Rain fell like a madman.  The drops were large and
they attacked both the body and the mind.  You became
instantly drenched.  And you drifted into a foul mood.

Snake felt depressed and not just because of the rain.
 It was not supposed to be this way.  A real warrior
went to combat on a beautiful morning on a hill in
clear view of a worshipping multitude.  Your opponent
was a vicious-looking person who snarled and grunted
like some kind of horrible beast.  A real hero never
fought a woman!

The sun would be shining.  There would be a slight,
cooling breeze.  Somewhere just out of view, a bird
sang lifting, spirited ballads of heroes beating
desperate villains in torrid battle.

Everything should have been valiant and glorious!

Instead, it rained horribly in dark gray shadows that
walked across the hotel roof.  And the chill ate into
you.

After a while, he had grown stiff and got up to stroll
about.

Just as he turned left at the edge of the roof by a
small waist-high wall, he thought he saw someone move
off to the left.  He leaped to the right, dropping
instantly to his knees, a throwing knife in his hand.

But no one was behind a low skylight when he looked.

Keeping low, he ran to the other side of the roof,
slipping on the slick surface of the roof, catching
himself in time before falling, running on.  He found
no one.

After a few minutes, he put the razor-sharp German
knife away and returned to the stiff-backed folding
chair in the center of the roof.

He stayed alert, but it was obvious to him that the
Spider Lady was not going to appear.  Quite frankly,
he had not really expected her to come.  But word
would get back to her about the posters plastered
around Manhattan--maybe she'd even see one
herself--and grow, perhaps, a little concerned at
missing an opportunity to kill him.  Or talk to him.

The posters had been excellent.  Wekser had them
printed in two colors, one a florescent orange that
immediately drew your eyes to it.  And Montague, true
to his word, had done a superb job of distribution. 
Some of the members of the gangs that roamed the north
end of Central Park, now participating in the coming
basketball tournament, had helped.

The meeting with the gang members a couple of days ago
had been touch and go for a few minutes.  Unwilling to
lie, Snake had admitted that he'd never met Michael
Jordon.

"And you're going to get him to come to the playoff
game of the tournament?"

"I can't even guarantee that," Snake had said. 
"Michael Jordan is a very busy man."

"Hey, he's a brother, ain't he?"

"He has a lot of brothers," Snake had said.

A debate quickly erupted.  Among the terms thrown
about were "screw that shuck and jive!" and "Reeboks."
 Eventually, Reeboks won by a nose.  But there were
enormous compromises--all with considerable
argument--worked out between King and two of the gang
leaders.  A "board of directors" was formed. 
"Members" to this board were named, even though some
of them weren't present at the time.

Snake had stayed out of the planning.  In fact, he'd
gone over to watch Montague play one-on-one with an
11-year-old wearing a Knick tee-shirt.

"Finally found someone you could beat, huh?"

"Hey, this guy is good.  You want to try him on?"

"Not me," said Snake.  "I know when I'm outclassed."

When the arguments finally eased off between King and
the others, King dropped into step beside Snake.  They
left Montague behind.  He was still trying to beat the
11-year-old.  Two members of the gang were now helping
him.  All to little effect.  The kid was giving all
three of them fits.

"Good job," Snake told King.

"It's going to work out, I think," King said.  "Not an
easy situation, talking to those guys.  Last time we
met, it was with chains and knives."

"A basketball sounds like a better weapon to me," said
Snake.

"Convincing them of that was the problem."

Snake had then discussed "the arrangements" for the
Saturday night party.

"Ice?  Champagne?"

"Let Neva do those trivial things.  I have something
more important I need done.  But it's pretty dangerous
and if you don't want to do it, I'll understand."

"Dangerous?  And I just talked the Legionnaires'
Disease into a basketball game.  Hey, the Spider Lady
will be a piece of cake compared to those guys."

Quietly, as they walked, Snake told him what he needed
and how to do it.

"What about Thursday and Friday nights?"

"Nothing.  I'd be very surprised if someone shows up. 
I'm fairly confident that won't happen."

And, except for the faintest shadow, nothing had
happened.

For two days, Snake rested at King's "hideyhole."  He
slept in a sleeping bag in the corner of the bicycle
shop out of view behind a counter.  During the day, he
read the rest of "Dune" and King brought him a mystery
novel by Bill Moody called "Solo Hand."

It did no good to protest that he wasn't really a
mystery fan.  King told him, "You'll like this one."

And he had.  Moody involved jazz music and musicians
in his story line.  The novel was interesting and
pleasant reading.

But after a couple of days of eating Pearl's cooking
and relaxing, he had become extremely bored.  Worse,
he knew that he was growing fond of being lazy; it was
addictive.  For much too long, his life has operated
at a torrid pace.  It was impossible to slow it down
for more than a brief period--perhaps an hour or
two--without it falling completely to a standstill. 
Once at a standstill, he was afraid it would be
difficult to get back into gear.

Thus, he was relieved when Thursday finally arrived.

And not unhappy that it rained all day and was still
raining that evening when he left Pearl's apartment
and took a taxi to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The bridge was one of the great wonders of the world
when it was constructed and linked two different
worlds--Brooklyn and Manhattan.  It had become a
worldwide joke, "sold" over and over to rubes around
the world.

These days, however, the bridge showed its age.  It
creaked in the wind.  Rust fought against the flecked
paint on the higher trusses.  And the stones on some
of the pillars, a sign of its ancient design, wore
moss in deep places.  The rain and the night obscured
most of its higher reaches.

But when the taxi stopped and he crawled out, wearing
a Knicks cap that King had loaned him, Snake found
himself paying tribute to the ancient structure.  To
him, the bridge represented a different time, a
different world when life seemed to lack the
complexities that it did these days.  A time when kids
walked carefree on sidewalks shaded by beautiful green
trees and were concerned more with their choice of ice
cream cones than whether an Uzi was a better weapon
than an AK 47.  He stood and admired the amazing
architecture, unique for its day, for several minutes
before turning sadly and walking west. 

Half an hour later, he hesitated on a distant corner a
block away from the Bonsoir d'Jour.  Already, he was
soaked.

The building was only 11 stories tall.  Like the
distant bridge, it had been constructed of stone in a
different time.  Ornate gingerbread flared from below
the roof around the sides of the building.  The
windows were all framed with sculptured stonework. 
And, like the bridge, time had not been kind.  Wind
and ice and rain, like the rain that fell at the
moment, had slowly chipped away at the building.  Age
had changed the stone from brown to mottled gray as if
it had been attacked by some strange disease.

Light from a streetlight flickered mysteriously across
the rain-swept pavement.  Down the street, several
people, hidden underneath umbrellas, hurried somewhere
else.

A car passed, the tires throwing a wide spray of water
from a puddle toward Snake.  He stepped back, dodging
most of the water.  Then he walked quickly across the
street and entered the hotel.

The clerk behind the counter didn't even look up as
Snake crossed the lobby and stepped into the
self-operated elevator.  Had he moved, he might have
regretted it.  Snake was prepared.  A throwing knife
was hidden in his hand at his side.

The normal way to throw a knife is the same as
throwing a baseball or a rock--overhand.  You lean
into the throw and follow through.  A good baseball
pitcher can ordinarily throw a fastball somewhere
around 90 miles per hour.  A good knife thrower can
drive the point of a knife through a board an inch
thick or bury it up to the haft in the body of a man.

Tossing a knife underhand is not the best method
because you can't put much force into the throw.  Nor
accuracy.  Snake had worked for years to become as
effective as possible with the technique simply
because of the element of surprise that it offered. 
The intended victim didn't expect you to throw a knife
 when your hand was at your side.  So, the clerk was
relatively safe even if he'd reached for a gun.  The
chance of Snake hitting him in the throat, his primary
target, with the knife was less than 20 percent.

The knife, however, would have bought Snake a few
seconds of time in which to leap over the counter at
the clerk and attacked him hand to hand.

The clerk never raised his head.

The elevator creaked and groaned with terribly
slowness up to the 11th floor.  From there, Snake
found the stairs to the roof.

The door at the top of the stairs latched from the
inside.  But King had accomplished one of the several
tasks that Snake had asked.  The latch had been
rendered ineffective.  The door moved easily open an
inch or so when Snake pushed.  There was no noise.

For a long time, Snake waited.  If she had been out
there on the roof already--and he was prepared for
that--she would have let off a few rounds into the
door when it swayed outward.  The door was an old
wooden door.  It wouldn't have even slowed down a
bullet.

He eased the door out just a little further and
slipped sideways through and to the side of the small
structure, half expecting a hail of bullets to greet
him.

The roof was vacant.  He sensed it even before he
could check it out.  It wasn't the silence, for the
rain beat like a hundred tiny drums on the surface of
the tarred roof.  It was a feeling in his fingers. 
Years ago, he'd discovered that he possessed a very
unusual talent: He could sense a crook.  His fingers,
for some weird reason, felt greasy every time he was
around someone of disrepute.  He had felt it the other
day in Caraboo's limousine.  And in the hospital
lobby.

After strolling around for a few minutes, Snake had
picked up the card table and unfolded it and set it up
near the center of the roof.  He'd also set up the two
chairs that Neva had provided.  The champagne, as
requested, was cheap enough.  The Fritos, still
unopened, had been placed by the bottle of champagne. 
Because of Pearl's lavish cooking, he wasn't hungry. 
The Fritos had been a joke anyway.

Now that he thought about it, what possible humor
could be found in a bag of Fritos?

He sat down in one of the chairs, arms folded,
waiting.

A couple of hours later, just a few minutes after
midnight, he'd got up and walked about and that's when
he thought he'd seen the movement off to his left and
had drawn his throwing knife.

When his search turned up nothing more dangerous than
the possibility of catching a bad cold, he'd returned
to the chair at the table and sat there for a few
minutes more before deciding only a masochist would
stay out in a chilling rain in the dark like this. 
The rain, anyway, was whipping under his cap and
smearing his glasses.  He wouldn't be able to see an
enemy even if one walked up and sat down across the
table.

He went down to the street, handed the bottle of
champagne to a man huddled in a doorway, and caught a
taxi.  At Grand Central, he opened his locker, took
out his suit, and changed in the men's room.  He wrung
out his shirt, his blue jeans, his jacket and hung
them up in his locker, hoping them would dry out.

A few minutes later, a taxi let him out at the
Waldorf-Astoria.  "They" were pleased to see "Mr.
Williams" again.  He wondered if "they" would have
been as eager to see him in his other clothes. In his
suite, he ordered breakfast and after eating went to
bed and slept until late afternoon.

The next night on the roof was more interesting, but
not very much.  First, it did not rain, so it was more
comfortable.  Second, he had visitors.  However, they
were quite dull.

They seemed puzzled to find him sitting in a chair in
the middle of the roof.  As if they had expected
something else entirely.

He was embarrassed about the situation.  Instead of
pulling his knife or another weapon, he merely clunked
their heads together, knocking them both out.  He left
them leaning against each other.

It was all too easy.

No one else showed up.  He waited for perhaps a couple
of hours before giving up.

Another bottle of cheap champagne had been there,
along with the bag of Fritos.

He handed the Fritos and the champagne to the same
person.  The man was still huddled in the doorway down
the street from the hotel.

"Thanks," said the man.

This time, Snake didn't bother to change clothes, but
went to his suite in the Waldorf-Astoria and went to
bed without even bothering to have breakfast.  This
time "they" hadn't been so "very happy" to see him. 
However, he'd reserved the room for two nights.

When he woke up, he showered and dressed.  His beard
looked quite ragged in the bathroom mirror, but he
thought there was a certain glamour associated with a
beard like that.

Breakfast, delivered by room service on his order, was
eggs benedict, tomato juice, coffee, hash browns.

The condemned man ate a good breakfast, was the
thought that flashed across his mind as he ate.

Afterwards, he checked his various "weapons."  
Everything seemed to be in order.

Later, he stopped by a travel agency and bought cruise
tickets and had them delivered to Pearl's address.

It was by now late afternoon.  A taxi let him out a
block away from the Bonsoir d'Jour Hotel.

He noticed the bum sitting in the same doorway,
leaning against the wall, and waved as he passed. The
bum didn't wave back.  The reason was soon obvious. 
Dead.  No marks.  The champagne bottle was at his
side, one hand still wrapped around the neck of the
bottle.

This part of lower Manhattan is a cemetery of
abandoned cars, abandoned buildings, and abandoned
people.  Obviously, no one had discovered the body yet
or they had discovered the body and not done anything
about it, waiting on someone else to take care of the
problem.

The grimace around the man's mouth bothered Snake.  He
picked up the bottle from the man's lifeless hand and
put his thumb over the opening and shook it once.  He
touched his tongue to his thumb.  It was not just
cheap champagne.  Someone had laced the champagne with
poison.  Arsenic, maybe.  He didn't know much about
such things.  He considered poison a despicable method
of combat.

Snake felt a chill along his back!

The man's death was an accident.  Someone had
obviously expected Snake to take a drink from the
bottle.  Someone who didn't know he didn't drink.

Also, that completely screwed up a theory that he'd
been developing in the back of his mind.  Because all
of the suspects evidently had access to his file and
knew that he didn't drink!

The first two parties had turned out almost exactly as
expected, with the exception, of course, of the dead
man leaning against the side of the doorway.  The
"parties," of course, were research.  True, they were
research of an unusual nature, designed to prove his
theory.

The death of the man in front of him, however, tended
to offer conclusive proof that his theory was on shaky
ground and his "research" was merely the bizarre
thinking of a man driven to extremes by the Spider
Lady.

If he'd actually seen someone in the rain that first
night, someone drawn by the posters distributed by
Montague and various gang members, then his research
had already proved at least one thing.  Just precisely
what that conclusion was, he didn't quite know.  His
trouble at the moment was that the death of the man in
the doorway had confused him.  On one hand, he felt
sad that someone entirely innocent had died because of
his carelessness.  On the other hand, he was irritated
at his inability to think clearly; anyone should have
been able to assume that the Spider Lady would have
tried something more serious than just sending a
couple of chowder heads at him!  He now realized that
they had walked onto the roof in a casual manner; they
hadn't even known he was there and probably not even
the reason they'd been sent up to the roof in the
first place!

He turned and stared at the Bonsoir d'Jour down the
street.  Off beyond the building, the moon hung in the
sky like a searchlight.  It threw this side of the
hotel building into darkness.  In the gloom, it
resembled a haunted house more than a hotel.

Snake felt a horrible reluctance to walk down there
and go inside.

The things he'd hoped to discover from the three
parties now seem so futile and senseless, the
blundering of a fool.

However, it was too late now.

This was one research project that was like the
proverbial snowball rolling downhill:  Don't get in
the way!

Like a man marching to the gallows, he walked across
the street and down to the Bonsoir d'Jour and went
inside.

(continued next week)