Snake Eater

by William G. Tapply

  “Thanks. Time. That’s all.”

  Bonnie talked about New Haven, how she’d met Al when he was a law student and she an undergraduate at Yale, the parties at the place Charlie and I rented on the ocean, how Al started as a State Department attorney, their early married life in Georgetown, how Al became disillusioned, quit, set up a practice in New York and eventually became a literary agent, the famous writers whose passes she had rebuffed.

  She waved her hand in the air and smiled. “Hell,” she said. “You didn’t come all the way up here to listen to my life story.” She reached down to the seat beside her and brought up a spiral-bound notebook. She placed it on the table.

  “Al’s?” I said.

  She nodded. “He was pretty haphazard about things. A lousy record keeper. He kept track of his appointments in his head. Otherwise, it was my job. Keeping track of things. Or else we would’ve gone broke. After he died, I spent more than a month going through all the little scraps of paper he left scattered around, just trying to make sure all the loose ends got tied up before I turned the business over to Keating. Anyway,” she said, tapping the notebook with her forefinger, “I found this.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “More notes. When he got a manuscript he liked, he’d sometimes want to suggest some changes. He liked to play editor, and he was pretty good at it from what the writers used to tell me. You know, cut a scene here, change the ending there, tighten up a plot line, sharpen a character. He’d usually call up the writer and they’d talk about it. A few of them would even listen to him. Most of them would argue with him. But he kept doing it, because he wanted his books to be good. Anyway, there’s a couple of pages in here I wanted to show you, and you’ll see why we couldn’t really discuss it over the phone.”

  She picked up the notebook and flipped through it, then turned it around so that it lay open and facing me on the table. She leaned over and twisted her head so that we both could read it.

  At the top of the page a black felt-tipped pen had printed the words SNAKE EATER, and under that, “BC anony.—Daniel??” I looked up at Bonnie. “The man who wrote the book was called Snake Eater by some of his war buddies,” I told her. “This BC would mean me. Brady Coyne. The author was anonymous. His first name was Daniel. I must’ve mentioned that to Al.”

  She nodded. “My guess was that this might be your book. This was the only set of notes I couldn’t account for.”

  I glanced through the scratches and scribbles on the page. Much of it was illegible. There were sketches and squiggles, some recognizable such as a bird and a woman’s breast and a snake and a palm tree and a man smoking a cigar, others just abstract designs, as if Al’s black felt-tip kept doodling randomly as he read. A Freudian could find vast significance in all of it, probably. But I couldn’t. Here and there I was able to decipher some of his hieroglyphics, although figuring out what they meant wasn’t so easy.

  I looked up at Bonnie. “He had awful penmanship.”

  She smiled. “I think he did it on purpose.”

  “These are the only ones I can make out.” I moved my finger from place to place on the two pages, stopping where the letters made sense to me:

  —ed for gramm & spel

  —ch w BC re au 2 talk

  —needs prol

  —ch w PV This was underlined three times, and beside it, in green pen, Al had scratched: Fr 1:00 Rock Cent

  —PV—Sun This was the last notation on the second page. It was written in pencil.

  I flipped forward through the notebook, but the rest of the pages were blank.

  “I know it’s not much,” said Bonnie.

  “Can you make sense of any of it?”

  She pointed to ed for gramm & spel. “This means edit for grammar and spelling,” she said. “Al was a stickler for removing as many objections as possible before he’d show anything to an editor. And this BC must be you again.”

  “Check with me regarding the author. Al told me he wanted to talk with the author. I told him that Daniel wouldn’t do it.” I moved my finger. “And here. It must mean he thought it needed a prologue.”

  Bonnie nodded.

  “What about PV?” I said. “It’s mentioned twice. Mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head. “I thought it might be somebody’s initials. An editor or publisher or something. But I know all the publishing people Al dealt with, and there’s no house and no editor with the initials PV. I checked our Rolodex. There are a couple of V names who are writers, but none with the first initial of E. There’s also a television guy, someone Al liked to talk to about movie rights. Vance. But it’s Jack. There’s no PV that I know of.”

  “Rock Cent?” I said, touching the marks Al had made.

  “Rockefeller Center is my guess,” said Bonnie. “Al liked to go there to meet with editors, have lunch, watch the girls in little skirts twirl around on their skates, do business.” She frowned. “Maybe this refers to some other book, nothing to do with this one. PV could be an author’s initials. Or even some kind of abbreviation of a title.”

  “It could be the pen name Daniel—the author—used,” I said.

  “But Al didn’t know who he was. How could he have an appointment to meet him?”

  I shrugged. “Good point.”

  “And here,” she said, twisting her head around so that it was close to mine, “PV again. And Sun must mean Sunday. Another…”

  Her voice trailed away and she slouched back in the booth. I frowned at her. Tears had welled up in her eyes. “Bonnie?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. Sunday, that’s all. Al died—got killed—on a Sunday.” She tried to smile. “Oh, I’m doing just fine, I am. Shit.” She rummaged in her pocketbook and found a tissue. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “Dammit,” she muttered.

  “I know this is hard,” I said.

  She sipped her coffee and made a face. She looked at her watch. “Look,” she said, “I’ve got to get back to the kids.”

  “Sure. Would you mind if I photocopied these two pages? I’d like to have them to study.”

  “There’s one of those twenty-four-hour places down the road. They’ve got a copier.”

  I put a five-dollar bill on the table and we left. I followed Bonnie a mile or so south on 7A. We stopped at a convenience store that doubled as a video rental. I photocopied the two pages from Al Coleman’s notebook. It cost me twenty cents.

  Outside, Bonnie and I shook hands. “Sorry about the tears,” she said.

  “You’re entitled.”

  “Thought I was done with all that.”

  “I don’t suppose one ever is.”

  She smiled, then held out her hand. I took it. “Thanks,” she said.

  She climbed into her Honda and I watched her drive away.

  I slid the two sheets of photocopied paper into my briefcase and headed home. And all the way back to Boston I pondered who—or what—PV could be.

  22

  I GOT BACK TO my apartment around four in the afternoon. We were approaching the shortest day of the year, and already the sun had sunk low behind the city’s buildings. In my childhood, Sunday afternoons in the wintertime were always my most depressing times, and little has changed since then.

  I tucked my car into its reserved spot in the basement garage, retrieved my briefcase from the backseat, and took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

  The instant I opened the door I knew something was wrong.

  I have an eccentric concept of order, I readily confess. Shoes, T-shirts, bath towels, magazines, fly rods—everything finds its place in my apartment. They usually happen to be places that most people wouldn’t consider appropriate. But I know where things are, and if they’re not there I know where to look.

  I do not, however, keep my private papers scattered across the living-room rug. I do not keep my desk drawers upside down on the kitchen table or the cushions of my
sofa in a heap in the corner or my canned goods and refrigerator contents strewn around the kitchen floor.

  My place had been pillaged.

  I wandered around the living room, staring at the mess. Whether it had been a thorough job or a hasty one I couldn’t tell. Nor could I determine if any papers were missing. My TV was there, and my stereo, and the two Aden Ripley watercolors still hung on the wall. The canned goods and pots and pans had been swept out of the cabinets in the kitchen. The freezer door hung open and melting ice dripped into a big puddle on the floor.

  I went back into the living room, shoved the cushions back where they belonged on the sofa, and sat down. I lit a cigarette. My hands, I noticed, were steady.

  I remembered Daniel’s office the day he was killed. It had been trashed, too.

  I smoked the cigarette down to the filter, crushed it out, and stood up. I went into my bedroom. I groped, then found the wall switch. When the light went on, I saw the arrow sticking into my mattress.

  It was a mate to the one that had protruded from Daniel McCloud’s chest—the same design on the aluminum shaft, the same colored fletching. But instead of slicing up through Daniel’s abdomen into his heart, this one had been rammed into my bed—in just about the place my chest would have been had I been sleeping there. It had sliced through the blanket and two layers of sheets and penetrated deep into the mattress.

  I have been accused on more than one occasion of not being sensitive or intelligent enough to take a hint.

  It’s a bum rap. I’m pretty good at understanding hints when I hear them. I just tend to ignore them, which is different.

  Anyway, this wasn’t a hint.

  It was a warning, and a blatant one, and it was the same one that Charlie McDevitt and Horowitz had issued to me.

  Only this one was impossible to ignore.

  Sticking razor-sharp hunting broadheads into mattresses wasn’t Charlie’s style, or Horowitz’s, either. It was exactly the style of a man who would shove an arrow into a man’s abdomen, however.

  I sat on the edge of my bed. I gripped the arrow and tried to twist it out. It came reluctantly. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. I yanked it from the mattress, then pulled it through the sheets and blanket, and when I got it free big tufts of mattress stuffing clung to the barbed broadhead. It left behind a jagged three-cornered hole in my mattress, just as it would have in my chest.

  I carried the arrow out into the kitchen. I poured two fingers of sour mash into a glass, paused, then splashed in some more. I lit another cigarette.

  Anger makes me glacially calm and focused. Fear gives me the shakes. I knew I was angry. Getting burglarized made me angry. But I noticed my hands. They were trembling.

  I was angry and afraid.

  A murderer had been in my apartment. I was entitled.

  How the hell had he gotten in? It wasn’t the most constructive question I could think of. But it was the one that my anger and my fear conspired to raise first.

  Part of my hefty monthly rent check goes to paying the security guard who sits in the lobby of the building. He has a bank of closed-circuit television monitors in front of him that he’s supposed to watch continually, but that must get a little boring, since he has his own portable television set tuned to more interesting channels. Nobody bothers complaining. Harbor Towers is a quiet building, inhabited mostly by retired old folks who spend the cold half of the year in Florida, plus a few separated or divorced single people like me who appreciate privacy. Nothing much ever happens in my building, and although the guards wear revolvers on their hips, none of the many we’ve had over the years has ever had an occasion to remove one from its holster.

  For a visitor to gain entrance into the building, he must buzz the guard, who will then scrutinize the appropriate closed-circuit monitor and pick up the intercom phone. The visitor will give his name and the number of the unit he is visiting. The guard will ring the unit. The resident will okay his guest, who will then be buzzed in. The visitor will sign into the book, noting his or her name, the number of the unit visited, and the time. All visitors must sign out, too.

  Residents, of course, have their own keys.

  Most of us who live there park our cars in the basement garage and take the elevator directly up, bypassing the guard. But without our plastic parking card, which we must insert into a slot to make the barrier go up, we can’t drive into the garage.

  There are four fire doors that open into the building plus a service entrance in the back. They can only be opened from the outside with a passkey. A closed-circuit camera is trained on each of them.

  If I wanted to invade a building such as mine, I would walk into the garage, ducking under the barrier and sticking close to the wall so that the closed-circuit camera would miss me. I’d have to take my chances getting onto the elevator, since there’s a camera trained on it, too. If I kept my back to the camera, it’s unlikely a guard would set off an alarm if he happened to notice me. He’d assume I was a resident even if he were watching that monitor instead of a ball game. Even more foolproof, I’d lurk in the shadows until some residents drove in. Then I’d walk onto the elevator with them. They’d assume I was one of the many residents they had never met. The guard would assume I was their guest. And an hour later my face would be forgotten by all of them.

  Of course, if I had a passkey, or was adept at picking locks, I could get in through a fire door and then enter someone’s apartment where I could, if that’s what turned me on, strew papers around and shove arrows into mattresses.

  I called Tony, the weekend guy, through the building intercom.

  “Yo,” he answered.

  “It’s Brady Coyne, 6E,” I said.

  “Hey, Mr. Coyne.” Tony was a cheerful guy, a retired shoe salesman who’d only been on the job for a couple of months. His main responsibility was to be there sitting on his fanny. He liked to watch soap operas and sitcoms, and I figured he barely earned the five bucks or so he was paid per hour.

  “What’s your shift these days, Tony?” I asked.

  “Noon to eight, same as it’s been.”

  “So you’ve been there since noon today?”

  “Yep. Why? Problem?”

  “Did anybody come looking for me?”

  He hesitated. “You okay, Mr. Coyne?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sound a little—I don’t know—shaky.”

  “I’m okay. Was there anybody for me?”

  “Um. Hm. Nope. Nobody. Expecting someone?”

  “No, not really,” I said. “Did anybody come looking for anybody who wasn’t home? Or did you notice anything suspicious at all today?”

  “Nah. Quiet day. Sunday, you know?”

  “Any deliveries?”

  “Nope. Sunday. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, dammit.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry, Tony. Listen, did you catch anything from the garage?”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just wondering if you saw anyone you didn’t recognize today, someone who might’ve come around and then left, or buzzed me but found me out or something.”

  “Jeez, no, Mr. Coyne. Nothin’ like that. Quiet. It’s Sunday.”

  “Who was on before you?”

  “That was Lyle. He had four to noon.”

  “Take a look in the book, see what’s there after nine this morning.”

  “Like what?”

  “Guests. Anybody who might’ve signed in.”

  “Okay. Hang on.” There was a minute or two of silence, then Tony said, “Nothin’ here, Mr. Coyne. Sunday morning, people go out. No guests at all. You know, half the tenants are away anyhow.”

  “Sure. Did Lyle make any notations?”

  “Huh? What kind of notations?”

  “I don’t know. That he saw anything unusual.”

  “I guess he would’ve called in an alarm if he did, huh? That’s what we’re supposed to do. Anything at all, just buzz the police. He would’ve noted it
if he’d done that. Nothing here. Quiet day. Sunday.”

  “Right,” I said. “Sunday. Listen, has anybody reported losing their keys?”

  “Keys?”

  “House keys.”

  “Jeez, no. I heard nothing like that from anybody.”

  “Okay.” I hesitated. “Well, thanks anyway, Tony. If you think of something, give me a buzz, will you?”

  “Sure. You bet. Hey, Mr. Coyne. Really. Somethin’ wrong?”

  “No. No problem. Thanks.”

  “You bet.”

  I took my drink and my souvenir hunting arrow to the glass sliders and stared out into the November night. I fondled the arrow and sipped my drink. My hands were no longer trembling. All I saw outside was darkness. I went back to the phone and dialed Charlie’s number at home. When he answered, I said, “How’d you feel if someone got a key to your place, sauntered in, trashed it, and stuck an arrow into your bed?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When I got home this afternoon I found the place turned upside down. There was an arrow up to its hilt in my mattress. It looks identical to the one that was sticking in Daniel. I’ve been trying to sort out my feelings. Anger and fear, mingled together. Lots of fear, I think.”

  “For Chrissake, Brady—”

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. I took a deep breath. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  “It kinda sounded like it.”

  “Well, I’m not. I just need to talk to somebody. Look. This thing has freaked me out, Charlie.”

  “An arrow sticking into your bed? I don’t blame you.”

  “I was away most of the day. When I got back it was there. Right where I would’ve been if I’d been asleep.”

  “A warning, you figure, huh?”

  “Of course. What else? The sonofabitch was here. First you warned me, then Horowitz warned me, now this.”

  “Horowitz? The state cop?”

  “Yes. He told me what you told me.”

  “About Daniel?”

  “Yes.”

  “To back off?”

  “Yes. In the strongest possible terms. Like you did.”

  “Well, you don’t think Horowitz broke into your place, trashed it, and jammed some arrow into your bed, do you?”