by John Godey
“Look,” Eastman said, “you’re the expert and I have a lot of confidence in you. But it didn’t take those two guys who got bitten any week to turn it up, did it? Both of them found it inside of twenty-four hours of each other.”
“Yeah, well,” Converse said, “they were just lucky. It was pure dumb luck.”
***
Converse decided to stake out the Belvedere Lake because it was there, or near there, that Roddy Bamberger had been bitten. For all anyone knew, the snake might have been going to or coming from a drink when Bamberger had run across it.
“But it could have drunk in a lot of places.” He tapped his fingers on Eastman’s police department map of the park. “The Lake to the south, the Conservatory Water to the southeast, or even here….” With a broad sweep of his palm he covered the Receiving Reservoir that ran almost the entire width of the park between the 85th and 97th Street transverses.
“It’s long odds,” Eastman said. “Why don’t we use some manpower and stake out all of the possible watering holes?”
“Because there’s only one of me,” Converse said, “and your cops would probably miss it or else step on it in the dark and get bitten.”
Eastman said, “We’d better go back over your contract and include a breach of modesty clause.” He covered a yawn with his hand. “We know the snake was around the Belvedere Lake a couple of night ago. Is it their custom to hang around in one place?”
“Again, it depends on the species. As a rule, snakes aren’t all that territorial except when they’re breeding, so it could be anywhere in the park. But at least it’s a starting place.”
“We’re not going to find it, right?”
“It isn’t likely,” Converse said. “We need time.”
“We haven’t got any,” Eastman said.
They left the precinct around nine in a squad car driven by a patrolman who took them out of the park into Central Park West, then brought them back in again at the Hunter’s Gate and drove on the pedestrian walks past the Swedish Schoolhouse, the Shakespeare Garden, and the darkened Delacorte Theatre. Except for one group of half a dozen young men and women whom they took to be Puries, there was no evidence that citizens were still at large in the park searching for the snake.
“At least I hope that’s the case,” Eastman said. “Muggers don’t take kindly to having crowds of people wandering around in their park after dark.”
The police car pulled over to one side of the walkway and parked. Converse and Eastman got out and walked down the embankment to the lake.
“This is as good as anyplace else. We might as well sit down.”
“Suppose it comes along,” Eastman said. “I mean, sitting down, we’d be sitting ducks, wouldn’t we?”
“Of course, if it comes down for a drink on the other side of the lake we won’t see it. But it was near here that that fellow was bitten.”
“You’re sure it’s okay to sit down?”
“Sure. That way there’s no chance of our stepping on it.”
“If you say so.” Eastman touched the Pilstrom tongs. “I know what this stick is for. The pillowcase—I remember you putting that rattlesnake into some kind of a yellow bag.”
“It was a yellow pillowcase. Listen, captain, it would be better if we didn’t talk. Okay?”
“I thought snakes were deaf.”
“They are. I’m not. I want to be able to hear it if it comes.”
Eastman fell silent. Behind them, the driver had turned off the car’s motor and lights. Converse could see him behind the wheel. Above them, the sky seemed to be pressing down, as if it bore a tangible weight of clouds. It was the color of lead, except where it was tinged with red from the upfling of neons in the center of the city. The oppressiveness of the heat seemed worse than ever. The park was quiet in the still air, except for the occasional sound of an auto horn or a noisy transmission as a car accelerated.
Eastman was sitting motionless with his head bowed, his hands clasped on the grass between his legs. He was probably terrific on stakeouts, Converse thought, a man who knew how to do that most difficult of things, wait. If the snake came along, Eastman wouldn’t give them away. Not that there was much chance of it. Even if it was still in the area, even if it did come to the lake for a drink, it would be next to impossible to detect unless it practically ran into them.
He shifted his position slightly and dabbed at his sweaty face with a corner of the pillowcase. Eastman hadn’t moved, not even to scratch his nose or mop up sweat. His breathing was regular, and Converse realized that he was asleep. He smiled in the darkness, and settled himself into a more comfortable position. But he kept his head raised, peering through the gloom for something that might never come and, if it did, might come and go unseen and unheard. He felt something on the back of his hand. A raindrop.
***
The snake curved in its flowing S-movement, propelling its great length forward swiftly toward the water it had drunk from on the previous nights. From time to time it paused to taste the air with its darting tongue. When it felt the first drops of rain it stopped. It raised its head high, tongue testing. Then the rain came down in a sudden torrent. The snake slid into a coil as the downpour pelted it. It lowered its head to within an inch or two of the ground, and moved from side to side in an almost dancelike rhythm.
The downpour beat against its body, colder than it liked. The rain was so heavy it bounced off the parched ground, and quickly formed puddles. The snake uncoiled and slid forward again toward the lake. Then it stopped, dipped its head, and drank from a puddle. Afterwards, it returned to its tree.
***
After the first warning drop or two the rain fell out of the sky in sheets. In a few seconds, Converse was soaked to the skin. Nevertheless, Eastman continued to sleep through it. Converse shook him awake.
“Christ,” Eastman said. “Where did this come from?”
“Let’s go.”
Converse held out his hand, and Eastman came to his feet awkwardly and with some effort. With the rain soaking him he looked old and bedraggled. They ran to the squad car and jammed into the front seat beside the driver.
“Now what?” Eastman said.
“Maybe it’ll cool off the weather,” the driver said.
“Now we can go home,” Converse said.
“Can’t we sit here and watch from the car?”
Converse shook his head. “It won’t come tonight, not now.”
TEN
His technique was deplorable, but his stamina was prodigious, and he was sweet in a dumb kind of way. Stamina and sweetness normally ranked well down on Jane Redpath’s scale of masculine virtues, so it remained an open question in her mind as to whether or not she would have gone to bed with him if he hadn’t offered to go to the menagerie with her. At this point the matter was purely academic.
“This point” was 3:30 in the morning. The alarm clock was clamoring, and here he was again, looming over her, undepleted and eager, broaching her sore pussy with a miraculous erection. She opened to him, halfway between weariness and helplessness, and wondered if she couldn’t catch a catnap in the few minutes until he was done. But instead she responded with enthusiasm to his thrust, and finished up squealing with pain and delight.
While she was showering, he parted the curtain and stepped in with her. She felt him against her, and realized, incredible as it might seem, that he was prepared for another assault, so she turned on the cold water full force, and even his Phoenix-like member wasn’t up to coping with such a deterrent. He dwindled, and then she had to put up only with his cavorting and hollering and pounding his chest and spitting streams of water and a few other locker-room antics. Finally she turned off the water and jumped out of the shower stall, and before he could rouse himself again, without bothering to dry herself thoroughly, put on her jeans and T-shirt. He tried to take them off again, but she fended him off and chivied him into getting dressed. She diverted him while they drank coffee by praising him for his courag
e in offering to accompany her to the park. She told him that he was the ballsiest man—in the sense of being gutsy, she added quickly—she had ever met. His chest—and nothing else, she noted thankfully—swelled with pride.
It was probably true, she thought, as he sipped his hot coffee and made a thoroughly unconvincing disclaimer of his bravery. He was not only one of the bravest men she had ever known, but incontestably the stupidest. The stupidest girl she had ever met was Jane Redpath.
They prepared to leave. She gathered up her tripod and slung her Hasselblad over her shoulder. Jeff stuck a hefty tire iron in his belt, picked up a forked wooden stick and a burlap bag, and they were ready. She thought the tire iron was a pretty good idea, but she wasn’t so sure about the forked stick and bag. They reminded her that there was a snake in the park. She had given it some thought earlier, but rationalized her fears in terms of the enormous size of the park. Still, the knowledge of the snake’s presence had made her squirm, and she might very well have postponed the expedition if her paper hadn’t already been badly overdue.
She warned Jeff that she didn’t want him to do anything silly like going off on his own to hunt for the snake. He said the stick was just a precaution, and relax, baby, relax.
In the taxi that took them downtown through deserted streets, he groped her, naturally, and she tried to divert him by being serious and unsexy. She went on about her photographic project, which was to constitute the thesis for her Physiology M.A., but it didn’t slow him down.
“God, I love your apples,” he said fervently, with his hand inside her T-shirt.
“Whenever people think of sleep problems,” she said in what she hoped was a pedantic, sedative voice, “they tend to think exclusively in terms of human beings. But it’s obvious that we can learn much from animals….”
He was nuzzling her neck with his handsomely broken athlete’s nose. The cab driver, who drove with his left hand extended through the window, as if to cool his fingers, kept turning his head around at intervals to check the activity in the back of the car.
“Jeff,” she whispered. “Stop it, everybody’s looking at us.”
He placed his hand between her legs. “I can’t get enough. You know?”
“How could I not know?” She tried to pin his hand down, but realized that he would take it as a playful test of strength, so she stopped. “Look, in case we meet that snake… I mean, it’s not too likely and all, but… I’m scared, Jeff.”
It was a fresh effort to distract him, and it succeeded. He didn’t remove his hand, nothing as definitive as that, but he stopped trying to poke into her.
“No sweat, baby. If we run across it, we’ll just catch it, and that’s that.”
She gave him an only partly feigned shiver. “It’s dangerous. I’m so scared. How are you going to catch it?”
He had already told her how, in detail. He had spent the previous summer in the Southwest on some kind of archeological dig, and in the evenings, in his free time, had gone out catching rattlers with his colleagues. “Great sport” was how he had described it. But he didn’t mind repeating himself.
“It’s simple. All you need is a forked stick. You spear them just behind the head with the stick, then you grab them there with your hand—behind the head, so they can’t nip you—and just pop ’em in a bag. Nothing to it. I hope we run into the one in the park so I can show you.”
“But it isn’t a rattler. They think it might be a cobra.”
“No difference. A snake is a snake. What you have to keep in mind is that snakes have a very low I.Q. When they’re threatened, and can’t run away, they attack. Well, they have this low intelligence rating, and all they can think of is that they have to bite something. So you give them the stick, and they bite that.”
In his enthusiasm he removed his hand from her crotch to gesture, and forgot to put it back. For this relief, much thanks. “They bite the stick?” She tried to put an enormous amount of curiosity and wonderment in her voice. “And then what?”
“Then you shake them off the stick and pin them down. It’s easy.”
“Easy.” She strove for a tone combining skepticism and admiration.
“Anything’s easy, if you really know what you’re doing.”
He prattled on with earnest enthusiasm as the driver entered the 97th Street transverse and headed eastward through the park. All she had to do was keep him going for another five minutes. The trip back was another matter, but maybe she would be able to think of something.
***
The snake glided onto the pavement, dry again since the cloudburst. It moved slowly, cautiously, as its tongue brought in the mingled odor-substances of many animals.
Once or twice it lifted its head high and peered into a cage. Even when the cages were empty, the odor-substances were strong.
In one cage, two lions were asleep; their powerful smell was familiar to the snake and disturbing. One of the lions twitched uneasily in its sleep before the snake moved on.
***
The cab driver dropped them at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street. They entered the park through the Children’s Gate, and walked toward the Arsenal, ivy-covered red brick, where the park’s administrative offices were housed. It was dark, except for a modest floodlight over the steps, and a faint reflection at a downstairs window from lights somewhere in the interior of the building.
Now that they were actually here, Jane felt nervous. If Jeff had any fears or qualms, he didn’t show them. Well, that was the wrong way to put it. He didn’t show them because he hadn’t any. He was fully tooled up for the venture: tire iron in his belt for disposing of muggers, forked stick over his shoulder to deal with snakes. And if there was a night watchman, he would undoubtedly disarm him with sheer ebullience.
They skirted the Arsenal to the left, walking softly on their sneakered feet, circled to their right, and came into the menagerie. It was still an hour or so before dawn, and the menagerie was dark and shadowy except for the thin spread of light from the spaced lampposts. Behind them, on Fifth Avenue, the buildings loomed blackly, except for an isolated light at a window here and there, where, she thought, some despairing soul waited for the dawn or the resolution needed to end his life.
“Okay,” Jeff said. “Where do we start?”
He spoke in his normal voice, and in the nighttime hush it echoed like a gunshot.
“Shsh. Quiet. You’ll wake everything up.”
He surprised her by lowering his voice to a creditable whisper. “You’re gonna wake them all up anyway with your flash.”
“I’m not using a flash. I’m doing a time exposure with a very fast film. ASA 400. It should work with the light from the streetlamps.”
Something was moving to her right. She turned quickly and saw two points of light. She gasped, and clung to Jeff, and then realized that an animal was watching her through the bars of its cage. It was a shadowy gray bulk, and she couldn’t make out what it was.
“Jesus!” Trembling, she rested her head on his chest. “It scared the shit out of me.”
“Relax, you’re with Jeff, okay?” His voice was soft, he was a terrific whisperer, an ace, better than she was herself, and he was patting her ass caressingly. “I like these apples, too.”
“Please, not in front of the animals.” She pushed him away, took a deep breath, and decided that she had herself together again. “Let’s go to work.”
She moved on to the next cage. The plaque read: BARBARY SHEEP. She peered inside. At first the cage seemed to be empty, but when her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she could make out the sheep. There were two of them, lying toward the back of the cage, tan animals with strongly curved horns. Both were motionless, asleep.
“I’m going to get these. Please keep quiet.”
He watched as she opened the telescoped metal legs of the tripod and fitted the Hasselblad to it. She adjusted the settings, sighted through the finder, then decided to make an adjustment. Behind her, Jeff gave a tiny cluck of impatien
ce and breathed heavily on the back of her neck. She sensed that he was about to pat her ass again, too.
She said, “You’re making me nervous. Go take a walk, okay?” He grunted and looked surly; he didn’t like being dismissed. He didn’t like standing around and doing nothing, either. He needed something to do, even if it was nothing more than a brush with a mugger. “What I mean—check out the other cages, see what I can shoot next. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He strode off to the south end of the line of cages. She sighted on the sheep and felt for the shutter release. Before she could press it there was a sudden outcry, shrill, panicky (or so it seemed to her), and then pandemonium. From nearby cages and from within the animal houses she could hear the roar of big cats, the chatter of monkeys, indefinable screams, whines, snarls, even the barking of the seals in their pool.
Through the finder she saw the sheep bound to their feet, bleating. He’s done it, she thought, the clumsy oaf somehow startled them and woke up the whole fucking zoo. She whirled, catching up the camera and tripod, and started toward him angrily. Then she stopped dead. He was crouched, his back to her, facing a snake, the longest and lithest-looking she had ever seen or even imagined. Its head was high off the ground, its mouth was agape.
She let out a cry of terror, and knew in that instant that her reaction was no different from that of the other animals. The urge to turn away and run was overwhelming, but she knew she couldn’t desert Jeff. The snake horrified her, but there was something thrilling in the way Jeff faced it—in the knotted back muscles standing out against his damp T-shirt, the alertness of his posture, the athlete’s grace and self-confidence.
He was moving the forked stick toward the snake and whispering softly, encouragingly, laughing a little at himself: “Toro. Ho, toro, make your move.”
The snake was erect, tensed, threatening, hissing hollowly. Its body seemed incredibly long and slender, the neck swelling on a vertical axis, the eyes wide and menacing. Barely aware of what she was doing, she planted the tripod and put her eye to the finder. She placed her finger on the shutter release. Peering through the finder, holding her breath, she saw Jeff extend the stick at full length. She pressed the shutter release almost by reflex, and it seemed to trigger off movement. The picture in the finder became unfrozen. The snake and the stick seemed to meet, and then Jeff dropped the stick with a clatter. He cried out. She shut her eyes, shaking with fear. Jeff’s voice came from directly in front of her. “The bugger ran up the stick and bit me.”
