The King of Swords

by Nick Stone

  ‘I really couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘You didn’t say “no”, Detective, which is interesting. It’s a short step between the church and what I do, you know.’ Phyllis smiled. ‘It’s all part of the same path…But anyway, I respect your wishes. We’ll do a hypothetical reading.’

  She put on her glasses and picked out ten cards. She arranged two in the middle of the table, one crossing the other, then she quickly placed one above and one below the cross, then one card on either side of it. The last four tarots she laid down to her right, vertically, one over the other.

  She circled her hand above the group of tarots on the left. ‘This first set of cards represents the present, and these’–she moved her finger up and down over the upright line on the right–‘going up, represent the future. Now, let’s break it down.

  ‘The two crossed cards in the middle represent the petitioner–that’s the person you’re reading for.’

  The Knight of Swords, riding a white horse, charging into battle, sword aloft, face frozen in aggression, was crossed by the Two of Cups, a young man and woman, each holding a golden chalice, reaching out to touch one another’s fingers.

  ‘Typical boy meets girl scenario, from a male’s perspective,’ Phyllis said. ‘The card behind them, the Six of Wands, represents the recent past, what’s brought them to this point: news, communication, a letter, a phone call. The one above them, the Queen of Cups, represents what the petitioner hopes for the most. In this case, the Queen of Cups is the woman of his dreams. The card below, the Three of Swords, is what the petitioner’s worried about–a broken heart. And the last card in this section, the one in front, is the Three of Cups and shows the present moving into the future. It may be a celebration. A happy time.

  ‘When you read them, you read them in the order you placed them. Tell me what you see, Detective.’

  Max studied the cards, which she’d laid out so that they faced him.

  ‘The Knight of Swords is an aggressive young guy. Like a younger version of the King of Swords, always going to war. He meets this girl he thinks is everything he isn’t, and that maybe she’s better than him, so he’s afraid of getting his heart broken if he goes after her. They’ve been in touch with each other though’–he pointed to the Six of Wands and then moved to the Three of Cups–‘and they’ve made a date to go to–a party?’

  ‘Very good.’ Phyllis clapped. ‘You’re a natural.’

  Max thought it wasn’t exactly brain surgery, but he smiled at Phyllis instead of speaking his mind. Then he thought of Sandra, who he’d met twice for lunch close to her workplace in the past two weeks and studied the cards more closely. The Six of Wands–half a dozen branches seemingly falling through the sky–reminded him of rain.

  He looked at Phyllis again and got a knowing smile from her.

  ‘You understood that the cards tell a story. Most people, when they start out as readers, take it one card at a time. Not you. You got a girl in your life?’

  ‘Not really, no. Why? D’you see one for me?’ he asked her. The times he’d met Sandra had been brief, but he’d sworn she’d been a bit warmer to him when they’d first met than these last two times. Their lunches–sandwiches and coffee in Avi’s Diner on Flagler–had almost been formal, the talk small and polite, her attitude aloof and distant. Yet it was she who’d made all the moves. She’d called him up both times and fixed the where and when. He’d gone there all excited, like the teenage geek who’s bagged the best-looking cheerleader in his school, yet he’d come away uncertain as to whether she felt anything for him beyond curiosity. It was an odd position he found himself in, vulnerable and open to hurt in a way he hadn’t been since his youth.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want a reading,’ Phyllis replied, putting away the cards.

  ‘Guess not,’ Max said. ‘So, how many different kinds of tarot cards are there?’

  ‘All kinds. The one we used here is the Rider-Waite deck, probably the most common and popular, on account of its simplicity, but there are literally hundreds of designs. You can get the ones with Native American Indians, crows, cats, dogs, vampires, comic-book superheroes, old movie stars, baseball players–you name it. They’re all based on the Rider-Waite system. There are some exceptions though. Have you heard of Aleister Crowley?’

  ‘Yeah. The devil worshipper, right?’

  ‘That’s him. He designed a deck called the Thoth Tarot. It incorporates a lot of Egyptian symbolism in the designs. Then there’s also the Golden Dawn Tarot, the Tree of Life Tarot and the Cosmic Tarot, each with a variation in the way they’re interpreted.’

  Max pulled out three black and white morgue photographs of the card taken from Preval Lacour’s stomach, the scraps fitted together to make a whole.

  ‘Seen this one?’ Max handed her the photographs.

  Phyllis studied them for just a second.

  ‘My God! That’s from a de Villeneuve deck!’ She was almost breathless. ‘Where did you find this? And why’s it been cut up like that?’

  ‘It was found in someone’s stomach.’

  ‘Someone ate this?’

  ‘Ate, swallowed, force fed. We’re not sure yet.’

  ‘These are very rare cards. Very exclusive. Very expensive.’

  ‘How much do they go for?’

  ‘Five grand a deck, the last I heard, and that was a few years ago. They’re not easily available. They’re only printed once a year in Switzerland. And they’re made to order. Cash upfront.’

  ‘What’s so special about them–apart from the price? Why’s the face missing’

  ‘All the faces are missing. That’s one of their unique qualities. Not just anyone can use them. Only certain people.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘People with…a very special gift.’

  ‘Can you use them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go near them,’ Phyllis said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Did you ever hear of someone called Kathleen Reveaux?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was a well-known card reader, quite famous even. She’d been on TV a few times, accurately predicted Nixon’s downfall, defeat in Vietnam, the attempt on Ford’s life. I knew her very well. She bought a de Villeneuve deck at an auction in New York. She tried using the cards and the images on them turned hostile.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She said she saw monsters, great beasts with blood-red eyes and white fangs. I told her to burn the cards immediately. But she had a wilful, stubborn side and she persisted with them.’

  Phyllis stopped talking and tears began to gather in her eyes. She took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘What happened to her? If you want to tell me,’ Max said.

  ‘She took her life. She threw herself off the Freedom Tower. You must have heard about it?’

  ‘Was that in ’78?’

  Phyllis whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about her,’ Max said. He remembered the incident, but not well. It was deemed a spectacular suicide, given the location, but a suicide nonetheless. A deranged woman who’d died alone. It made a change from the two most common kinds of death in Miami at the time–cocaine cowboys killing each other and everyone in-between, and South Beach retirees checking out of God’s waiting room–but those were the only things about Kathleen Reveaux’s death that had registered. He hadn’t even known her name until now.

  ‘I spoke to her a few days before,’ Phyllis said. ‘Kathleen told me the cards were speaking to her, compelling her to…to kill herself.’

  ‘She heard voices?’ Max asked.

  ‘Just like psychotics do, I know.’

  ‘What kind of voices?’

  ‘Actually it was just the one voice. A man’s voice. She said he had a French accent. And every day the voice got louder and louder, until I presume it was all she could hear and all she could listen to.’

  She broke off and stared out of the window into the darkness outside.


  ‘Who was this de Villeneuve?’ Max asked, bringing her gaze and attention back to the photographs on the table.

  ‘A lot of rumour and conjecture surrounds him,’ Phyllis began. ‘What is known for sure is that he was a painter in the court of the eighteenth-century French king, Louis XVI. He made a good living painting flattering portraits of the nobility. He was a favourite of Marie-Antoinette, Louis’ wife. Some claimed he was also her lover. But there was another side to him. He was a reputed devil worshipper, and–unlike Crowley–he was said to be the real deal, capable of summoning Lucifer himself from the depths.

  ‘The story went that Lucifer granted him the power to change his appearance. He could become whoever he wanted, male or female. He had the power to walk through any wall and open any door. He made a lot of use of this to further his position and influence in court, taking on the appearance of husbands, wives and mistresses, hearing every dirty little secret in the realm, which he passed on to Marie-Antoinette.

  ‘But, as with all pacts, there was a downside, a price to pay. Every month de Villeneuve had to make a human sacrifice to retain his powers. Young women–young girls, actually, because the Devil would only accept virgins. He killed several society women, some say up to ten or twelve before he was caught. The bodies would be found with their throats cut ear to ear, and there’d be a brand over their hearts–a long upright, medieval sword, very similar to the one in the card. The hearts would be missing, although no one knew how because the only injuries the victims had were to their necks.’

  ‘How d’he get caught?’ Max asked.

  ‘Well, one day, the king decided to honour de Villeneuve by exhibiting his favourite paintings of himself and his cronies. The portraits were hung in the Grand Trianon–an outbuilding in the Palace of Versailles. Hundreds of guests were invited. They wined, dined and danced in the main palace ballroom and then Louis led them over to see the portraits. There they got the shock of their lives. Instead of seeing portraits of the monarch and themselves, they saw what looked to be a hundred variations of the same painting: a naked young girl, sitting in a chair with her feet in a bucket and her hands tied behind her back. A man in black robes was standing behind her with a raised sword. And all around them, in a circle stood these very tall men with dead-white faces.

  ‘No one knew how the paintings got in there, or what had happened to the original portraits. Then one of the nobles recognized the girl in one of the paintings as his murdered daughter. And then another nobleman saw his child in another of the paintings.

  ‘They arrested de Villeneuve and put him in the Bastille, but he escaped. That was in 1785. In 1789 the French monarchy was overthrown and de Villeneuve resurfaced, this time in Haiti.

  ‘Haiti was then a French slave colony. No one knows how, but de Villeneuve had become a wealthy plantation owner; coffee and cane were his main trade. He owned over a hundred African slaves, although, for the times, he was enlightened. He treated them well and gave them a kind of freedom. He paid them and even built a village for them away from his estate. Of course, there was a reason for this. At night, the slaves practised their religion.’

  ‘Voodoo?’ Max suggested, mentioning one of the four things he knew about Haiti, outside of Papa and Baby Doc, and the fact that the island was a hundred miles away from Miami.

  ‘No. De Villeneuve’s slaves practised black magic, a series of rituals revolving around human sacrifice and the conjuring up of evil spirits. The high priest of the slave village was a man called Boukman. He was said to have all kinds of supernatural powers, including the ability to see far into the future. He used playing cards in his divination.

  ‘De Villeneuve used to attend the ceremonies, both as participant and painter. He and Boukman were good friends, as well as followers of the same master. De Villeneuve designed a set of cards for Boukman to use.’

  ‘And that’s the origin of the famous five-grand deck?’ Max asked.

  ‘Yes. But it’s said that it wasn’t really de Villeneuve who was the cards’ creator, but Lucifer himself. All the cards are said to bear his signature in the lower left-hand corner: a falling star, symbolizing his fall from grace. And the cards are only really meant to be used by those who follow him, or who are at least familiar with his ways. I can’t verify this because I’ve only seen the cards in photographs, and those weren’t close-ups.’

  They both studied the card in the morgue pictures, but all four corners were eroded.

  ‘What happened to de Villeneuve?’

  ‘He lived in Haiti until 1805, when once again he disappeared. This time for good. No one knows what happened to him.

  ‘As for Boukman, in 1791 he led the first slave uprising against the colonial masters–a very bloody and violent campaign. De Villeneuve and his property were of course untouched. Although Boukman was eventually captured and executed by the French, the rebellion continued and became a sophisticated military campaign led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. Haiti declared its independence in 1804.

  ‘De Villeneuve is known to have fathered many many children by slave women, including several with Boukman’s sister, by whom he had six–all twins. Many of his descendants are still in Haiti and Switzerland, of course, where they produce the cards every October, which was the month they were originally created.’

  ‘So this King of Swords card. What do you think it was doing in someone’s stomach?’

  ‘What did the person do?’ Phyllis asked.

  Max told her about Lacour.

  ‘It sounds like he was possessed and under a spell, to do something like that,’ Phyllis said. ‘Just like Kathleen was, God rest her soul.’

  Max checked his watch. It was past 9 p.m.

  He asked Phyllis for the names of shops where they sold tarot cards. She told him she had a list of suppliers and distributors in her files and went out to make him a copy.

  She came back with three sheets of paper. He thanked her for her time and help. She walked him outside.

  When they were shaking hands and saying goodbye, Max saw her expression change from pleasant to fearful.

  ‘I know you don’t yet believe, Detective, but I have to tell you to be very careful,’ she said gravely. ‘You’re heading out on a dark road. It’s going to be very dangerous–not just for you, but those close to you, people you care about the most.’

  ‘Where does it end, the road?’ Max asked.

  ‘It’s not where, it’s how,’ she said, looking at him with concern one final time.

  ‘Could you be any more specific?’

  She shook her head and walked quickly away, back into the motel.

  29

  Early the next morning, Max drove to Miami-Dade PD headquarters and went to the library. He looked up micro-fiche articles on Kathleen Reveaux’s suicide. It had made the front page of the Herald on Thursday 11 May 1978. She’d jumped from the top of the Freedom Tower in the early hours of Wednesday morning. There were no witnesses. The body had been discovered by construction workers.

  The following day the story had been bumped down to a third-page column: Reveaux was identified, and her family and friends were quoted as saying she’d become increasingly disturbed since her return from a trip to New York the previous month.

  By Friday 26 May, another column, again on the third page, said the police had ruled out foul play and were marking her death as a suicide. The report mentioned that ‘numerous occult objects’ had been found in her house on South Miami Avenue, before going on to describe her career as a celebrity fortune teller.

  Max then went down to Records.

  Kathleen Reveaux’s file was thin: incident report, coroner’s report, witness statements (two) and twenty photographs.

  A Detective Billue had caught the case. His report stated that, based on the damage to the victim’s body–head, legs and arms all fractured in multiple places–the victim had fallen from a considerable height, estimated to be the upper floors of the Freedom Tower.

  The victim was we
aring blue Levi’s, a white blouse, white socks and one Adidas tennis shoe on her left foot. Recovered near the scene was the right tennis shoe. Screwed up in her hand was a tarot card: the King of Swords.

  Max made a photocopy of the file and took the elevator down to evidence to see if they’d kept anything from the case. All personal effects in suicides were usually destroyed if the next of kin didn’t claim them.

  There was nothing, but Kathleen’s sister had signed for her belongings–her bloodstained clothes and shoes, and the tarot card.

  Her address was in Gainesville.

  Max called her up and made an appointment to go by her house that evening.

  30

  Joe sat back on the busted up couch and stretched out his long legs as he finished up reading through the NYPD witness reports on the Wong family murders. He was in the disused garage behind North West 9th Street in Overtown, which he and Max were using as their base. His cousin Deshaun had hooked them up with it for fifty bucks a month. Apart from the couch, a wall of empty metal shelves, a refrigerator, their three boxes of paperwork, a blackboard and a corkboard, the place was empty. Max and Joe went there once a day, sometimes together, but more often individually, before the beginning or at the end of their shifts. They never talked about the case at MTF. Any calls they made were on outside payphones.

  The place could have been much better–light came from a single bulb hanging off a flex, and the power supply was temperamental, going off for minutes at a time; plus there was no ventilation, so it was always stifling hot, and the stench of old oil made Joe’s head hurt and his clothes stink like a mechanic’s overalls. But it was on a deserted side road, and was one of a dozen identical-looking, brown metal-shuttered garages with rusted padlocks, completely anonymous.

  Joe liked it here, doing real police work instead of framing patsies. He and Max had spent all of the past week putting together an imaginary case against Philip Frino, an Australian dope runner who brought Colombian cartel coke in on a small fleet of cigarette boats. Frino had a place in the Bahamas. The idea was to link Grossfeld to him and then him to Carlos Lehder’s middle management. It was something they could’ve done in ten minutes, but Sixdeep wanted the whole thing carefully documented, a paper trail that would stand up in court, so he’d pulled them both off their eight ongoing investigations and made them go at Moyez full time; so far they’d put Frino under surveillance and photographed him meeting numerous people. Joe was glad he was in on the joke.