotten surprisingly warm. And, not so surprisingly, hazy. The air tastes of sauerkraut, the metropolitan ozone layer wiggles like a mold of rat jelly. Although theres barely a cloud in the sky, Mount Rainier has virtually vanished. It is a spook summit now, a ghost tit behind the haze, and the sun is ghostly, too, its blazing oceans of nuclear radiation no match for the spew of tens of thousands of little Japanese cars. Dont breathe this air, you say. You dont know where its been. Behind a hydrocarbon hood, the city is outlined like the features of a robber under panty hose. I can remember, says Belford, when Seattle didnt have any smog. It was not that long ago. We shouldnt complain, you say. Its the smell of money.
Happily for you, Belford pays for parking. You suppose you are going to have to start pinching your pennies now, a thoroughly depressing idea. For some odd reason, you think of that creep in the Bull&Bear and what he said about the fun just commencing. Harborview, you hiss. And Belford, believing you are referring to the police receptionist, hastens to add, We probably did strike her as a bit demented, poor woman.
By driving along the waterfront on Elliott Avenue, you manage to avoid any congestion generated by the Yamaguchi parade. It turns out not to be a parade, anyhow, but a rally at the downtown Westlake Mall. The mayor gives Dr. Yamaguchi the key to the city. Cancer patients from a five-state area and British Columbia mill about, crying out to be blessed. The good doctor promises the crowd and the press that he will reveal findings of some importance at the conference on Monday-and then, with shy smiles and Bic-taps, relates a little story about how his parents consented to his studies in Houston only because they thought Rice University sounded sympathetic to a homesick Asians dietary needs.
On the climb up Queen Anne Hill, you stupidly ask Belford if he has considered the possibility that AndrE might have been stolen. He shakes his head assuredly, but his confidence turns quickly to panic when you elaborate. Im talking plot here. A professional job. I mean, therere criminals all over Europe who know about AndrE and his special talents. Maybe one of them traced him here. Okay, so they wouldnt know how to control him, what commands to give, and so forth. But what if Kongo van den Bos informed them? Suppose he sold the information to one of his jailmates, or they beat it out of him? Suppose Kongos been paroled? Its been three years. Early release happens all the time in America, so why not France? Suppose Kongos here? Suppose …
Lord, Belford moans. Lord, lord, lord, lord! Why didnt I think of that? He insists that you turn the Porsche around and fetch him right back to police headquarters so he can alert the detective. It taxes your powers of persuasion to convince him that he can accomplish it just as easily over the telephone. Call as soon as you get home. Then take a nap, for goodness sake. Drink a glass of cooking sherry. Youre a load of nerves. You are not as nurturing as you ought to be, perhaps, but you have devoted the entire morning to Belford at the expense of your own agenda. You simply must catch Q-Jo before she leaves. Her tarot deck awaits you, with its lurid colors and obscure archetypes, an extravagantly fashioned if spitball-plugged keyhole in the door to your temple of busted luck.
ELEVENFIFTY A.M.
You dont make it. Her appointment with the garden club tourist is at noon, and it appears as if she is going to be on time for a change. To you, whose creed is to never ever be late for anything, she once quoted Oliver Goldsmith: Punctuality is not an admirable trait in a woman of grace. You surveyed her beanbag rolls of bouncing flesh and saw a travesty of grace, but the best you could come up with in response was, The early bird gets the worm. Naturally, she had some fun with that at your expense.
In any event, today of all days, Q-Jo Huffington has left for work on time, her work, in this case being not in her primary capacity as tarotmancer but in her secondary role as professional one-woman captive audience for travel bor
es.
Nearly a decade ago, on a Metro bus, Q-Jo slid her tectonic plates of tootsie-wootsie tonnage onto a seat next to a (fortunately) tiny, black-clad crone who, it turned out, had recently returned from a visit to her ancestral home in Greece. When Q-Jo responded with some semblance of enthusiasm to the already dog-eared snapshots the old woman pulled out of her purse, the woman said, You come to my house, look at my pictures, I pay you ten dollars. And Q-Jo, because she felt sorry for the lady and because she could use ten dollars, complied. Later, it occurred to her that the world was full of people with similar needs. Some were old and alone, some were weird and friendless, some had friends but were in danger of losing them if they subjected them to another illustrated account of their last vacation, some were simply incorrigible show-offs. What they had in common was that each of them had been somewhere and wanted to tell somebody about it. In great detail. So, Q-Jo hired herself out. She would sit in their parlors or dens or cramped apartments-occasionally in an executive suite-and pore through their scrapbooks and photographs, applaud their slide shows and video presentations, ooh and ahh at their souvenirs and mementos, listen attentively to journal entries and passages from guidebooks and hyperbolic brochures, and generally exhibit appreciation and curiosity. (She learned early on that the more questions she asked the better tips she earned, although it was prudent to ask only those questions she was reasonably certain a client could answer.) From family reunion picnics in Iowa to the Folies-BergEre in Paris, from the magic mice of Disneyland to the killer rats of Kabul, Q-Jo had had occasion to comment on them all. Sometimes more than once. Her clients tended not to travel often-some took only one trip in their entire lives-and it was fairly common for her to be invited to review the same journey twice or thrice or more.
If you have told her once, you have told her forty times, her little scam may be creative and clever, but theres no money in it, no serious money. She says she doesnt mind. Its supplemental income. The tarot business seems to fluctuate a lot, according to the alignment of the planets. According to the state of the economy, in your opinion. Anyhow, my clients rely on me emotionally, she maintains, a sentiment not appreciably different, it seems to you, from the bleeding-heart attitudes of Belford Dunn, which she often joins you in ridiculing.
No matter. Q-Jo has gone off on a job, just when you need her most. However, as you discover when you walk down the hall to your own more spacious unit, she has left you a note.
ELEVEN FIFTY-THREE A.M.
Wedged in your threshold is a small rectangle of black rice paper that when unfolded reveals the following message handwritten in silver ink:
Gwen Baby,
Regret we missed connections. Ill be back by three. Meanwhile, the cards are spread on my reading table. Ive shuffled them, meditating on you and the questions Id bet the ranch youre dying to ask. So pick a card. You know how. Study it and well get together later.
Ta-ta,
Q the Huff
She wishes you to select a single card. Thats the way you do it these days. Now that you have grown close, she has difficulty giving you a full-scale reading. Her feelings, her fears and hopes for you, show up as static in the psychic transmission. She says the tarot can have a plethora of meanings, and when she looks at the cards that come up for a friend, she, due to a protective instinct, tends to lose her objectivity and overaccentuate the positive. As a result, the friend is misled, and Q-Jos gift is compromised. Tarot with a stranger is kinda like a one-night stand, she explains. Its usually both more dangerous and more honest than sex with the partner you love.
Recalling the first time she ever read you, you have to concur. That was nearly three years ago. You were new in the building, having recently purchased your apartment from Belford Dunn. You were also fairly new at Posners disco, and it was a mix of career anxiety and career ambition that led you to ring Q-Jos bell, although she contends it was actually other concerns altogether.
Just as the University of Washington was the only school of any consequence that would accept you in its graduate program, Posner Lampard McEvoy and Jacobsen was the only brokerage house that would hire you. God knows you applied at the jumbos first. Granted, you had not been any academic whiz, but you earned your MBA fair and square (except for that teensie bit of cribbing and brown-nosing to which every pressured student occasionally resorts), and you were confident of eventual success. After all, it was the only thing you had ever wanted. Okay, if you were forced to launch your career at a regional firm, so much the better. You could become a big fish in a small pond and soon be invited to swim downstream. To the sea where the big bucks splashed. Of course, it irked you to no end that Posner was unimpressed by your MBA. Were here to sell, he said, and Im giving you a chance because of your experience in selling. You had paid your way through college by working afternoons, weekends, and summers at Nordstrom. The store had started you out in the lingerie department, but you became so blushingly flustered whenever a male questioned you about intimate apparel that they had to transfer you to outdoor wear. Oh, yes, you moved a mountain of ski jackets over the years, but thats another story. If Posner couldnt differentiate between Gore-Tex and government bonds, that was his problem.
Your problem was that your performance that first year at the disco hadnt quite lived up to your expectations. True, you were better off financially than youd ever been in your life, but the major juice seemed annoyingly just out of reach of your dipper, and Mr. Dunn, as you called him then, had had to pull some strings at the bank to get your loan approved.
At exactly what juncture you became aware that your neighbor down the hall was Seattles most highly regarded tarotmancer escapes you now. Vivid, however, is your recollection of the evening that you, with hesitation, cynicism, and more than a dollop of shame, pressed the chewed tip of your index finger against her buzzer. Disoriented by her size and attire, you blurted out that you would like to schedule an appointment-Just for the fun of it, you know-and she said, How does immediately strike you? My six-thirty gig just canceled. Stammering excuses, you attempted to back away, but she looped the lumpish loaf of her arm-the baguette of the behemoths-around you and drew you across the sill. Come on, you look like a girl whos into instant gratification. Why procrastinate when we can precognitate?
Before you could protest further, you were being seated at an oval cherry table in a living room-parlor is a more descriptive term-that might have been decorated by a Midwestern grandma on a shopping spree at Sears in 1939. Furniture in the room was covered with that nubby upholstery that is mildly but incessantly irritating to both the skin and the spirit, sofa pillows were stiff and scratchy, curtains were of dingy lace; and adorning the walls, where you expected to see, if not heathen mandalas at least inspirational slogans superimposed over pictures of rainbows and sunrises, there were landscape paintings of the type sold in perpetually-going-out-of-business furniture stores in the gritty parts of town. When she noticed the way you were scowling at the decor, she waved her arms and said, Psychic forces find this atmosphere hospitable. Good grief! you thought. Is she implying that the Higher Self sleeps under chenille?
How ill at ease you were as you shuffled the cards! Q-Jo could tell that you were totally unfamiliar with the tarot, but she provided very little that evening in the way of history or background. In the years that followed, she lectured you extensively on the subject, although as you would be quick to admit, most of it went in one ear and out the other. You returned the deck to her. Listen, you said. Im a stockbroker, and the reason I came to you is, well uh, Im wondering … my timing has been off lately vis-A-vis the market, and uh, frankly, Ive picked some sinkers and thrown some wide darts, and… . You fumble in your purse. I dont have a stock guide with me, but I can run down the hall and get it. I was hoping that we could look it over just a little bit and you might—
Q-Jo put a plantain phalanx to your lips, issued a brief, derisive chortle, and said, Now you listen, honey, and listen good. Do you really believe that if I could pick stock
s that are gonna double-or winning lottery numbers or racehorses-that Id be living in this one-bedroom apartment smoking rot-lung tobacco and wearing last years turban? Come on! Id be styling and smiling in a nice little villa in the Himalayan foothills; fountains, peacocks, Ram Dass in the guest suite, both a French chef and a weight-loss doctor on duty around the clock, so forth and so on. You get the picture. And another thing: I cannot accurately predict your future. We need to get that straight, too. I cant, no psychic can, and any that claim they can are swindlers.
She rapped the deck with the same musaceous digit she had employed to shush you. A crystal ball, this is not, and you damn well ought to be glad about it. It isnt tea leaves or goat entrails, neither. What it is is a highly refined, highly efficient system of symbolic knowledge. The symbols that were carefully chosen over the centuries speak directly to the deeper levels of the mind. The western mind. In the East, the I Ching cuts the very same mustard, but with a more, shall we say, intricate turn of the knife. Never mind that. The images here in the tarot will serve to open up and free certain aspects of your subconscious. Once the symbols have unlocked your subconscious, I can use my own psychic vision to read what the hells going on in the recesses of your pumpkin. I read your subconscious thoughts-theyre damn near as legible to me as The Seattle Times-but I dont read the future. Comprende?