Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

Like me, she thought. Once upon a time.

The President’s Secret Service code name was “Mastodon.” He loved it.

“Perfect!” he’d boomed when he was told. “Fearless, smart, and tough.”

And enormous, she’d said to herself. Don’t forget fucking enormous.

On only his second day in the White House, the President had ordered his chief of staff to arrange a trip to the National Zoo for a close-up look at a real mastodon. The chief of staff wasn’t brave enough to tell the President the truth, so he cooked up a story that the zoo’s beloved mastodon herd was on loan to a wildlife park in Christchurch, New Zealand. The President had scowled, muttered something about “those snotty Kiwis,” and soon gotten sidetracked by another daft notion.

“Is it a dog in the road?” Mockingbird asked Keith, who was positioned in the front passenger seat.

“No, ma’am, it’s a snake.”

Mockingbird scooted forward. “Really? What happened? I want to see!”

“I don’t have that information,” said Keith, using two fingers to snug the fit of his earbud. “There’s no danger whatsoever. The snake is very large, but it’s dead.”

Mockingbird leaned left and right, peering through the bulletproof windshield, trying to see around the other agents.

“How do they know it’s not just sleeping?” she asked.

“Because the head’s been removed, ma’am.”

“Can’t we get closer? Please, Keith?”

The agent said, “They’re taking some pictures. I’ll show them to you later.”

“That’s not the same.” Mockingbird sat back, frowning. “Not at all.”

She enjoyed nothing about being First Lady, but she felt especially smothered by the ironclad timetables upon which each day was structured. Once inside the limousine, she was captive cargo—no spontaneous detours, no carefree changes of plans. How often does a person get the chance to see a humongous headless serpent?

“But you said there isn’t any danger, Keith. So why can’t I just—”

“Buckle up, please, ma’am. We’ve been cleared to proceed.”

—

Looking back, Uric would admit they should have dealt with the dead python before getting trashed at the titty bar.

The name of the joint was Prime Vegas Showgirls, which the Prince after four bourbons complained was false advertising; a flame-haired dancer with whom he’d been chatting had confided that she’d never been west of Tallahassee. Meanwhile Uric allowed himself to get bewitched by a rangy Russian brunette with a Jiminy Cricket tattoo on each of her dimpled butt cheeks. The conversation between dance numbers was appreciably less monotonous than the choreography.

Hazy hours passed, and a coral sun was peeking over the horizon by the time the empty-pocketed burglars emerged from the strip club. Yet even Prince Paladin, who was more wasted than Uric, grasped the problem.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Now we gotta ditch that fuckin’ snake in broad daylight.”

“Chill your drunken ass. I know a place.”

But, in truth, Uric couldn’t think of another safe location. The remote rock-mining pit where he’d planned to dispose of the reptile in the dark would now be open, bustling with dredges, cranes and dump trucks.

Had he been sober and clear-thinking, Uric wouldn’t have been steering the stolen Malibu—its tail end sagging under the heft—toward the busy, heavily policed island of Palm Beach. He would have been racing in the opposite direction, toward a landfill or a cane field.

Lipid House was quiet. Uric parked under the arched stucco portico. Although he’d done several jobs for Tripp Teabull, he had never been invited to the estate. Likewise the Prince had never seen a real mansion up close. No one approached the car, so the men got out and waited in the shade.

“Dude, the trunk’s leakin’,” the Prince observed.

Uric dolefully studied the slow drip coming from somewhere under the Malibu’s rear bumper. The goddamn snake was melting.

“It’s gonna stink,” the Prince said.

Uric slapped him in the nuts. “This is all your fault, draggin’ me to that lame-ass bar.”

The doors opened and out walked Teabull wearing charcoal slacks, loafers, and an Oxford shirt with the cuffs rolled up. He stared coldly at the men, glanced at the Malibu, and then with open palms raised his arms. Silently he mouthed the words: “What the fuck?”

They all clambered into the car, which Uric drove to the back of the property. Teabull told him to park in the golf-cart shed.

Uric said, “We need to unload the snake. You got any ideas?”

Teabull kicked open the passenger door and practically rolled out of the car. “The damn thing’s in the trunk? The deal was—Are you serious? Are you dicking with me?—because the deal was you bury it way out west, somewhere it’ll never be found.”

The Prince said, “Yo, they was complications.”

Uric added, defensively, “Shit, the hardest part of the job got done. We found the motherfucking snake and we stole the motherfucking snake.”

Teabull was livid. Mauricio had told him about Angela Armstrong’s visit—and how much she already knew.

“Why in God’s name did you bring it back here ?” he yelled at the two hired thieves. “All you had to do was call.”

“Phone died,” said Uric, which was the truth. There was no charger in the stolen Malibu.

“You guys reek of booze,” Teabull croaked. “Are you drunk?”

The Prince said, “We were drunk. Now we’re just hungover.”

Uric told Teabull to focus on the problem. “Think hard, bro. There’s gotta be a place around here to drop this load.”

“On the island? Are you insane? This is Palm Fucking Beach.”

Teabull pointed one of his loafers at a puddle widening beneath the car. “Don’t tell me the gas tank’s leaking. This shed’ll blow like a napalm bomb.”

The Prince said, “Don’t worry, man. That ain’t gasoline.”

“The snake was in a deep freeze when we jacked it,” Uric explained.

A hot surge of nausea wobbled Teabull. “So you’re saying it’s…thawing?”

Uric offered to pop the trunk. “Then you can see with your own damn eyeballs that we really got this thing.”

“Don’t open it! I believe you.”

In almost a decade as the caretaker-manager of Lipid House, Teabull had smoothed over—and covered up—many difficult situations arising from the bad behavior of club members or their guests. There had been thefts, fistfights, unsought nudity, indiscreet sex, drug overdoses, rowdy vandalism, and one felony stabbing (a surgeon wielding a Wusthof steak knife had forcefully attempted to remove a benign but unsightly mole from the neck of his carping father-in-law).

Still, no member in good standing had ever expired on the estate, at least officially, during Teabull’s coolheaded tenure. Thanks to his friendly relations with first-responders, even the indisputably deceased victims of heart attacks on the property were rushed to a nearby emergency room for a convincing charade of resuscitative efforts before the official pronunciation of death—purposely delayed by hours—was issued. The hospital, not Lipid House, would be listed as the location of demise.

Teabull pondered the steep challenge now facing him. Not only had Katherine Pew Fitzsimmons, society matron and presidential fan-girl, perished on the grounds, but her once-removed, half-digested corpse was now back at the scene, reheating inside the dead monster that had devoured her. Teabull longingly thought back to the great job offer he’d turned down last season—managing a Waspy Cape Cod yacht-and-tennis club where the average member’s age was only fifty-six. The climate there was way too cold for pythons or boa constrictors or whatever the fuck had gobbled Kiki Pew.