We're All in This Together (26 page)

The man raised an eyebrow. He coolly blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. "I'm a snake man. This is a snake show."

"Oh, yeah?" Frank wasn't sure what he meant until he spotted a piece of posterboard taped to the wall:

Jimmy "Leatherneck" Federicci

and The King Boa Of The Amazon:

Julius Squeezer

Photos with Julius Squeezer $5

Feed Julius Squeezer $20

Warning: Julius Squeezer WILL eat ASSHOLES!!!

A fearsome snake threaded through the letters, rearing up with hypnotic green eyes.

"You wanna see?" asked Leatherneck Federicci. He didn't wait for an answer. "Stay there."

The big man went to the largest crate. There were several holes punched in the side and a heavy metal latch with a padlock.
He took a key from his pocket, unlocked it. Removing the lid, he squatted down and put his arms into the wooden box.

Frank felt little anticipation. He had seen snakes before at the zoo in Portland and the experience had not been a memorable
one. The idea that a mall snake would be any more interesting than a zoo snake was unlikely.

Leatherneck lifted the creature from the box and draped it nonchalantly over his neck. From the distance of a few yards it
looked like nothing more than a thick green cable.

He came back to Frank wearing the thing, hung around his neck and twisted down the length of his left arm in a practiced way.
Along the side of the snake a band of darker green diamond-shaped markings appeared glazed beneath the mall's fluorescent
lighting. The snake looked very heavy, swelled somehow, although Leatherneck carried it with ease. Its eyes were yellow chips
of glass; it might have been dead.

"This," said Leatherneck, "is Julius Squeezer."

"Cool," said Frank. He was mildly impressed.

"Fuckin' A cool," Leatherneck said. "That right there is a big badass snake. An emerald boa constrictor." He held up his hand
and squeezed a burly fist. "Choke you right off."

In fact, the snake didn't appear all that active.

"What's it do?" Frank asked.

Leatherneck gave Frank a disdainful look. "What's he do?" He stroked the creature's head with a single finger. "He's a giant
boa constrictor. He does whatever he wants."

"I mean, he seems like he's sleeping."

"Yeah, well. The Squeezer keeps his own hours. He's not a dancing bear."

Frank wondered where the animal had come from, and how it had ended up playing scarf for a beefy biker. It wasn't much to
wonder about, but for a Sunday, it wasn't bad.

"Where'd you get him?" asked Frank.

"That's an interesting story." Leatherneck petted the dark flesh where it wound around his bicep.

"Yeah? Tell me."

"You like a good story, huh?"

"Sure," Frank said.

"You got five bucks in that backpack? Five buckaroos for a Polaroid, kid. This ain't a charity. I'll tell you all about the
Squeezer while I snap your portrait."

Frank figured why not. He had a few dollars to spare, and there'd be enough left over for the bookstore. There was certainly
no hurry. The crazy woman with the stroller had gone past and they were alone again, the surrounding storefronts open for
business, but quiet.

"I guess I can spare five bucks."

"Right on," said Leatherneck and led Frank over to the poster, positioning him so that it would be in the background, "for
copyright purposes."

Leatherneck gripped the motionless creature at a point underneath the jaw, and pulled it loose in one smooth motion, as if
he were taking off a belt. "Just look tough, and we'll get a nice one. The Squeezer knows you're with the good guys."

Something skipped in Frank's throat; it occurred to him that he was about to wear a giant snake, however docile, or even deceased,
it appeared. "So, where did you get him?"

"Originally, the Squeezer hails from Costa Rica," said Leatherneck as he gently set the animal against the back of Frank's
neck. It lay against his collar, weighing less than he expected. He had imagined the snake would feel wet and clammy. But
it didn't really feel like much, a small pressure against his nape.

"Like, you found him in the jungle?"

"Nope. A girlfriend of mine was trying to kill me," said Leatherneck matter of factly, and drew the ends of the snake over
Frank's shoulders.

"What?" Frank registered only vaguely the slight tensing of Julius Squeezer's body, making certain of his hold.

"Your girlfriend was trying to kill you? Are we talking a murderous rage kind of thing, or are we talking about a professional
hit?"

"You're one of those morbid little bastards, huh? I should have been able to tell by the trench coat." Leatherneck dropped
his cigarette on the tile and ground it out. "Well, I'll give you the short version: a buddy of mine from the service had
a little place on a strip of beach down there and invited me to come check it out. Me and this girlfriend of mine took him
up on the offer. Sun, snorkeling, beer on the beach, maybe some dope, what could be better, right?"

"Right," said Frank.

"But this girlfriend of mine thought I was cheating on her, snagging a piece on the side from this island gal. It was a totally
bullshit rap, by the way. I never touched this island chick. I pleaded my innocence, made my case like Perry Mason. At which
point, my lady friend, she says, 'Fine, I believe you, sugar baby.' And I thought that was the end of it, everything's cool.
Big mistake. Never trust a broad when she starts talking to you like an infant.

"Turns out my lady goes and makes a deal with this fucking witch-dude. No kidding, a fucking witch. One of these characters
who goes around wearing a big fucking bush on his head.

"This guy, he gives her a snake to do the job, make it look like the thing crawled in through a window or something, which
is perfectly believable down there. I'm dead fifteen minutes after the poison hits my bloodstream. Fifty bucks for a shroud,
drop me in the ground, and my lady and the witch go have piria coladas. She heads home with some extra luggage, but otherwise
no big hassle."

"Holy shit," said Frank. He glanced down at the creature where it was knotted around his arm, supple and silent.

"Pretty fucking sinister, huh?" He raised the camera, lowered it, checked the flash, and raised it again. "Thing was, the
guy was an idiot. He gave my old lady a boa constrictor, which he thought was a viper. A significant difference, my friend.

"So, she slips the old Squeezer in bed with me after I'm asleep one night, expecting him to bite my ass or something. I wake
up, feeling a little tickle around my feet, and think I've kicked off the sheets. That's when I see Julius here, curling all
over my legs. For a second, I think I'm fucked, but then I realize he's only a boa, and I sit right up and start cuddling
with the big son-of-a-bitch. The witch snookered her."

The flash snapped. "And there it is," said Leatherneck. "You have proved yourself to be a worthy mantle for the greatness
of the Squeezer."

Frank blinked at the spots of color against his eyes, and felt Leatherneck remove the weight from his shoulders. The snake
trainer carried Julius Squeezer over to the wooden frame and hung it up. The snake dangled limply, as harmless as a damp towel
on a rack. In the next moment, it curled up, wound itself out along the wood. The snake froze in this position, a hard green
spiral.

Swishing the square of celluloid back and forth in the air Leatherneck said, "It's gonna be a nice one. I got the Squeezer's
handsome side."

Frank found the five dollars in his wallet and they made the exchange. In the photograph, the snake appeared even deader than
in real life.

"That's an incredible story," said Frank. "The double-crosser got double-crossed. I love stories like that."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it, brother," said Leatherneck. "But let me tell you, it wasn't that funny living it. Every time you
wake up with a snake in your bed it takes five years off your life, minimum." He went over to one of the other crates and
started rustling around in it. "Anyway, have a good one. Tell all your friends about the Squeezer."

Frank pulled a couple of books from the shelf and retired to the pill-spotted armchair in the rear of the store. These first
two paperbacks were well titled—
The Gold Stamp Murders
and
Checkfate
—but almost immediately disappointing.

These were the kind of his books that Ken, an English teacher, called "cops and robbers crap."

"Jesus, at least you're reading something, though," he had said once. "I've got kids in my senior class who wouldn't be able
to decipher a draft notice. When I was eighteen there were guys I used to play Little League with coming home in pine boxes,
and meanwhile their nuts were being chewed on by jungle rats in Southeast Asia. It was college or death, kiddo—hey, what have
they got you reading in class?"

Frank had shrugged.
"Great Expectations."

"Dickens!" his father cried. "That's tremendous, Frankie. Can you believe how funny it is? I mean, the language."

"It's boring," said Frank.

"C'mon," said his father. "Pip? Joe? Miss Havisham?
Magwitch,
for god's sake? Darlin', you gotta get with the program. Don't you love it when they eat 'wittles'?"

"But what are 'wittles'?" Frank had asked, and his father had heaved a sigh of disbelief. "Ah, forget it," Ken said. "You
want to go and shoot a few strings?"

The trouble with
The Gold Stamp Murders
and
Checkfate
was that neither was particularly believable. The first book was about a gangland war. In the second chapter, a hired gun
backed over a private investigator with a garbage truck. Then, after the garbage truck pulled away, the P.I. was able to crawl
off with only a fractured leg. Please, thought Frank. It was common sense that after one pressing by a garbage truck, that
was it, your ticket was punched.

Checkfate
was about a chessmaster caught in a game of international intrigue: Frank knew several guys on the chess team at school and
the notion of any of them seducing a female MI6 agent strained his suspension of disbelief. If it didn't seem true, what was
the point? That was the way Frank looked at it.

Luckily, he had an ace in his pocket, a sure thing—the latest paperback by Bernie Varrick. There was a small picture of Varrick
on the back cover, showing an old man with a head of windblown snow-white hair and a scowl. The author's note said that Bernie
Varrick was a retired Florida sheriff. He was one of Frank's favorite writers. In Varrick's books when people died, they stayed
dead; there were no brilliant madmen, just desperate people and tough cops. The new Varrick was called
Some Things Float.

Frank began to read: a plane goes down in the Everglades, carrying a congressional candidate and his brother. There's no chance
that anyone survived, and no way to recover the bodies; anything out there in that swamp was gator bait. And that would probably
be the end of it, except for a sheriff from a nearby township, an alcoholic hard case named Charlie Gunther, who stumbles
across a packed suitcase belonging to the congressman's dead brother in the closet of an overdosed prostitute.

It was vintage Varrick stuff:
Gunther played the flashlight over the
walls of the basement. There was a smell in the room. It was a humid
smell, tangy and overdue. He thought about meat turning from red to
white in the sun, drawing gnats. Rusted hooks lined the walls.

Gunther listened, the smell rising up to his eyes. After a moment it
came to him: it was the reek of old bait, fish guts. Something scraped
in the darkness. "Who the fuck?" he asked, trying to keep the stutter
out of his voice . . .

But Frank's mind wandered. Maybe at that moment his father was chasing down a pass, perfectly timing the parabola's end, loping
in for a touchdown. He could hear his father tell it: "I gave the d-back a bump, broke left, caught it in stride, and hustled
my ass into the end zone. Thought I was going to bust a gasket, Frankie, keel right over." This was followed by what seemed
to Frank a somewhat likelier image: his father leaning against a sapling a few yards north of the field, releasing a long,
sighing beer piss in the bushes.

Gunther reached for the grip of his thirty-eight, strapped tight
underneath his armpit. His fingers recognized the cap of the flask, the
one he had stowed away last night, in case of an emergency. He
swung the flashlight across the room. The white circle spotted
something on the ground, something moving. Gunther took a step
forward
—
the light caught two tiny spikes of
yellow
—and the old cop clutched his chest, staggered back, wheezing, and popped like a balloon. Julius Squeezer, the King Boa of
the Amazon, slithered into the circle of the flashlight.

Frank set the book down. Maybe he wasn't in a reading mood today. The bookstore was empty except for the counterman and a
woman in the greeting card section. A piano plunked from the tinny store speaker system. He pulled the Polaroid of the snake
from the inner pocket of his trench coat. He ran a hand through his hair, dragging at the knots. After studying the picture
for a minute or two, he used a sharp corner to pick at his teeth. Then he looked at it again, looked hard.

Leatherneck's story had come to him, and something about it suddenly bothered Frank. He was reminded of his father, of the
way the old man described the plays he made in his football games, or the arguments he won when he was out drinking. The conspiratorial
delivery, the casual intimacy as he talked and worked the camera at the same time. It even had the hallmarks of his father's
stories: sinister women, startling confrontations with rampant ignorance, the frustrations of being a simple man. What was
troubling him now, Frank realized, was that as a general rule, his father, like most crime novels and paperback thrillers,
was not to be believed.