Snake Eater Read online

  The Snake Eater

  A Brady Coyne Mystery

  William G. Tapply

  For Michael

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  Preview: The Seventh Enemy

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  HE SHOULD’VE TAKEN A taxi.

  That was his first thought after he completed his descent and began to shoulder through the bodies toward the front of the platform.

  He held his briefcase flat against his crotch, like a shield. Women aren’t the only ones who have to watch out for subway gropers. He’d learned that from personal experience.

  As he wedged his way forward, the bodies closed in around him. Old, young, black, white, male, female. Not people. Just bodies. And as the bodies closed in, so did their heat. And their odors, all mingled, the stench of a hundred human bodies, smells of sex and anxiety and fear, farts and urine and sweat and booze and garlic all mixed in a disgusting stew of human stink.

  He tried breathing through his mouth. The odors became tastes. He was afraid he might gag.

  He tugged at the knot in his necktie, felt dribbles of sweat begin to trickle down his sides, dampen the insides of his thighs, soak the back of his shirt under his linen jacket.

  He pulled the briefcase tighter against him, grateful for the thin but comforting barrier.

  The crush of bodies around him forced him up against a man who stood solid and unmovable in front of him. He was a head taller, this man, with a brown neck as thick as a telephone pole and a shaved brown scalp that glistened in the piss-colored light. Another body nudged him from behind, then settled against him. More bodies, bodies on both sides, bodies everywhere. They pressed his arms against his sides, holding him immobile with the heavy briefcase tight against his middle.

  It was oddly silent there beneath the street. Some muffled human sounds. Breathing, grunting. No distinguishable voices. Distant mechanical sounds. Somewhere on the platform a radio. Rock music and static.

  Why in hell hadn’t he taken a taxi?

  He felt the vibrations through the soles of his feet. As the tremoring grew, the crowd seemed to shake itself like a dog in a dream, muttering, twitching its separate parts to separate rhythms as it came awake, and then he heard the rumble, and it became a roar, and with it the metal-on-metal screech as the train approached the platform.

  Thank God.

  The bodies pressed tighter against him, forcing his face up against the damp shirt of the enormous man in front of him.

  A hand snaked around from behind him, then an arm half encircled him. A forearm against his chest forced the top half of his body backward. And an odd pinprick low on his back, and then—

  Oh, Jesus! A shaft of pain, sudden, searing, unbearable. He threw back his head, he opened his mouth, he knew he screamed. He heard nothing but the metallic squeal of brakes and the hiss and rumble of the engine. He screamed again and again as a red-hot arrow of indescribable pain burned toward his heart and bodies surged around him and the train roared and screeched.

  That arm around his chest held him impaled on his pain. His knees buckled. His legs were suddenly cold, numb. He became detached from his body. He felt himself float above the crowd and drift there, separate now from the mob, looking down at them, looking down at himself and his pain.

  But he saw only fog.

  He had the urge to laugh. He instantly forgot why.

  A gentle voice in his ear said, “Thank you. I’ll take that.” The briefcase. It was gone. His shield. Now his groin—

  Another pain, quick and hard, rammed into the core of his soul, and with that ramrod of pain came the understanding of what that kind of pain meant.

  The sudden urge to vomit. No strength for it. And then he felt himself spinning, spiraling.

  The bottom half of his body began to melt. A snowman on a hot sidewalk. So that’s how it felt to be dying.

  To be dying.

  Christ. Oh good Jesus Christ forever and ever world without end amen.

  The book. The damn book.

  It’s true.

  If he could just remain upright he wouldn’t die. Nobody died standing up. That’s true, isn’t it? He tried to lift his hands, to grab the shoulder of the big man in front of him, something to hang on to, to keep him upright, to keep him alive. But his fingers were numb and his arms refused to move. He felt himself tilt sideways, settle momentarily against the man’s broad, wet back, slip, slide, collapse.

  Where are you, honey? Sweetheart? Are you there?

  They were stepping around him, avoiding him. From somewhere far away he heard a woman’s voice. “See? The bums are wearing neckties these days. Banker, lawyer, ha? High roller from Wall Street, ha? See? That’s what’s happening to them.”

  His mind formed the words “Help me.” He thought he spoke those words. He couldn’t hear his own voice. Couldn’t hear anything. Just a hum, growing fainter.

  Should’ve taken a taxi….

  1

  IT WAS THE SUMMER’S first heat wave, and I was putting my pinstripe away for the weekend when Charlie McDevitt called.

  “Coyne,” I said. I wedged the phone against my shoulder and sat on the edge of my bed to tug at my pantlegs.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Friend of mine needs a lawyer.”

  “I litigate, therefore I am,” I said. “My motto.”

  “Ha,” he said. “I know you. You take on new clients the way Red Auerbach signs rejects off the waiver wire.”

  “Rarely,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “Anyway, this one’s criminal, not civil. But he needs you.”

  “Tell me.” I dropped my pants in a heap on the floor. I lay back on my bed and lit a cigarette.

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Guy name of Daniel McCloud got picked up this afternoon in Wilson Falls, charged with possession, possession with intent, and trafficking.”

  “Where in hell is Wilson Falls?”

  “Little nothing town out in the Connecticut Valley. More or less across the river from Northampton.”

  “They holding him?”

  “Yes. Arraignment won’t be till Monday.”

  “Was he?”

  “What, trafficking?”

  “Yes. Was he trafficking?”

  “He grew marijuana in his backyard. The cops came with a warrant, ripped up his garden, filled several trash bags. Not to mention all the incriminating odds and ends they found in the house.”

  “Trafficking includes cultivation,” I said. “Fifty pounds means trafficking. That’s a felony worth two-and-a-half to fifteen. Must’ve been a major-league garden. What about priors?”

  “One year suspended in ’79 for possession. He also admitted to sufficient facts in ’76. That’s supposed to be sealed, of course, but…”

  “But,” I said, “the court sees it on his record anyway. Which makes this his third time up.” I paused to stub out my cigarette, then said, “Sorry, pal. No deal. Friend or no friend, I’m not defending some drug dealer. I don’t need that kind of business.”

  “He’s no dealer, Brady. He grows it for himself. He’s sick. It helps him. It’s the only thing that helps him.” Sure.
/>   “Really,” said Charlie. “Daniel doesn’t deal. He needs you. This is a favor for me.”

  “He needs a good criminal lawyer, all right,” I said. “So why me?”

  “You’ll like Daniel. And you’re good.”

  “Christ, you know how much criminal work I’ve done lately?”

  “I know what you can do, Brady. All those wills and divorces must drive you batshit after a while.”

  “That they do. So what’s this Daniel McCloud to you?”

  “He’s just this quiet guy from Georgia who tried to get some money out of Uncle Sam, which is how I met him. He spent six years in the jungles of Indochina, got himself Agent Oranged, and not a penny for his misery. He runs a little bait-and-tackle shop on the banks of the Connecticut, likes to fish and hunt and hang out in the woods. Prison would kill him. Literally.”

  “And they nailed him growing fifty pounds of marijuana?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you expect me to do.”

  “You can start by getting him out on bail.”

  “Wilson Falls,” I said, “is a long drive from Boston.”

  “So you’d better get an early start,” said Charlie.

  “Um,” I said. “Tell me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This is one of your pro bono deals, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “He can afford me?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Be damned,” I muttered.

  A cop brought Daniel McCloud into the little conference room in the Wilson Falls police station on Saturday morning. He sat down at the scarred wooden table and looked at me without curiosity, gratitude, anger, or fear. Without, in fact, any expression whatsoever. Except, maybe, patience.

  I held my hand to him. “Brady Coyne. I’m a lawyer.”

  He took my hand briefly. His handshake was neither robust nor enthusiastic, but I sensed great strength in it. He said nothing.

  “Charlie McDevitt asked me to come,” I said.

  “Charlie.” He nodded. “A good man.”

  “He didn’t call me until about seven last night. This was the earliest I could make it.”

  He shrugged.

  “I hope you weren’t worried?”

  “Worried?”

  “You know…”

  “I was waiting.” He said it as if waiting and worrying were not activities that could be conducted simultaneously.

  “Did you sleep okay?”

  “Nay. I didn’t sleep at all. I hardly ever do.”

  “I won’t be able to get you out of here until Monday,” I said. “They don’t do arraignments on weekends.”

  “I know that,” said Daniel. “That’s why they waited until Friday afternoon to come for me. It’s that farkin’ Oakley.”

  “Oakley?”

  “The cop who arrested me.”

  “What about him?”

  Daniel jerked one shoulder in a shrug. “He didn’t have to wait until Friday afternoon. You see?”

  He spoke softly, and I thought I detected just the hint of a Scottish burr mingling into his southern drawl. His voice was almost musical.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “He doesn’t like me.”

  “Why not?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s that my woman is black. See, Mr. Coyne, Wilson Falls is a small town. Everybody knows everybody else. Who they live with. What they grow in their garden. How much they’d enjoy a weekend in jail. He could’ve arrested me anytime.”

  “Well, regardless of all that,” I said, “the first thing we’ve got to do is get you out of here. Can you get your hands on some cash?”

  “I have some resources.” He smiled. He had, I noticed, terrible teeth. They were gray and stubbed and gapped. Several were missing. Later he would tell me, “You sometimes forget to floss regularly in the jungle.”

  “I’ll try to get you out on personal recognizance,” I told him. “I doubt if it will work. They’ll want to go high. The courts are making examples of their drug cases these days. I’ll need to know some things.”

  “I could use a smoke,” Daniel said suddenly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I put my pack of Winstons onto the table. “Help yourself.”

  He glanced down at the cigarettes, then looked up at me and shrugged.

  “Oh, Christ,” I said. “You can’t smoke that stuff here.”

  “It’s my medicine,” he said, and that’s when I first noticed that beneath the table that separated us his right leg was jiggling furiously. I looked hard into his face and saw a tiny muscle twitching and jumping at the corner of his eye. Behind his mask of calm, Daniel McCloud was, I realized, in agony.

  “Charlie told me you encountered Agent Orange over there.”

  “Aye.”

  “That’s how you met him?”

  “Yes. We thought our government would want to take care of us.”

  “And it didn’t work out.”

  “We got nowhere. Charlie tried to help. Good fella, Charlie.”

  “We?”

  He shrugged. “Sweeney and I. Sweeney’s one of my buddies. We were S.F. together, got burned together, and—”

  “S.F.?” I blurted.

  He smiled. “S.F. Special Forces.”

  “You were a Green Beret?”

  He rolled his eyes. “We wore the farkin’ hats. A green beret is a hat, and it’s a book and a movie and a song. But it’s not a man. We didn’t even like ’em. Nobody put ’em on except when they had to. Anyway, Sweeney and I tried to get some medical help from the government. But we didn’t have cancer, we weren’t dead, or even, as far as they would admit, dying. We couldn’t prove what we got was from the Orange. So we had no case.”

  “And marijuana helps you.”

  “Aye. It helps the itching and the pain. It’s the only thing that helps.”

  “How do you feel now?”

  “Right this minute?”

  “Yes.”

  He exhaled deeply. “It’s driving me crazy, Mr. Coyne.”

  “How much do you smoke?”

  “I need six to eight sticks a day.”

  “My God!”

  He shrugged. Daniel shrugged often, I was beginning to notice. It seemed to be his primary form of expression. When he shrugged, he gave his shoulders a tiny twitch and darted his eyes upward. It wasn’t a very dramatic shrug. “It’s the only thing that’ll help,” he said.

  “What about the trafficking charge?” I said. “Do you sell it?”

  He leaned across the table and gave me a hard look. “I smoke it. What do you think I am?”

  “A drug dealer, of course.”

  “Never,” he said quietly.

  I shrugged. “Charlie told me you had money.”

  “Aye. I have some. That’s not where I got it.”

  “If I’m going to represent you, I’ve got to know.”

  He peered at me, then nodded. “I don’t sell it, Mr. Coyne.”

  “Do you share it? The grass?”

  “Aye. With Sweeney. He needs it, too, same as me. And sometimes Cammie. She’s my woman. Just a stick now and then. She keeps me company with it.”

  Daniel McCloud did not fit my mental image of a Green Beret. He stood no more than five-eight, and he looked overweight in his baggy chino pants. His sandy hair was thin and uncombed, his face pockmarked, and his eyes were a washed-out blue. He wore steel-rimmed glasses. I guessed he was in his late forties, although he looked ten years older than that.

  He looked like a lot of other country boys I have known who get old early in life.

  He also looked like a man with a terrible disease who had spent a sleepless night in jail without his medicine.

  “At the arraignment Monday,” I said, “I’ll have to argue for reasonable bail. I need to know some things.”

  He nodded.

  “How long have you lived in Wilson Falls?”

&nb
sp; “Almost twenty years.”

  “Own your own home?”

  “Aye.”

  “And a business?”

  “I’ve got a shop. I sell bait and tackle, bow-hunting stuff.”

  “You’re a fisherman?”

  He smiled. “Aye. I grew up in the outdoors.”

  “I love fishing myself. Fly-fishing, mostly. Fly-fishing for trout.”

  “I look at it a little different,” he said. “I go after whatever is there, and I catch ’em any way I can. I like to improvise. Same way I hunt. Bow ’n’ arrows, snares, slingshots. It’s how I was brought up.” He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, I saw in them for the first time a hint of feeling, something other than the pain, although I couldn’t identify that feeling. Wistfulness, maybe. Or loneliness. “My daddy was a poacher down in Monroe, Georgia,” he said softly. “He taught me the woods. He killed deer with bows and arrows and spears he made himself, so the wardens wouldn’t hear him. They all knew he did it. But he never once got caught. That was the fun he got out of it. That was his sport. Outwitting the wardens. Fishing and hunting weren’t sports for him. He was a Scotsman. Knew the value of things. My daddy took game and fish when he needed it to feed us. Never more, never less. He taught me how to survive in the woods. I knew all about survival before I ever got to Fort Bragg. How to eat whatever you could find, how to disguise your smell, how to be invisible, how to distinguish all the different sounds in the woods, what it means when there are no sounds. My daddy made me eat bugs when I was six. After bugs, any kind of meat’s pretty good. Better when you can cook it, but good anytime.” Daniel shrugged. “He used to tell me, ‘Son,’ he’d say, ‘they make the farkin’ law because they need general guidelines. They try to hit an average with it. But that don’t mean it’s right for a particular person. Maybe a deer a year per man is a good guideline. But it ain’t right for us. You’ve got to figger what’s right for you. That’s your law.’”

  He looked at me and smiled. He was, after his fashion, giving me his defense. I guessed this was a long speech for Daniel McCloud.

  “Like growing your own marijuana,” I said. “That’s your law.”

  He shook his head. “God’s law. Not mine. My daddy told me that if it don’t hurt anybody else, and it helps you, then it’s God’s law you should do it. He never broke God’s law. Shit, neither did I. I guess we both broke man’s law some. Difference is, my daddy never got caught.”