John Godey - The Snake

"They sure can. In fact their motion, in which they push against the substrate, is essentially the same as the way a fish curves back against water. But this one obviously isn't a water snake, so you can skip the water."

"Thank God. There's a hundred and fifty acres of water, and we would have had to bring in divers."

"How many trees are there?"

Eastman groaned. "They hide in trees? Sure, now that you mention it, I've seen it in the movies."

"All snakes can climb trees. Some of them live in trees and never come down to the ground. Others are strictly terrestrial. Still others are both arboreal and terrestrial. And some of those also live underground in burrows."

"Trees and burrows." Eastman shook his head uneasily. "Anything else I ought to know?"

"Snakes live by stealth, and they have to be caught by stealth. As it happens, snakes are deaf, but they're sensitive to vibrations of the substrate. Five hundred heavy-footed cops are going to sound like an earth quake to that snake out there. It'll hide, and that's that. You don't need five hundred men, just one man who knows what he's doing."

Eastman barked a short unamused laugh. "One modest man, right?"

"Look, captain, I was walking along a downtown street with a cop I know one day. An ordinary street on an ordinary day, quiet and peaceful. But all of a sudden the cop tensed up and said, 'That character up the block, he's going to pull something! The man he was talking about was casual, well-dressed, strolling, nothing suspicious about him. But in the next ten seconds, this guy turned into a jewellery store with a gun in his hand. Okay.

Turn it around-you and I, we can both look at an innocent meadow, and if there's a snake in it I'll know it and you won't."

"Okay. I get your point. Come along and give us the benefit of your knowledge."

A series of loudspeakers burst into sound, all along the police line from the west to the east limits of the park. "Attention, all sergeants, attention. We're moving out. Remember your instructions. Walk as straight a line as you can, keep the line dressed up, eyes down to the ground, concentrate on the wild and heavily brushed areas…"

"Eyes down," Converse said, "and they won't look up in the trees."

'…, everything is included-playgrounds, ball fields, walks, buildings, inside everything, behind everything… Move on out. Move out."

Nearby, a sergeant shouted an order, and the line began to move forward.

Converse said, "The guy on the street didn't know a cop had his eye on him. If there were five hundred cops, he'd have known about it and just kept walking."

The loudspeakers were addressing themselves to people in the park, visible in the near distance: "Folks, please keep back. For your own safety and the success of the operation, please keep back and do not impede the officers. If you do not have business in the park at this time, we ask you to please leave the park…"

Eastman stood up. "I'd better put that dope about the trees into the loudspeakers. Come along?"

Converse shook his head. "No sense to it. After this is over and the dust settles, I'll come back here."

"I apologize for waking you up. You can go back to bed now."

Eastman turned abruptly and walked away. Converse watched the police line at his right mass together and start to flow around the Pond. A group of winos and addicts sitting on the nearby benches gave them a cheer.

Eastman had stopped to speak to the DI. Together, they hurried toward a communications truck.

Converse walked out of the park. There was a group of reporters at the exit, surrounding the Police Commissioner and four uniformed cops with yellow braid on their caps and stars on the shoulders of their uniforms.

He wondered if Holly Markham was among them. She wasn't.

The turnout at City Hall, doubtless because of the heat, was considerably smaller than expected, to the relief of the police guard, which was dangerously thin and might have been overwhelmed by a large aggressive mob.

The operation at the park had strained police manpower to an unacceptable limit.

The demonstrators who did appear-the police estimate of their number was 150-were highly vociferous and reasonably energetic in waving their home-made banners and placards. There were a few clashes between bodies representing diametrically opposed viewpoints, a rough division between those who wanted the park closed (mainly white and middle class) and those who wanted it to remain open (predominantly black and Hispanic). No blood was drawn. Among the sectarian splinter groups present were the Schweitzerites, animal lovers who felt that the snake, as one of God's creatures, should not be hunted down but given free run of the park; a group of environmentalists petitioning for the razing of outlying slum areas for the purpose of creating a green belt; and a faction of welfare recipients demanding an immediate increase in their monthly payments.

The mayor, who had been known to venture out onto the steps of City Hall to address other assemblages on other occasions, did not make an appearance.

Instead, he sent forth one of his young assistants, a man with a curly black beard and, although he was a graduate of an Ivy League college, a demotic New York accent that disarmed all but the most intransigent of crowds. Speaking with impeccable timing in the troughs between waves of boos and catcalls, he told the demonstrators that Hizzonner was unable to talk to them, much as he wished to, because he was on the phone to the president to ask for increased federal assistance to the city; he had made his connection and was on hold. The bearded man reminded the complainants that the police were at this very moment sweeping the park in force, under the stem instructions of the mayor to "find the snake, or I'll know the reason why." He shouted to them to "have faith," and then ran up the steps and into the building. People began drifting away. Others surrounded three pushcart vendors selling soft drinks and ice cream. A hard core, obviously the creatures of the opposition candidate, continued to call for the appearance of the mayor, but their ranks kept thinning. The demonstration was, to all intents and purposes, finished.

At 10: 30 the police removed the barriers.

If I wanted to die of thirst, Police Officer Fleming told himself, I would've joined the French Foreign Legion.

The only thing that was keeping him going was the promise of a lunch break once they had finished sweeping the area between the 79th and 85th Street transverses. He had been pouring sweat ever since the start. His uniform was soaked, his eyes smarted, his tongue felt like a slab of wood. So much sweat had run down into his shoes that he squished at every step. Still, he seemed to be holding up a lot better than most of the overweight cops.

Funny, you'd think the fat ones had more schmaltz to bum, but it was the wiry types like himself who were doing the best.

He trudged on, thankful for small things, like not having to circumscribe the Belvedere Lake, like a lot of the others did, because of their position in the line. By now, Fleming was just more or less going through the paces.

He kept his eyes on the ground, but mostly because it was too much trouble to keep his head up. As for looking up into trees, he had quit doing that when he had heard a Parks Department gardener say that there were over 100,000 trees in the park. Even with 500 cops that figured out to better than 200 trees per man!

By now, Fleming didn't give a shit whether they caught the snake or not. In fact, he was positive it was hopeless. He had stopped having that crawly feeling that started somewhere down in his sweating toes and worked itself up to the scrotum. Not that he was any less queasy about snakes but that he was just plain numb.