The Hanged Man Read online

  “How’d that happen?”

  “Who knows? Ercole’s wife was Renee, the daughter of Louis the Twelfth, the French king. Maybe she had something to do with it. But the French were all over Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They wanted Milan, Ravenna, Florence, most of the Italian towns. Folks today think that the people in the Renaissance, they just sat around and listened to lute music, ate squab all day. Horseshit. Half the time, they were out killing each other. The other half, they were getting killed.”

  She frowned again, looked off at the far wall.

  “The Death card was in France,” I prompted her.

  Another frown. “His head in his pants?”

  “The Death card. It was in France.”

  “I know that,” she snapped at me. “I haven’t gotten senile yet. And it was with the rest of the deck, the first twelve trumps. The Bourbons had them. Henry the Fourth, Louis the Thirteenth, that whole sorry bunch. The Death card disappeared sometime around 1774. Stolen from the royal palace.”

  “By whom?”

  “Cagliostro is a good bet. You know Cagliostro?”

  “A magician?”

  “No,” she said. “He was a magician. Or so he claimed. Claimed to be two hundred years old, too. Horseshit, of course. But he was there at the time, and he was suspected. Next place it showed up was Switzerland.”

  “In 1776. Court de Gebelin mentioned it.”

  She smiled. “Done your homework, eh? Good.” She nodded. “And de Gebelin knew Cagliostro, which fits in with the theory that Cagliostro was the thief. Anyway, from then on, it didn’t show up much. Once in 1886, as I recall. Eliphas Levi claimed he’d seen it. Probably had. He described it well enough.”

  I said, “From what I understand, the last person to see it was Aleister Crowley. Sometime around the turn of the century.”

  She nodded.

  “So where did it go from there?” I asked her.

  A blink, a frown. “What chair?”

  “Where did the card go after Crowley had it?”

  She smiled, evidently pleased with herself once again. “To my great-grandfather.”

  “How?”

  She grinned. “He stole it. He was one of Crowley’s disciples. He and his wife both were. Kirby and Loretta Knight. You know that Crowley’s specialty was sex magic? He was going to rule the world with his penis.” She smiled. “Lot of men make the same mistake. But usually not on so big a scale.” The smile twisted slightly at the corner of her mouth. “Of course, I’ve heard that Crowley had reasons to think big along those lines.”

  I smiled.

  “He never got to rule the world,” she said, “but he probably had a pretty good time trying. At one time or another, he jumped all his women disciples. Couple of the men, too. And an occasional passerby. Kirby, though, he finally got tired of Crowley jumping Loretta—I never did hear how Loretta felt about it—and so he dragged her away and went back to Devon. This all happened in Sicily in a town called Cefalu, where Crowley had a retreat. But before Kirby left, he took the card.”

  “How did Crowley feel about that?”

  “Oh, he called up all the demons of hell and sent them after Kirby. Kirby was supposed to die in agony and torment, his body ripped apart, his soul blown to smithereens.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Kirby lived another thirty years and died in his sleep. He outlived Crowley.”

  I smiled again. “Why didn’t Crowley report the theft of the card? Use legal means to get it back?”

  “Probably because he didn’t own it legally himself. Legally, I suppose, it belonged to the French government. Anyway, Kirby gave the card to his son, Walter, my grandfather, and Walter gave it to Charles, his son. My uncle. In Devon. Charles gave it to my cousin, Adam. Adam gave it to me, mailed it to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was dying. Heart. He needed the money. He told me we’d split whatever I could get. This was six months ago.”

  “Was dying, you said?”

  “He passed away in December.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. He was a fool. He could’ve sold the thing years ago, at auction, and made himself some real money. Waited till the last minute instead. A fool.”

  “Why didn’t you sell it at auction after he died? Your cousin was gone. You would’ve made more money.”

  “I’d already opened up negotiations with Leonard and Quentin. Couldn’t go back on my word, could I?”

  “What does the card look like?” I’d gotten a rough description of it from Giacomo Bernardi, but Eliza Remington had actually possessed the thing.

  “Oversize,” she said. “About three inches by seven. It’s got gilt along the edges, framing it. Shows a skeleton in a long black robe, holding a scythe. Death, of course. He’s standing in a field littered with skulls. One of the skulls is a bull’s skull—the bull, that was the Borgia family emblem. All the cards in the Borgia Deck have a bull on them somewhere.”

  I finished my tea, leaned forward, set the cup and saucer on the coffee table. “Sierra Quarry told me that her husband wanted the card for himself, that he wasn’t bidding on behalf of someone else.”

  She frowned impatiently. “Sierra’s an idiot. What she knows about money wouldn’t fill a gnat’s asshole. Leonard never told her anything about his business.”

  “So he was bidding for someone else?”

  “Course he was. Leonard didn’t have two dimes to rub together.”

  “For whom?”

  She shrugged. “Haven’t got the faintest idea. But listen, if you think Leonard’s death had anything to do with my Tarot card, you’re way off track. I talked to Sierra. From what she says, Leonard was killed by someone she never heard of.”

  “The question is why.”

  Still another puzzled frown. “You want to get high?”

  I smiled. She’d gone a long time without mishearing me. I was fairly certain now that her deafness was a sham, either a private entertainment or a kind of camouflage. Maybe both. “Why was Leonard killed?”

  “How the hell would I know? Leonard was usually involved in two or three deals at a time. I wouldn’t be surprised if now and then he got himself involved in something a bit shady. Maybe someone got pissed off at him. Wouldn’t take much to get pissed off at Leonard.”

  “He was killed within a week of the murder of Quentin Bouvier.”

  She frowned again. “Giacomo didn’t kill Quentin because of that damn card.”

  “You think Giacomo’s guilty?”

  “Guilty as sin.”

  “Why?” I sipped some tea.

  “He’s had it in for Quentin for years now. Quentin was seeing some little girl that Giacomo had the hots for. Some little hippie girl. Moonbeam was her name. No. Starlight.” She waved her hand impatiently. “Can’t remember. One of those damn silly hippie names. Starbright! That was it. Starbright. Idiotic name, if you ask me. Anyway, Quentin dumped her and the brainless little thing went and killed herself.”

  “How?”

  “Tied a nylon stocking around her neck, climbed up on a chair, tied the other end to some kind of hook in the ceiling. One of those things designed to hold a lamp? And then she jumped off the chair, boom, and that’s all she wrote.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this girl?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “This happen many years ago.”

  “Three years ago.”

  He shrugged again, as though his point had just been proved.

  Still in his baggy orange cotton pants and sagging T-shirt, Giacomo Bernardi once again sat opposite me across the small Formica table in the interview room of the Detention Center. His fleshy jowls were still stubbly with whiskers, but probably he had the kind of beard that grew back in while he was rinsing his razor. The puffiness at his right eyelid had gone down slightly, and the bruise beneath his right cheekbone had turned a lovely saffron yellow.

  “Back then,” I said, “after it
happened, did the police talk to you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, they talk to me. They know I know Starbright. A friend of hers, she tell them.”

  “And since you’ve been arrested, have the state police mentioned it?”

  “I no talk to the state police.”

  “But they’ve talked to you. Have they mentioned the girl?”

  He nodded, still lodged within that dull and seemingly impenetrable stolidity. “Yeah, they mention.”

  “How?” I could imagine, but I wanted to hear it.

  “They say, maybe I kill Bouvier this way, with the muffler, because of Starbright. Revenge, they say.”

  “They didn’t say this in front of Sally Durrell.” If Sally had known about the girl, she’d have told me.

  He shook his head. “No. Before she come here. When I wouldn’t talk to them, they say this.”

  I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell Sally about it? About the girl, about the cops asking?”

  He shrugged. “Not important. It happen many years ago.”

  He was beginning to seem almost willfully stupid. “Giacomo,” I said patiently. “The prosecution lawyer is bound to use the information.”

  He shook his head, slowly, stubbornly. “I no kill her.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If you thought that Quentin Bouvier was in some way responsible for her suicide, that gives you another reason to kill him.”

  He raised his eyebrows slightly, the first sign of animation I’d seen from him. “Three years ago, it happen. If I want revenge, why wait so long?”

  “The D.A. will say that you were waiting for the right opportunity.”

  Once again, with the same sluggish stubbornness, he shook his head. “I no kill him.”

  “Who else knows about the girl?”

  “Who you mean?”

  “The people who were down in La Cienega last Saturday night. How many of them knew about the girl in Albuquerque?”

  He shrugged. “No one know.”

  “Quentin Bouvier knew. Eliza Remington knew. She said that you went to Quentin’s house a few days after her suicide.”

  He frowned. “How she know that?”

  “Bouvier was a client of hers. She did his charts. He told her about you.”

  He nodded. “I was upset when I go there. About Starbright, you know? She’s a good girl and he treats her bad. So she kills herself. I want to talk to him. Tell him what I think. He laughs at me.” He shrugged. “A scumbag.”

  “Who else knew?”

  “No one know.”

  “Quentin’s wife, Justine?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he tell her.” He frowned. “Why you ask?”

  “Look, Giacomo, I believe you. I don’t think you killed Quentin Bouvier. But someone did. And whoever it was, he tried to make it look like you were the murderer. If all he wanted to do was kill Bouvier, he could’ve just hit him again, harder, with that piece of quartz. But he went to the trouble of getting your scarf from your room, when it was possible that anyone could start wandering around the hallway and see him, and then he used the scarf to haul Bouvier up the rafter. If he knew that you’d been involved in an earlier case involving a hanging, that might’ve made him more likely to think of using the scarf. So who else knew?”

  “I tell you. No one.”

  “Giacomo, how could they not know? This is a small town.”

  Another shrug. “People in Santa Fe, they don’ care what happens in Albuquerque.”

  To some extent that was true. A good many of the Santa Fe locals, insular and smug, tended to think of Albuquerque as an overlarge truck stop. “But this was the death of a young girl. A suicide. And it involved not only you, but Quentin Bouvier.”

  Another shrug. “Maybe he tells somebody about her. Not me. And no one never asks.”

  “Three years ago,” I said, “you were going back and forth between Santa Fe and Albuquerque on a regular basis?”

  “Not regular. Sometimes. Sometimes I’m there for some weeks or a month, maybe, then I come back. I stay with friends, do readings.”

  “Where’d you meet this girl? Starbright?”

  “A psychic fair. You know? At the Hotel Hilton.”

  “She was involved with Bouvier then?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And you became involved with her?”

  He frowned. “You mean to sleep with her? No, no.” He shook his head firmly. “She’s a good girl. I like her. She tells me about Bouvier, how he treats her. What he does. Rituals, you know. Sexual things. She’s ashamed. I’m concerned, huh? I’m worried for her. She’s a good girl. And then Bouvier, he tells her to go away, stay away. He don’t want her no more. And she’s unhappy. I tell her, is better without him, for her. But she’s unhappy. And so she kills herself. And so, later, I go to Bouvier. I told you.”

  He frowned at me. “Why these questions, huh?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just trying to make sense of all this. How did you get along with the rest of the people in La Cienega?”

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “Yeah, I get along okay. I know them for years, you know?”

  “You got along okay with Leonard Quarry?”

  “Sure. He’s dead, huh? I read it in the papers.”

  “He’s dead, yes.”

  “Who kills him?”

  “I don’t know. Do you know an Anglo man, thin, medium height, black hair?”

  He shrugged. “I know many people. Many like that.”

  “Any of them who might have something to do with Leonard Quarry?”

  He shook his head, frowned. “This is the one who kills Quarry?”

  “I think so. I have to go, Giacomo. Is there anything I can bring you, the next time I come? Books? Magazines?”

  He shook his head. “What I want,” he said, “is a drink.”

  “Me too,” I told him.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Chang?”

  “Ah, Mr. Croft. I am very glad you called. You’ve spoken with Eliza, then?”

  “Yes. She said you wanted to talk to me?”

  “Yes, I did. You haven’t seen my brother, have you?”

  “Not since this morning.”

  “Neither have I. He left shortly after you did. He is very angry with you, Mr. Croft.”

  “Is he.”

  “Yes. His pride was hurt. No one has ever defeated him in that way. Physically, I mean. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m very sorry for what happened. It’s all my fault, I realize. Sometimes Paul takes it upon himself to … interfere. He believes that he is helping me, protecting me. This morning, I think he felt that I was angry at you, and he decided to act as his sister’s keeper.”

  “That was very fraternal of him.”

  “I should have anticipated him and tried to stop it. I really am terribly sorry. And I did want to let you know that he might be looking for you.”

  She hadn’t seemed terribly sorry when she was standing on the other side of the window, watching me leave her front lawn. But, as Peter Jones had said, sometimes people can surprise you. “I appreciate that,” I said.

  She said, “I wonder if we could try again.”

  “Try which again?”

  “Talking. I know that I wasn’t very helpful this morning. Could we make another attempt?”

  “Of course.”

  “But I don’t think, under the circumstances, that it would be a good idea for you to come here again. Could you meet me somewhere?”

  “Where?”

  “Do you know the Big Trees Lodge?”

  “Up by the ski basin?”

  “Yes. It’s usually quiet there at night. We could meet for a drink at the bar tonight. My treat.”

  “Fine,” I said. “What time?”

  “I have some errands to run in the early part of the evening. Would nine o’clock be all right with you?”

  “Nine o’clock would be fine.”

  “Good. Nine, then. I look forward t
o it. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  She hung up, and the sound of a dial tone spilled from the speaker phone and filled the office. I leaned across the desk, pushed the button. The dial tone abruptly died.

  “She has a sexy voice,” Rita said.

  “You think so?”

  Sitting in the swivel chair behind her desk, arms folded, Rita smiled. “Yes. And I think she’s aware that it’s sexy.”

  She was wearing a pale lavender turtleneck sweater and a small strand of pearls. Against the light pastel of the cashmere, the black of her hair looked at once deeper and more luminous than usual.

  “Holy smokes,” I said, and raised my eyebrows. “You think I’m being set up?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think she’s a very nice person. I think she genuinely feels terrible about the way she treated me this morning. I think she wants to make up for it by buying me expensive drinks and giving me everything I need.”

  She smiled again. “Everything you need? Are you planning to bill Sally for this?”

  “Everything I need to break the case.”

  She nodded. “So you’ll be taking your gun along?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She knew that there wasn’t much else I could do. No one had actually threatened me. Possibly Veronica Chang was trying to set me up; but possibly she wasn’t. And probably she possessed information that would be useful. I needed to talk to her. All I could do was act like a Boy Scout, and be prepared.

  I left Rita at her computer terminal and went next door to my office and called Sally Durrell to tell her about Giacomo Bernardi and the young woman in Albuquerque.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Is that one of those technical legal terms?”

  “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “It probably just slipped his mind. What there is of it.”

  “Very funny, Joshua. That’s all I need right now. Bad jokes.”

  “You don’t get Robin Williams for fifteen bucks an hour, counselor. Isn’t the D.A.’s office supposed to provide you with full disclosure of their evidence?”

  “Jim Baca is the prosecutor. He can get cute. He may be doing that now. I’ll find out. Anything else?”