Then the sound stopped.
The snake felt the vibrations first at a distance. It paused below the rock and raised its head warily. It could see nothing threatening. But the vibrations continued, and they were disturbing. It darted its tongue and swivelled its eyes. Then, all at once, the ground became active, it began to shake, leaves and small stones flew, and there was a great wind.
The snake whipped around in a swift turn and slithered into the brush.
Even here, down below, leaves were blowing about, fragments of twigs were stinging its flanks. It broached the entrance to the burrow, pushed past the debris which had piled up around the entrance, and slid inside to safety.
Later, Converse was to realize that he should have heard it long before he did-perhaps did hear it, but only with his ears, not his brain, because he was so intensely concentrated on the top of the rock and the sound of dragging rope.
When the leaves and small stones stung his legs, and the trees and bushes began swaying, the sound crashed in on him with a roar. He looked upward just as the helicopter passed over him, so low that it barely seemed to clear the treetops. It was painted blue and white, there was a number on the fuselage, and, in large letters, POLICE. No longer cautious, he came out of his hiding place and leaped up onto the flat shelf of the rock.
He shook his fist up at the helicopter and screamed, "You bastards! You dumb, stupid, fucking saboteurs!"
The courtyard of the Central Park Precinct was seething with activity when Converse got out of his taxi. Cars were pouring out of the underground garage, cops were piling into the ESU trucks, and still others were lined up in platoon formation. Inside the main precinct building there was more turmoil, with additional cops and plainclothesmen crowded around the desk. Nobody paid any attention to him as he went down the corridor to the Commander's office. Eastman barely glanced at him. He was speaking on the phone, which he held tucked in between his shoulder and chin, and at the same time shufling papers on his desk. He was unshaved, his clothes were rumpled, his blue eyes were puffy and slitted.
By the time Eastman finished his phone call, and took several others, all of which seemed to concern the deployment of police from other precincts to duty in the park, Converse's anger had simmered down. Nevertheless, the first words he said to Eastman were, "Well, you fucked it up, captain."
Eastman's reddened eyes looked startled, but he didn't say anything. He held up his hand warningly, as if to indicate, Converse thought, that he wasn't yet ready for anger, that he adjusted gradually to the unexpected these days where he would have leaped into its face twenty years ago.
"A helicopter," Converse said. "It would have been cheaper to call it up on the telephone and warn it to take cover. I swear, captain, it made me sick."
Eastman nodded, as if, at last, he was on familiar ground; there was always, inevitably, something that made someone sick.
"Why didn't somebody ask me about it? I could have told you it wouldn't work. You promised to give me time."
"Time ran out a few hours ago," Eastman said. He took note of Converse's puzzlement. "You didn't hear about it?"
Converse shook his head, and Eastman told him about the McPeek family, his face blank, as though, Converse thought, he had exhausted pity and anger.
"The little girl died a few hours ago. The wife is still on the critical list."
"Oh, Christ."
It was the kind of accident that occurred from time to time in Africa, when a black mamba would pursue a rodent into a house. In India, as well, where a cobra might enter through a ventilating duct. His eyes welled with tears.
"So we have no more time for the scientific approach," Eastman said.
"We're putting every policeman we can spare into the park, and we're going through the houses on the street where the family was bitten. And that's why we put the helicopter in the air."
"It's awful," Converse said. "It's a great pity." He brushed at his eyes.
"But you won't be helping them or anybody else by using a helicopter."
Remembering how the ground had trembled, and the storm of stones and vegetation, Converse's indignation returned. "That damn stupid machine, just when the snake… might have been coming out to bask."
He had almost given himself away. Had Eastman detected the slight hesitation when he had caught himself up? He gazed past Eastman's head to the window.
"What happened when the helicopter came over this morning?" Eastman's voice was heavy with suspicion. "Were you on its trail?"
"If I was on its trail, I'd have picked it up after the helicopter was gone, wouldn't IT'
And so he should have done. He should have waded into that hollow that he was so sure was the black mamba's home and turned it over until he found the snake. But he had been carried away by anger.
"Because," Eastman said, "if I find out that you found it, and aren't telling, so help me, I'll beat the living shit out of you."
The captain's eyes were ice and fire at the same time. This is how he must have been, Converse thought, when he was younger. Maybe I'm doing him a favour, rejuvenating him.
He said calmly, "Relax, captain, you're beginning to sound like an old-fashioned ass-kicking cop. I know you're not but-"
The hand that closed on the back of his neck was like a steel clamp.
He wrenched himself free of it and whirled around.
"Get the fuck out of here," DI Scott said, "and don't come back."
Converse had breakfast at the same coffee shop where he had gone with Holly. He ate slowly, touching his neck tenderly from time to time.
Nobody had manhandled him that way since he was a kid, but his indignation was tempered by the thought that he had lied to Eastman. He liked Eastman. Eastman was a good man. But, like everybody else, Eastman wanted to kill the snake.
He drank a second cup of coffee. There was no burry. After a while he would return to the park, go down into that hollow, and stay there until he found the black mamba. He would catch it, bag it, and… and then what? Sneak it up to the Bronx Zoo and give it to his old boss for safekeeping? Turn it over to that showman and collect his twenty thousand dollars? What he would really Eke to do was shove it down DI Scott's shirt collar.
He walked slowly northward along Central Park West, resting on a bench now and then, fighting off the temptation to doze. There were five police cars parked near the Boys Gate, and a lot of cops inside the park. As he walked eastward he passed a group of Puries being herded by some cops.
The Puries looked disheveled, and one of them had a bloody lip. The cops were grim-faced. He turned and watched the cops shove the Puries into patrol cars. More work for the Reverend's lawyer, who had been kept busy the last few days bailing out the Reverend's flock.
Two cops, carrying shotguns, were standing beside the thicket that led up to the rock overlooking the black mamba's hollow. Converse stopped and swore silently. Keep going, he thought, come back later. He nodded to the cops and sauntered by them, then stopped again. While there was only a small chance that they would find the snake, suppose it found them, and attacked?
He turned and went back to the cops. One of them recognized him and said hello. "It's the snake guy," he said to his partner.
Converse said conversationally, "You fellas got a lead of some kind?"
The cop who had spoken first said, "We're looking, that's all. Christ, we never stop looking."
He other cop gestured toward the thicket with his shotgun. "Come on, Charlie, let's get it over with."
"I hate this duty," Charlie said. "Ask me to kick a door in with a perpetrator inside and I'll do it, but snakes… He shuddered.
"You can save yourself the trouble," Converse said. "It's not in there."