to LaGrange. 'Twelve offspring in a clutch, if they're egg-layers, or twelve offspring in a litter if they're live-bearers. I assume Common Blacksnakes are live-bearers?'
'Yeah, whatever,' Paxton acknowledged absentmindedly. 'Anyway, we've already found twenty-three of the little buggers, which means — Hey, wait just a minute now! How come you know so much about snakes all of a sudden?' the Bravo Team leader demanded.
'You mean like this one?'
Henry Lightstone suddenly thrust the snake hook down behind Larry Paxton's feet, squatted, and stood holding a small, frantically wiggling black-and-red snake just behind its head with his thumb and forefinger.
'What the hell!' Larry Paxton's eyes bulged as he hurriedly searched the floor around his feet.
'Just gotta know where to look, Paxton.' Lightstone glanced around the floor again and casually brought the wiggling snake up to eye level.
'What the hell are you doing, holding a poisonous snake like that in your bare hand?' Larry Paxton demanded, his eyes still round as he watched the tiny reptile furiously try to work itself loose enough to bite its captor.
Henry Lightstone examined the snake's gaping mouth critically. 'Come on, Paxton, a little guy like this can't do much damage. Little baby fangs like that, it probably would've taken him a good thirty seconds just to chew through your sock. And even then, he probably wouldn't have given you much of a jolt. They like to save their venom for something that looks good to eat.
'Which reminds me,' Lightstone went on, 'you really don't have to worry too much about food and water for a few days with reptiles at this temperature, but it'll be a lot easier to get all the snakes into the terrariums before the babies hatch out. And another thing,' he added, glancing down at Paxton's low-cut tennis shoes, 'most professional snake handlers wear high-topped leather boots. Cuts down on the number of trips to the emergency room.'
'I ain't no professional snake handler!' the Bravo Team leader snapped irritably.
'Yeah, no kidding.' Henry Lightstone scanned the surrounding floor again. 'Anybody got an extra snake bag handy?'
'Right here!'
Mike Takahara ran up with a long, narrow canvas bag and held it open as Lightstone thrust his hand deep into it. As Henry removed his hand, the tech agent clamped his own around the neck of the bag and tied it shut with the attached canvas straps.
'Twenty-four!' Takahara's voice echoed in the cavernous warehouse holding the snake bag up triumphantly.
'Thank God,' Dwight Stoner tiredly agreed as he and Woeshack came up beside Paxton. 'We've been looking for that damned thing for the past hour.' Then a puzzled frown crossed the huge agent's face. 'Hey, wait a minute.' He looked at Henry suspiciously, then glared at Paxton. 'How come he found it so fast?'
'And caught it with his bare hands, too,' Thomas Woeshack reminded them.
'The bastard knows something about snakes.' Larry Paxton looked like someone who had been thrashing in a pond convinced he was about to drown at any moment, only to discover that the person sitting on shore observing him was an off-duty lifeguard.
Henry Lightstone shrugged. 'Bobby and I were interested in herpetology when we were kids.'
'But that was before we discovered girls.' Bobby LaGrange smiled helpfully. 'I take it you guys are still working yourselves up to that stage?'
Larry Paxton stood momentarily speechless.
'You mean you — ' It took the nearly apoplectic Bravo Team leader several seconds to finally get the words out. 'You left the four of us here — four people who don't know shit about snakes, in a freezing warehouse full of some of the most poisonous snakes in the whole damned world — to try to figure out how to put snakes that are too big into terrariums that are too small… with nobody bothering to tell us that some of the damned things might be pregnant and start squirting out baby snakes right and left… while you and your ex-partner here — '
'Were out risking our lives purchasing Bigfoot evidence?' Henry Lightstone finished with an innocent look on his face.
'Actually, that's not exactly true,' Bobby LaGrange pointed out. 'I didn't risk anything except my reputation and my bank account. And the way you explained the situation to me, you really didn't buy anything from her, Henry. It was more like a gift, wouldn't you say?'
'Yeah, good point.'
'Her?' Four voices practically howled in unison.
'The witch,' Bobby LaGrange explained helpfully. 'Personally, I think Henry's in love. I've seen that look in his eyes before, but he won't admit it.'
'You let him buy Bigfoot evidence from a witch?' Dwight Stoner demanded. 'What happened to the old fart soothsayer?'
'Wow.' Thomas Woeshack looked duly impressed.
'What does she look like, Henry?' Mike Takahara asked.
'Well, I think she's pretty attractive… as far as witches go, anyway,' Lightstone added with a cheerful smile as he looked around the warehouse. 'I would've called and told you guys all about her, but I gather you haven't installed the phones yet?'
'Next item on the list,' Mike Takahara promised.
'And while we're on the subjects of lists,' Lightstone interrupted. 'You guys need to cut down on your lights in here, or do a lot better job in sealing off under the roll-up door, around the window and door shades, between the aluminum siding and the roof. Looks like a carnival show out there.'
'Door, window, and roof seals, check,' the tech agent muttered as he made a few cryptic notes.
'Another thing,' Lightstone went on. 'Looks like I'm going to need some halfway decent ID after all.'
'Okay.' Mike Takahara looked up from his notebook. 'What do we know about you so far?'
Lightstone paused for a moment. 'Let's see, I'm in between jobs, my girlfriend took off on me a few weeks ago, and I'm out here to look up Bobby — a guy I went to school with when we were kids.'
'Any particular discussion on location where you two went to school?'
'No.'
'What about your name?'
'I'm locked in on 'Henry,' but no last name yet.'
'Okay. Bobby's got a pretty strong Southern accent for somebody who grew up in San Diego. Why don't we see if we can get you away from the West Coast. Maybe somewhere back East. How does North Carolina sound?' The tech agent looked over at Bobby LaGrange.
'Why don't you make it South Carolina,' Bobby LaGrange suggested. 'I've got relatives down in Beaufort, so I can fill Henry in on the appropriate local color. And as far as the local people around here are concerned, all they know about us is that we moved here from Miami.'
'South Carolina's fine with me,' Lightstone agreed. 'Just get it as soon as you can, and make sure whatever name you come up with can stand up to a half-decent background check.'
'Yeah, that's right, you never know what a witch can find out if she really puts her mind to it,' Thomas Woeshack pointed out.
'I think I need to sit down.' Larry Paxton fumbled for one of the overturned boxes.
'Uh, not there, Larry.' Lightstone quickly reached past the Bravo Team leader with the snake hook, knelt, and stood with another tiny wiggling black snake. 'Kinda cute little critters,' he remarked to Takahara. 'Got another bag?'
'Don't worry, Larry, he always did that when we were kids, too. Used to drive me crazy.' Bobby LaGrange smiled sympathetically as he watched the visibly shaken Bravo Team leader gingerly kick at the box, move it out into a bare patch of concrete floor, then look around once more before finally sitting down uneasily.
'That's twenty-five, Paxton,' Dwight Stoner pointed out with a menacing edge to his deep voice. 'What about that 'two-times-twelve is twenty-four' bullshit you've been handing us all evening?'
'Actually, those clutch and litter numbers are usually plus or minus a whole bunch,' Henry Lightstone pointed out. 'At least that's the way it worked for all the North American snakes Bobby and I raised, and I'll bet it's pretty much the same thing for Australian snakes, too. So if I were you guys, I'd keep my eyes open, just in case.'
Larry Paxton gave him a venomous look.
