Are Snakes Necessary? Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Acclaim for the Debut Novel of BRIAN DE PALMA and SUSAN LEHMAN!

  Some Other Hard Case Crime Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  We Are Pleased to Provide You With This Advance Reading Copy.

  Please Send Any Mention or Review to [email protected]

  Title: ARE SNAKES NECESSARY?

  Author: Brian De Palma & Susan Lehman

  Publication Date: March 17, 2020

  Price: $22.99 U.S./$29.99 CAN/£16.99

  ISBN: 978-1-78909-120-5

  Pages: 240

  PLEASE NOTE:

  This is an uncorrected proof and not the final edition.

  Acclaim for the Debut Novel of BRIAN DE PALMA and SUSAN LEHMAN!

  “When we were all trying to get our first pictures made, Brian De Palma was leading the way, forging ahead, giving a real example to follow. Brian was the model of the truly independent filmmaker, no matter what the situation or the scale of the picture or the size of the budget. When he got into a tough situation, he fought, he did the best he could, he learned and he moved on and made the next picture. Now, with Susan Lehman, he’s turned his energies to writing. In Are Snakes Necessary?, you have the same individual voice, the same dark humor and bitter satire, the same overwhelming emotional force. It’s like having a new Brian De Palma picture.”

  —Martin Scorsese

  “One of the world's greatest filmmakers has helped produce a fast-moving page turner, breathlessly paced, part Hollywood screenplay with hardboiled movie dialogue, part playful and parodic soap opera, both cinematic and self-referential: women in trouble, videographers, murder, lenses, masks, and of course, Vertigo. Ultimately irresistible for any De Palma fan.”

  —Bret Easton Ellis

  “Are Snakes Necessary? is brilliant, lurid, twisty fun. Working together, Susan Lehman and Brian De Palma have captured in print something akin to one of De Palma’s dreamlike visual masterpieces. Compulsively readable and fiendishly constructed.”

  —David Koepp, screenwriter of Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, and Spider-Man

  “A clever thriller and a brilliant charge against American politicians.”

  —Le Figaro

  “The supercharged grace of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential with less despair and more humor.”

  —Marianne

  “A great first novel, a beautiful discovery.”

  —Read

  “A debut noir novel full of winks to the masters of the genre.”

  —Millepages Bookstore

  “In this world of men, Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman compose powerful female figures who go to the end of their emotions.”

  —Hebdo Books

  “A taut drama combining suspense and humor. A book more visual than literary. We imagine the scenes that De Palma would film.”

  —Paris-Match

  “When the caricature succeeds, the result makes you cheer.”

  —Action Suspense

  “A lively thriller, dark and punctuated with winks at the movies.”

  —Madame Figaro

  The sun is still bright, dagger bright, when Nick pulls the blue Cutlass into Elizabeth’s long circular driveway, the one that leads to Diamond’s glass castle in the desert. Bruce opens the door.

  “Come on in, homewrecker,” he tells Nick. “Come to say your goodbyes? The missus will be down shortly. Meanwhile can I pour you a farewell drink?”

  Though entirely unnerved, Nick plays it cool. Mostly because he has no idea what else to do. The house looks like a place James Bond would feel at home.

  Bruce takes the bottle he is carrying and unscrews the top. He goes over to the bar to get some water and ice cubes and makes two Scotches on the rocks. He lifts his drink to Nick.

  “Well, well, you surprised me. I didn’t think you went in for this kind of cheesy stuff. Fucking the boss’s wife. Pretty ballsy.”

  Nick finds it harder to play it cool. “At least I don’t beat her.”

  Bruce laughs. Too hard. He follows this with an alligator grin. “How wrong you are…”

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY :

  JOYLAND by Stephen King

  THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

  BRAINQUAKE by Samuel Fuller

  THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal

  SO NUDE, SO DEAD by Ed McBain

  THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES by Lawrence Block

  BUST by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  SOHO SINS by Richard Vine

  THE KNIFE SLIPPED by Erle Stanley Gardner

  SNATCH by Gregory Mcdonald

  THE LAST STAND by Mickey Spillane

  UNDERSTUDY FOR DEATH by Charles Willeford

  CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL by Scott Von Doviak

  SO MANY DOORS by Oakley Hall

  A BLOODY BUSINESS by Dylan Struzan

  THE TRIUMPH OF THE SPIDER MONKEY by Joyce Carol Oates

  BLOOD SUGAR by Daniel Kraus

  KILLING QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  DOUBLE FEATURE by Donald E. Westlake

  Are Snakes

  Necessary?

  by Brian De Palma

  and Susan Lehman

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-144)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: March 2020

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  Copyright © 2016, 2020 by DeBart Productions

  Cover painting copyright © 2020 by Paul Mann

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

&nb
sp; Print edition ISBN 978-1-78909-120-5

  E-book ISBN 978-1-78909-121-2

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  CHAPTER 1

  Barton Brock had a bad day. A very bad day.

  The vasectomy was not, as the doctor promised, painless. Brock’s balls hurt and he is having unpleasant thoughts about swelling, discoloration and perpetual soreness.

  This is not the worst of it. The poll numbers are devastating. It looks like Jason Crump is going to get creamed. The primary is just four weeks away.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” These are pretty much the only words going through Barton Brock’s head. It’s Brock’s job to get Crump elected, and he can’t fuck up.

  Political campaigns are brutal. The stakes are high. Not for the electorate—Barton Brock does not particularly care about the electorate. But for the team, the one that boosts the candidate into office, the stakes matter, a lot. The guys on the team get big payoffs, good appointments, cushy jobs, bigger campaigns.

  It’s like fishing. You start small, then throw away the little guys, the ones self-respecting cats wouldn’t call dinner—and then you cast out for the big mothers.

  Crump’s big problem is that he’s up against Lee Rogers, mister fancy-pants incumbent who’s scared off most of the challengers in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary.

  Crump, an Iraq war vet who has a chest full of medals and an artificial leg to show for his trouble in Operation Desert Storm, does not lack for candidate brownie points. And he has a nice, yes-you-would-like-to-have-a-beer-with-this-guy frat-boy appeal.

  The trouble is he doesn’t have a lot going on upstairs. Certainly nothing Rogers, with his Columbia Law School dazzle, can’t blow away at the debate in two weeks.

  As Crump’s campaign manager and strategist, Brock’s MO springs from a line he read in a David Mamet play: “The only way to teach these guys a lesson is to kill them.”

  Brock is going to teach the pretty-boy politicos a great big lesson, one that will kill their chances. And it’s going to take a very dirty trick to do it.

  Brock, 42 and busily not thinking about how he is not going to tell his wife about the vasectomy, applies himself to the question of how best to smear Senator Rogers.

  First thing, we move the news cycle away from foreign policy, farm subsidies and all that and towards something Rogers would rather not talk about, something like his zipper problem, maybe.

  Brock feels a familiar excitement as he considers what dirty rabbit he can pull out of his hat. Suspecting that Dr. Jack Daniels might supply a little inspiration, Brock drives his rental sedan past several hard-to-distinguish strip malls—it seems to Brock that suburban Pennsylvania may, in fact, be one interconnected strip mall. He steers the sedan into a big lot and heads towards One Fish, Two Fish, a tavern at strip’s end. A swollen goldfish floats at the top of the tank inside the front door. Brock pulls a stool up to the bar and orders. A couple of shots later, no light bulbs have gone off.

  The good thing about having a history, even a bad history, is that your record can be a source of confidence—or sometimes supply a sense of direction. Brock, now dim in the ideas department, decides maybe a little sleep will kickstart his dark genius. He’ll come up with something in the morning. He’s sure he will. He always has.

  He heads for the Red Roof Inn Motel, and, just before the turn-off, is cheered by the sight of a pair of golden arches. McDonald’s. God Bless America and God Bless late-night snacks.

  Brock ducks inside. It’s a few minutes before closing. A surreal vision greets him at the counter: there stands a drop-dead gorgeous blonde. Her stiff yellow apron barely contains her voluptuous curves. For a moment Brock imagines a wrestling match between her giant breasts and the tight seams of her Ronald McDonald wear. His better ball starts to tingle.

  “Double quarter pounder with cheese.”

  “Anything extra?” asks the knockout.

  “Just one question.”

  “Is the answer on the menu?”

  “Nope. It’s a personal question.”

  The blonde shakes her head. She’s beat.

  “Sorry, mister. I’ve been on my feet for twelve hours. I’m ready to go home. If it’s not on the menu, I’m not interested in what you have on your mind.”

  “Really? How about this: I wonder if you’d be interested in a better-paying job that doesn’t require you to be on your feet all day.”

  Elizabeth deCarlo looks up at the clock. She looks back at Brock. He seems a little rough around the edges but he’s got on a suit and tie and looks like he could be some kind of manager. He does not look scary.

  Ten minutes later, Elizabeth has closed off the blinding dining area lights and is sitting inside Brock’s nondescript black town car.

  Brock gets right to the point.

  “I’m the campaign manager for Jason Crump. We need people to conduct push polls tomorrow.”

  “Push polls?”

  Brock explains that push polling involves calling Republicans, encouraging them to go to the polls and slipping in a few questions before they hang up the phone.

  “What kind of questions?” Elizabeth doesn’t quite follow and wants to go home.

  “Like how do they feel about their candidate supporting Right-to-Life legislation?”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What does it pay?”

  Brock knows push polling doesn’t pay anything. Local volunteers do this stuff for nothing. But he has an idea it would be good to have Elizabeth in his sphere of influence where he can prime her for a job she was born to play, one that will be extremely lucrative.

  Ten days in and $2,000 later, Brock calls Elizabeth into his office for a special after-hours chat.

  “How’s the job going?”

  Elizabeth shrugs. “Most of the people I talk to don’t know who Jason Crump is. In fact they don’t even know they’re supposed to vote next month. They do know who Senator Rogers is.”

  “They bring his name up?”

  “Yep.”

  “How do they feel about his womanizing?”

  “I don’t ask them about that. Am I missing something?”

  “Rogers has a history of philandering.”

  “Stop the presses,” she says. “What man hasn’t? And what difference does it make? Aren’t we campaigning for Crump?”

  Brock affects a professorial tone. Political Campaigning 101. “We are. But one way to campaign for Crump is to attack Rogers, expose his negatives.”

  In a matter of seconds, Brock unveils his big idea. “This is a man who plays around, okay? He’s been doing it for years. He just hasn’t been caught. The voters deserve to know the truth about the man representing them in Washington, don’t you think?”

  Elizabeth doesn’t care much one way or the other.

  Brock continues. “How about this. We get the senator in a compromising position with a girl and photograph it. Maybe we send a couple copies around, stir up some gossip with a little strategically placed web video. Then we push poll along these lines: ‘Lee Rogers cheats on his wife. Would this make you more likely or less likely to vote for him?’ ”

  Brock smiles. It’s simple. It will be deadly. He’ll be that much closer to the Crump victory that is his job.

  Elizabeth gets it. “Sounds like a pretty dirty trick.”

  “Exactly. And it’s kind of an ideal smear. It will cause a ruckus and no one will be able to trace it back to the Crump campaign.”

  Brock has been studying Elizabeth’s cleavage for the past few moments. He’s not subtle. So Elizabeth isn’t surprised when he says, “You’re going to b
e the girl in the photograph. You know, the heart of the dirty little rumor.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Brock. Thank you very much but I’m going back to my job at McDonald’s.”

  Greasy french fries, dirty tricks, it all sounds pretty much the same to Elizabeth. She doesn’t need to get involved in political smearing. Big Macs are oily enough.

  “Sit down!” Brock barks. Now this guy is beginning to scare her. Elizabeth sits back down. “You think minimum wage at McDonald’s is going to pay for you to fight that nasty landlord who is trying to evict you from your home?”

  “What do you know about that? That’s my personal business.”

  “I’m concerned about the welfare of my employees. I try to be well acquainted with their personal problems. And you need money. A lot of it. Even bad lawyers are expensive.” Brock has a sinister cool. He’s got it all figured out.

  Elizabeth knows when her back is to the wall. She does need money. Fuck. Maybe this sneaky bastard can help. She’s not running for Senate. How compromising can it be?

  “Okay,” she says. “Let’s cut to the chase. You want Rogers to be caught with someone just like me.”

  Brock smiles. “You are a bright girl.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten grand.”

  “Make it fifteen. And throw in a couple of grand for a clothes budget. I can’t go to work dressed like this.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Elizabeth’s new job is easy. Much easier than flipping burgers.

  She sits at the bar at the Boody House Hotel. The one where Lee Rogers is staying.

  She wears jeans and a creamy silk blouse. Elizabeth knows a bit about fashion and sex appeal. It’s the flash of skin, the point where the conceal and reveal join, that is most interesting. This is a fancy way of saying that her blouse is buttoned to the third button. Discreet but inviting.

  Guess who accepts the invitation? Yes. Lee Rogers.

  He walks in after a staff meeting, thinks about going to his room, sees 19-year-old Elizabeth at the bar and turns around.

  “Hi there,” he says with practiced charm.

  “Buy a girl a drink?”

  When you really get down to it, it’s not so hard to get things moving. A few Manhattan swigs later, Elizabeth is twirling the cherry stem on her tongue and trying out her favorite dumb Southern bunny accent.