John Godey - The Snake

"This time of the night? When we don't even know for sure that there's a snake, which I personally doubt it's a snake? Tell you what I would do, doc-wait for the autopsy report. How long does it take them to do an autopsy?"

"Who knows? Some of those fellows can dawdle over their work for hours.

It's like looking up a word in the dictionary and being waylaid by a dozen other words on the page that you get curious about. You know?"

"Well, doc. Dark put away his notebook, in which he had hardly made an entry. "I honestly think we ought to wait for the morning. There ain't a thing we can do right now, anyway."

"Two men have been bitten in the park-allegedly bitten, as you say, I'll accept that-and who is to say that by morning there won't be a third?"

"I tell you, doe, anybody who goes into that park at night is likely to get killed one way or another. If he doesn't get bit by a cobra snake, he's gonna get himself killed some other way. Fact, we had a guy shot dead in the park just last night around three in the morning."

Shapiro sighed. "Well, I'm just trying to do what I think is best."

"Me too," Dark said.

The snake lay on the black rock under the sun, its length spread out in gentle curves.

During the night, lying in its tree, the snake had lost its fangs, but new fangs had already moved up into position.

The snake's upper jaw contained only two teeth, the poison fangs, enclosed to the inside of the jawbone. The fangs were connected to the poison gland, and conducted venom from it through a canal. The fangs of a poisonous snake were subjected too much wear, and had to be replaced from time to time. Sometimes, they broke off prematurely. But substitute fangs, always growing just behind the functioning ones, would move up to take the place of the lost fangs. This cycle of loss and re placement continued throughout the snake's life.

Because of the continuing heat wave-now in its fourth day-the snake had lost little of its body heat during the night. Now, in the fierceness of the morning sun, it basked for only a brief time.

It glided fluidly down the rock and into its territory. It climbed into its tree and spread out amid dense foliage, which provided concealment and shelter from the rays of the sun.

When Dr. Shapiro finished his morning rounds he went down to the hospital cafeteria for a second breakfast. Papaleo appeared beside his table.

"Did you hear it?"

Papaleo seemed pale and nervous. Shapiro sopped up runny egg with a piece of toast and washed it down with coffee. Then he looked up and said, "Hear what, Dr. Papaleo?"

"On the radio? It came in less than five minutes ago."

"I don't make rounds with a radio, doctor."

Papaleo grimaced, as if. In admission of his own clumsiness, then said, "The radio, a flash, they said two people had been bitten by a snake in the park and died at East Side Hospital."

Shapiro put his fork down with a clatter. "The radio? What else did they say?"

"That's all. That two people had died of snakebite. It was one of those flashes. You know, 'This just in,' and 'more on the story as it develops."'

"Did they say where the information came from?"

"I don't think so."

Shapiro nodded and turned back to his eggs, but Papaleo lingered, fidgeting.

"On the one I treated, tried to treat," Papaleo said. "I have to tell you. There were perforations on the thigh. I guess they were fang marks."

Shapiro stared at him.

Papaleo was sweating. "After you left, I cut the patient's pants off and saw the marks. I actually thought of snakebite, but it didn't make any sense."

"It was your duty to wake me and tell me."

"I know. But you had gone back to sleep, and. Papaleo made a helpless, self-incriminating gesture, then said with some dignity, "I'm sorry, doctor."

My fault, Shapiro thought. He didn't tell me because he was afraid I'd either ream him out or laugh at him. That tells me more about myself than it does about Papaleo. He said, "It's my fault for not insisting on removing the patient's pants."

"Oh." Papaleo tried to smile, then said, "Well, anyway," and hurried away.

Shapiro finished his breakfast and then phoned the M.E.'s office. He asked for the pathologist who had performed the autopsy on Torres and, after some phone switching, was connected with Dr. Borkowski.

"How do you like that?" Borkowski seemed tickled. "Fatal snakebite in the middle of Manhattan-isn't that terrific?"

"I've been waiting for your phone call, Dr. Borkowski."

"I was on the verge of it. In fact, I had my hand on the phone when the phone rang and it was you. The phone rang just as I was picking up the phone."

"Yeah, sure, it's a thrilling coincidence," Shapiro said. "I don't mind your making hay with the media, but you might have done me the courtesy-"

"I resent the implication, doctor."

"It wasn't an implication, it was an accusation. And I don't give a fuck whether you resent it or not."

Borkowski was silent a moment, then said stiffly, "The report will be on its way over. Meanwhile, to sum up my findings, the spectral analysis showed-"

"Never mind. I'll get it from the radio like the rest of the public." He overrode Borkowski's protest. "What about the second one?"

"I'm working on it right now. Jesus, it hit him five times, and at least one of them must have caught a vein. What a hell of a shot!" Borkowski had recaptured his gusto. "I swear, a bull's-eye. He was probably dead in fifteen or twenty minutes after he got stuck. Some shot!"

"Your enthusiasm is infectious," Shapiro said. "Look, doctor, I'd appreciate hearing from you as soon as you've finished with him. Me first, and then the media. I promise not to take too much of your time."

Borkowski said, "I resent the implication, doctor. Or the accusation, which is even worse. If you're making an out-and-out accusation, I demand an apology."

Shapiro had been hearing a page for the last half-minute. He jiggled the phone, cutting Borkowski off, and asked the operator what she wanted.

"There are some gentlemen here to see you," the operator said. "From the press. And also. Her voice became breathy, from the television, too."

"Oh, shit," Shapiro said.

In the normal course of events, the Police Commissioner would have read about the snake in the morning report of overnight events prepared for him by his staff; and Hizzonner the Mayor would have been informed of it promptly by one of his young aides. But, instead of driving him to his office at No. 1 Police Plaza, the P.C.'s limousine had taken him directly to City Hall, where he was to help the mayor formulate an optimistic statement on recent crime statistics for presentation at a noontime news conference.

Hizzonner had issued a stem fiat against being disturbed for any reason whatsoever. His aides, mindful of his unpredictability in an election year, were prudently obedient, even though it was their consensus that the story of the snake just barely came under the umbrella of "whatsoever."

The purpose of the news conference was to announce a radical decrease in the homicide rate for the first six months of the year (down a whopping 1 Percent), thus more than offsetting a negligible rise in crimes of violence (19 percent) and felonies (14 percent). Hizzonner would also point with quiet pride to the absence of a major riot (and only one mini-riot) in the city's major ghettos — Harlem, Bedford, Stuyvesant, the South Bronx, and the East Harlem barrio-due to a forceful but understanding police presence, and it is high time that we fully appreciated the sterling professionalism of the city's cops, under the firm but sympathetic guidance of our sterling Police Commissioner. "Don't smile when I say that, Francis, and don't look modest, either. Just stare straight ahead into the camera."