With his ringleted yellow hair, coiled mustache, and haughty right file, this was a jack that looked as if he might be a knave in the worst sense of the word.
And now to the tenth card, already in Maria's small brown hand.
Never had the familiar red Bicycle design of the U.S. Playing Card Company looked ominous before, but it was fearsome now, as strange voodoo veve or satanic conjuration pattern.
Maria's hand tamed, the card turned, and another knave of spades revoIved into view, snapped against the table.
Drawn one after the other, two knaves of spades didn't signify two deadly enemies, but meant that the enemy already predicted by the first would be unusually powerful, exceptionally dangerous.
Agnes knew now why this prognostication had dismayed rather charmed her: If you dared to believe in the good fortune predicted he cards, then you were obliged to believe in the bad, as well.
In her arms, little Barty burbled contentedly, unaware that his destiny supposedly included epic love, fabulous riches, and violence.
He was so innocent. This sweet boy, this pure and stainless infant, couldn't possibly have an enemy in the world, and she could not imagine any son of hers earning enemies, not if she raised him well. This was just a silly card reading.
Agnes meant to stop Maria from turning the eleventh card, but her curiosity was equal to her apprehension.
When the third knave of spades appeared, Edom said to Maria, 'What kind of enemy does three in a row describe?'
She remained fixated on the card that she had just dealt, and for a while she didn't speak, as though the eyes of the paper knave held her in thrall. Finally she said, 'Monster. Human monster.'
Jacob nervously cleared his throat. 'And what if it's four jacks in a row?'
Her brothers' solemnity irritated Agnes. They appeared to be taking this reading seriously, as though it were far more than just a little after-dinner entertainment.
Admittedly, she had allowed herself to be disturbed by the fall of the cards, too. According them any credibility at all opened the door to full belief.
The odds against this phenomenal eleven-card draw must be millions to one, which seemed to give the predictions validity.
Not every coincidence, however, has meaning. Toss a quarter one million times, roughly half a million heads will turn up, roughly the same number of tails. In the process, there will be instances when heads turn up thirty, forty, a hundred times in a row. This does not mean that destiny is at work or that God-choosing to be not merely his usual mysterious self but utterly inscrutable-is warning of Armageddon through the medium of the quarter; it means the laws of probability hold true only in the long run, and that short-run anomalies are meaningful solely to the gullible.
And what if it's four jacks in a row?
At last Maria answered Jacob's question in a murmur, making the f sign of the cross once more as she spoke. 'Never saw four. Never even just I see three. But four? is to be the devil himself.'
This declaration was received seriously by Edom and Jacob, as if the devil often strolled the streets of Bright Beach and from time had been known to snatch little babies from their mothers' and eat them with mustard.
Even Agnes was briefly unnerved to the extent that she said, 'Enough of this. It's not fun anymore.'
In agreement, Maria pushed the stack of unused cards aside, and she peered at her hands as if she wanted to scrub them for a long time under hot water.
'No,' Agnes said, shaking loose the grip of irrational fear. 'Wait. This is absurd. It's just a card. And we're all curious.'
'No,' Maria warned.
'I don't need to see it,' Edom agreed.
'Or me,' said Jacob.
Agnes pulled the stack of cards in front of her. She discarded the first two, as Maria would have done, and turned over the third.
Here was the final knave of spades.
Although a cold current crackled along the cable of her spine, Agnes smiled at the card. She was determined to change the dark mood that had descended over them.
'Doesn't look so spooky to me.' She turned the knave of spades so the baby could see it. 'Does he scare you, Barty?'
Bartholomew had been able to focus his eyes much sooner than the average baby was supposed to be able to focus. To a surprising extent, he was already engaged in the world around him.
Now Barty peered at the card, smacked his lips, smiled, and said, 'Ga.' With a flatulent squawk of the butt trumpet, he soiled his diaper, Everyone except Maria laughed.
Tossing the knave onto the table, Agnes said, 'Barty doesn't seem too impressed with this devil.'
Maria gathered up the four jacks and tore them in thirds. She put the twelve pieces in the breast pocket of her blouse. 'I buy to you new cards, but no more ever can you to be having these.'
Chapter 32
Money for the dead. The decomposing flesh of a beloved wife and an unborn baby transmuted into a fortune was an achievement that put to shame the alchemists' dreams of turning lead to gold.
On Tuesday, less than twenty-four hours after Naomi's funeral, Knacker, Hisscus, and Nork-representing the state and the county held preliminary meetings with Junior's lawyer and with the attorney for the grieving Hackachak clan. As before, the well-tailored trio was conciliatory, sensitive, and willing to reach an accommodation to prevent the filing of a wrongful-death suit.
In fact, attorneys for the potential plaintiffs felt that Nork, Hisscus, and Knacker were too willing to reach an accommodation, and they met the trio's conciliation with high suspicion. Naturally, the state didn't want to defend against a claim involving the death of a beautiful young bride and her unborn baby, but their willingness to negotiate so early, from such a reasonable posture, implied that their position was even weaker than it appeared to be.
Junior's attorney-Simon Magusson-insisted upon full disclosure of maintenance records and advisories relating to the fire tower and to other forest-service structures for which the state and the county had sole or joint custodial responsibility. If a wrongful-death suit was filed, this information would have to be divulged anyway during normal disclosure procedures prior to trial, and since maintenance logs and advisories were of public record, Hisscus and Knacker and Nork agreed to provide what was requested.
Meanwhile, as attorneys met on Tuesday afternoon, Junior, having taken leave from work, phoned a locksmith to change the locks at his house. As a cop, Vanadium might have access to a lock-release gun that could spring the new deadbolts as easily as the old. Therefore, on the interior of the front and back doors, Junior added sliding bolts, which couldn't be picked from outside.
He paid cash to the locksmith, and included in the payment were the two dimes and the nickel Vanadium had left on his nightstand.
Wednesday, with a swiftness that confirmed its eagerness to make a deal, the state supplied records on the fire tower. For five years, a significant portion of the maintenance funds had been diverted by bureaucrats to other uses. And for three years, the responsible maintenance supervisor filed an annual report on this specific tower, requesting immediate funds for fundamental reconstruction; the third of these documents, submitted eleven months prior to Naomi's fall, was composed in crisis language and stamped urgent.
Sitting in Simon Magusson's mahogany-paneled office, reading the contents of this file, Junior was aghast. 'I could have been killed.'
'It's a miracle both of you didn't go through that railing,' the attorney agreed.
Magusson was a small man behind a huge desk. His head appeared too large for his body, but his ears seemed no bigger than a pair of silver dollars. Large protuberant eyes, bulging with shrewdness and feverish with ambition, marked him as one who'd be hungry a minute after standing up from a daylong feast. A button nose too
