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."This is the deck I mostly use," he said, lifting off the lid and unfolding the cloth that wrapped thecards."There is some danger involved in using any Tarot deck, and this is a particularly potentconfiguration.But I can sense that you fellas are already pretty much fucked, so what the hell."Crane glanced around at the room, noting the food stains on the carpet and the stack of batteredissues of Woman's World on a far table, and he remembered Joshua's tastefully mood-conducive parlor.Maybe, Crane thought, if you've got the real high-octane stuff, you don't need to dress it up.The blind man spilled the cards out of the box face down and put the box aside.With a practicedone-two sweep of his hands he flopped the cards face up and spread them.Crane relaxed when he saw that it was not the deck his real father had used.But even in this dim lightCrane recognized the morbid, fleshy style of the finely crosshatched engravings."I've seen this deck," he said."Or parts of it."Spider Joe sat back, and two of his antennas sprang loose from the carpet and waved in the air."Really? Where?""Well " Crane laughed uneasily.Most recently in a Five-Draw game at the Horseshoe, he thought."The Two of Cups is a cherub's face with two metal rods stuck through it, right?"Spider Joe exhaled sharply."Are you a & some kind of Catholic priest?"Mavranos attempted a laugh, but stopped quickly."No," Crane said."If I'm any thing, I'm a Poker player.We're dealing with weird crap here, so I'll tellyou the truth I've only hallucinated these cards, and seen them in dreams.""What you're talking about," said Spider Joe thoughtfully, "is a variation of the Sola Busca deck, onethat even I've barely heard about.I've never seen it; the only known example is supposed to be in alocked vault in the Vatican.Not even qualified scholars can get permission to see it, and it's only knownof at all because of a letter from one Paulinus da Castelletto, written in 1512."With a clanking of cups and spoons, the old woman known as Booger came back into the roomcarrying a tray.She crouched and carefully set it down on the carpet next to the table."Milk or sugar?" asked Spider Joe."Black," said Mavranos, and Crane nodded, and Booger handed steaming cups to them; she thenstirred three sugar cubes into each of the other two cups and handed one to Spider Joe."My deck here," said Spider Joe, "is just the standard Sola Busca deck.Sorry.But it'll do.It's areproduction of a set owned by a Milanese family called Sola Busca the name means 'the only huntingparty,' by the way which set they permitted to be photographed in 1934.That family and those cardshave since disappeared."Mavranos sipped his coffee and leaned forward, reaching out to touch the margin of one of the cards."They're marked!" he said."Brailled, I guess I should say."Crane looked down at the cards and noticed that each of them had at least one hole poked throughthe margin of it somewhere, as if they had been tacked up again and again, in all sorts of positions on asuccession of walls."Yeah, that's how I read them," Spider Joe said."But also it's a kind of safety measure, that everycard in any heavy Tarot deck have at least one tack hole in it.All the serious decks from the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries have tack-holes in the cards.""Ahoy," said Mavranos, "that sounds like stakes through a vampire's heart, or silver bullets for awerewolf."Spider Joe smiled for the first time."I like that.Yeah, I suppose it works like that, but only inthe the head of the beholder.If there's nobody, no human being, looking at these things, they're justrectangles of cardboard.It's what they become when they enter your head through your eyes that'spotent, and a few tack holes are enough of a topographical violation to step-down their power.It's likethe smog equipment on modern car engines." He rocked where he sat, and his antennas bobbed in theair."Both of you touch the silver dollars to your eyes now, and then pass 'em across."Crane lifted the two coins to his eyes, and let the silver edge of the right one tap against the plasticsurface of his false eye just for luck.He handed them to Mavranos, who touched them to his own closedeyes and then clicked them down onto the Formica surface of the table.Spider Joe found them and tucked them behind the lenses of his sunglasses.He squared up the deckof cards and pushed them across to Crane face down."Shuffle."Crane did, seven times, though each time it was hard to slide the cards into a block, with the edges ofthe holes sticking up and catching on the card edges.Spider Joe reached out and felt for the deck, then pulled it to his side of the table."What's yourname?""Scott Crane.""And what, exactly, is your question?"Crane spread his hands wearily, then realized that his host couldn't see the gesture."How do I takeover my father's job?" he said.Spider Joe swiveled his head back and forth as though he were looking around the shabby livingroom of his trailer."Uh, you do know you're in some trouble, right? Having to do with a game you musthave played on Lake Mead twenty years ago?" He grinned, exposing uneven yellow teeth."I mean,that's your question? Something about your dad?"Crane grinned pointlessly back."Yep."Booger hummed something in the back of her throat, and Crane guessed belatedly that she was amute."Look," said Spider Joe, his voice angry, "I'm here to help you.I'm not here to do anything else.Ithink you're probably a dead man, an evicted man, but there might be something you can do.Ask thecards about that, not about some damn job.""He's my father," said Crane."I want his job.See what the cards say.""Check it out," Mavranos said to Spider Joe, "deal the cards.If everybody's not happy with what youget, we'll go back to town for another two bucks."For several seconds Spider Joe just rocked on the carpet, his haggard brown face expressionless."Okay," he said, and picked up the deck.CHAPTER 37A Dead Guy Who You Don't Know Who He IsThe first card flipped out face up onto the table was the Page of Cups, an engraving of a young manin Renaissance costume gazing at a lamp on a pedestal.Crane found that he was bracing himself on the shabby couch in the dim trailer living room for rain,or for the sound of cars crashing out on the highway, or for the cards all to jump into his face.But thoughthe sunlight slanting in through the Venetian blinds seemed to have taken on a glassy quality, like lightthrough clear gelatin, and the thwick of the card slapping the tabletop had been particularly liquid anddistinct, the only physical change in the room was the buzzing, looping intrusion of a couple of housefliesfrom the kitchen.The next card was a picture of a man in armor in front of a globe cut into three sections; the title wasNABVCHODENASOR, presumably an attempt to spell Nebuchadnezzar.Crane noted that these cards didn't show any tendency to fly around in any psychic breeze, andirrationally he remembered Spider Joe's saying that it was a heavy deck.More flies had come into the room, and they were all buzzing around the cards as if the pictures werearomatic food.Spider Joe's fingers traced the puncture-holes in the margins of the two cards, and he grunted sharply,and then he opened his mouth and began to speak."Hagioplasty one-two-three," he said harshly, the words seeming to be coughed out resentfully likeblood clots, "gumby gumby, pudding and pineal, and Bob's your uncle and the moon's my mother [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]