John Godey - The Snake

Racing southward, cheating on lights, he still couldn't believe how fast the thing had crawled. A shame he had missed it. What a hero he would have become! Still, he would have quite a story to tell Florence in the morning.

In fact, he couldn't wait to tell the cops. But at 94th Street a man and woman flagged him, and before he knew what he was doing, he screeched to a stop. Pure instinct, right? He would have pulled away, but the man was already tugging at the door handle, and he had to let them get in. They gave him an address near Gramercy Park.

He asked them if they would mind if he stopped at the precinct first, it would only take a couple of minutes, and he would raise the flag, no charge-but they were smooching back there, and didn't even hear him. He did sixty all the way downtown, but then they decided to go to an all-night joint in the Village, and he had to take them there. He dropped them, finally, and raced over to the 9th Precinct on East Fifth Street, but by then the police knew all about it. They asked him some questions and made a couple of notes, and then told him that he would have to move his cab because he was blocking the street.

West Side Hospital, although it was accustomed to the presence of the police, had never known such a convocation of high brass as it now had in its waiting room. It was 5:30 in the morning, and such was the haste with which the group had gathered that most were unshaved and wearing yesterday's shirt. Captain Eastman had convened the meeting, or, rather, made the call that set it in motion. As soon as the report came in, he had phoned the DI, who had in his turn called the Deputy Chief in charge of SOD, parent organization of the Emergency Service Unit. The Deputy Chief had phoned the Borough Commander, and so it had gone, upward through the ranks, to the Commissioner himself. No one had objected to being wakened in view of the gravity of the occurrence, and only the P.C., who was being murdered by a hangover, failed to show up at West Side Hospital.

Inside, in the emergency ward, an augmented Emercrit Group (West Side's equivalent of East Side's Code Blue Team) was working to save the lives of Webster McPeek, his wife Emily, and the two McPeek children, Webster Junior, nine years old, and Charlene, six. Only ten-month-old Parker McPeek, who had slept through everything in his crib, had not been bitten. The victims had been administered black mamba antivenin immediately upon arrival at West Side but their present condition varied.

The two males seemed to be responding well, but Mrs. McPeek and young Charlene were, in the words of one of the Emercrit Group, "touch-and-go."

The police brass, centered about a Deputy Commissioner at one end of the waiting room, were deep in conference. DI Scott and Captain Eastman, the two lowest ranks, had not been invited to join. They stood a little way off, smoking. Presently, the Deputy Chief in charge of SOD separated himself from the group, and beckoned DI Scott to one side.

"The heat's on," the DC said. "You've been given forty-eight hours to get that snake. When it starts biting people outside the park, it's going too far. You know who those people are?"

"What people, sir?"

"The family that got bitten. They're from Trinidad. She's a social worker, and he works as a warehouse man for a supermarket chain in the daytime and goes to law school at night. These aren't any of your welfare blacks, but a fine wonderful family. You get the point?"

"Yes sir. There's going to be a public outcry."

The DC nodded. "Your ass is on the line, Vincent. You've got forty eight hours to get the snake. After that, you'll be reassigned to someplace dirty. Nobody's fooling around, now. This comes straight from the top.)

The DC went back to join his peers, and DI Scott gave Eastman the gist of his conversation with the DC. "No question about it, this is a bullet straight from the P.C., bless his aching head. I'm telling you flat out, Tom, that if I go to Siberia you're coming with me."

"Look," Eastman said patiently, "we've been doing our best, robbing men from everywhere to put them in the park, even some old desk-duty cops who are practically crippled by arthritis. Our ESU trucks and personnel are out there all day long. And Converse has been going out every morning, like I told you, trying to find it sunning itself-"

"He hasn't produced any results," the DI said flatly.

"Maybe not. But he knows what he's doing. Sure, the brass shoots an ultimatum at us, but it's still going to take time. It's a process of elimination."

"Well," the DI said, "our asses are on the line, and I think I just thought of a process that will eliminate the whole process of elimination."

As the DI finished speaking to Eastman, Converse's alarm clock went off. He sipped a cup of instant coffee while he shaved and dressed, and turned off the air conditioner before he left. He found a cab cruising on Hudson Street. Its driver was a kid with a beard who confessed that he was lost in the Village and would welcome guidance. He took notice of the Pilstrom tongs.

"You gonna take a chance at catching that snake?"

Converse nodded.

"I don't believe in killing things," the driver said earnestly. "Like Schweitzer? I mean, the snake has a right to life. It's part of the ecology."

Eighth Avenue was dark and squalid. In a half hour, Converse thought, it would be light and squalid.

"You know," the driver said, "Schweitzer would go out of his way to avoid stepping on an ant?"

"Some snakes eat ants."

"Ah," the driver said, "eating is different from killing. Eating is ecology."

Converse got out at 100th Street and Central Park West, near the Boys Gate.

There were only a few cars going by on the street, mostly cabs with the off-duty signs lit. To the east, the sky was lightening, but the sun was not yet up. It was the eleventh or twelfth day of the heat wave-he had lost count-and this was going to be another ninety-plus day. He shifted the Pilstrom tongs to his shoulder and headed into the park.

He ambled eastward along the walkways, dreaming about Holly Markham, Empress of all the Russias, and it wasn't until a ray of sunlight struck his eyes that he realized that he had been dawdling. He began to trot, holding the tongs in front of him now, like a soldier on a bayonet charge.

By the time he reached his first target area of the day, not far from the short road (CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC-POLICE ONLY) that connects the East and West drives, the sun, white and aqueous, was starting to clear the buildings on Fifth Avenue.

The site was a hollow in a heavily wooded, overrun area, dense with undergrowth, fallen leaves, a tangle of bushes, ground creeper, weeds, a couple of fallen trees; and, above it, a large flat plateau of rock. It was a beautifully convenient rock, Converse thought, in the perfect neigh borhood for a black mamba's home. But that had been the case, to be sure, in a dozen previous sites he had checked out.

Moving cautiously, he edged toward a position that would bring him up to eye level with the table of the rock. He inched forward, careful to avoid making vibrations that a snake might "hear," and took cover behind a thick bush where, if he didn't move about unduly, he wouldn't be likely to be spotted by a snake's sharp eyes.

A long bar of sunlight appeared on a margin of the rock, toning its color down to a warm gray; as Converse watched, the strip broadened visibly. In a few minutes it would cover the entire surface and provide an irresistible basking place for a black mamba. He shut his eyes against the brightness, and when he next opened them, the rock was bathed in sunshine. He shaded his eyes with his palm and stared outward at the rock.

When he first heard the sound-or thought he heard it; it might have been wishful thinking-he pushed his head forward, straining. Nothing. Silence.