"Well, I'm glad you came. Now tell me, what can I do for you?"

"Do you mean in the way of psychic counseling?"

"Or any other way you have in mind." He caught her frown and grew serious. "Psychic counseling is what I do."

"I don't know what I wanted from you, Peter, I really don't. Just a sympathetic ear, I guess. I don't see that there's anything you or anybody else can do for me."

"Don't be too sure." He looked around the room speculatively. "Let me see, I don't think this is a job for the crystal. Ouija board?" He looked at her quickly, then shook his head. "No, we're not ready for the Ouija board. We don't have time to make a proper astrological chart for you." He rubbed his chin. "What would you say to a Tarot reading?"

"You mean fortune-telling cards? Like Gypsies?"

He held up his hands, palms outward. "No no no, not fortune-telling. Don't even say fortune-telling out loud. Fortune-telling is against the law. So are Gypsies, as far as I know. I am no Gypsy fortune teller, I am a psychic counselor." He smiled at her. "For this no laws have yet been written."

"I don't think so," Joana said. "I wouldn't be a very good subject. I really don't believe in all that stuff."

"Until last night, did you believe you could be dead and come back?"

"You've got a point there."

"Anyway, it doesn't really matter if you believe or not. It won't affect the reading. Why not give it a try? What have you got to lose?"

"Wella what the h.e.l.l, why not?" Joana took out a cigarette and Peter reached across instantly to snap a flame for her from his lighter. "As you say, what have I got to lose?"

"That's the spirit." Peter stood up and walked over to a compact writing desk. From a drawer he took an oblong package wrapped in silk. He carefully unwrapped the silk kerchief and laid it aside. Joana saw the package was a thick pack of cards.

"You take good care of them," she said.

"Silk keeps out the discordant vibrations."

Joana searched his face for any sign that he was kidding, but found none. He came back and sat down beside her, spreading the cards out face up on the table in front of them.

Joana gazed down at the colorful picture cards. There were figures of humans, animals, and mythological creatures engaged in a variety of activities in different detailed settings. A few of them, kings and queens, vaguely resembled regular playing cards.

"First time you've seen a Tarot deck?" Peter asked.

"Yes, it is. Does each of these cards have a meaning of its own?"

"In a sense they do," Peter said smoothly, "but the symbolism is the important thing. That's the key to the Tarot. The meanings of the individual cards are different according to where they come up in the layout, whether they're upright or reversed, which cards come up around them, and most important, the vibes given off by the querent."

"Querent?" Joana repeated.

"That's you. I am the reader."

"If you say so." Joana picked out a card at random. It showed a tall, square-sided structure on the top of a mountain being struck by a bolt of lightning. Flames licked from the windows, and a man and woman, their faces contorted, plunged apparently to their deaths. "What does this one mean? It looks ominous."

Peter took the card from her hand. "This is The Tower," he said. "And you're right, this is usually bad news. Conflict, catastrophe, violent change, oppression. It all depends, though, on the total reading. With the right kind of vibes it could mean a new freedom of mind or body, though gained at great cost."

"What you're saying is it means just about what you want it to mean."

He smiled, not at all offended. "Not really, but there is always room for interpretation. That's what I'm here for."

"All right," she said, "let's do it if we're going to."

"Right." Peter moved the cards about on the table. "First we have to find one that will represent you." He picked out a card showing a handsome crowned woman sitting on a throne, holding in her hands an elaborate jeweled chalice. "How would you like to be the Queen of Cups?"

"Why not."

He placed the Queen of Cups face up in the center of the table. Then he scooped up the rest of the deck, squared it, and handed it to Joana. "Now you shuffle the cards."

She took the deck from him. "How much do I shuffle?"

"Just until you feel comfortable about it. And while you shuffle, think about some question that you'd like the cards to answer."

The Tarot cards were considerably larger than ordinary playing cards, and Joana found shuffling them an awkward task. She managed to mix them, however, and tried to come up with a question. She still thought this was a lot of foolishness, but as long as she was here, she might as well play the game.

The question. What should she ask the Tarot? There was only one thing of importance on her mind-her experience in that shadowy tunnel, and what came immediately before and after. The feeling stayed with her that she was not out of trouble yet. She concentrated on the question: How will this all end?

She finished shuffling the cards and placed the deck on the table between them. "What now?"

"Cut the deck into three piles, from right to left, with your left hand."

Joana followed his instructions, and felt a tingle of antic.i.p.ation in spite of herself.

Peter took up the three piles in reverse order, using his left hand. "There are many different methods of laying out the Tarot," he said, "but we're going to use the one that's most common-the ancient Keltic method."

"If it was good enough for the ancient Kelts, it's good enough for me," Joana said. She was trying to lighten the mood, to lose the apprehensive feeling that this oversize deck of cards was actually going to tell her something.

Peter just smiled and peeled off the first card, which he placed over the Queen of Cups in the center of the table. As he laid the card he said, "This covers you." The next card he placed horizontally across the first, saying, "This crosses you." The next four cards he laid down in the form of a cross with the covered Queen of Cups at the center. As he carefully placed each card in its position, Peter spoke the ritual that went with it. "This is beneath youa This is behind youa This crowns youa This is before you."

Next he laid down four cards in a vertical row to the right of the cross, beginning at the bottom. "These, now, will build up to give us the final answer to your question."

He snapped down the tenth and last card. Joana flinched. The picture was of a skeleton in black armor mounted on a fiery-eyed white horse. Beneath the horse's hooves lay a dead king. Before it a woman and a child were on their knees. The legend under the picture: DEATH.

Joana reached out and tapped the card with a finger. "My G.o.d, what does this mean?"

Peter's composure slipped a notch. "That? Oh, we'll get to that. It doesn't necessarily mean what it seems to."

"I hope not," Joana said.

Peter cleared his throat and slipped back into his professional manner. "Let us consider first this card, the one that covered your Queen of Cups. It represents the influences at work on you and the general atmosphere in which you ask the question. As you see, it is the Three of Swords. Here the swords are piercing a heart. Your heart. There are problems in your romantic life. A quarrel. Separation, perhaps."

Joana looked at him quickly, remembering the chilly exchange she'd had with Glen this morning. She tried to recall if she had made some reference to that when she'd met Peter in the parking lot this morning. That was probably it. He was a perceptive man.

He pointed to the card at the right side of the cross-a stalwart young man in a winged helmet, a cup held firmly in his outstretched hand. "But now the good news. Here, in your very near future, we find a new romantic interest. A young man, sensitive, artistic. He will have a message for you. An invitation, perhaps."

"Or a proposition?" Joana suggested.

"Possibly, possibly." He went on in more general terms, telling her what each card represented-the forces opposing her, an influence just pa.s.sing away, and so on. The things he read, or said he read, in the cards could generally fit her situation, but a clever man like Peter Landau could have deduced enough from what he already knew of her to build a fairly convincing story.

Still, as he talked on, telling about the cards that made up the cross, Joana could detect a faltering in his patter. She watched his eyes and saw they kept straying to the top card in the row of four, the Death card.

"Is anything the matter?" she asked.

"Matter?" he said too quickly. "No. Well, maybe. I don't seem to be getting strong vibes from you. Maybe the Tarot wasn't a good choice. What sign did you say you were? Libra, I'll bet."

"I'm an Aries, but don't change the subject." She pointed down at the skeletal figure on horseback. "I want to know what this means."

"Without reading all the other positions and relating them to each other, it's impossible to-"

"Cut out the bulls.h.i.t, Peter," she said. "Tell me what it means."

Peter cleared his throat again. "Well, this position, number ten in the Keltic layout, tells us what the final outcome will be. It is the sum of the information contained in all the other cards, and the ultimate answer to your question/'

"Death?"

He tried a smile that did not come off. "When you come right down to it, isn't that the final outcome of everything, for all of us?"

Joana did not answer his wobbly smile. Her eyes returned to the card showing the deadly figure in the black armor.

Peter reached out suddenly and swept the cards into a pile. "Sometimes you just don't get a true reading," he said. "It happens all the time. Why don't we start over again?"

"No, thank you," Joana said.

"Well, look, how about another gla.s.s of wine? I'll put on another tape, something upbeat, and we can relax and rap for a while."

"I've really got to go," she said. "I haven't even been home yet to change my clothes."

She stood up, and Peter immediately got to his feet. "Can I see you again?" he said.

"What for?"

"What does a guy usually want to see a girl for? A date. You know.".

"I'm pretty involved right now, Peter."

"With Glen Early?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You're not engaged or anything?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, then?"

"Call me if you want to," Joana said. "I'm in the book. J. Raitt on Beachwood Drive."

"I'll find you," Peter said. He walked with her out onto the porch and watched as she descended the steps to the street.

Joana climbed into the Datsun and sat for a long minute behind the wheel before starting the engine. Coming here had been foolishness, she told herself. Tarot cards! That was for people who believed in tea leaves and crystal b.a.l.l.s and all that supernatural c.r.a.p. And Peter Landau was no seer, he was just another guy on the make. Joana was a hard-headed, intelligent young woman, not some superst.i.tious dingbat.

And yet, she could not put out of her mind the picture of Death in black armor astride the white horse with the blazing eyes. The skull face under the upraised helm glared at her with empty eyes. The skull swam in Joana's mind, and blurred into the face of the woman behind the wheel of the station wagon.

Joana shook her head vigorously to clear away the troubling thoughts and cranked the little car's engine to life.

Up on the porch Peter Landau watched the Datsun turn around and head down the hill and out of sight. Then he went back inside the house. The late clouds had begun to drift inland from the ocean, and it was growing cold.

Peter walked over and sat down on the love seat. He stared at the table where he had laid out the Tarot cards for Joana. It was the first time anything like this had happened to him, the first time he had lost control of a reading.

It had been his plan to give her one of his standard flattering readings, with the subtle suggestion that the time was ripe for a new romantic adventure in her life. That approach had worked many times, leading him into more beds than he could remember. With Joana, though, it was different. He had been uncomfortable from the start with the familiar routine. For the first time he could remember, the cards seemed to be actually telling him something. Something he did not want to know.

Years ago Peter had memorized the standard interpretations for each of the seventy-eight cards. He could weave them together glibly into any kind of a story he wanted to tell. For some reason, today he could not seem to talk his way around the portents of bad news, violence, and disaster. And then there was that d.a.m.ned Death card in the crucial number-ten position. Jesus, was he starting to believe in this c.r.a.p?

Idly he scooped up the deck, shuffled, and cut it to his left into three piles. He chose the Magician, as usual, to represent himself, and began laying out the Keltic cross. It always relaxed him to weave brilliant futures for himself by giving his own special interpretations to the meanings of the cards.

He laid out the six cards of the cross and frowned. Many swords, a sign of strife. Especially bad, the Nine, Ten, and Page of swords. Sorrow, desolation, misfortune, pain, and an impostor exposed. How the h.e.l.l could he make anything good out of that?

Peter was tempted to sweep up the cards and put them away, but some compulsion made him continue. Deliberately he put down the seventh, eighth, and ninth cards in the vertical row.

First came The Fool, that unheeding young man about to step over the brink of a precipice. Folly, indescretion, thoughtless action. Then The Tower with its fearsome lightning bolt and falling bodies. And The Hanged Man, bound and suspended from a T-cross of living wood. The most ambiguous of the Tarot deck, but with a dark and sinister look. Bad news, all of them.

What the h.e.l.l was he doing? This was only a game, wasn't it? He could make the cards say anything he wanted, couldn't he?

One more to go. The tenth card, the final outcome. Peter hesitated a long time. His fingers rubbed the crisscross design on the back of the card, and seemed to sense what it would be.

Don't turn that card, he told himself silently. If he did not actually see it, then it wouldn't exist.

His fingers moved without his willing them and slid the next card from the top of the deck. He flipped it face up in the tenth position. It was no surprise. It was Death.

Chapter 8.

The air in the elevator grew rapidly cooler as Dr. Hovde rode down to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the West Los Angeles Receiving Hospital. The car came to a stop, the doors slid noiselessly open on oiled rollers. The doctor shivered when he stepped out into the tiled hallway. Powerful fluorescent lights gave the scene a harsh, blue-white clarity.

Dr. Hovde walked quickly past a row of heavy drawers set into the wall. One of the drawers was rolled out. The outlines of a body could be seen under a green sheet. One naked black foot protruded from under the sheet. A cardboard tag was attached to the big toe.

Hovde continued to the end of the hall and through a door with Pathology Lab lettered on frosted gla.s.s. Inside, the smell of disinfectant was sharp in his nostrils. There were four tables s.p.a.ced across the room. The tops of the tables were metal grillwork with troughs underneath to catch the spilled body fluids. At one end of each table was a stainless-steel sink, at the other a hanging scale for weighing organs as they were removed from the cadaver. Three of the tables were empty. On the fourth lay the naked body of Mrs. Yvonne Carlson.

Dr. Kermit Breedlove, the chief pathologist, a lanky man with an unruly shock of black hair, stood over the body with his arms folded. A wooden toothpick danced from one side of his mouth to the other. Dr. Hovde had always thought he would look more at home playing the piano in a saloon than cutting up dead bodies.

"h.e.l.lo, Warren," Breedlove said. "What brings you down to the icebox? Things slow upstairs?"

"For the moment." Hovde walked over and stood next to the pathologist, looking down on Mrs. Carlson's body. "I'm a little curious about this one."