happening for me. It changed my luck. I've so got to find it.'
'You've looked for it, I presume,' Gia said.
'Turned my place upside down. But tomorrow I'm getting professional help.'
'A bloodhound?' Jack offered, which earned him another squeeze.
'No. I've got an appointment with my psycho.' She giggled. 'I mean my psychic.'
Gia's fingers became a vise, so Jack decided to heed her. 'I'm sure he'll be a big help.'
'Oh, I know he will! He's wonderful! I left my old seer for Ifasen a couple of months ago and am I ever glad. The man's absolutely incredible.'
'Ifasen?' Jack knew most of the major players in the local psychic racket, if not personally, at least by rep, and the name Ifasen didn't ring a bell.
'He's new. Just moved into Astoria and-oh, my God! I just realized! That's just up the road from here! Maybe I can see him tonight!'
'It's pretty late, Junie. Will he-?'
'This is an emergency! He's got to see me!'
She pulled out her cell phone and speed-dialed a number, listened for a moment, then snapped it closed.
'Damn! His answering service! So what. I'm going up there anyway.' She pushed herself up from the couch and staggered a step. 'Gotta find a cab.'
Gia glanced at Jack, concern in her eyes, then back to Junie. 'You'll never get one around here.'
She grinned and hiked her miniskirt from mid-thigh to her hip. 'Sure I will. Just like what's-her-name in that movie.'
'Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night,' Jack said automatically as he wondered when the last time was a cab had cruised the Brooklyn Army Terminal area at this hour. 'And someone'll think you're looking for more than a ride if you do that. We'll call you a cab.'
'They never come,' she said, heading for the door.
Again that concerned look from Gia. 'Jack, we can't let her go. She's in no condition-'
'She's a grown-up.'
'Only nominally. Jack?'
She cocked her head and looked at him with big, Girl Scout cookie-selling eyes. Refusing Gia anything was difficult, but when she did that...
'Oh, all right.' Donning a put-upon expression, he rose and offered a hand to help Gia to her feet; in truth he was delighted for an excuse to bail this party. 'I'll give her a ride. But it's not 'just up the road.' It's on the upper end of Queens.'
Gia smiled, and it touched Jack right down to the base of his spine.
Somehow, between saying good-bye to the hostess bride and reaching the sidewalk, they picked up two extra passengers: Karyn-the Bride of Frankenstein-and her friend Claude, an anorexic-looking six footer with a flattop haircut that jutted out over his forehead, making his head look like an anvil from the side. They both thought a jaunt to a psychic's house would be moby cool.
Plenty of room in Jack's Crown Vic. If he'd come alone, he probably would have traveled by subway. But Gia's presence demanded the security of a car. With Gia in the passenger seat, and the other three in the back, Jack wheeled the big black Ford up a ramp onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and headed north along the elevated roadway. He said he hoped no one minded but he was opening all the windows, and he did, without waiting for answers. His car; they didn't like it, they could walk.
This kind of summer night, not too humid, not terribly hot, brought him back to his teens when he drove a beat-up old Corvair convertible that he got for a song because too many people had listened to Ralph Nader and dumped one of the best cars ever made. On nights like this he'd drive with no destination, always with the top down, letting the wind swirl around him.
Not much swirling tonight. Even at this hour the BQE was crowded, but Junie made the creeping traffic seem even slower by rattling on and on about her psychic guru: Ifasen talked to the dead, and Ifasen let the dead talk to you, and Ifasen knew your deepest, darkest secrets and could do the most amazing, impossible, incredible things.
Not amazing or impossible to Jack. He was familiar with all the amazing, impossible, incredible things Ifasen did, and even had a pretty good idea how the man was going to get back Junie's bracelet for her.
Yeah, Junie was a ditz, but a lovable ditz.
Maybe some music would slow her Ifasen chatter. He stuck one of his homemade CDs in the player. John Lennon's voice filled the car.
'This happened once before ...'
'The Beatles?' Claude said from the back. 'I didn't think anyone listened to them anymore.'
'Think again,' Jack said. He turned up the volume. 'Listen to that harmony.'
'... I saw the light!...'
'Lennon and McCartney were born to sing together.'
'You have to realize,' Gia said, 'that Jack doesn't like anything modern.'
'How can you say that?'
'How?' She was smiling. 'Look at your apartment, your favorite buildings'-she pointed to the CD player-'the music you listen to. You don't own a song recorded after the eighties.'
'Not true.'
Karyn piped up. 'What's a current group or singer you listen to?'
Jack didn't want to tell her that he had Tenacious D's last disc in the glove compartment. Time for some fun.
'I like Britney Spears a lot.'
'I'm sure you like to look at her at lot,' Gia said, 'but name one of her songs. Just one.'
'Well...'
'Got him!' Karyn laughed.
'I like some of Eminem's stuff.'
'Never,' Gia said.
'It's true. I liked that conscience song he did, you know where he's got a good voice talking in one ear and a bad voice in the other. That was neat.'
'Enough to buy it?'
'Well, no...'
'Got him again,' Karyn said. 'You want to try the nineties? Can you name one song from the nineties you listened to?'
'Hey, maybe I wasn't exactly a Spice Girls fan, but I was one hell of a nineties kinda guy.'
'Prove it. One nineties group-name one you bought and listened to.'
'Easy. The Traveling Willburys.'
Claude burst out laughing as Karyn groaned. 'I give up!'
'Hey, the Willburys formed in the nineties, so that makes them a nineties group. I also liked World Party's 'Goodbye Jumbo.''
'Retro!'
'And hey, Counting Crows. I liked that 'Mr. Jones' song they did.'
'That's because it sounded like Van Morrison!'
'That's not my fault. And you can't say Counting Crows weren't nineties. So there. A nineties guy, that was I.'
'I'm getting a headache.'
'Some Beatles will fix that,' Jack said. 'This disc is all pre-Pepper, before they got self-conscious. Good stuff.'
The double-tracked guitar intro from 'And Your Bird Can Sing' filled the car as Jack followed the BQE's meandering course along the Brooklyn waterfront, running either two or three stories above or one or two stories below street level. A bumpy ride over pavement with terminal acne. As they ran under the Brooklyn Heights overhang a magnificent vista of lower Manhattan, all lights ablaze, slid into view.
