Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

“They’re storming across our wide-open borders to prey on our most precious citizens! Women, children—and now helpless, rich, old patriots like Kikey Pew Fitzsimmons. Well, my fellow Americans, guess what. This stops now! It ends here! No more Diegos! You have my solemn word as your president. No more Diegos!”

With Arthurian flair, Mastodon thrust his custom-made Ping putter toward the heavens. He kept it high as he parted the press corps and moved toward a line of parked golf carts.

Ryskamp turned off the TV and sat down to wait for his phone to ring.

“Maybe he’ll forget about it in a few days,” one of the other agents said hopefully. “That happens a lot.”

“Not this time. No way.”

“You think he could be right about this Diego kid being involved in the old woman’s death?”

Ryskamp looked up with a rueful smile. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t fucking matter whether he’s right or not. That’s the scary part.”

ELEVEN

Chief Jerry Crosby dry-heaved twice over his laptop while watching the President’s press conference. Afterward he phoned the county sheriff, who confirmed that Keever Bracco’s weighted corpse had been discovered in a waterway by a tow crew salvaging a stolen Chevy Malibu. The sheriff said he knew of no link between the car and Bracco’s murder, adding, “Who dumps a body in the same canal where he sunk a stolen car? You either lock the body inside the damn trunk, or you go bury it somewhere far away. What a moron.”

“But it’s probably true that Bracco was murdered by his partner,” said the chief, “to shut him up. That’s the only part of the President’s story that didn’t sound like horseshit.”

He reminded the sheriff that Diego Beltrán couldn’t have killed Bracco because Beltrán had been in custody for days. “He had nothing to do with the death of Katherine Fitzsimmons, either. I’ll bet my badge on it,” Crosby said.

The conch pearl that the chief had found on the railroad tracks was in a baggie on his desk.

“What gang was our fearless leader yapping about at his press conference?”

“No fucking clue,” the sheriff replied. “If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

Crosby was sickened by the cynical motives of the President’s conspiracy theory, and also by the damage caused. Diego Beltrán had been indicted, tried and convicted in a breezy golf-course rant. Finding an untainted jury anywhere but the North Pole would be impossible.

Nobody in the chief’s circle of island insiders was able to explain how this toxic carbonation of shit got uncorked, but soon he had his answer. There, streaming on a local news feed, appeared Fay Alex Riptoad. She was aglow from the salon and sporting a Stars-and-Stripes brooch the size of a Philippine fruit bat. A male reporter asked if she was worried that she and the other Potussies were being targeted, like poor Kiki Pew.

“All of us are taking the threat very seriously,” Fay Alex said. “It’s a sad, sobering day for this great country. But, just like our brave President, we will never ever be intimidated by ideological terrorists.”

Crosby had only himself to blame. He was the one who’d told Fay Alex about Diego Beltrán’s arrest, though he’d had no warning that the information would be shared with the White House, woven into a bizarre xenophobic plot, and then trumpeted to the entire world. The facts of the case remained sparse and cloudy. Even the killing of Keever Bracco could be linked only by suspicion to the anonymous hotline tip about the death of Katherine Fitzsimmons. Nor had any evidence surfaced placing Bracco in Palm Beach on the night of the crime—or in the unlikely company of young Beltrán, a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant.

Yet demonstrators galvanized by seething talk-radio hosts had already gathered outside the county jail on the mainland. Some carried handmade signs, while others waved ineptly knotted lynch nooses.

All were chanting, “No more Diegos! No more Diegos!”

It was rampaging imbecility, and possibly unstoppable.

Crosby trudged into his office bathroom, where he scrubbed the taste of bile from his mouth. Only one person was waiting outside in the small lobby—a pretty, green-eyed woman wearing a ponytail and the unlikeliest of Palm Beach attire, long outdoor khakis with grass stains on the knees. She introduced herself as Angela Armstrong and said she was a wildlife-relocation specialist. The chief thought she didn’t look big enough to arm-wrestle a squirrel, but the logo on her shirt advertised a company called “Discreet Captures.”

“We specialize in humane techniques,” she added, “whenever possible.”

“I’m sorry, but you’ve caught me at the worst possible time. It’s crazy busy around here today.”

“Yes, sir, I bet. We should go somewhere quiet and talk.”

“Look, Ms. Armstrong, I’m not trying to be rude but—”

“It’s Angie, please.” She reached up and put a hand on his shoulder. “I promise you want to hear what I’ve got to say.”

Crosby was caught off guard by her directness. Also, those eyes.

He heard himself ask, “All right. What’s this about?”

“The late Katherine Pew Fitzsimmons. Specifically, the true and unusual nature of her death.”

Oh Christ, thought Crosby. Another escapee from Loonyville.

He said, “Somebody’s already put in a claim with the victim’s family for the reward. Now, I’ve really got to run. Late for a meeting—”

Angie blocked his juke to slip past her. “I don’t want a goddamn reward,” she said. “And don’t you dare brush me off.”

“Okay, sorry.” Crosby stepped back. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“For starters, it was no coincidence they found Keever Bracco’s body in the same canal as that stolen car.”

The chief remained wary but was now intrigued. “What’s the connection between Bracco and the Malibu?” he asked his visitor.

“You’re whispering, sir, and there’s nobody here but us.”

“Yes or no—do you know who killed Mrs. Fitzsimmons?”

“It’s not a ‘who,’ ” said the woman named Angie. “May I call you Jerry? Come on, Jerry, I’ll buy you a beer.”

—

Uric Burns was still angry about the last phone conversation when his cell started ringing. The caller’s number had a blocked ID, but Uric answered anyway.

“Did you get this shit straightened out?” he barked.

A woman was on the other end. It didn’t sound like Judith from the tipster hotline. Uric had just cursed at her and hung up after learning that the rich snake lady’s relatives would only cough up half the promised reward. Judith had said the other half would be released after the police investigation was finished.

Fifty thousand dollars was still a shit-pile of money, more than Uric had ever made on a single job, and the sensible move would be to grab it and vanish. But he resented being jerked around, and the sweet scent of that other fifty grand held sway over his judgment, which wasn’t razor-sharp to begin with.

Uric didn’t consider his stubborn stance as one of shortsighted greed, but rather as a principled effort to collect something that was rightfully his. He hoped his outburst had worried the hotline operations office, though the woman had yet to identify herself as a representative.

“Are you, like, Judith’s boss?” Uric demanded.

There was a pause. “Yes, that’s right,” replied the woman, who had introduced herself as Miss Baez. “I’m her supervisor.”

“Then she must’ve told you I want all the reward money right now, not just half. That was the goddamn deal. So it’s a real bad idea for that old lady’s family to pull any last-minute bullshit. They’d never a found her, weren’t for my tip. And I been straight with you guys from day one. I always acted in—what the fuck do lawyers call it?”