King of Swords

'Whaddaya want?' Eldon said, finally looking in the rearview mirror at the passenger who'd been riding with him the whole way. He could only see the side of his forehead.

'The most powerful man in town shouldn't be leaving his car door open.'

'I didn't,' Eldon said. 'Whaddaya want?'

'Two of your finest are investigating me.'

'Who?'

'I don't have the names. One's black, one's white.'

'How d'you know this?'

'I just do.'

'This more of your voodoo shit, Boukman? The spirit of King Kong materialize in your living room or somethin'?'

I '11 don laughed.

'You'll never understand,' Solomon said. The leather squeaked as he moved slightly in the seat.

247 'I'd “understand” if you gave me a name or two.'

'Look into it.'

'You heard of “please”, or don't that word exist in Haiti?'

'Look into it - please Solomon said. No sarcasm in his tone. No emotion. No nothing. Usual flat, dull, personalityfree voice. 'We don't want any problems, not with the construction about to start.'

'There's no problems I don't see comin' a month before they show up,' Eldon said. 'I'm your future, remember? So you got nothin' to worry about, s'long as you remember who's in charge.'

'Long as I remember my place, you mean?'

'Don't gimme that civil rights shit!' Eldon laughed. “You ain't a nigra, Boukman. You're Haitian. Martin Luther King did not die for you.'

Solomon didn't answer. He shifted closer to the door on the passenger side.

'Why are you sweatin' this anyway? No one knows what you look like, right? You probably forgotten yourself, way I bin hearin' things. How many operations you had to your face?'

'You remember what I look like, Eldon. You never forget a face, right?' Solomon opened the door and got out of the car.

Eldon watched him walk off to the Mercedes, which had pulled back away from the street light and into the dark.

The car then reversed up the road, did a three-point turn and headed back to Miami.

Weirdly, Eldon had the feeling someone was still in the car with him. He switched on the light and looked behind him. There was no one there, but Boukman had left something on the seat, his signature, his calling card: the King of Swords.

Their troubles weren't over. There'd be more killing.

PART FOUR

June 1981 I 28

'Tarot cards are used in the art of divination, commonly known as fortune telling. They've been around since the fifteenth century, and are thought to have originated in Italy, although fortune telling itself is older than the Bible. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy rail against fortune tellers. And in Chronicles, one of the reasons King Saul dies is because he asked a medium for help. You could even say it's the oldest faith,' Phyllis Cole explained to Max in a room at the Tuttle Motel on Collins Avenue, where she taught card-reading and palmistry classes on Thursday nights. She was a professional psychic who also helped cops with their investigations. Max had never used psychics himself, but it was a common, if not publicized practice, especially in missing persons cases. Phyllis had a good reputation: she'd found several people, although they'd all turned up dead.

'There are seventy-eight cards in a tarot deck. They're divided into two groups - Major Arcana and Minor Arcana,'

she continued, laying out four on the table. 'There are twenty-two Major Arcana cards; they signify life's prime forces, things over which we have no control — twists of fate, acts of God, the intangibles, the imponderables. They're results too. You're probably familiar with some of them, on account of seeing them on TV or movies - Death, the Devil and the Lovers. None of these are meant to be taken literally.

Take a look at the design. What do you see?'

She passed the Death card over to Max, who was sitting opposite her at a table at the end of the room. He saw a giant grinning skeleton in black armour riding a white horse.

The horse was trampling over a body. In front of it stood a

2W cardinal in his mitre and robes, hands clasped together in prayer and supplication, while two children knelt beside him, one looking up at the skeleton, the other looking away in fear.

'Oh, I know, I know,' she said before he stated the obvious. 'Looks like a scene of devastation, doesn't it? But look to the right of the picture, behind the horse's head.'

'A rising sun,' Max said.

'Exactly.' She nodded. 'A rising sun. A new day. After the end, a new beginning, a fresh start; change, regeneration.

That's what the card symbolizes — one door closing, another opening. And if you look at the rest of the background, you'll see a waterfall, symbolizing the constant flow of life.'

'And tears too, right?' Max said.

'See? You're learning.' Phyllis smiled warmly. She was a short, large, but not unattractive, woman who wore her hair in an almost militaristic afro, cropped close around the back and sides, but higher and pointed on top. It shouldn't have suited her, but it did.

She put the cards away and picked out eight new ones from the deck, laying them face up so Max could see them.