Serpent's Kiss

by Ed Gorman

  "I'm afraid I did, Andy."

  Andy Todd then gave himself permission to slip into warp drive. He called Frank Dvorak so many names so fast and so loud that neither man could be sure of what was being shouted. All both of them knew was that it was awful, awful stuff. And Andy knew it was not exactly what the doctor had in mind when he said Andy should take things easier and not get so excited.

  Andy Todd hung up by slamming the receiver back onto the cradle three or four times and so hard the whole phone started to tear from the wall.

  "He got out in the fucking laundry truck," Todd said to Ames who was sitting there watching the show his boss was putting on. "The fucking goddamn laundry truck."

  The time was 9:46 P.M.

  1

  THE JOCK ON KFAB had just pronounced it 10:07 A.M. -"ready with more of the hits you want to hear"-when the man in the back seat of the Yellow cab realised that he had no idea who he was.

  No idea whatsoever.

  He leaned forward, trying not to show the least trace of panic, and said, "Excuse me."

  "Yeah?" the cabbie said, his brown eyes suddenly filling the rear-view mirror.

  And then the man realised: How can I say it?

  Excuse me, sir, but I don't happen to remember my name. Do you happen to know who lam?

  And realising this, all he could say, his voice nervous now, was, "I was just wondering if you had the time."

  "Like the guy on the radio said, 10:07."

  "Oh. Right. Thanks."

  And slumped back into the seat that smelled vaguely of vomit and slightly more so of disinfectant.

  This was impossible.

  Impossible.

  He was merely a man-a nice normal man-riding along in the back seat of a taxicab and he'd merely forgotten his name.

  But only temporarily. The way you forgot who you were dialling sometimes. Or the date of your birthday.

  Or-

  "Here you go," the cabbie said.

  "Pardon me?"

  "I said here you go."

  "Go?"

  "This was the address you gave me."

  "It is?"

  This time the cabbie turned around. He was this little guy in a blue Windbreaker and a white shirt. Shiny bald with freckles along the ridge of scalp bone. "This is where you said you wanted to be left off."

  "Oh."

  The cabbie stared at him. "You all right?"

  "Yes. Sure."

  "Because you don't look too good."

  "I don't?"

  "Kinda pale."

  "No, really, I-"

  "Maybe you got a touch of the bug that's goin' around. My old lady's got it and-" The cabbie shook his head miserably. Then he put his hand out. "Ten bucks, please."

  "Oh. Right."

  For a terrible moment, he thought he might reach inside his pocket and find it empty.

  But there was a small fold of crisp green new bills. He counted out twelve dollars and gave it to the cabbie.

  "You take care of yourself," the cabbie said.

  "Thanks."

  He was halfway out of the rear door of the cab when he realised that he didn't remember giving the cabbie this address. But he had to have given him this address or else why would the cabbie have stopped here?

  He said, "May I ask you a question?"

  The cabbie regarded him in the rear-view again. "Sure."

  "This address."

  "Uh-huh?"

  "This is the address I gave you?"

  "Sure thing, chief. I always write 'em down. And I wrote this one down same as always."

  "I see."

  "4835. Ain't that right?"

  "Uh, yes."

  "So anyway, like I say, you take care of yourself."

  And get the fuck outta my cab, asshole. I got other fares to worry about now.

  So he got out.

  And the cab went away.

  And here he stood, sniffing.

  Actually, it was a perfect morning for sniffing, and enjoying. This was the Midwest at its most perfect apple blossom weather, the temperature in the seventies even though it was still morning, and the wind at ten miles per hour and redolent of newly blooming lilacs and dogwood. Girls and women were already wearing shorts and T-shirts with no bras, breasts bouncing merrily beneath the cotton. Dogs appeared in profusion, tugging masters behind them; everything from Pekinese to wolf hounds were on parade this morning. Babies in strollers waved little pink hands up at him and a couple of college girls in an ancient VW convertible gave him mildly interested glances.

  At one time the Italian Renaissance buildings of this area had been beautiful. This was back in the days when the neighbourhood had been largely populated with young middle class families who couldn't yet afford houses. These apartment buildings had shone with respectability, the pedimented windows and arcaded entryways not only fashionable but elegant.

  Now the neighbourhood was given over to student housing, serving the sprawling university several blocks north. Middle class aspirations had long since fled, replaced now not only by students but by those who preyed on students-drug pushers, hookers, muggers, and merchants who automatically marked everything up 20 percent more for the college kids.

  From open windows came a true cacophony of musical styles-heavy metal, salsa, jazz, and even country western. Students today were much more eclectic than his generation of the sixties had been when the official music had run to the up-against-the-wall lyrics of the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, and the Stones.

  If he couldn't remember his name, how did he remember music he'd listened to over twenty years ago?

  Trembling, he started across the street.

  He stood in front of the place, looking up at the arched entranceway and remembering… nothing.

  He knew he'd never seen this place before.

  Then why had he given the cabbie this address?

  The front door opened. A young black woman, pretty, slender, came down the stairs carrying an infant. "Hi," she said.

  "Hi," he said.

  She saw the way he was looking at the entrance and said, "May I help you with something?"

  He shrugged. "I just want to make sure I've got the right place."

  She laughed. "It's the right place unless you're selling something." She pointed to a discreet sign, black letters on white cardboard, NO SOLICITORS.

  "Oh, no," he said. "I'm not selling anything."

  She laughed again. "Then this is probably the right place."

  She hefted the infant and walked on, looking eager to be caught up in the green flow of the perfect day.

  He stood there a few more moments and then went up the stairs.

  The vestibule smelled of cigarette smoke and fresh paint. The hallway had been done in a nice new baby blue.

  He went over to the line of mailboxes. He checked the names carefully. None looked familiar.

  He tried once again-it seemed pretty ridiculous, when you thought of it: What's my name?

  He dug his hand into his right pocket. He felt two quarters and a dime. He also felt a key.

  When the key was in his fingers, and his fingers in front of his face, he saw the number 106 imprinted on one side of the golden key.

  He looked at the mailbox marked 106: Mr. Sauerbry.

  Who was Mr. Sauerbry? Was he Mr. Sauerbry? If he was, why didn't he remember?

  The inner door opened. A fat man in lime-green Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt that read OLD FART came downstairs leading a pretty collie on a leash.

  "Morning," the fat man said.

  "Morning."

  He could tell that the fat man was suspicious. "Help you with something, pal?"

  He wasn't sure why, but it irritated him to be called pal. "No. Just looking for my friend's apartment."

  "Which apartment is that?" the fat man said. The collie was yipping. He wanted outside with the green grass and yellow butterflies.

  He said, too quickly, "Number 106."

  The fat man lost his expression of suspici
on. Now he looked curious. "You actually know him?"

  "Who?"

  "The guy who lives in 106."

  "Oh. Yeah. Sure. As I said, he's a friend of mine."

  The fat man pawed at some kind of very red, crusty skin disease he had on one of his elbows. "Nobody's ever seen him."

  "Really?"

  "Not one of us. But we've always been curious."

  This time, the dog didn't merely yip. He barked. In the small vestibule, the sound was like an explosion.

  "Needs to piss," the fat man said. Then he smiled. "Matter of fact, so do I. But I guess I should've thought of that sooner, huh?"

  And with that, he nodded goodbye and let the collie jerk him down the vestibule stairs and outside.

  Two minutes later he stood in front of 106.

  The apartment was at the far end of the hall. Warm dusty sunlight fell through sheer dusty curtains. For a moment he felt lazy and snug as a tomcat on a sunny bed. He wished he knew who he was. He wished things were all right.

  He looked both ways, up and down the long rubber runner that stretched from one end of the hallway to the other.

  Nothing. Nobody coming. Nobody peeking out doors.

  He inserted the key.

  How had he come by this key, anyway? Exactly what was it doing in his pocket?

  The key worked wonderfully; too wonderfully.

  He pushed open the door and stepped inside 106.

  The smell bothered him more than the darkness.

  Unclean. That was all he could think of. His brother and he had once found a mouse that had died in the cellar. Over a period of hot sticky days, it had decomposed. He thought of that now. Of the way that little mouse with its innards all eaten out had smelled.

  But if he could remember his brother… why couldn't he remember himself?

  The second thing he noticed was the darkness.

  You wouldn't think, on so bright a day, that you'd be able to keep an apartment this dark, even with all the paper shades and curtains pulled down.

  But it was nearly nightlike in here.

  He reached over to turn on a table lamp. The bulb blew, blinding him temporarily.

  Shit. What the hell was going on here?

  It took long, unnerving moments for his sight to return.

  He felt helpless and stupid.

  Gradually, it did come back, of course, his sight, and so he walked through the three rooms and a bathroom and all he could think of was Aunt Agnes, how even into the 1980s she'd kept her little tract home looking just like the 1950s, complete with blond coffee table and big blond Philco TV console and lumpy armchairs with those screaming godawful slipcovers with the ugly floral patterns.

  This apartment was like that. And given the heavy layer of grey dust on everything, he doubted it had been cleaned since the 1950s, either… And then the thought: Who was Aunt Agnes? If I can remember her…

  He had the sense that he'd just stepped into a storage closet that hadn't been opened since the last time President Eisenhower had been on the tube…

  Why have I come here?

  On one of the blond end tables there was a telephone, one of the ancient rotary models.

  He went over and picked up the receiver and thought: Who am I going to call?

  And then, automatically, he dialled a local number.

  The dial tone was so loud it seemed to be digging a tunnel into his ear.

  Four rings.

  On the fifth a very pretty female voice said, "Hello?"

  He said nothing.

  "Hello?" she said again.

  And again he said nothing.

  Who was this? Why had he called?

  "Hello?" she said. There was something desperate in her voice now. And then she said: "It's you, isn't it?" And her voice was softer. You might even call it tender. "It is you, isn't it?"

  He wanted to say something.

  He had this sudden, inexplicable urge to cry. To sob. He felt overwhelmed with grief.

  But why? And who was this woman exactly, anyway?

  "Richard," she said. "Richard, please just tell me if s you."

  And then he hung up.

  He sat down in a dusty armchair and put his face in his hands. Again, the urge to sob. It was almost as if he wanted to vomit. To purge himself.

  He looked at the phone. In the curious brown curtain-closed darkness of the musty, dusty room, the phone looked almost alien. How queer, when you thought about it, that you should pick up this small instrument and a human voice would come through it.

  He put his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. He thought of what the fat man in the OLD FART T-shirt had said. That nobody had ever seen the man who lived in 106.

  Was he the man who lived in 106? Somehow he doubted it.

  And then he saw the envelope.

  It was a regular manila envelope, with a metal clasp close, an eight by ten.

  He saw it in his mind.

  And he saw what was inside.

  That was when he jerked forward in the chair and opened his eyes.

  He did not want to see, to know what was inside the envelope.

  The only way to avoid this was to keep his eyes open. To somehow forget all about the manila envelope.

  He stood up and started pacing.

  He should leave this apartment. Leave quickly.

  But go where?

  If he did not know who he was, how could he possibly know where he was going?

  In the cinnamon coloured darkness, he paced some more.

  This went on for ten minutes.

  Meanwhile, on the street, girls laughed and babies cried and cars honked and buses whooshed past.

  If only he could be a part of that.

  That bright, giddy flow of spring life.

  Be gone from this musty smell of death; and the sudden queer chill of the living room as he turned and looked through the gloom at the bedroom.

  Of course. That's where the envelope was. The envelope he'd seen so clearly in his mind.

  In the bureau there.

  Top right hand drawer.

  Just waiting for him.

  He tried not to go. He tried instead to go to the front door and put his hand on the knob and let himself out into the warm streaming sunlight and the sweet balming laughter of children.

  But instead, he went farther into the odd darkness of this place, deeper and deeper till he passed the brass bed and the solemn closed closet, and walked straight to the bureau and put his hand forth and-

  The manila envelope was there, of course.

  Waiting for him.

  He reached in and picked it up and then he gently closed the bureau drawer and walked back to the living room.

  With great weariness, he went to the armchair he'd been sitting in and sat down once more, a great sigh shuddering through him, his blue eyes sorrowful, knowing the images they would soon fall on.

  He made quick work of it, then, knowing there was no point in putting it off any longer.

  He unclasped the envelope and slid the photographs out.

  The surface of the black and white photographs was glossy, silken to the touch. Given the clothes the women wore, and the hairstyles, these photos had obviously been taken in the thirties. But that made them no less shocking.

  He looked away at first.

  They were even worse than he'd imagined them.

  But once more, after turning his head for long moments, he knew it was no use.

  He stared at the photos again.

  Carnage was the only word that could describe what his eyes settled on now.

  Two or three young women, naked, their faces hacked up-one of them had had her nose ripped away-and their breasts cleaved off, leaving only bloody holes.

  In the centre of a stomach a hexagram had been bloodily carved, and in another an obscenity had been cut into a forehead.

  Sickened, he sank back in the chair.

  He knew better than to close his eyes. His mind would only conjure up the ph
otographs again.

  But he knew he was not done with the envelope quite yet. With the photographs, yes.

  But waiting inside the envelope would be a sheet of paper… He had seen this in his mind, too.

  And so once more, he sat forward, and jammed his hand inside the envelope and pulled out a small piece of white writing paper.

  In the centre of it was writing in ballpoint pen.

  He had to hold the paper close to his face to read it.

  MARIE FANE

  He knew instantly who she was, and why her name was here.

  Despite himself, he raised one of the photos and studied it again.

  Marie Fane was alive now, but soon enough she would be one of these dead and savaged women.

  And he did not have to wonder about who her killer would be.

  ***

  A sullen black youth in leg irons and handcuffs being led to a police car raised his left hand and flipped everybody the bird.

  Cut to: Three SWAT team cops kneeling down behind a car as a beefy white man swaggered across a night-time parking lot firing two handguns at them.

  Cut to: a pretty teenage girl sobbing about her addiction to crack cocaine.

  Cut to: a mayor's aide running to his car obviously trying to outdistance the reporter who kept yelling questions at him about an alleged contractor payoff and cover up.

  The one thing all these pieces of videotape had in common was the presence, at the end of each story, of a tall, redheaded woman in her mid-thirties. While nobody had ever called her beautiful she did have a vivacious intelligence that made her unabashedly sexy both on camera and off. Her full mouth was by turns wry and sombre, her green eyes by turns comic and vulnerable, and her voice by turns ironic and sad. She signed off each piece the same way: "This is Chris Holland, Channel 3 News."

  Now, a Chris Holland four years older sat in a small editing room in the back of the noisy Channel 3 newsroom smoking one of her allotted three cigarettes a day, and editing a videotape.

  What she was putting together was called an audition reel. Reporters take their best stories, edit them together, and send them out to potential employers, i.e., TV stations around the country. Maybe the reporter is a city type who suddenly longs for a few years in the boonies; maybe the reporter is trying to survive a bad divorce and feels a change of scenery will stave off putting the old head in the oven; or-and this is the most likely scenario-the reporter feels it's now time for him/her to take that shot at working in a bigger and better market-trade in Des Moines, say, for Chicago or Terre Haute for LA. Or, if you've just been fired, trade in your present situation for just about any place where the currency is American and the plumbing is indoors. At any given time in the USA it is estimated that more than five thousand newspeople are sneakily putting together audition tapes and another five thousand are at various post offices shipping their mothers off somewhere. While this is no doubt an exaggeration, it isn't an exaggeration by much.