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- Herausgeber: Hard Case Crime
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
"It's like having a new Brian De Palma picture. – Martin Scorsese, Academy Award-winning director FROM THE DIRECTOR OF SCARFACE AND DRESSED TO KILL -- A FEMALE REVENGE STORY When the beautiful young videographer offered to join his campaign, Senator Lee Rogers should've known better. But saying no would have taken a stronger man than Rogers, with his ailing wife and his robust libido. Enter Barton Brock, the senator's fixer. He's already gotten rid of one troublesome young woman -- how hard could this new one turn out to be? Pursued from Washington D.C. to the streets of Paris, 18-year-old Fanny Cours knows her reputation and budding career are on the line. But what she doesn't realize is that her life might be as well…
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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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
Dedication
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
Acclaim for the Debut Novel of BRIAN DE PALMA and SUSAN LEHMAN!
“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 deliciously deceptive novel…The writing is nearly pitch-perfect…When the surprises start to come, one after another, with increasing rapidity, we realize there have been a few subplots running behind the scenes, just out of our view, that have suddenly become visible, altering the whole texture of the novel. A wonderful, immensely satisfying thriller.”
—Booklist
“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
“A taut drama combining suspense and humor. A book more visual than literary. We imagine the scenes that De Palma would film.”
—Paris-Match
“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
“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 SnakesNecessary?
byBrian De PalmaandSusan 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.
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.
Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com
ARE SNAKES NECESSARY?
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 turned 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 be 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.
“Oh Senator, my Lord, is it really you? Do you know that I helped my mama cast a vote for you when I was just a little girl? She took me in the booth with her and let me pull the lever. I know you’re the only one who keeps us safe from all those terrible terrorists. I’m so looking forward to the debate on Sunday with that, he’s practically a communist, that liberal Crummy or whatever his name is. Would I like to see how you prepare for a debate? Right now? Upstairs in your suite? I would be honored.”
The next morning Elizabeth walks into Brock’s office. “Check this out,” she says looking like the Cheshire Cat as she offers Brock a selfie that shows her lying naked next to the sleeping senator. She’s carefully framed the photo so her face is cut off but her body doesn’t lie.
Brock is very pleased. Elizabeth was a good hire.
Brock tells her to meet his paymaster in the McDonald’s parking lot that evening.
Brock keeps his eyes on Elizabeth’s bottom as she walks out of the office and closes the door behind her. Then Brock gets up, follows her out the door and takes off towards Rogers’ hotel.
It’s early morning. Brock, a real pro, is of course familiar with Rogers’ schedule and knows that the senator will be in his room working on debate prep.
A yawning Senator Rogers opens the door in a bathrobe.
“Well hello, Mr. Brock. What brings you here so early? Come to concede the election already?”
“Morning, Senator. Nope. Not here to concede. But I do have something I think you’ll find interesting. May I come in?”
“Please, please,” says Rogers, who exudes almost unnatural delight at the appearance of his rival’s top operative. “Always a pleasure to see what the opposition has dreamt up. Your push polling has been very instructive.”
Brock is all business. Though he has something like a mental hard-on as he anticipates Rogers’ reaction to the photo, which Brock holds up on the screen of his iPhone as soon as he’s inside the senator’s room.
Rogers leans back against the hotel room desk and just smiles. “I guess I’ll be seeing this on Washington Whispers as soon as you leave. Or maybe it’s already there?”
“No, Senator, the picture isn’t on Washington Whispers…yet. And it could vanish entirely, if you concede the election. I understand your wife has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Don’t you think this might be a good time to put your political ambitions aside and go home and look after that magnificent lady?”
Rogers laughs in Brock’s face.
Brock is uncomfortable. Has Rogers gone mad? Or has Brock? Having someone laugh at you brings back memories of early childhood and some of its worst horrors.
“I’m surprised at you, Brock. Pulling a cheap trick like this. Go ahead. Upload your naughty picture. I’ll deny it of course. And when it’s analyzed and discovered to be a fake, guess whose doorstep the media is going to be parked on?”
“It’s not a fake, Senator. It was taken right here in this hotel room.”
“You sure, Brock? Do you really want to bet your political career on that?”
Brock can feel the weight of pennies dropping from his eyes and he doesn’t like it at all. He can’t place it exactly but he definitely has the feeling he’s been taken somehow. He rifles through the options in his mind and sees quickly he has no choice but to play this out.
“Fake? Why do you say that?”
Rogers smiles. Actually it’s more of a grin. The haughty grin of a winner who gets that it would be impolite to smile at a man he’s just beaten. “Because we faked it. You know Photoshop, right? Amazing little program. You just push a few buttons. Use the blur tool around the collarbone. It’s my face on another body next to Elizabeth’s.”
Temporary loss of composure on Brock’s side of the room. “You did this together?”
“If a whore can be bought once, she can be bought twice. Oops! I wasn’t supposed to tell you about our little deal until you paid her off.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck” are the only words going through Brock’s mind.
Rogers is having fun. “By the way, have you looked at the polling this morning?”
Brock nods. His candidate is 30 points behind.
“Brock. Face facts. There is no way that Crump is going to win this primary. You know it. I know it. I quite enjoyed meeting your friend last night. We had a lot of fun creating this picture. It gets real boring on the campaign trail.”
