John Godey - The Snake

The Police Commissioner, told about the Reverend's statement, said that the police would not tolerate vigilantism in any form or for any reason.

Whoever disobeyed the police directives would be dealt with sternly.

Jane Redpath refused to be interviewed for television. She said, "I know how much you bastards like to have people weep on camera for the entertainment of your audience, and I realize I'm being unsporting, but you can all go fuck yourselves."

With Jeff's death, the city turned a corner. It became euphoric. The snake in the park became a jewel in the crown of the city's obsession with its own eccentricity. The public reasserted its prideful conviction that it inhabited the most put-upon city in the whole world. When bigger and better and more unendurable disasters were contrived, they were visited justly upon the city that matched them in stature; which was to say, the city that was superlatively dirty, declining, expensive, crime-ridden, unmanageable, and glamorously unlivable beyond any other city in the world. By lunchtime, gallows humour jokes were already epidemic. And never mind that most of them were retreads of stale ethnic jokes; they worked surprisingly well with the mere substitution of the word "snake" for "Italian" or "Polish."

Manufacturers of novelties, famous for their opportunism and dazzling speed of production, succeeded by late afternoon in flooding the city with snake buttons, snake decals for auto bumpers, stuffed snakes of many lengths, designs, and colors. Not long afterward, strikingly realistic, battery-powered snakes of great technical sophistication were to appear.

There was a run on canned rattlesnake fillets in gourmet specialty stores, and the brave people who ate them inevitably compared their taste to that of chicken, only better.

Four Hollywood film companies filed notice of intent to make a movie about a snake in Central Park; by nightfall, one of them had brought a lawsuit against another, charging infringement of its title, "Black Mamba." The news division of all three television networks patched together half-hour films about snakes for presentation following the eleven o'clock news, with full commercial sponsorship. A porno film, in which a young woman performed the sex act with a squirming and unhappy snake, was revived and did turn away business at the box office. A nightclub introduced a snake-charming act: a man in a turban playing a flute for a cobra so lethargic from being refrigerated that it could barely spread its hood. Educational paperback books dealing with reptiles flooded the newsstands and bookstores. Herpetologists and zoo curators were at a premium for guest appearances on television talk shows.

Snakeskin shoes, jackets, handbags, ties, and belts were snapped up in clothing and department stores. Sheets, pillowcases, and window drapes with a serpentine motif appeared almost overnight.

Comedians on television, at hotels, in nightclubs, and even in a Broadway show here and there, introduced snake jokes. These ranged from the innocent and simpleminded ("Goodness snakes alive!", "It's me, Snake, I mean Jake") to the dirty and simpleminded ("What's eleven feet long and stands up when it's irritated? Sorry to disappoint you, baby, it's a black mamba").

The reptile houses at the Bronx and Staten Island zoos were so packed with spectators that it was almost impossible for any but those in the front ranks to see the exhibits. When a man visiting the Staten Island Zoo used a hammer to smash the glass of a cage containing a sand viper and then attacked the snake with a breadknife, the police were called in to clear the snake house for the rest of the day. The next morning, crowds were kept back five feet from the cages by barriers, and special guards were on hand to protect the snakes from further assassination attempts.

A well-known showman made the front page of two of the city's three daily newspapers with his offer of $20,000 for the snake in the park, alive.

Throughout the day, alternating between the claustrophobic office of the Commander of the Two-two and the desk up front, where he hovered nervously around the teletype, Captain Eastman had been logging reports from the park. Good news and bad news. Good: there were many fewer people in the park than the day before, whether because they were paying heed to the mayor's plea or simply because of the heat, which had touched 99 degrees at three o'clock, there was no way of telling. Bad: lots of Puries out, neatly dressed, barely seeming to sweat (maybe they did have an in with God, Eastman thought), methodically checking out likely areas where the snake might be hiding. There had been several minor scuffles with the police who ordered them back onto the walkways, and one serious one. Two members of Christ's Cohorts, the Purie security guard, had engaged in a slugging match with a cop. It was only with the arrival of reinforcements that the Puries had been subdued. They had been booked at the Two-two and been held in detention for several hours before it was time to take them to night court, where they were charged with disorderly conduct, assault, and resisting arrest.

The cop who had fought with the Christ's Cohorts had lost a tooth. What had impressed him, aside from the fact that they were handy with their fists, was their lack of emotion. "I've never seen guys fight like that," he had told Eastman. "No swearing, no hollering, not even a mad expression on their face. I swear, it gave me the creeps."

Technically, Eastman was "coordinating" the police effort in the park.

Although he had been desk-bound for several years, he had never really become accustomed to it. He thought of it as "sitting on his ass," when he should be "doing something." He would have much preferred being out in the field with one of the ESU trucks. Near ten o'clock there was a bit of gruesome comic relief. A grinning cop reported that he and his partner had come upon a Purie wandering through the park, dazed, battered, completely naked, and had taken him to West Side Hospital. He had been snake hunting in the Ramble, according to his story, when he had been set upon and beaten by a half-dozen men. The cop, winking, describing the Purie as "one of them," said that he had obviously been gang-shagged.

Converse arrived with his stick and pillowcase, looking so refreshed and rested that Eastman almost hated him for it. Youth. But the prospect of getting out of the precinct house and "doing something" palliated his sourness.

"Godssake," Converse said. "It looks like a mob scene."

The driver had taken them into the park through the Engineer's Gate at 90th and Fifth Avenue, and was following the East Drive around the perimeter of the Receiving Reservoir. The park seemed to be twinkling with lights, and they could make out shadowy figures, some of whom must have been police personnel, others, Puries. Driving, they were almost blinded by the brilliant sweeping floodlight of an ESU truck.

"Where do you want to stop?" Eastman said.

"Noplace," Converse said. "What black mamba in its right mind would turn up with all this going on? Those lights? Those people clumping around everywhere? Forget it. it's going to hole up and stay hidden until everybody goes away."

Eastman's definition of "doing something" did not include riding around in a police car. "How the bell can you hope to find it if you don't get out and look for it?"

"No way," Converse said. "If I knew all this crap was going on I would have stayed home. Remember what I told you about a snake having to be found by stealth?"

"Certainly I remember," Eastman said. "I make it a point never to forget anything you tell me. Then what the hell are we going to do?"

"It's hopeless," Converse said, "and there's no sense getting sore, captain. You want to get out, I'll keep you company. But it's a pure waste of time."