The Hanged Man Read Free Page A

myself.
    â€œYou understand,” I told him, “that I’m working for Sally Durrell, your lawyer.”
    â€œSi,” he said. “Yeah. I unnerstand.” His flat, phlegmatic voice was gravelly, and his accent suggested that he’d been born in Italy or that he’d spent many hours watching the collected works of Francis Ford Coppola.
    â€œAnd you understand,” I said, “that the police have a pretty good case against you.”
    He nodded. “You think I kill him, huh?” His voice was still flat, unmodulated, as though he didn’t especially care what I thought.
    â€œI don’t think anything, Mr. Bernardi. But Miss Durrell believes that you didn’t do it, and she’s hired me to learn what I can.”
    â€œHow much I got to pay you?” With the same dull lack of interest.
    â€œYou don’t pay me anything. The public defender’s office takes care of that.”
    â€œHow much they pay you, huh? The public defender’s office?”
    â€œFifteen dollars an hour.”
    He grunted. Few grunts express contempt more effectively than an Italian grunt. “I make more with the cards,” he said.
    â€œI don’t have your special skills. So do we talk or do I go back to Miss Durrell and tell her to find someone else?”
    He eyed me for a moment from beneath his hooded lids. Then, slowly, he sat up. He pulled his right hand from his pocket. In it, he held a small sheaf of papers, maybe twenty or so, soiled along the edges and slightly crumpled. They had been cut, or carefully torn, from larger sheets of lined notebook paper, and each was about the size of a playing card. Without a word, Bernardi laid them out along the tabletop in the shape of a horseshoe, the open end at my side of the table. The sheets—or cards, which is what I assumed they were intended to be—were blank, at least on the sides that faced upward.
    Bernardi sat back. “They take away my cards. I make these.”
    â€œVery enterprising.”
    He said, “You pick one now.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œâ€™Cause I got to know.” As though that were an answer.
    I leaned forward and reached out my left hand.
    â€œRight hand,” said Bernardi.
    â€œRight hand,” I said. I selected one of the homemade cards. “Now what?” I said. “You guess what it is?”
    â€œPut it down on the table. The face up.”
    I turned over the card and set it on the table. It was a line drawing in pencil, very well executed, of a man about to step off a cliff. He wore boots and a long tunic, belted at the waist, and, like a hobo, he carried over his shoulder a staff with a bundle dangling from its end. Some small unidentifiable animal—a dog or a cat or, for all I know, a wombat—was nipping at his heels. For no discernible reason, the man was smiling.
    Bernardi was nodding. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
    â€œYeah?”
    He leaned forward. Looking at me, he tapped the card with his fingernail. I noticed that his fingernail had been bitten to the quick. Maybe he wasn’t as phlegmatic as he seemed. “This card, he stand for you. He represent you. He’s a good card.”
    â€œAnd which card is he?”
    He tapped again at the card. “This card, he’s the Fool.”

“He sounds to me,” said Rita, smiling, “like an admirable judge of character.”
    â€œVery amusing, Rita. Next time, you can be the one who goes over to the Detention Center and plays Groucho to his Chico.”
    â€œDon’t let the Knights of Columbus hear you say that. Or the Mafia.”
    â€œThe Mafia wouldn’t let this guy in. He wouldn’t know a sharkskin suit if it swam up and ripped his leg off.”
    We were sitting in Rita’s office, Rita behind the desk and me in one of the client chairs. For almost three years the office had been empty, and even now, after a month, I still felt