Good Lord, Deliver Us (16 page)

Z couldn't help it. He felt
ashamed.

Damn women, anyway!

Susan. She'd used the name Susan,
again.

Time to find out a few
things. "How do
you
know about Susan?"

There was a pause, the
girl looking over at him. Was she smiling? "How do you
think
I
know?"

A challenge.

The girl was a challenge to Z's
manhood -- in more ways than one.

"Telepathy?"

Z heard what he took to be a low
chuckle. Or else a growl. With this girl, anything was
possible.

Suddenly, Jamie was up and stepping
across the short space between her side of the bed and the stacked
boxes, there to switch on the DC lamp, the quick light causing both
of them to blink.

After that, she just stood there,
modeling for him, striking a seductive pose, hands brushing her
thighs, then her breasts.

Looking down at him again, she sighed
and stepped back to sit beside him on the mattress, both of them
snapping off their little lights. Putting them on the
mattress.

"Want me to read your fortune?" A
question Z was unprepared for -- but something better than she
might propose. Though what that had to do with knowing Susan's
name, Z couldn't guess.

"OK."

"Give me your hand." Oh, oh. "Give it
to me. The left hand first."

Reluctantly, Z did as she
asked.

Taking his large hand in her small
ones, the girl turned his hand over, bending down to look at his
palm.

Letting go of that hand after a
moment, she motioned for his other hand; stared into its
palm.

"Your left hand is the hand of
potential," she said, still looking at his right palm. "The right,
the one of achievement. The right hand shows what you've done to
modify your potential." Letting go, Z taking his hand back quickly,
she looked up at Z, blue eyes sparkling in the lamp light. "Your
left hand tells me it was possible for you to have achieved
greatness, that you're bright, hard-working." She frowned her
delightful scowl; full, multipurpose lips, pouting. "But your right
hand shows that something's happened to you." She captured his
right hand again, using her forefinger to trace the line that
curved around the meaty part at the base of his thumb. "Good
color," she said. "Pale. The line, deep."

She retraced the fold. "Now look at
this." She tapped his hand near the wrist. "At the bottom, there's
this sharp crossing line. Sickness. ... No, I would say
accident."

Like someone smoothing a piece of
wrinkled paper, the girl stroked his palm with her other hand. "A
bad accident when you were a child. A teenager. An accident that I
didn't see in your left, or potential, hand, meaning you could have
prevented it by living a different kind of life. It's a misfortune
you recover from, though the line's a little fuzzy after that. Not
a complete recovery." Z thought about his knee and the Raytown
game. She was doing all right so far. Still, a lot of people got
hurt by the time they were Z's age; had nagging complaints. "As
your life line moves along," she continued, "a series of small
lines bisect it. Danger, but not death. A fairly long line. Ah
...."

"What?"

"This dark dot?" Z could barely see
it, but then, he could barely see anything after he'd just woken
up. He probably needed glasses, but .... "It generally means death.
Everyone has one, but usually not this dark. Could mean a violent
death."

She knew he was a
detective, an occupation that made it reasonable to assume he
wouldn't die in bed. Anyway, it was no test of her skill to tell
him what
might
happen. Anyone could do that because anything
could
happen.

She was looking up at him again.
"Think I'm a fraud, huh?"

"I didn't say ...."

"You wanted to know how I knew about
Susan?" Z nodded. "It came to me in a flash. Suddenly, I saw her
picture, right before my eyes." The girl smiled what Z had come to
understand was her "I've got a secret" smile, Jamie Stewart more
cat than woman. Liked to play with manly mice. "There's more to
prophesy than the lines in a person's hand, you know. The lines are
there to give you broad indications. It takes intuition to
interpret them. That's why some of us are fakes, and some of us
......" Again, that smile.

Without a word, she took his hand
again. Turned it over. Pointed. "This is your love line. It runs
from the mount of Jupiter ...." She touched the fleshy place at the
base of Z's index finger. "... to the mount of Mercury." She had
stopped at the padded bump under his little finger. "What I see
here is that you were married, but that the marriage didn't work.
You were married to what looks like -- judging by this double,
crossing line -- a short, black-haired girl. My insight tells me
her name started with a ... P." She frowned suddenly. Closed her
eyes. Tapped her forehead with a closed fist. "Pauline. ... Or
Paula."

The roots of Z's hair had
begun to tingle, his skin to chill. That
was
his ex-wife's name: Paula. Paula
Perfect, as Z always thought of her since the break-up. Too bright.
Too educated for a big dumb fuck like Z!

Opening her eyes, the
ghost hunter continued, looking down at Z's open hand again. "This
star represents your current girlfriend. Susan. Taller. Black hair
and eyes. Pretty. About 30. You've been going with her for a couple
of years." Jamie looked up at Z once more, grinning like the
wolf-girl she very well might be. "You're too old for her, you
know. That means you're
much
too old for me. But I think we've already
established that."

The girl looked down at his hand
again, smoothing and smoothing it, peering at it, bringing her head
down close. "And here's a surprise. You don't even have a license
to be a detective." Again, a direct hit! And in another, completely
private area. "The length of the second finger, called the finger
of Saturn, tells me that." She began touching each finger in turn,
like playing "This little piggy goes to market."

"The third finger, the finger of
Apollo, is shaped in such a way that it shows you're more than just
a dick." She grinned. "For instance, you like art."

Z didn't know what to say.
He
hadn't
liked
art until Susan had dragged him to the Nelson Gallery, but he did
now.

How could this slip of a ghost hunter
possibly know the most intimate details of his life!? Z began to
sweat in the close confines of the tiny room.

"You don't like to watch TV -- that I
can tell that from the fourth finger, the one we call the TV
finger. And the plain of Mars -- the center of the palm -- is
shaped just right for holding a slice of pizza. This tells me that
one of your favorite places to eat is the Pizza Hut on
Oak."

Suddenly, Jamie laughed.
Was delighted with herself. "And one more thing. Folks in the
business of reading palms have got a name for people like you." She
was still chuckling. "It's rube -- which translates,
sucker
."

"All a fraud." Z let his breath out
with relief -- though he still didn't know how .....

"I told you that before."

"But how ....?

"Easy. I just did what any modern
fortuneteller would have done. Did it last night, in fact. Did it
because, in order to guard her virtue, a girl must know as much as
possible about her gentleman friends."

"Did ... what?"

"Picked your pocket."

"What!?"

"Sure. Last night."

Putting both her arms above her head,
she stretched, then folded her hands in her lap. "Remember in the
living room? When I bumped into you? Remember how it
felt?"

"Yes." In spite of what they'd been
doing since, Z was still embarrassed at remembering where Jamie had
put her hand. "I was doing more than checking the size of your
dong, pal. I was slipping your wallet out of your back pocket. I
put your billfold back later."

"But I didn't feel ...."

"Let's just say I
distracted you -- the best way a woman can." Again, the confident
grin. "I think I told you I was good? Well, I am." She nodded her
agreement. "Normally, it takes two people. A
diverter
who bumps the mark, and
a
dip
who
light-fingers the goods." Again, the self-satisfied smile. "After
that, while you were checking the front door, I was going through
your billfold." She nodded wisely. Then shook her short, shiny
blond hair.

"The most amazing thing
about all this is what men keep in their billfolds. For instance,
you have a picture in there of a sailboat." That was true. Z had
once had a small sailboat, when he and Paula had first been
married. Did him more good in the winter --
thinking
about sailing -- than in
the summer when he rarely had time to sail. "For all your tough guy
image," the girl was saying, "you're a romantic at
heart."

And what did Z say
to
that
? He
wasn't even sure what she meant by it. Didn't know whether or not
he should feel insulted.

"Who else," she continued
relentlessly, "goes to the trouble, of painting his wife's name on
the prow of a crummy, 10-foot sailboat? Paula. To say nothing of
having the little woman stand by the side of the boat, when your
real interest was in taking a picture of the boat itself. Small,
dark-haired woman. A little waspish-looking, if you ask me." That
was Paula, all right. "In addition, though hard to see, the woman
in the picture is wearing a cheap wedding ring.

"Susan? You've also got a picture of
Susan in your wallet, dummy, with a loving message on the back,
signed Susan. A picture that, considering it's still in good shape,
can't have been in there more than a couple of years. Contrasted
with the boat picture, which is falling apart. Want
more?"

Z nodded, still a little
stunned.

"If you had a ticket to be
a detective, you'd carry it with you -- and don't think for
a
moment
I was
fooled by that fake badge."

"Don't need a detective's license.
Unless I carry a gun."

"Swell. And just how were you going to
protect me without a gun?"

Z shrugged. There were ... ways ...
but she knew too much about him already.

"Not by kicking someone,
that's for sure." She grinned, showing him she wasn't
too
worried about her
safety. After all, she'd never thought she was in any danger.
"Explaining your limp, is the scar around the kneecap." She grinned
again. Shook her head in that defiant way. "There's more to learn
from a naked man, my dear, than finding out if there's a chance his
measurements will set a record.

"Back to the scar. They don't do it
that way anymore. Modern knee surgery leaves pockmarks, each
smaller than the size of a dime -- where they insert the
orthoscope. What you've got there ...," she said, reaching across
to trace the half-moon slash around Z's left kneecap, "... is ol'
time butchery, my man. What did you do, hurt your knee in high
school?" Z nodded. "Playing football?" Z nodded again. "Typical."
She tossed her head. Figuring out something so elementary was
clearly beneath her.

"And by the way, just how did you get
a free pass to the Nelson Art gallery, anyway? And now that we're
on that subject, I wouldn't mind having a discount card for Pizza
Hut, either."

Z was ... disappointed.
Impressed, but disappointed. "Sure," she added, picking up his
mood. "It's fun to believe there's magic in the world. What takes
the fun
out
is
knowing how the magician does his tricks."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, like I said, I know all the
scams. That's why I'm good at my job; why I'm hired to flush out
"ghosts."

Z felt ... stupid. Because
he'd
been
stupid.

"Don't take it so hard.
This little lesson didn't cost you a bundle -- like it does a lot
of people. That's what makes a con successful: it's hard to detect.
Even by bright people." She grinned at Z again, took his hand in
her small ones. Squeezed. "And finally, I can tell that you
are
bright. And believe
me," she added, looking at him again, shaking her head, "I didn't
find that out by anything you've
told
me: because you don't talk --
before, during,
or
after. No. In part, I can tell you're a bright guy because
you don't watch all that junk on TV -- you don't have a video
rental card. And partly because you buy books. Sure, paperbacks,
but who buys
any
kind of books now days? What I
can't
figure is, why you put the
sales slips in your billfold. And from three different bookstores,
no less."

"Don't know," Z said. And ... he
didn't. He'd never thought about it. Now that he did, it seemed
that whenever he bought a book, the lady at the counter handed him
the receipt with his change. He supposed that, now and then, he'd
put the receipt in his billfold along with the bills he got
back.