The Hanged Man Read online

  “How? He never interfered with her. She lived exactly the way she wanted to.” He put his hands together, fingers interlocked, and leaned slightly forward. “Look. Have you met Justine?”

  I nodded.

  “And you really think she could kill someone?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes people can surprise you.”

  He smiled. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “What did you think of her?”

  “You want an honest answer?”

  He shrugged, smiling, and sat back. “If you’ve got one.”

  “I think she’s a user,” I said. “I think she uses men to give herself a sense that she’s in control. To give herself a sense that she’s alive.”

  He nodded calmly. “Empowerment. Sure.” Then he smiled. “She got to you too, huh?”

  I frowned, momentarily irritated, and then I smiled. “Yeah,” I said.

  He laughed. “I can hear it in your voice.” He laughed again and sat back. Grinning, he asked me, “Have you met Veronica yet? Veronica Chang?”

  “No.”

  “Veronica makes Justine look like Shirley Temple. She’s a Saku master—you know what that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Saku is terrific,” he said, “It’s supposed to be an ancient Brazilian technique, something used by the Indians in the Amazon. You put your hands over John Smith and you concentrate on your ancient Brazilian Indian symbols, and you cure John of whatever ails him.” He grinned. “Ever heard of Brazilian Indians practicing a technique like that?”

  “No.”

  “Neither have they.”

  I smiled. “But I’m not an anthropologist.”

  “Neither was Horst Beuller, the guy who invented Saku. He discovered it in a vision.”

  “Good for him.”

  “And you might think,” he said, “that it’d take you a while to learn how to pull this off, all this terrific healing.”

  “I might, yeah.”

  He smiled. “Uh-uh. It’ll take you three hours and cost you a hundred and fifty bucks. Cheap at twice the price. And, bingo, you’re a first-degree Saku practitioner. Then, if you want, you can become a second-degree Saku practitioner. You get a whole new set of ancient Brazilian Indian symbols. That’ll cost you another three hours and three hundred bucks. And then, if you really want to go for the big time, you can spend ten grand and become a Saku master. The cute thing is, once you become a Saku master, you can give classes in first- and second-degree Saku, and each class can hold up to fifty people at a time. Figure it out. Fifty people at a hundred and fifty dollars apiece. That’s seventy-five hundred bucks for three hours’ work. Fifteen thousand bucks for the second-degree class.”

  “Who appoints the masters?”

  “Another master.”

  I nodded. “A pyramid.”

  “Like Amway.” He grinned. “Only Amway is more spiritual.” He leaned slightly forward again. “The thing is, okay, it’s a scam, but Veronica is for real. She’s got something. A force. A power. She’d have it if she’d never heard of Saku.”

  I nodded. “I’ve heard that she was involved with Justine.”

  He blinked again. And then he smiled. “I’ve heard that, too.”

  “Is she still involved with her?”

  He shrugged. “You’d have to ask them.”

  I nodded, and he suddenly grinned again. He said, “Must be weird for you, talking to all these crazies.”

  I smiled. “Now and then.”

  He laughed and sat back. “They’re all sick. All these people, New Agers, Seekers, call ’em whatever you want. I include myself, naturally. It’s a sickness of the soul, and a sense that there’s something out there that can heal it. If we get lucky, we finally figure out that there isn’t anything out there at all, and there isn’t anything in here”—he pointed to his chest—”and that that’s just perfect.”

  I nodded some more and he grinned. “And some of us don’t get lucky. And we get involved with crap like Saku. It’s another kind of empowerment. And power is the wet dream of the powerless.”

  “What’s spiritual alchemy, by the way?”

  He smiled. “Just another brand of lunacy. It’s a meditation technique, visualizing certain areas of the body that correspond to the chakras. You know about chakras?”

  What I’d known about chakras was that sooner or later in this investigation I’d stumble over some. “Vaguely,” I said.

  He grinned. “None of this is helping you very much, is it?”

  “Nope.”

  He laughed. “Who have you talked to so far?”

  “Justine. Brad Freefall. Sylvia Morningstar. Leonard Quarry and his wife.”

  He nodded. “I like Brad and Sylvia.” He grinned. “What’d you think of Leonard?”

  “We didn’t get along very well.”

  He grinned again. “Not many people get along with Leonard.”

  “Not many will. Not now. He’s dead.”

  He blinked, and then he frowned. “What?”

  “Someone put an ice pick through his heart. A couple of hours ago.”

  He sat still for a moment, staring at me. Finally he said, “You like doing that. Catching people off guard.”

  “I don’t necessarily like it. But sometimes it’s useful.”

  He stared at me some more. “Manipulative, you mean.”

  “That, too,” I admitted. “But I’ve got a job to do.”

  He frowned. “Nice job.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You could’ve told me before, about Leonard.”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded. He continued to stare at me. “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”

  “No one involved in a case.”

  His eyes narrowed. “How do you sleep at night?”

  “On my back.”

  He nodded sadly. He said, “I don’t think I’d want to be you.”

  “I don’t have much choice in the matter.”

  He nodded, slowly, faintly. He looked away and took a deep breath and let it out. His shoulders seemed to slump.

  I said, “Any idea who might want to kill him?”

  He shook his head, and then turned back to me. “Why was he killed?” he asked me. “Do you know why?”

  “If I knew why, I’d know who.”

  He looked away again. He took another deep breath, let it out. He said, as much to himself as to me, “Christ. This is really a mess.”

  He ran his hand through his hair and then looked at me. “How did it happen?”

  I told him. I asked him if the tanned, thin Anglo sounded like someone he knew.

  “It’s not much of a description,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “It could be anyone.”

  “But not anyone who was at La Cienega last Saturday night. And that bothers me. I’ve been working on the assumption that the person who killed Quentin Bouvier was one of the people there, at the house. This guy wasn’t.”

  “Your assumption was wrong.”

  “Maybe. Let’s forget Quarry for a minute. Was there anyone in La Cienega that night who might’ve had a reason to kill Quentin Bouvier?”

  “As far as I know, no one. Including Giacomo. The police asked me the same thing.”

  “What do you think of the idea that Bernardi stole the card?”

  “Not much. Giacomo’s not a thief.” He frowned again. “You think this is all about the Tarot card? Quentin’s death? Leonard’s death?”

  “Leonard’s I’m not sure about. But Quentin’s—I think so, yeah.”

  He shook his head. “It’s such a shame.”

  “A shame?”

  “A shame, yeah, because it’s a violation of what the cards are all about. For me, the Tarot is a kind of graphic representation of a spiritual pathway. Like the old woodcuts done by the alchemists. It’s a guide to the sacred. The Tarot suits—the wand, the sword, the cup, the pentangle—they’re the Grail Hollows. And what’s the search for the Grail if not the
search for the holy? The other uses for the cards, divination, magic, they may’ve come first, but I think that at some point someone got hold of the cards and reorganized them as a kind of handbook to enlightenment.”

  “I heard a theory recently,” I said. “Bernardi hung Bouvier because Bouvier was a traitor to the cause of White Magic.”

  He smiled sourly. “I can tell you where you heard that theory. From Bennett Hadley. He expounded it to me. Bennett’s good at expounding.”

  “What do you think of the theory?”

  “I think it sucks. Bennett should stick to writing books.”

  “What do you think of Bennett?”

  “I like Bennett. He sees himself as a kind of observer, above the fray. But in his own way, he’s just as screwed up as the rest of us. Writing books like his, cataloguing experience, that’s a kind of self-empowerment, too. The cataloguing puts you in control of the experiences, even if you’ve never had them yourself. Especially if you’ve never had them yourself.”

  “What do you think of Carl Buffalo?”

  He looked at me. “You want to know about all of them, right? All the people who were in La Cienega.”

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head. “Even if I suspected that one of them was a murderer, I wouldn’t tell you that. I could be wrong. And if I knew anything about any of them that wasn’t common knowledge, then revealing it would be a violation of trust.”

  “Look,” I said. “It seems to me that there are two possibilities here. First, one of you, one of the people at the Freefall place last Saturday night, killed Quentin Bouvier. Second, none of you did. If Leonard Quarry’s murder is connected in some way to Bouvier’s, then maybe the second possibility is true. Maybe it was this guy, this brown skinny Anglo. Or maybe he was working for, or with, one of you. I don’t know. But if one of you did kill Quentin Bouvier, then there’s nothing to stop him from killing again.”

  “Him? You’re convinced it was a man? Then why ask about Justine?”

  “I’m not convinced of anything. I don’t know anything. Except that by not cooperating, you may be protecting a murderer.”

  He sat back and folded his hands across his lap. He nodded. “You’re good at this.”

  “Yeah?”

  Another nod. “First you tell me you don’t trust anyone. But by telling me that, you imply that you trust me enough to reveal the truth. Then you start to work on my guilt.” Another nod. “You’ve got a job to do, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shrugged. “Sorry. I can’t help you. If I knew that one of us was a killer, I’d go to the police and tell them. But you admit it yourself—Quentin could’ve been killed by the same man who killed Leonard. It sounds to me like he’s the one you should be looking for.”

  “I don’t know where to find him. I know where the rest of you are.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

  Sitting at the kitchen table, cutting salt pork into small squares, I said, “This Anglo guy bothers me.”

  “Understandably,” Rita said. She sat across the kitchen table from me, dicing carrots. Her head was lowered and her long black hair leaned forward, off her shoulders. She wore a lavender blouse, open at the throat.

  “He just suddenly turns up out of the blue and ice-picks Leonard Quarry.”

  She nodded. “So you said.”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And how did he get the ice pick into the resting room without anyone seeing it?”

  “I can think of one way.”

  I stopped cutting and looked up. “How?”

  Rita didn’t stop cutting, didn’t look up. “I haven’t been to Agua Caliente for years. Do people still carry jugs of drinking water into the pool?”

  “Yeah …” And then I understood. “They’re translucent. And the handle of the ice pick was clear plastic. The only thing that’d show up would be the shaft of the pick. Maybe not even that.”

  “And who takes a careful look at a gallon jug?” She diced some more carrots.

  “When you want the ice pick,” I said, “all you’ve got to do is pour out some water till the pick pops out along with it. There are drains all over the floor in the resting room, and water everywhere. No one would’ve noticed more of it.”

  She looked up, smiled. “I’m not saying that’s the way it was done. But it’s one of the ways it could’ve been.”

  “But how’d he get past the attendant?”

  “There’s only one attendant, you said.”

  “Right.”

  “And he leaves whenever someone comes into the building and buzzes to enter the locker room. He goes into the locker room and checks to make sure they’ve got a ticket.”

  “Right.”

  “Can you see the resting room from the showers?”

  “It’s all one big room.” I nodded. “Right. The Anglo guy waits in the shower till the attendant leaves, makes sure that there are no witnesses, then runs up and stabs Quarry. If there’s any blood on his hands, he can run back to the shower to wash it off. Very neat. But he’d still have only a minute or so to pull the whole thing off.”

  “How long does it take to stick an ice pick into someone?”

  “But how did he know that Quarry would be there just then?”

  “You said that Quarry used the pool fairly often.”

  “Yeah, but not necessarily at any regular time. Even if the Anglo knew that Quarry went there fairly often, how’d he know that Quarry would be there today, at two o’clock?”

  “Had the attendant ever seen the Anglo before?”

  “He said he wasn’t sure. He said the guy looked familiar, but he couldn’t swear that he’d seen him there, at the pool. I got the impression that he really doesn’t pay much attention to the people coming and going.”

  Rita shrugged. “So perhaps the Anglo had been there before, without finding Quarry. But this time, on what became his final attempt, he did.”

  “He’d still be taking a couple of big chances.”

  “Which?”

  “Quarry was underneath a sheet. His face wasn’t visible. The Anglo couldn’t be sure that the fat man on the table was Quarry.”

  “You said that Quarry was monumentally fat. Was the Anglo likely to mistake someone else for him, even if he was covered by a sheet?”

  “But you’d think that he’d want to be sure.”

  “If he’d been waiting outside in a car, watching the entrance, he would’ve seen Quarry enter the building. And he would’ve seen everyone else enter it. He would’ve known that the man on the table was Quarry.”

  I nodded. “And he waits in the car long enough to be fairly sure that Quarry will be out of the pool and lying on the resting table. Okay. I can buy that, I guess. But there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “If he’d been there before, he had to know that the attendant would see him. He had to give the attendant his ticket. The attendant could identify him later.”

  “Not identify him. Recognize him. And that would only be dangerous if he were caught, sometime later.”

  “Yeah, but he can’t have been certain that he wouldn’t be caught.”

  “Even if he were, no one actually saw him stab Quarry.”

  “But if the police can establish a connection between him and Quarry. If they can establish a motive.”

  “That still might not be enough for a conviction. Or even for a trial.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Rita. It all sounds a little iffy to me. Why kill him there, at the hot springs? Why not kill him somewhere else, somewhere private?”

  “I don’t know.” She smiled. “But I’m sure you’ll find out. You are missing something, however.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Which month is this?”

  I frowned, narrowing my eyes. “You’re going to go didactic on me, aren’t you?”

  She laughed. “Which m
onth.”

  I sighed. “February. Dear.”

  “And how did the attendant describe the Anglo?”

  “Medium height. No scars. Very tanned.” I frowned. “Oh shit,” I said.

  Rita laughed.

  I said, “He was tanned and this is the middle of winter.”

  Smiling, she said, “Very good, Joshua.”

  “So he wasn’t from here. Or he’s been using a tanning salon.”

  “Or perhaps he wasn’t tanned at all. Perhaps he was wearing—”

  “Dye. Body dye, skin dye, whatever. Misdirection. The cops are looking for somebody who just got back from Antigua, and he goes home and washes the stuff off.” I frowned again. “But wouldn’t it come off in the shower?”

  “Not necessarily. There are some theatrical dyes, oil based, that aren’t water soluble.”

  I nodded. “I’ve got to see Hernandez tomorrow, to sign my statement. I’ll mention all this to him.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be grateful for your help. Are you finished with the salt pork?”

  “Not yet.”

  Both of us went back to work. Rita was dealing with the parsley now. After a moment, I had another thought. I looked up. “What about Quarry and the card?”

  “What about them?” She continued chopping.

  “Quarry’s wife seems to think that he wanted that card for himself. The card went for two hundred thousand dollars. I wouldn’t have said, judging by the house he lived in, that he had that kind of money.”

  “He didn’t,” she said, chopping carefully away.

  I frowned. “Have you run an asset search on him?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “And are you going to share the results with me?”

  She looked up and smiled. “Not including the house, if he cashed in everything he owned, he could probably come up with fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Max?”

  “Max.”

  “And including the house?”

  “Twenty thousand in equity.”

  “What about inventory? He’s a dealer. Maybe he’s got a bunch of stuff tucked away. Ancient Aztec treasures. The Maltese Falcon.”

  “I doubt that.” She went back to her parsley. “His bank statements show a small but steady increase each year since he arrived in New Mexico. Nothing dramatic.”

  “When did he arrive?”