The Snake

proves like you're not a punk. It proves...'

'It proves how fast you can get killed, too.'

Slowly, he turned around. 'Am I in the middle, Mike?'

'I don't see how.'

'Ask it straight.'

'Who is Dickerson?'

'Nobody knows. Just that he's big.'

'Money?'

'I guess.'

'Who takes Kid Hand's place?'

'Whoever can grab it. I'd say Del Penner. He's pretty tough. He had a fall ten years ago, but came back to grab off the jukes in Chi, then moved into the bolita and hi-li in Miami. He was pushing Kid pretty hard.'

'Then maybe Kid's move in on me was part of a power grab.'

'Favors don't hurt nobody.'

'It killed Kid.'

'So he didn't know it was you.'

I looked at him a long time, then his face got tight and he turned away. When he gulped down his beer he looked at me, shrugged, and said, 'Word goes it was a personal favor. You were a surprise. You just don't know what kind of a surprise. It wasn't with you. It was something else. That's all. I don't know... I don't want to know. Let me make my bucks my own way, only stay loose, man.'

'Why?'

'You're hot now, man. Everybody knows. Everybody's looking.'

'I've had heat before.'

'Not like this.' He looked into his beer, shrugged, and decided. 'You ever hear of Marv Kania?'

'No.'

'He's a contract man from St. Loo. Punk about twenty-eight, got a fall for murder second when he was a teen-ager, joined with Pax in K.C., then did the route with Arnold Philips on the coast and back to St. Loo. They figured he was a contract kill on Shulburger, Angelo, and Vince Pago and the big Carlysle hit in L.A. He's got plenty of cover and is as nuts as you are.'

'What does that make me, Toby?'

'A target, man. He's in town with a slug in his gut and everybody knows how it happened. If he dies you're lucky. If he don't you're dead.'

I got up and put on my hat. 'My luck's been pretty good lately,' I said.

He nodded gravely. 'I hope it holds.'

When I went to open the door he added, 'Maybe I don't, too.'

'Why?'

'I don't want to be around when it stops. You'll make an awful splash.'

'It figures.'

'Sure it does,' he said.

Then I went back to her, the beautiful one whose hair hung dark and long, whose body was a quiet concert in curves and colors of white and shadow that rose softly under a single sheet into a woman's fulfillment of mounded breasts and soft clefts.

She didn't hear me come in until I said, 'Velda...'

Then her eyes opened, slowly at first, then with the startled suddenness of a deer awakened and her hand moved and I knew what she had in it. When she knew it was me her fingers relaxed, came out from under the cover, and reached for mine.

'You can lose that way, kid,' I said.

'Not when you're here.'

'It wasn't always me.'

'This is now, Mike,' she said. It was almost me thinking again when I walked up the steps a couple of days ago.

I took her hand, then in one full sweep flipped the sheet off her body and looked at her.

What is it when you see woman naked? Woman. Long. Lovely. Tousled. Skin that looks slippery in the small light. Pink things that are the summit. A wide, shadowy mass that is the crest. Desire that rests in the soft fold of flesh that can speak and taste and tell that it wants you with the sudden contractions and quickening intake of breath. A mouth that opens wetly and moves with soundless words of love.

I sat on the edge of the bed and let my fingers explore her. The invitation had always been there, but for the first time it was accepted. Now I could touch and feel and enjoy and know that this was mine. She gasped once, and said, 'Your eyes are crazy, Mike.'

'You can't see them.'

'But I know. They're wild Irish brown green and they're crazy.'

'I know.'

'Then do what I want.'

'Not me, Kid. You're only a broad and I do what I want.'

'Then do it.'

'Are you ready?' I asked.

'I've always been ready.'

'No you haven't.'

'I am now.'

Her face was turned toward mine, the high planes in her cheeks throwing dark shades toward her lips, her eyes bright with a strange wetness, and when I bent forward and kissed her it was like tasting the animal wildness of a tiger filled with an insensate hunger that wanted to swallow its victim whole and I knew what woman was like. Pure woman.

Across the room, muffled because of the alcove, came a peculiar distant tone that made the scales, rising and falling with an eerie quality that had a banshee touch, and Velda said, 'She's awake.'

I pulled the sheet up and tucked it around her shoulders. 'She isn't.'

'We can go somewhere.'

'No. The biggest word.'

'Mike...'

'First we get rid of the trouble. It won't be right until then.'

I could feel her eyes. 'With you there will always be trouble.'

'Not this trouble.'

'Haven't we had enough?

I shook my head. 'Some people it's always with. You know me now. It comes fast, it lasts awhile, then it ends fast.'

'You never change, do you?'

'Kitten, I don't expect to. Things happen, but they never change.'

'Will it be us?'

'It has to be. In the meantime there are things to do. You ready?'

She grinned at me, the implication clear. 'I've always been ready. You just never asked before.'

'I never ask. I take.'

'Take.'

'When I'm ready. Not now. Get up.'

Velda was a woman. She slid out of bed and dressed, deliberately, so I could watch everything she did, then reached into the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out a clip holster and slid it inside her skirt, the slide going over the wide belt she wore. The flat-sided Browning didn't even make a bulge.

I said, 'If anybody ever shot me with that I'd tear their arms off.'

'Not if you got shot in the head,' she told me.