An Affair Of Sorcerers

'You'll see for yourself. Do you know anything at all about the cards?'

'Only that they were supposedly invented by the Gypsies in the Middle Ages; they have pictures, and they're used for fortune-telling.'

The waiter brought our gazpacho. The soup was good, but April ate only half of it. ' 'Fortune-telling' isn't a good word for what happens during a tarot reading,' she said, pushing the rest of her soup away. 'Despite what you see on Forty-second Street, that's not what the tarot is about. You should think of the tarot deck as a great book of mystical knowledge that uses symbols instead of words. The symbols are very deep. The tarot is one of the occult 'mysteries'-astrology, palmistry and numerology being the occult 'sciences.' Each card is open to a variety of interpretations; the quality of the reading depends on the quality of the channels of communication opened between the querent-the person having the reading-and the reader.'

'How does it work?'

'John Krowl will have you shuffle and cut the cards; then he'll use any one of a number of different layouts. What should show up are trends in your life-past, present and future.'

'It still sounds like fortune-telling,' I said gently.

'If someone can accurately see your past, it's not difficult to predict your future. The tarot deck can change a person's life, if the person truly wants to change; the cards can provide a shock of recognition.'

Our omelettes arrived. As we started to eat, April shivered again. I rose and put my sports jacket around her shoulders. She nodded her thanks and pulled the jacket even tighter around her. Seeing her do that gave me an absurd jolt of pleasure.

'You said that the symbols on the cards are inexact. It seems to me that a reader could come up with any number of different interpretations.'

'But you'll instinctively know if it's a true reading,' she said, picking at her omelette. Her mind was back in the hospital with Kathy; her voice was distant, its matter-of-factness masking her anxiety. 'A single card may have as many as three or four subtly different meanings; but the specific interpretation of any card is refined by its position in a particular layout. The cards are intensely personal, Robert.' April paused and smiled thinly. For a moment, she was back in the restaurant with me. 'Behind your somewhat flamboyant exterior, I sense that you're a very private man. You shouldn't go to this man unless you're prepared to have your life and dreams stripped bare. He could know all there is to know about you five minutes after the cards are laid out.'

'You are impressed by the tarot, aren't you?'

'Yes I am, Robert,' she said evenly. 'Of all the occult studies, I find the tarot the most mystical and beautiful.' She had to force herself to eat a few more bites of the omelette, then pushed away what was left. 'I'm sorry, Robert,' she continued quietly. 'I hate to waste food. I know I should eat, but I can't. I'm afraid you've wasted your money on me.'

'Don't be silly. Would you like some tea or coffee?'

April shook her head. 'The reason I believe Krowl is probably psychic is that he's been so successful,' she said in a low voice. 'People wouldn't keep going back to him unless he was telling them something about their lives and helping them to solve their problems. Also, he's been working with the cards for many years. Regular use of the cards can help you develop your own psychic abilities. It's like exercising a muscle, except in this case it's a psychic muscle. I think of the tarot deck as a window into regions of the mind that are beyond the rational.'

'Thank you for talking to me, April.' I said. 'I know it's been hard for you.'

As I signaled the waiter for the check, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to see if John Krowl lived up to April's advance billing.

The most spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline, bar none, is from the Manhattan Bridge. I took advantage of a minor traffic slowdown to twist in my seat and look back at the most exciting piece of real estate in the world. Manhattan is, of course, only one of New York's five boroughs, but to me it was New York, the city's heart and soul. At that moment the sight of the skyline was probably the only vista in the world that could, if only for a few seconds, lift me beyond my anxiety and fear. Manhattan's tremendous energy can burn a man out, but burning out is not something I worry about.

Traffic began to move again, and I drove down into the amorphous entity of funky culture and parochial defensiveness that is Brooklyn.

Tacky appearances to the contrary, Krowl had chosen a chic area to work out of. Creeping glamour, wealthy dilettantes and accompanying rising rents were driving loft artists out of SoHo, NoHo and the rest of Manhattan's 'Ho's.' They were migrating in increasing numbers to Brooklyn's DUMBO-'Down Under the Manhattan-Brooklyn Overpass.' The area-a montage of dying industries that supplied the artists' lofts and thriving galleries and small businesses that were supported by the artists-even had its own newspaper, the Phoenix. It was an apt title; DUMBO was rising from ashes of crumbling concrete.

John Krowl's brownstone was four blocks east of the Manhattan Bridge, in a poor but clean working-class neighborhood. I was a few minutes early, but I rang the bell anyway. It was answered by a young man in his early twenties who looked down at me inquiringly. I introduced myself and said that I had an appointment for eight o'clock. He introduced himself only as Krowl's secretary and told me I'd have to wait a few minutes. He motioned me inside and indicated that I should sit down on one of the three antique chairs just inside the door.

I was in a large circular foyer with a corridor directly opposite me that extended all the way to the end of the house. There were closed doors to either side of me. Around the perimeter of the foyer were a number of old, heavy tables, their surfaces covered with what looked like valuable African primitive sculpture-most of it erotic. The walls of the foyer were decorated with an odd but strangely appealing mixture of garish Haitian paintings and faded Persian tapestries. All of the exposed wood had been stripped to the grain and polished to a burnished glow. In contrast to the rather dreary facade and neighborhood outside, the inside of Krowl's brownstone was like a museum. Krowl had taste.

The art was carefully chosen and interesting, but what intrigued me by far the most in the foyer was a display of at least a hundred plaster hand casts mounted in the spaces around and between the paintings and the tapestries. I got up and went closer to examine them.

The casts had been expertly made, and all of the details in the palms had been meticulously lined in with India ink. The effect was eerie and startling. The names of the hands' owners were inscribed in calligraphic script over the base of the wrist and signed beneath. Most of them belonged to well-known New York and Hollywood celebrities, with a few Washington politicians sprinkled around as if to give the display some respectability, like a heavy bronze identification plaque under a muddy painting. Just about everyone who was anyone seemed to be represented in John Krowl's foyer; it occurred to me that the people represented couldn't all be idiots, and I found I was impressed.

Two names in particular interested me. The first was that of Harley Davidson, at one time the hottest young rock star in the country. I'd known him as Bobby Weiss, a gangling, likable student who'd been blundering his way through college. Criminology had seemed to be one of the rare subjects that interested him, and he'd managed to show up fairly regularly for my undergraduate class.

Bobby had dropped out of school three years before, in the middle of his junior year. A year after that he'd exploded onto the national rock scene as Harley Davidson-Instant Millionaire. He'd signed with Jake Stein, a friend of mine with the William Morris Agency, and I'd kept track of him through Jake. One year I'd even received a Christmas card. I'd thought Bobby spent all his time in Los Angeles, but he'd obviously touched base often enough in New York to hear of Krowl. Seeing the palm print suddenly made me realize that I hadn't heard anything of Bobby for at least six months-no records, no television, not even a gossip item. I wondered what had happened to him.

The second name hit even closer to home, and it gave me a jolt. The name was Bart Stone. Stone was a prolific writer of Western pulp novels who had provided the fictional fodder for dozens of Western films turned out by Hollywood.

I wondered if Krowl, when he'd make the print, had known that 'Bart Stone' was but one of the many pseudonyms used by Frank Marlowe. I might ask him.

I wandered down the hallway to the end, where a narrow balcony looked out over a small, exquisitely arranged garden and patio. The area was encircled by plants which seemed to be miraculously surviving in New York's sulfurous air; it seemed a tiny piece of serenity in the middle of the most manic city in the world. Across the