The Snake

Events had moved too quickly and she couldn't think for herself any longer. She agreed dumbly, the girls got into their coats, and I walked them out to the cab.

Upstairs I sat at the desk and took the letter out of my pocket. Like the straw, it was crisp with age, but still sealed, and after all these years smelled faintly of some feminine perfume. I slid my finger under the flap and opened it.

The handwriting was the scrawl of a drunk trying hard for sobriety. The lines were uneven and ran to the edge of the page, but it was legible enough.

It read:

Darling Sue:

My husband Sim is the one we called The Snake. Hate him, darling, because he wants us dead. Be careful of him. Someday he will try to kill us both. Sim Torrence could prove I helped deliver narcotics at one time. He could have sent me to prison. We made a deal that I was to be the go-between for him and Sonny Motley and he was going to arrange the robbery. He could do it because he knew every detail of the money exchange. What he really wanted was for Sonny and the rest to be caught so he could boost his career. That happened, didn't it, darling? He never should have left me out in the cold. After I had you I wanted security for you and knew how to get it. I didn't love Sim Torrence. He hated me like he hates anybody in his way. I made him do it for you, dearest. I will hide this letter where he won't find it but you will someday. He searches everything I have to be sure this can't happen. Be careful my darling. He is The Snake and he will try to kill you if he can. Be careful of accidents. He will have to make it look like one.

All My Love,

Mother

The Snake... the one thing they all feared... and now he was dead. Dedicated old Win with Sim, an engineer of robberies, hirer of murderers, a killer himself... what a candidate for governor. The people would never know how lucky they were.

The Snake. A good name for him. I was right... it worked the way I figured it. The votes weren't all counted yet, but the deck was stacked against Sim Torrence. In death he was going to take a fall bigger than the one he would have taken in life.

Torrence never got the three million. He never gave a damn about it in the first place. All breaking up that robbery did was earn him prestige and some political titles. It was his first step into the big-time and he made it himself. He put everybody's life on the block including his own and swung it. I wondered what plans he had made for Sally if she hadn't nipped into him first. In fact, marrying her was even a good deal for him. It gave him a chance to keep her under wraps and lay the groundwork for a murder.

Hell, if I could check back that far with accuracy I knew what I would find. Sim paid the house upstate a visit, found Annette Lee asleep and Sally in a dead drunk. He simply dragged her out into the winter night and the weather did the rest. He couldn't have done anything with the kid right then without starting an investigation. Sally would have been a tragic accident; the kid too meant trouble.

So he waited. Like a good father, which added to his political image, he adopted her into his house. When it was not expedient for him to have her around any longer he arranged for her execution through Levitt. He sure was a lousy planner there. Levitt talked too much. Enough to die before he could do the job.

In one way Sue forced her own near-death with her crazy behavior. Whatever she couldn't get out of her mind were the things her mother told her repeatedly in her drunken moods. It had an effect all right. She made it clear to Sim that he was going to have to kill her if he didn't want her shooting her mouth off.

Sim would have known who The Snake was. Sally had referred to him by that often enough. No wonder he ducked it at the trial. No wonder it scared him silly when Sue kept insisting her mother left something for her to read. No wonder he searched her things. That last time in Sue's little house was one of desperation. He knew that sooner or later something would come to light and if it happened he was politically dead, which to him was death in toto.

But somebody made a mistake. There was a bigger snake loose than Torrence ever was. There was a snake with three million bucks buried in its hole and that could be the worst kind of snake of all. Hell, Sim wasn't a snake at all. He was a goddamn worm.

I folded the letter and put it back in my pocket when the bell rang. When I opened the door Velda folded into my arms like a big cat, kicked it shut with her heel, and buried her face against my neck.

'You big slob,' she said.

While she made coffee I told her about it, taking her right through from the beginning. She read the letter twice, getting the full implication of it all.

'Does Pat know all this?'

'Not yet. He'd better take first things first.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Call Art Rickerby.'

I picked the unlisted number out of memory and got Art on the phone. It took a full thirty minutes to rehash the entire situation, but he listened patiently, letting me get it across. It was the political side of it he was more concerned with at the moment, realizing what propaganda ammunition the other side could use against us.

One thing about truth... let it shine and you were all right. It was the lies that could hurt you. But there were ways of letting the truth come out so as to nullify the awkward side of it and this was what the striped-pants boys were for.

Art said he'd get into it right away, but only because of my standing as a representative of the agency he was part of.

I said, 'Where do I go from here, Art?'

'Now who's going to tell you, big man?'

'It isn't over yet.'

'It's never over, Mike. When this is over there will be something else.'

'There will be some big heat coming my way. I'd hate to lose my pretty little ticket. It's all I have.'

He was silent for a moment, then he said, 'I'll let you in on a confidence. There are people here who like you. We can't all operate the same way. Put a football player on the diamond and he'd never get around the bases. A baseball player in the middle of a pileup would never get up. You've never been a total unknown and now that you're back, stay back. When we need you, we'll yell. Meanwhile nobody's going to pick up your ticket as long as you stay clean enough. I didn't say legal... I said clean. One day we'll talk some more about this, but not now. You do what you have to do. Just remember that everybody's watching so make it good.'

'Great, all I have to do is stay alive.'

'Well, if you do get knocked off, let me repeat a favorite old saying of yours, 'Kismet, buddy.''

He hung up and left me staring at the phone. I grinned, then put it down and started to laugh. Velda said, 'What's so funny?'

'I don't know,' I told her. 'It's just funny. Grebb and Charlie Force are going to come at me like tigers when this is over to get my official status changed and if I can make it work they don't have a chance.'

That big, beautiful thing walked over next to me and slid her arms around my waist and said, 'They never did have a chance. You're the tiger, man.'

I turned around slowly and ran my hands under her sweater, up the warm flesh of her back. She pulled herself closer to me so that every curve of hers matched my own and her breasts became rigid against my chest.

There was a tenderness to her mouth that was only at the beginning, then her lips parted with a gentle searching motion and her tongue flicked at mine with the wordless gestures of love. Somehow the couch was behind us and we sank down on it together. There was no restraint at all, simply the knowledge that it was going to happen here and now at our own time and choosing.

No fumbling motions. Each move was deliberate, inviting, provoking the thing we both wanted so badly. Very