Are Snakes Necessary?

by Brian De Palma

  The question is on Elizabeth’s mind as she peels off her clothes and jumps naked into the ocean. She’s gotten used to the temperatures here, and swimming focuses her thoughts.

  When she emerges, fifteen minutes later, blood thumping and hot from the exertion in the ice-cold water, she’s clear.

  First off, she could use a challenge. Surviving is a big deal, yes. But saving someone else’s life would count as a real accomplishment. Of a different order than saving yourself.

  Second, Elizabeth is pretty sure she can get away with murder. She’s thought this through a bit. If Bruce with all his fancy high-paid detectives couldn’t find her with her short black hair on Monhegan Island, why would anyone connected with one of the sad souls who write to Dottie think Elizabeth had anything real to do with their lives?

  Elizabeth knows that, aside from computer records, one of the main reasons people who try to bump off a spouse get caught is that it’s easy to trace the money they pay the killer to do their work: husband is shot under mysterious circumstances; four weeks before, wife withdraws ten grand from her separate checking account. Mistakes like this make detective work easy. Want to get away with a hit job? Keep money out of the picture.

  Another thing. Remember the girl who disappeared on the Bahamian island? Very instructive. If you want to bump someone off and get away with it, it’s a good idea to do your business in a backwater locale where the police force wouldn’t know DNA evidence if it hit them in the head and anyway are too busy comporting with corrupt justice officials to care too much about one dead tourist. Also murder is not great for tourism, so officials in offshore backwater spots hardly want to make a lot of hay out of a killing. They want to bury it quickly and move on.

  Elizabeth fixes herself a nice lobster salad, pours herself a glass of wine and heads off to sleep on it.

  Up at dawn, she’s at the laptop, pulling up the letter Lucy Wideman took out of her bag months ago on the Trailways bus.

  CHAPTER 43

  Fanny and Nick are in a cyber café. Fanny brightens the screen on her laptop so that she can make out the interview with Rogers that’s playing on some network news show.

  Brightened, the screen reveals Missy Masters, a hard-news correspondent, and Lee Rogers. Missy is drilling the senator. She fires one question after another. Were they not talking about her, Fanny would definitely switch it off.

  “Senator Rogers, do you know what happened to Fanny Cours?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you say anything or do anything that could have caused her to drop out of sight?”

  “Fanny and I never had a cross word.”

  “Do you have any idea if there was anyone who wanted to harm her?”

  “I can’t imagine there was, no.”

  “Did you cause anyone to harm her?”

  “Good lord, of course not.”

  “What exactly was your relationship with Miss Cours?”

  “She came to work on the campaign, shooting videos for the web. We worked together on those videos.” Rogers leaves it at that, but Missy lets the silence stretch on, an old interviewer’s trick. Even a veteran interviewee like Rogers finds himself compelled to throw some more words out, to fill the silence. “It’s a small campaign, long hours. You become close.”

  “Close, meaning…?”

  “We had a close working relationship. I liked her very much.”

  “Was it a sexual relationship?”

  Rogers shakes his head. “Missy, Connie and I have been married for almost thirty years, and I won’t say I’m a…a perfect man, I’ve made my share of mistakes. But we have a strong marriage. In fact, when I’m in Paris, Connie and I are going to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary by renewing our marriage vows.”

  The bulldog reporter’s expression softens.

  “On the top of the Eiffel Tower. October 25, three in the afternoon. That’s where I proposed to her thirty years ago.”

  “Wouldn’t our audience love to see that?”

  Rogers’ clenched jaw relaxes into a smile.

  “How is Mrs. Rogers doing?”

  “She’s getting stronger every day.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. But can you tell me this—do you think it’s possible that Miss Cours was also in love with you?”

  “Golly, Missy,” Rogers says. His cheek involuntarily twitches. “I don’t think so. No.”

  “Were you in love with her?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Fanny’s face hardens.

  She looks at Nick. He looks back, waiting to see what she’ll say.

  “Let’s do it,” Fanny says. “Dog. What a dog.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Elizabeth is now crystal clear. Answering letters is fun. But she wants action.

  “Dear Desperate,” Elizabeth types, not into a Word document that will go to her editor but into an email message that will go directly to the original sender—from an anonymous Gmail account, of course.

  Dear Desperate,

  It’s me, Dottie. I’ve been thinking about you. Not sure the advice I gave you was any good. But I have an idea. Are you serious about your husband—about getting rid of your husband, that is? I can help. No kidding. Hit reply. Send your zip code. And we’re in business.

  I’m concerned about you,

  Dottie

  Desperate (who in real life really is named Betty) is surprised to find the message when she opens her email. But it’s nice to think someone is thinking about her and wants to help. And Ben (not his real name) has gotten worse. He’s become so wrapped up in his work that Betty doesn’t have a husband anymore. He might as well be dead.

  She reads the email again. Could it be a trick of some kind? One of those sting operations she’s seen on television? At this point Betty doesn’t care. “19133,” she types.

  Betty gets a response almost instantly. (Elizabeth has been staring at the water, relishing the view, waiting to hear the ping that means there’s mail in the box.)

  “Oh, hello, Desperate in Philadelphia,” Elizabeth types. “Listen to me. I’m going to help you. But you have to do exactly as I say. Take the computer you’re reading this on to the Ben Franklin Bridge tomorrow night and throw it in the Schuylkill River. Sounds extreme, I know. But we can’t have any evidence of our online connection. Then go to the Package Center on Bainbridge Street the next morning, ask for a delivery in the name of Betty Smith, tracking number 5293-0471-2895-0414. You’re going to get away with this. We are. I promise.”

  Most people wouldn’t follow instructions from a total stranger, especially if the instructions involve tossing an expensive computer into a river.

  But Betty isn’t most people. She’s a distraught woman, one who is married to a total creep who has used, humiliated and discarded her, and it’s nearly the same to her whether she tosses the computer or herself—and her new perfect size 34c breasts— over the bridge.

  A little before midnight, Betty drives to the Ben Franklin Bridge, gets out of her car and walks up the pathway that leads to a deserted span. She throws her laptop over the guardrail. She listens to the splash as it hits the black water beneath. She looks up and around to see if something will happen.

  A few minutes pass and nothing does. Betty’s stomach tightens.

  Is she the dumbest person in the world or what? She just threw her laptop into a river. No wonder Ben left her for Lynette Tart-head or whatever her name is.

  Betty picks up the package the next day. Inside she finds a small gray phone, a simple one, without a camera or any doodads, just a screen and a keypad that lights up when she touches it. Betty doesn’t have anyone to call so she puts the phone on the counter and, from time to time during the day, looks over at it, wondering when or if it might ring.

  At dinnertime it does.

  “Arrange to take your husband to the Greenwood Beach resort on Cat Island for
a romantic four-day Bahamas weekend,” says a voice with a strange electronic, recorded sound. The voice suggests some possible vacation dates.

  “When you have made the travel arrangements, log on to www.puppyfind.com from a public computer that can’t be tied back to you, at a library or FedEx in another town. Say you have a yorkipoo for sale. You will get a call with the rest of your instructions as soon as you do this. Do not write them down. Memorize them. When you have, throw this cell phone in the river. Are you serious, Betty? Because I am. Together, we can take care of Ben forever.”

  Dottie has done her homework.

  The recorded message repeats itself, and Betty listens again. A disembodied voice instructing her to do more strange things? Well, it’s not as if anyone else is helping her. And she is desperate. She follows all the instructions, then throws the phone in the river.

  CHAPTER 45

  The view outside Nick’s window still excites Fanny’s young girl heart: Paris!

  Nick, lanky, appealing, dressed, as always, in his crisp white shirt, is pacing. Doing a slalom through a course of French magazines, a stack of his pictures, mismatched shoes, an empty pastry bag. He walks onto the balcony. Clarity brightens his face. “We need to have a hiding place. Somewhere people—even ones who aren’t looking for you—won’t see you and recognize you from the news photos and missing posters.” This sounds crazy to Fanny. But she’s game. “For a week at least. It’s probably best if we keep you entirely out of sight at first.”

  Fanny follows with interest. Really, she thinks, everything would have been a lot easier if Rogers’ wife had just stayed home where she’s supposed to be and Fanny had spent a few days in bed with Rogers and they’d called it a day. Then she’d be back on the campaign trail, not here coming up with screwball plans.

  “We let a ‘Where is Fanny?’ hysteria build in the D.C. papers and who knows where else. Then create a few sightings.”

  Nick looks serious. And there is that stack of pictures.

  Could her story be his story? Fanny thinks. Maybe Nick’s a nut job. Or just a lost soul himself. Fanny wonders why she is listening to him. The answer is: because she is. She likes him. Also she doesn’t have lots of other ideas.

  “Okay, when do we start?”

  Nick’s friend Lester knows a camera assistant who has a vacant pied-à-terre near the Eiffel Tower. He moved in with his girlfriend.

  Nick checks it out and a day later Fanny is the new resident.

  Snap. Snap. Nick documents her every move.

  It’s actually kind of a cool place. At night, if she turns off all the lights and looks out the window, the whole world dissolves and it’s just Fanny and the sparkle of la Tour Eiffel, bright lights, la grande cité!

  She stays inside, reading, surfing the net, enjoying pain au chocolat and excellent fromage.

  As Nick imagined, the American tabloids rev into high gear fast: Girl Missing? Missing Fanny? Senator Rogers’ Wife: My Husband is Not a Fanny Chaser.

  It doesn’t take long before “missing girl” stories and old photos of Fanny show up in Le Monde, Paris Match, People, The Huffington Post.

  Fanny thinks her hair looks good in the school photos the French publications ran; she’s sad to see she looks a little fat in the Paris Match spread.

  CHAPTER 46

  Betty awakens with renewed purpose. She’s in the kitchen scrambling eggs when Ben walks in.

  He sits at his place at the table and Betty delivers his eggs, along with coffee, juice and the paper.

  Betty pokes at her eggs while Ben scans the paper. When, at last, he looks up, Betty says, “Darling, let’s go away. Me and you. No questions asked about the past. I want to go forward—with you. One chance is all I ask. Four days in the Bahamas. You and me, a lot of sunshine. Let’s be together there, and honest, and maybe have a good time too.”

  “I could use some sunshine,” Ben says.

  God it would be great to be on Cat Island with Lynette, he thinks, but hell, she’s not offering up a trip. I’ll go with Betty, give her the chance she wants, and then goodbye, baby, goodbye, I’m out of here.

  “Wonderful,” says Betty.

  Two-timing son of a bitch, she thinks as she washes Ben’s scrambled egg remains down the garbage disposal. Next month can’t come soon enough.

  CHAPTER 47

  Brock hurries to the arrival gate and finds the senator and his wife on the concourse. Today Brock looks like a businessman, not a politician. For one thing, he’s wearing a green tie. Political operatives always wear red or blue ones.

  “Bonjour,” Connie says brightly. She looks particularly frail.

  Brock delivers his salutations with the hurried affect Connie expects from him.

  “Hello hello. Have a good trip in, Mrs. Rogers? You look exceptional. Nice to see you. Everything is set for you. It will be a wonderful week.”

  It’s hard for Connie to tell if he is hurried because of any actual exigency or if it’s just that every word that slips out of Brock’s mouth is coated with falsity.

  Brock pulls Rogers aside as his wife walks ahead down the concourse, pulling her leather carry-on behind her. He grabs the senator’s arm and leans close.

  “I got ahold of some local security video on her. Looks like she’s hiding out somewhere in the 7th.” Brock holds close to Rogers’ arm and whispers his discovery into his ear.

  “How do you know?” Rogers is processing the information.

  “I’ve got some friends in the security world. But they can only sit on this information for so long. I have to get to her before it leaks. And before your real trouble starts.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Fanny sits in her Eiffel Tower apartment. She looks at the old-fashioned telephone on the wall by the stove. She’s called, texted, and emailed her mom. No response.

  Nick cautioned her against contacting anyone. But this is her mom! Fanny can’t keep her in the dark anymore. Jenny must be going crazy. Maybe she’s seen the coverage in the press and flown to Paris to try looking for her? But that doesn’t explain why she doesn’t answer her phone, doesn’t read her email.

  Fanny wonders about the whole plan. It looks ridiculous. Much as she likes Nick, his scheme is kind of kooky and far-fetched. The sad fact, though, is that Fanny hasn’t got any better ideas.

  She picks up the iPad and looks for the latest on the Missing Intern.

  A feed from a Daily Beast reporter catches her eye: Could Lovesick Videographer Be Dangerous?

  Is this me? Fanny scrolls down. “A source within Pennsylvania Senator Lee Rogers’ campaign revealed today that Fanny Cours became infatuated with the senator and acted erratically in his presence. She was dismissed from the campaign. Another source confirms this description and says the videographer could be ‘a dangerous stalker.’ ”

  Fanny bursts into tears. A dangerous stalker! She loves Lee Rogers and he knows it. Who is spreading this garbage about her? No question: Barton Brock. But there’s no way he would leak stuff like this without Lee knowing. Fanny feels sick to her stomach, but determined.

  She stands up, throws her coat on and storms out the door. Today’s the day Lee told that TV reporter he’d be renewing his vows with Connie. She will confront him—and his cheap, demeaning lies—at the Eiffel Tower.

  CHAPTER 49

  Maybe Fanny would like a bon bon, Lester thinks. He is in line at his favorite boulangerie, two blocks away from the camera assistant’s pied-à-terre where Fanny is holed up.

  “I’ll take one of those,” Lester says to the woman behind the counter, pointing to a sugary confection he plans to drop off with Fanny. When in France, he thinks.

  Bon bon in hand, he approaches Fanny’s block when the front door swings open. Who should come out but the lost girl herself? Lester is about to call out to her. But he notices a broad-shouldered man in a tan suit and green tie trailing her from half a block back. Looks like he means business—dirty business.

  Lester ducks into a doorway and FaceTimes Nick.


  “Nick, Lester here. I’m over at Fanny’s place and it looks like some guy is following her. Know who this is?” He turns the phone towards the man in the green tie.

  Nick stands at the foot of the Eiffel Tower watching the Vertigo crew setting up to film. Barton Brock’s image flashes up on Nick’s phone screen.

  “Yes—I think so. That Brock guy. Could that be him?”

  Lester watches as Brock gains on Fanny.

  “I gotta go. They’re turning the corner,” says Lester.

  “Hold on,” says Nick. But it’s too late. The line is dead. Nick looks up to see Hildy and Laurent taking their positions.

  The AD calls for silence.

  Hildy’s robe is pulled off revealing a white silk suit. She turns to face Laurent and the AD yells “Action!”

  CHAPTER 50

  Lee and Connie Rogers get out of a black Mercedes in front of the Eiffel Tower. Connie is a slip of a woman in her blue wrap dress. Her husband steadies her.

  “Are you all right, darling?” He is being especially solicitous.

  Connie could not be more all right. Well, she’d be more all right if she didn’t have the awful prognosis, but mentally she is as chirpy as a bird, so happy to be here, away from the Washington reporters, away from the awful thoughts—paranoid, anxious, self-hating thoughts—that have plagued her during the last weeks.

  “Let’s forget all that,” says Rogers, reading his wife’s mind as long-married spouses sometimes do. “We’re away from everything. Let’s enjoy ourselves. It’s spectacular here. What a day. Just like the day we were first here.”

  Rogers hugs his wife close.

  “Let’s go up to the top.”

  They cross the plaza to the elevators.

  A second AD directs them away from the lift. Rogers is surprised to see the AD and the rest of the movie crew crowded around the elevator doors. The set photographer seems to be giving him a long look. “What’s going on?” Rogers asks.