The Snake

That seemed to satisfy him. We shook hands back at the car and took off. An hour and ten minutes later we were at the turnoff that led to the property. The first road was a shale and dirt one that we took for a mile, looking for a stream. We found that too, and the barely visible indentation that showed where another road had been a long time back.

I drove down the road and backed the Ford into the bushes, hiding it from casual observation, then came back to Velda and looked at the jungle we were going into.

The trees were thick and high, pines intermingled with oaks and maples, almost hopelessly tangled at their bases with heavy brush and thorny creepers. Towering overhead was the uneven roll of the mountain range.

It was getting late and we wouldn't have too much sun left.

'It's someplace in there,' I said. 'I don't know how he did it, but it was done. He's in there.'

Animals had made their way in ahead of us. The trail was barely visible and some of the brush was fuzzed with the hair of deer, the earth, where it was soft in spots, showing the print of their hoofs. We made it crawling sometimes, fighting the undergrowth constantly. But little by little we got inside.

The ground slope ranged upward, leveled off, then slanted down again. We saw the remains of a shack and headed toward it, but that was all it was, a vermin-infested building that had long ago fallen into ruin. At one side there was a carton of rusted tins that had spilled over and rotted out, and another wooden crate of cooking utensils, still nested inside each other. The remains of a mattress had been scattered over the floor making permanent nests for thousands of mice.

It didn't make sense.

We started down the slope and burst through the brush into a clearing that was shaped like a bowl. Nature had somehow started something growing there, a peculiar soft grass that refused to allow anything else to intrude on its domain.

Velda said, 'Mike...'

I stopped and looked back.

'I'm tired, Mike. Can't we rest a minute?'

'Sure, honey. This is a good place.'

She sank to the ground with a long sigh and stretched out languidly looking at the sky. The clouds were tinged with a deep red and the shadows were beginning to creep down the mountainside. 'This is lovely, Mike.'

'Not much like the city, is it?'

She laughed, said, 'No,' and lifted her legs to strip off the ruins of her nylons. She stopped with one leg pointed toward the mountain. 'You do it.'

What a broad.

I held her foot against my stomach, unhooked the snaps that held the stockings, and peeled one down, then the other. She said, 'Ummm,' and patted the ground beside her. I crossed my legs and sat down, but she grabbed for me, tipped me over toward her, and held my face in her hands. 'It's going to be dark soon, Mike. We can't go back through that again. Not until morning.' Her smile was impish.

'Any time, any place. You're crazy.'

'I want you, Mike. Now.'

'It's going to get cold.'

'Then we'll suffer.'

I kissed her then, her mouth slippery against mine.

'It's awfully warm now,' she murmured. She raised her legs and the dress slid down her thighs.

'Stop that.'

Her hand took mine and held it against the roundness of one thigh, keeping it there until she could take hers away and knew mine would stay. Ever so slowly my hand began a movement of its own, sensing the way to love, unable to stop the motion.

With an age-old feminine motion she made it easier for me, her entire being trying to bring me into its vortex and I tried to fill the void. There was something I was fighting against, but it wasn't a fight I knew I could win. There was a bulk between us and Velda's hand reached inside my coat and pulled out the .45 and laid it on the ground in back of her.

The sun was low now, the rays angling into the trees. One of them picked up a strange color in the brush at the foot of the hill, an odd color that never should have been there. I stared at it, trying to make out what it was.

Then I knew.

The fingers of my hand squeezed involuntarily and Velda let out a little cry, the pain of it shocking her. I said, 'Stay here,' and snapped to my feet.

'Mike...'

I didn't take the time to answer her. I ran down the hill toward the color and with each step it took shape and form until it was what I knew it had to be.

A thirty-year-old taxi cab. A yellow and black taxi that had been stolen off the streets back in the thirties.

The tires were rotted shreds now, but the rest of it was intact. Only a few spots of rust showed through the heavy layers of paint that the cab had been coated with to protect it against the destruction of the wind-driven grit in the city.

I looked it over carefully and almost wanted to say that they sure didn't make them like this any more. The windows were still rolled shut hard against their rubber cushions so that the stuff fused them right into the body of the car with age. The car had been new when it was stolen, and they made that model to last for years. It was an airtight vault now, a bright yellow, wheeled mausoleum for two people.

At least they had been two people.

Now they were two mummies. The one in the front was slumped across the wheel, hat perched jauntily on a skeletal head covered with drawn, leathery flesh. There wasn't much to the back of the head. That had been blown away.

The guy who did it was the other mummy in the back seat. He leaned against the other side of the car, his mouth gaping open so that every tooth showed, his clothes hanging from withered limbs. Where his eyes were I could see two little dried bits of things that still had the appearance of watching me.

He still, held the rifle across his lap aimed at the door in front of me, fingers clutched around its stock and his right forefinger still on the trigger. There was a black stain of blood on the shirt that could still give it a startlingly white background.

Between his feet were three canvas sacks.

A million dollars in each.

I had finally found Blackie Conley.

She came up on bare feet and I didn't hear her until her breath hissed with the horror of what she saw. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stop the scream that started to come, her eyes wide open for long moments.

'Mike... who... ?'

'Our killer, Velda. The Target. The one we were after. That's Blackie Conley in the back seat there. He almost made it. How close can a guy come?'

'Pretty close, Mr. Hammer. Some of us come all the way.'

I didn't hear him either! He had come up the side of the hill on sneakered feet and stood there with a gun on us and I felt like the biggest fool in the world! My .45 was back there in the love nest and now we were about to be as dead as the others. It was like being right back at the beginning again.

I said, 'Hello, Sonny.'

The Snake. The real snake, as deadly as they come. The only one that had real fangs and knew how to use them. His face had lost the tired look and his eyes were bright with the desirous things he saw in his future. There was nothing stooped about him now, nothing of the old man there. Old, yes, but he wasn't the type who grew old easily. It had all been a pose, a cute game, and he was the winner.

'You scared me, Mr. Hammer. When you got as far as Malek you really scared me. I was taking my time about coming here because I wasn't ready yet and then I knew it was time to move. You damn near ruined