John Godey - The Snake

At 11:30, terrified that the mayor might walk into his press conference unbriefed on the snake, one of Hizzonner's aides entered without apology, walked across the room with the early edition of the New York Post, and placed it on the desk beneath Hizzonner's eyes.

KILLER SNAKE SLAYS TWO IN PARK

The mayor goggled. The news story on page three, to which the aide obligingly turned, was brief, and traced out with photographs and quotations from Dr. Shapiro, Dr. Mukerjee, Dr. Papaleo, and Dr. Borkowski.

There was a single-column cut of each, arranged in a circle around a picture of a semi-naked girl, the Maharani Santha Agnes Chowdhury, playing the flute to a swaying cobra in a Cincinnati nightclub.

A small inset box contained a few facts about Central Park. Acclaimed masterpiece of its justly celebrated architects, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. One of the great parks of the world, unsurpassed for beauty of conception and design. Its 843 acres larger than London's Hyde Park, Paris's Tuileries Gardens, Berlin's Tiergarten, Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens. Not as large as Rome's Villa Borghese or Vienna's Prater.

Purchased for $5.5 million in 1856, real estate market value today: untold billions.

The lead editorial, obviously a last-minute insertion, consisted of three sentences.

THERE IS A SNAKE IN CENTRAL PARK.

IT IS KILLING PEOPLE.

WHAT IS THE MAYOR DOING ABOUT IT?

"Dirty pool," the aide said indignantly. "It's one thing for them to endorse your opponent, but-"

"The bastards," Hizzonner said. "I'll show 'ern what I'm doing about it.

I'm leaving no stone untumed, that's what I'm doing about it!"

He used the phrase, later, at his news conference, where it was greeted with a mixture of awe and muffled hilarity. He amplified on this declaration by telling his audience that the Central Park Precinct, which knew the park the way you gentlemen know your wife's, ah, face (laughter), were out in full saturation force, combing every nook and cranny for the interloper, with the able assistance of park personnel.

"Give'em the details, Francis," the mayor said to the P.C.

The P. C., who had only fifteen minutes earlier learned of the details himself by telephone, declared that the men of the Central Park Precinct were fine-combing the park in cars, on horseback, on scooters, and on foot, ably assisted by Parks Department gardeners and grounds men, as well as one of the justly famous Emergency Service Unit trucks.

"How many men is that, all told?" a reporter asked.

It was a good question, and the P.C., frowning in annoyance at being interrupted, ignored it. He knew that the total muster strength of the Central Park Precinct was in the neighbourhood of 120 men, which broke down to 40 per shift. Subtract from that number clerical personnel, special duty officers, anticrime detective units on stakeout detail, shop personnel, officers on vacation and sick call, and the Central Park Precinct probably had not more than 15 men available for fine-tooth combing the 840-odd acres of the park.

"Many of the cars are equipped with loudspeakers," the P.C. said, "instructing people to stay on the walkways and out of heavily brushed areas, to keep to the more frequented parts of the park, to be alert at all times, to make no attempt to deal with the snake if they spot it but to inform a police officer immediately…"

"Mr. Mayor," a reporter said, "are you considering closing the park for the citizens' safety until the snake is found?"

The mayor was too practiced a public performer to blink, but he did pause perceptibly before saying, "You may rest assured, gentlemen, the matter has been under intense study since early this morning."

After the news conference broke up, the mayor, alone with the P.C., permitted his emotions to show. "How'd you like that bastard asking me if I was going to close the park down? He knows the answer as well as I do.

Close the park in the middle of a heat wave when the worthy poor-as if his lousy rag gives a damn about them-are gasping for a breath of air?"

"You'd need a thousand cops to keep people out," the P.C. said, "and even then you couldn't do it. You know people in this city? Try to keep them out and they'd find a hundred ways to get in. Believe me, they'd try to get in."

"Believe me," the mayor said, "I believe you."

After a brief opening citation of the weather 'near record-breaking heat for September with no relief in sight"-the early evening news program on the mayor's favourite television network ("they're somewhat less bad than the others") devoted a whopping eight full minutes of airtime to the story of the snake, exclusive of commercial interruption.

The sequence opened with a panoramic sweep of the park from a circling helicopter ("the most valuable parcel of real estate in the civilized world"). The helicopter swooped low over the Sheep Meadow, headed northward toward the Lake, then rose again for another long shot of the park to its northern terminus at Cathedral Parkway. The whirr of its motor was damped down to accommodate the voice of the anchorman: "Somewhere in the more than eight hundred acres of famed Central Park there lurks an unwelcome visitor to the city-a venomous snake whose deadly bite has already claimed the lives of two victims."

The mayor watched the screen from an armchair in his bedroom on the second floor of Gracie Mansion. From time to time he groaned rhetorically.

The helicopter, now flying very low to the ground, swept swiftly back from north to south. Its camera focused fleetingly on a policeman on horseback or one riding a scooter. "From noontime on, cops from the Central Park Precinct have been scouring the park, thus far without result. Here's Bill Arthur, direct from the park." The scene shifted to ground level, picking up a cop emerging from heavy undergrowth, moving gingerly, beating out in front of him with his nightstick. The camera closed in when the cop reached the walkway.

"Any luck, officer?"

The cop was breathing hard, his face was tomato red, his light blue uniform shirt was darkened by sweat. He looked at the reporter with murder in his eyes. But then, remembering the presence of the camera, he reassembled his features into a mask.

"No sir."

"How long have you been searching?"

"Noon."

The camera shifted to the reporter, who was nodding his head sym pathetically. "Must be pretty hot work."

"Real hot."

The reporter studied the cop dispassionately for a moment, then gave up.

"Back to you, Jerry."

"The police search continues," the anchorman said. "It's hot work, and dangerous, too… Earlier today, reporter Bill Stevens was at East Side Hospital."

Dr. Papaleo, described as "the earnest young intern who treated the first victim of the snake, Ramon Torres," told reporter Bill Stevens how he had watched helplessly as the snake's first victim had died.

"At that time, you didn't know the cause?"

"Not at that time."

Dr. Mukerjee, soft-eyed and soft-spoken, reminded the reporter that his "brilliant snap diagnosis" of cobra-bite was as yet not proven. "It was a bite similar to that of a cobra, shall we say."

Dr. Shapiro, Chief Resident of the hospital, his eyes ringed with fatigue, his lips curling impatiently, answered questions brusquely and minimally.

When the reporter asked him what he would do if another snakebite victim was brought into the hospital, he opened the door of a refrigerator and took out a small cardboard box.

"This is a polyvalent, wide-spectrum antivenin. We received it from the curator of herpetology at the Bronx Zoo, as did all other hospitals in the area. If another snakebite victim is brought in he'll be injected with this serum intravenously."